A Harry Potter Day....

Today is a Harry Potter day. I say this because today's the day that Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince movie comes out. I'm quite excited and yes, I am taking time from my moving schedule to see it.

I like Harry Potter Days. The best days are the ones when the books came out because as I say regularly, I'm a reader. There's nothing more relaxing and wonderful than having a big book to read that you can't wait to sink your teeth into and pass hours and hours of being lost in a world of fiction.

Today is still a good Harry Potter day though. I actually count the books and movies as seperate entities. Even though the movie was based on the book, they're different. I picture Harry, Hermione and Ron more as the illustrations from the books than the actors who play them. I collect some Harry Potter stuff and most of it features the illustrations. That's not to say I don't think that Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson don't do a fine job of playing Harry, Ron and Hermione but they're not the characters I read about in the book.

It doesn't mean that I'm not excited about the movie.

However, I do wish I could reread the entire series anew. If I did nowadays, I'd be reading each one for the multipleth time. They were wonderful reads, the kind of books that become old friends. The best thing of all is that they're a series and once you start, you have what seems to be an endless supply of future reading.

Of course, once you get to the last book in the series, it's a little like Christmas Eve; you WANT to read it just like you want Christmas to come but you know once it does, it's going to pass so quickly you're going to wish it was still Christmas Eve.

That's where I am with the Charlaine Harris novels. I started the last one in the series last night. I know that there'll be more later on but I had this fantastically entertaining pile of books to read and somehow, not slowly enough, I ended up on the last one somehow. I'm rather sad about it because I have no idea what to read next. I have books to read but I've been so immersed in the world of Sookie Stackhouse that coming out of it might be a problem. I'm going to wonder why everyone is coming out in the daytime and how, when it's a full moon, there aren't any were-creatures around.

Yes. I know. I should move onto other books. I'm sure I have some other, more literary, books to read. However, I like reading non-literary books. I applaud Charlaine Harris for creating a series that may not be the most literary thing ever but they are ridiculous entertaining and that's the mark of a good writer. I find escapism into her worlds similar to that of J.K. Rowling's. This is not to compare the two writers because they're wildly different in style, character building, narrative and everything. Yet in both Harris' and Rowling's worlds, the blending of our world with that of the the magical/supernatural is almost...believable. With the world of Harry Potter, it is easy enough to believe that underneath the bland, easy world of reality there's a whole, hidden world full of magic. It's concealed from the muggles in very creative ways, ways that are believable from the minute you step inside the pages of Harry Potter.

With the world of Sookie Stackhouse, once you open the first book, it is actually quite easy to see how vampires are able to be 'out' in the world, how the werewolves and were-creatures, witches, demons and other 'supes' are waiting in the shadows, watching to see how the world reacts to the Great Revelation of the vampires. Soon enough, these creatures will come out of the shadows and the humans in Sookie's world will see that vampires are the tip of the iceberg.

I love that in the Sookie books, there is no apology, no overexplaining of how these creatures can exist, why they exist. They're just there, given personalities and traits that make them oddly appealing and endlessly fascinating.

I'm going to be sad to finish inhabiting Sookie's world when I close that last book. I think I'm going to have to read another series. Suggestions would be much appreciated. I've heard Anita Blake is good but I'm not sure I want another vampire series yet, however.

Still, for now, at least I have Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince to watch. It's not quite the same as getting lost in a book but it will do. For now.

Happy Wednesday.

Writing as Identity: Money or Love?

Today did not begin well. I refuse to accept that as an omen that the day is doomed. I will, however, keep my smoke detector in my hall closet for a little while as a punishment for being so sensitive.

I burned my toast. The entire building now knows. In order to stop my smoke detector from making the piercing horrible noise that is still ringing in my ears an hour later, I had to quickly rip it off the ceiling and throw it in the closet. As I am not a giant, this involves standing on a chair. Unfortunately, the chair almost tipped. It did not, however, and I am taking that as a good sign.

I also got trapped by a train today. The tracks wind sleepily through town and it's inevitable that you have to cross them at some point. There was a train just sitting on the tracks almost the entire way through town and I had to go around. Fortunately, it gave me a chance to listen to more Green Day and nibble on my burned toast and contemplate life.

More specifically, it gave me a chance to contemplate my writing. I read an agent's blog yesterday that made me think a lot. The agent is Nathan Bransford, an agent who blogs fairly regularly. I'm not actually a huge fan of his, not only because he set the record for rejecting one of my queries- twelve minutes after I emailed it- but because, based on his blog, he tends to come across as a little superior and that sometimes rubs me the wrong way.

He had a blog a couple of days ago about "Writing as Identity" in which he said how unsettling he found it when people defined themselves as writers. By this, he was referring to the writers who say "I am a writer. It's who I am." These are the writers who claim that writing is like oxygen, that they cannot live without it. His claim is that people shouldn't define themselves by what they do in their spare time, for example, comparing it to someone who is enjoys reality TV but doesn't walk around claiming "They are a connisseur of reality TV." Well, no, Nathan because that would be both silly AND embarrassing.

However, while my first reaction was to be offended and angry at him, I stopped and thought about it. I know I set up this blog to talk about writing, to give me an outlet so I could write often and regularly yet...was I guilty of the charges he laid down? Am I self-indulgent enough to think of myself only as a writer and everything else secondary?

Given some of my posts on rejection and how personal it feels, I am guilty. Nathan says ofof these writers that, "They've stopped enjoying the writing process, and because writing is so wrapped up in their self-conception, they can't bear the pain of rejection and instead look outward for blame."

He might have a point. I do that at times. Hence the fact that I'm boycotting Amazon.com. I don't know how not to feel that I'm disappointing those characters who've charged me with telling their story. I'd say I'd like to be more businesslike about my writing and not make it such a personal thing but, well, what kind of writer would I be then? I used to dabble in journalism and I hated the impersonal nature of it. Anyone can use words to describe facts but not everyone can make those facts interesting and readable.

It's clear from his blogs that Nathan Bransford is a rational creature, one who thrives on the business side of being an agent rather than the creative side. There's nothing wrong with this except his job as an agent is to represent writers. Given some of the comments on his blog, there are definitely writers out there who write because they can, because they can earn money at it, writers who don't have any emotional tie to what they do. I find that fascinating; not because I can't do that but...I don't want to. I thought about it. I've done it. I hated it.

Believe me, I'd sometimes rather love to divorce myself from writing so that I could just do it but not care about it; it would be less draining and disappointing. But...then why would I do it? I like my job in software. I like my friends and family. I have a life outside of writing. But it's writing that gives me that passion, that thrill, that realization that makes me feel like I'm complete. I've had my ephiphany moment where I just knew. From then on, I wrote. I can almost hear Nathan groaning that this is exactly what he meant. I will say that while I could live without writing in my life, that it isn't the oxygen that keeps me going, it does make my life that much brighter, more enjoyable. People don't need sports but it doesn't stop people from dressing head to toe in their team colours, putting up posters and banners, drinking out of mugs while using a mouse-pad adorned with their teams-logo, does it? Sports enhance people's lives. Writing enhances mine. Try telling a die-hard Red Sox fan that their team means nothing, that it's just a stupid hobby. I dare you.

I do tell people I'm a writer sometimes. Most of the time, I don't bother unless it comes up in conversation. This blog is about as nametaggy as I get as to the fact that I'm a writer. I don't go to coffee shops with my laptop so people can see that I write. I don't pull out my notebook everytime I'm with friends and there's a silence so that they can see I'm a writer. I don't carry Stephen King's On Writing with me all the time even though I love that book.

Yet I can't stop my brain from constantly seeing stories in everything around me, hearing an idea from a song on the radio (or, in my case, my iPod). I can't stop myself from filing away news stories for future plot points. Sometimes it would be nice to be able to turn that off. I've actually tried and it doesn't work. I'm still figuring out how to steal something someone told me and work it into a story, even when I think I'm not thinking about writing.

Originally, Mr. Bransford referred to writing as a hobby. He changed that, I think because he realized that saying that was a wee bit condescending. Yes, writing is a hobby for me because it doesn't pay my bills. Yet since I've been watching the Food Network, I've started to love cooking. Yet don't go around thinking I'm a chef and I never will. I consider Mario Batali and Bobby Flay to be chefs just as I consider J.K. Rowling, Neil Gaiman and Stephen King to be writers. I consider Beethoven, Mozart, Green Day and Andrew Lloyd Webber to be composers and musicians. You know why? Because that's what they are. I guarantee in all of the cases I cited, those people enjoy it, they do it because they have no choice: it's their path in life.

I'm not arrogant enough to suggest I'm in the same league as J.K. Rowling, Neil Gaiman and Stephen King. Yet...is it because they get a paycheck that we get to say "they're writers?" Is it because they are fortunate enough to get paid for it that they have the permission to be a writer? Or is J.K. Rowling really just a former unemployed single mother who happened to write one of the best children's books and become a multi-millionaire because of it. Is it always about the money?

It would make sense that to agents like Nathan Bransford, that would be the case. It's his job to get writers to the point where they're making money so that he can make money. Yet...where is that line? I suppose he has a point that stamp collectors don't go around claiming to be a stamp collector and making that their identity. Reality-TV watchers don't claim that's who they are. I don't deny that there is a line between claiming to be a writer and actually being one. I am a firm believer that a writer has to write to be a writer. They can't be a coffee-shop dabbler who thinks they are a writer but doesn't do more than read books about it, make outlines and tell people about it. A real writer just writes because we love it. So what should we call ourselves? People-who-have-full-time-jobs-but-have-this-horrible-need-to-go-home-and-make-up-stories? Should I call myself a story-maker-upper-hobbyinst instead of a writer? Or am I allowed to say I'm a writer because...I am? Does making money at what you love grant you the title and identity or is it the thing itself?

I suppose it depends on how you look at it. I like my way better. Naturally. I suppose Mr. Bransford would probably argue that I am one of those writers that he criticized and the reason I'm writing this is because he rejected me. I would argue that's not the case. I just think there should be two sides to every argument. This is mine.

Happy Wednesday!

Why I Once Would have Loved Twilight: The Obsessive Nature of Captain Monkeypants

I've always been a creature of phases. And I don't mean that like I'm a werewolf or anything but, rather, that I've always had a bit of an obsessive personality. Ever since I was a child, I've had a tendency to get stuck on something and it becomes my most favourite thing in life.

For example, one of my earliest obsessions was with a British children's author named Enid Blyton. As an avid reader anyway, I discovered that she had hundreds of books. They were books about boarding schools, fantasy lands that could be found at the top of trees, child detectives, mysteries and even had my most favourite character: Noddy. Noddy was a little elf-like thing whose best friend was the grumpy Big Ears. I used to call him "Biggy Ears" before I knew better. I absorbed Enid Blyton's books like a sponge: I used to go to the library and come home with a stack of five books, all by her. I wanted to go to boarding school, to have midnight feasts, to do all the things her characters did. Actually, I've always had a sneaking suspicion that J.K. Rowling, author of Harry Potter, also read her share of Enid Blyton when she was younger. There are definitely some good Blyton-esque scenes in her books, especially the earlier ones before the world of Hogwarts got too dark.

Anyway, my obsession got to the point where, I believe, a teacher even told my mother that I should probably read something else to give me some variety. You see, I didn't know it then but Enid wasn't, um....a good writer. She tended to use the same words over and over and being as young as I was, I didn't realize how dated her books were, even when I was a child.

Sadly, I got my hands on some Enid Blyton books fairly recently, books that I'd loved as a child about St. Clare's school. I was horrified. They were terrible. They were full of terms like "fiddlesticks" and "golly gosh" and they were absolutely horrendously written. Needless to say, I was mildly crushed that such a staple of my youth wasn't the paragon I believed her to be. Yet she'd given me an impetus to read voraciously as a young 'un and there was value in that.

My obsessions continued. They veered in music in which I am now sort of embarrassed to admit I was a huge Wham! fan and was in love with George Michael. Ok, I'm more than sort of embarrassed. Hey, I was ten. We didn't know he was gay then. My best friend and I would had recorded two Wham! videos- "Careless Whisper" and "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" (and yes, ok, I know technically "Careless Whisper" was a solo effort by George but that's irrelevant to my story). We would run home at lunch EVERY DAY and watch them. My poor mother- she had to suffer through that. Sorry, mum. Really.

From Wham! I moved on bouncing from films to television to books and back to music. I went through a heavy metal period in my teens, wearing the black band shirts and thinking I was cool because I liked hair bands. Again, hindsight is 20-20 but at the time, they were a metaphor for my painful awkward teen years. My friends and I would have lotteries to divide up who had 'custody' of a band for the week. Yes, again....I was an unhappy teen for a while but, then again, show me a happy one. As teens, we all think that we're misunderstood and unliked by our peers. It's only fifteen years later and you realize that all those people you thought hated you really were just as messed up and befuddled by life as you and suddenly they all want to be your Facebook friend.

Uh, sorry...I digress. After that phase, I changed friends. I think it's because I suddenly realized that life really didn't suck and I was just a dork in a black shirt listening to music from men more effeminate then me. I made new friends and started to listen to happier things like Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals.

It was a new phase. That one lasted me a while. During that phase, I also went through an Anne Rice phase in which I loved vampires again. I've always liked vampires but Anne Rice made them more romantic and less, you know, fangy and bloody. Phases can overlap, you know.

Since then, I've probably had a dozen more phases. I went through a huge Buffy the Vampire Slayer phases but, then again, that one is still ongoing merely because Joss Whedon, the writer and creator of the show is a genius and I will follow his creativity wherever he goes because he always keeps me amused, spellbound and fascinated by his ability to write and create such original stuff.

You may wonder why I'm telling you all this. My snarky answer is that it's my blog, I can tell you what I like. Surprisingly, however, I do have a point. This whole reverie was sparked by a visit to a bookstore this weekend in which I saw two teenage girls grabbing several copies of Stephanie Meyer's Twilight books and literally being so excited you could see them jumping up and down.

Surprisingly enough, given my past rants and blogs about Ms. Meyer, this isn't actually a tirade against her and her mediocre books. It's mostly because when I saw those teens being that excited over a book, I could relate to it. Maybe the reason I hate those books so much is because I know, as a teen, I, too, would have wanted to be Bella Swan with her sparkled-skin, bronze-haired hero to save her from her mundane life. I would have felt catharsis in Bella's unhappiness too. So I can't even mock them as I normally would. Mostly, I'm excited that they are that excited over a book. Ok, so I wish it was someone more deserving like Neil Gaiman, Celia Rees, J.K. Rowling or even Stephen King but, well, at least they're excited over a book of some kind.

The only thing that I wonder, especially as I surf the pages of the internet, is how those Twi-hards are going to feel in a few years. At the moment, every entertainment site I read likes to talk about the sequel to the blah Twilight movie and who will play who and if the new director will be good. With each online news story, there is room for comments and that space is filled with devoted love from Twi-hards about how amazing the movie will be, how much Robert Pattinson resembles the Edward in their head and all of that. Yes, I read them. I used to be a quasi-journalist- I'm a firm believer in reading the good as well as the bad.

The comments are often written in that annoying shorthand used for text messaging, so fluidly done that it's obviously a teen. They love their Twilight. They love Stephanie Meyer. They love the books so much that they've read them multiple times.

There's nothing wrong with that. Whatever gets 'em through the day.

Yet, as I mentioned, in a few years, when those devoted fans are a little better adjusted to life, when the awkward teen years are behind them and they find themselves becoming adults, will they really be able to go back to Twilight and see the same beauty and brilliance they see now? Or will it become one of those slightly embarrassing obsessions that got them through middle school or high school but now needs to be forgotten?

I can't answer that because I don't know. What I do know is that when I was fourteen, I read The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. I fell in love with the book. I read it and reread it. I memorized the opening. I wondered what would happen if I met Ponyboy. I watched the movie. It wasn't great but I was willing to overlook that because there were Sodapop, Ponyboy and Johnny on the screen.

I reread that book a few years ago. I get why I loved it. It's the tale of a teen who doesn't fit in but eventually, after some crappy experiences, realizes that he has to stay true to himself. Something like that, anyway. I don't know why I could relate to it. I was from an unbroken, nicely stable, loving middle-class family- completely the opposite of any of The Outsider's characters. Yet I also cringed a little that I'd loved it as much as I had. I recognized that value it gave me in my teens but, as an adult, like any youthful obsession, I couldn't remember why I'd loved it to the point of obsession.

I suppose, maybe, The Outsiders was my Twilight. Minus the sappy romance and drippy descriptions, of course. I know now, having the hindsight and something resembling wisdom, that had I loved Twilight in my teens, it would now be one of those shelved memories along with Def Leppard, Bon Jovi and crushes on skateboarders who should have bathed more often. I'd be slightly embarrassed that I loved it but in a way, it made me who I am, for better or for worse. I like who I am now and that means everything. I hope those Twilight fans have a similar experience.

Sorry for the long blog but thanks, as always, for reading. Happy Wednesday.