Headsplody goodness.

[megwrites]

I guess I'll have to be a professional author before I understand all this, but apparently JK Rowling sobbed after writing the last words in Harry Potter.

Uh, I've never cried over any of my writing before. I've felt a sense of exhaustion, and after my last novel, I did sort of miss having something very definite to do every single day with those characters. But I didn't cry.

Although, I should've had champagne. I just had some cookies.

This is now the second time that something a very successful pro author has done strikes me at a right angle. Laurell K. Hamilton also has reactions to her characters that I scratched my head at.

It worries me. Does this mean that I'm still at some stage in my writing development that's so protozoic and stunted that anything I write is hopeless?

Blargh. That's exactly the kind of thing you don't want to think with THREE CHAPTERS TO GO on your novel. Seriously. My head gets explosion prone when I start thinking like that. Okay. Less thinking, more writing (bwuh?). Or, less thinking about anything that is not my novel.

ETA: I forgot to explain what prompted this entire entry.

So, I changed my layout here, and as I was doing so my fiancee saw me doing the header and said, in reaction to the motto ("the artist is not afraid"): "That's not true, they're very afraid. Their novels are coming to life and eating them alive."

Which might be the most accurate quote about the writing life I've ever heard.

But it made me think of having read about JK Rowling crying over the last HP book.

Comments

[anghara.livejournal.com]

I've cried over mine. At least once. I'm not telling when, or in which book.

But they DO come out and get you. They do. There are times that you type something in and then stare at the screen at what you've just typed in, and you can swear, absolutely swear, that you did not write that, that it came from somewhere way way way beyond yourself and beyond your understanding. And you have tears in your eyes. And you don't know why.

Words. They're power. I am infinitely grateful that they are my friends.

[chris-r-evans.livejournal.com]

I don't think your lack of tears are anything to be concerned about. The process of writing can be incredibly emotional and even cathartic at times, but everyone reacts differently. And while I'm sure it's true that Rowling sobbed at the end, it's also a great emotional hook to stoke the fire right before the last book comes out. Certainly sounds better than if she had said "I wrote the end then went and had some tea and toast and watched the telly."