Not Writers Block After All---Was Re: Are we having fun?

[msbeadsley]

No: HPFGUIDX 80575

Wanda wrote:
> Having fun?  Are WE having fun anymore?  Speaking for myself, I 
> have to say no.  For me, the fun died on June 21, when OotP was 
> released.  And so much of the discussion of that book, and 
> speculation of what it will lead to, make me think that very few 
> readers are having fun anymore.  Instead, I read worries and 
> foreboding about how much horror Harry is going to have to endure 
> until we finally make it to the end of book 7.  Nobody seems to 
> expect anything but anguish and pain, with maybe a happy ending, 
> but very possibly just a merciful release to look forward to.  
 
This is SO *#$%@!!! frustrating.  (Oh, no, sorry, not you, Wanda.)  I 
*know* I read, less than a week ago, a line in a post-OoP interview 
with JKR where she responded to a comment about its length with a 
statement about having written it through writer's block; now, of 
course, that I want to cite it, all I can find is denials that she's 
ever *had* writer's block.  It's occurred to me that (please let me 
not have gone 'round the bend) what I know I read *was* really there 
and has since been excised; no, I'm not being paranoid (not very, 
really), I just thought, after I stopped being able to find the 
quote, that she must have been being *ironic* and that the quote was 
removed since it really didn't come off at all that way in print.  
(If you know where that came from, I beg you, let me know!)

And it had made so much sense to me, too!  The first four books had a 
lovely "flow" to them; reading them was effortless.  Even when bad 
things happened to Harry, the narrative voice (not to be confused 
with the viewpoint character's:  the point of view is Harry's; the 
narrative voice is *the author's*) had a certain resilence to it that 
reassured us; in OoP that seemed to me to be sadly lacking.  My 
problem with OoP didn't have to do so much with Harry yelling and 
fighting his way through it; my problem had to do with how I felt as 
if *I* was the one having to yell and fight my way through the book.  
I want to know that Harry feels punished and frustrated and feel him 
feeling it, but I don't want it presented in a way that leads me to 
internalize that, myself; life does enough of that in real life, 
thank you.  IMO, a better written book would have communicated every 
bit of what Harry was going through and left it Harry's without 
making it mine (which I'd have resisted going in except that the 
first four books built up such a great level of trust in me that I 
failed to mount defenses).  And that's where I was happily chalking 
up the notion that JKR had writer's block when she wrote it:  I saw 
her as having had to fight her way through writing it as well.

Come to think of it, if it had that effect on me (as someone old 
enough to be a grandmother): what happens when a fairly young child 
ends up plunging happily into OoP, expecting that narrative buffer 
between reader and viewpoint character, and ends up staring bleakly 
into the void?  Should the fifth book come with a PG-13, or is that 
element simply going to escape very young readers?

That's what *I* get for reading (and not bookmarking interviews). 

Sandy aka "msbeadsley" who is considering using her soapbox as 
kindling for a nice, warm bonfire