Ten years ago today...
Today is the day! Exactly ten years ago, on May 19, 2001, I posted the first chapters of Harry Potter and the Psychic Serpent to fanfiction.net. At first I posted only the first two chapters, but then I added about ten more that were already done. I'd actually been planning the series since early January, after reading the first four books in the series at the end of December (having ostensibly bought them for my 8 year old son).
After searching out Harry Potter fanfiction I found fascinating and well-written tales of Adult!Harry and some slightly silly and very short fics, or long epic fics that departed substantially from JK Rowling's usual format, but nothing that really did what Rowling did--a tale constructed around the calendar of the academic year, beginning somewhere around Harry's birthday or just before it and taking Harry through his next year of school (and the next, and the next). I really wanted JK Rowling's next book (or three) and had no idea at this point that we would be waiting for it until the summer of 2003. Lacking that book, or a suitable substitute, I set out to create my own.
I planned the series in general and the first fic in excruciating detail for three months and began writing the first chapter early in April, not long before my birthday. Then the other shoe fell: my dad was terribly ill and taken suddenly to the hospital. He had needed skin-graft surgery, due to his diabetes, for some time. However, he had other issues (heart, liver, lungs) and so was a terrible candidate for any kind of surgery. It became a battle between the different physical problems he was suffering from as to which would succeed in killing him. My more far-flung siblings flew in from Washington state and Oklahoma while my nearer siblings came from Maryland and New Jersey to be with my dad for what, the doctors were certain, would be his final days with us.
And then he was fine. (Relatively speaking.) Or at least out of the woods. Plans began anew for skin-graft surgery. My siblings went home. Life settled into a kind of "normal" again. (Also relatively.) During the month of April, whenever I needed to escape from morbid, defeatist thoughts I ran to my computer to write more of my fic. I'd never needed more of a refuge from the real world and writing HP fic was more consuming and distracting for me than reading anyone else's fiction (even JK Rowling's). Now, I was also rereading all of the HP books, of course, as I've done many times. I think I read the first four books about three times before I wrote the opening sentence of Psychic Serpent in early April. But it was the fic planning and writing that really allowed me to enter another world--and one I controlled. I see this now with hindsight--I didn't like what was happening in the world around me, so I rejected it and replaced it with something else.
In early May my dad lost the battle with his unruly body, dying just about two months shy of his eighty-third birthday. (Nearly-eighty-three really isn't too shabby when you take his many physical ailments into account.) My siblings returned just in time to say goodbye to Dad and I found the act of writing to be more comforting than ever. It got me through the events of May, the funeral and wake and dealing with all of its aftermath. I would later, very consciously, make some of my thoughts from that time part of Harry's thoughts during Dudley's funeral, and the ceilidh and Scottish tales in chapter 25 were also heavily influenced by my father's Scottish background. I made Sirius Black (Black is a sept of many clans) part of my Dad's clan and gave his family an old "abandoned" castle on the Isle of Bute to live in that was the last stand for members of our clan in an epic battle of about 600 years ago. The influence of the time during which I began writing the series shows up in the writing in many ways, and I'm probably only remembering a tiny number at the moment.
It's strange to me to be observing the tenth anniversary of posting Psychic Serpent. So much has happened since then. Not long after I posted the Epilogue the entire world was reeling from the attacks on September 11; during the final chapters the site FicionAlley was launched; I've met up with numerous other HP people at HPEF symposia and have been on the board of directors since HPEF's founding; I've made a number of friends--and a few enemies, I'll admit--and the papers I've presented at symposia are being incorporated into a non-fiction book about Harry Potter on which I'm putting the finishing touches.
As I continue to work on my original fiction I think it only appropriate to acknowledge and pay tribute to the fact that writing fanfiction got me writing again at all, after abandoning this in my mid-twenties and then being consumed with motherhood in my late twenties. Being a mom is why I bought the Harry Potter books, however, so this is what has brought me full-circle (also the title of the Epilogue!) and led me to return to writing. I will always be grateful to JK Rowling and also to Patricia, my pastor at the time. Patricia was the first adult I ever heard talk about the Harry Potter books. After she did a children's sermon about boggarts she had the entire congregation yelling, "Riddikulus!" It was a turning point in my life that led directly to my purchase of the books, and the rest is history.
So--JK Rowling and Patricia, my heartfelt, deepest thanks. For what it's worth--it's all your fault.
NEXT: I'll actually begin my look at the opening chapters of Harry Potter and the Psychic Serpent.
After searching out Harry Potter fanfiction I found fascinating and well-written tales of Adult!Harry and some slightly silly and very short fics, or long epic fics that departed substantially from JK Rowling's usual format, but nothing that really did what Rowling did--a tale constructed around the calendar of the academic year, beginning somewhere around Harry's birthday or just before it and taking Harry through his next year of school (and the next, and the next). I really wanted JK Rowling's next book (or three) and had no idea at this point that we would be waiting for it until the summer of 2003. Lacking that book, or a suitable substitute, I set out to create my own.
I planned the series in general and the first fic in excruciating detail for three months and began writing the first chapter early in April, not long before my birthday. Then the other shoe fell: my dad was terribly ill and taken suddenly to the hospital. He had needed skin-graft surgery, due to his diabetes, for some time. However, he had other issues (heart, liver, lungs) and so was a terrible candidate for any kind of surgery. It became a battle between the different physical problems he was suffering from as to which would succeed in killing him. My more far-flung siblings flew in from Washington state and Oklahoma while my nearer siblings came from Maryland and New Jersey to be with my dad for what, the doctors were certain, would be his final days with us.
And then he was fine. (Relatively speaking.) Or at least out of the woods. Plans began anew for skin-graft surgery. My siblings went home. Life settled into a kind of "normal" again. (Also relatively.) During the month of April, whenever I needed to escape from morbid, defeatist thoughts I ran to my computer to write more of my fic. I'd never needed more of a refuge from the real world and writing HP fic was more consuming and distracting for me than reading anyone else's fiction (even JK Rowling's). Now, I was also rereading all of the HP books, of course, as I've done many times. I think I read the first four books about three times before I wrote the opening sentence of Psychic Serpent in early April. But it was the fic planning and writing that really allowed me to enter another world--and one I controlled. I see this now with hindsight--I didn't like what was happening in the world around me, so I rejected it and replaced it with something else.
In early May my dad lost the battle with his unruly body, dying just about two months shy of his eighty-third birthday. (Nearly-eighty-three really isn't too shabby when you take his many physical ailments into account.) My siblings returned just in time to say goodbye to Dad and I found the act of writing to be more comforting than ever. It got me through the events of May, the funeral and wake and dealing with all of its aftermath. I would later, very consciously, make some of my thoughts from that time part of Harry's thoughts during Dudley's funeral, and the ceilidh and Scottish tales in chapter 25 were also heavily influenced by my father's Scottish background. I made Sirius Black (Black is a sept of many clans) part of my Dad's clan and gave his family an old "abandoned" castle on the Isle of Bute to live in that was the last stand for members of our clan in an epic battle of about 600 years ago. The influence of the time during which I began writing the series shows up in the writing in many ways, and I'm probably only remembering a tiny number at the moment.
It's strange to me to be observing the tenth anniversary of posting Psychic Serpent. So much has happened since then. Not long after I posted the Epilogue the entire world was reeling from the attacks on September 11; during the final chapters the site FicionAlley was launched; I've met up with numerous other HP people at HPEF symposia and have been on the board of directors since HPEF's founding; I've made a number of friends--and a few enemies, I'll admit--and the papers I've presented at symposia are being incorporated into a non-fiction book about Harry Potter on which I'm putting the finishing touches.
As I continue to work on my original fiction I think it only appropriate to acknowledge and pay tribute to the fact that writing fanfiction got me writing again at all, after abandoning this in my mid-twenties and then being consumed with motherhood in my late twenties. Being a mom is why I bought the Harry Potter books, however, so this is what has brought me full-circle (also the title of the Epilogue!) and led me to return to writing. I will always be grateful to JK Rowling and also to Patricia, my pastor at the time. Patricia was the first adult I ever heard talk about the Harry Potter books. After she did a children's sermon about boggarts she had the entire congregation yelling, "Riddikulus!" It was a turning point in my life that led directly to my purchase of the books, and the rest is history.
So--JK Rowling and Patricia, my heartfelt, deepest thanks. For what it's worth--it's all your fault.
NEXT: I'll actually begin my look at the opening chapters of Harry Potter and the Psychic Serpent.