The Magic of Writing

Created in 2019.

There are several instances in my life that I have felt magic, but nothing quite feels like the first time I fell in love. It was with a book. I would go on to love other books, other stories, but nothing compares to the first one. That feeling of wonder is impossible to recapture. It was not one of the classics, one of those books every educator seemed to hold higher than the rest. It was not one of those books people pretended was their favorite because people wanted to feel smart and stopped believing in magic as adults. This is unfortunate since all writing, no matter the type, is magical.

When I opened Harry Potter for the first time, I felt magic down to my very soul. I was a cliché, the child who began reading because of Harry Potter. J.K. Rowling started an entire cultural phenomenon, and entire movement, based on her book series. But I did not realize that was going to happen when I was ten years old and bored out of my mind and picked something with a vaguely familiar cover off the shelf. I am not even sure I read the back cover back then, I just knew I had seen those books everywhere and I had nothing else to do. I still remember picking it up, though nothing else about that class or the teacher remains. It was magic. It was fate. It was what made me become a reader. It was what led me to become a writer.

Harry Potter and I went through a lot together. There would be other books and other authors and I would eventually lose my respect for J.K. Rowling, but Harry? Harry could never lose me, even as I grew and realized how flawed he was. He was an entity that had helped shape me into the person I was, who started my journey down the world of literature. No one could take him away from me, not even contrived movies with plot holes, not even drug scandals, not even casting a perpetuator of domestic violence.

Harry was what got me through panic attacks and late nights worried about where I was going to be in ten years or if I was ever going to be published. Harry got me through my parents’ fights, providing a source of escapism that only reading can offer. He is still a source of comfort, something that reminds me of the childlike innocence that should remain alive inside us all along, especially when you are a writer. Especially when life is hard. Which brings my first advice to any burgeoning writer: never forget what brought you to writing in the first place. It is so easy to forget what made you happy in the beginning, to get lost in the adult world and in assignments. Never forget the joy of writing and what made you happy.

Writing is magical in a way that I can’t understand though I am a practitioner of it. There is craft and books and guides, but the way my brain pieces together innocuous moments to create people and new worlds is not something everyone can do. How are nonfiction writers able to discover which stories, which memories will strike a chord with an audience? How can the same stories be made ultimately unique, despite the similarities with others? It is a reminder of the beauty of humanity that somehow, this occurs.

My second piece of writing advice is this: throw things against the wall and see what sticks. J.K. Rowling did not have a plan with Harry Potter; that much is clear to any adult writer analyzing it.

Harry and I have had fights over the years. I have analyzed him, seen his flaws, torn him apart, but ultimately, we always come back together. Really, there is no man that will probably be as faithful, and none that will ever introduce me to something I love so much, something that has been a part of me for the last fifteen years. He showed me the magic that was inside me all along, something I could not believe for myself. He opened a door to a world that I hope I never leave.