Tag Archives: writing

Halfway Through Harry (Potter) – Part I

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When the Harry Potter craze took the world by storm, I wasn’t a fan. I avoided anything that had to with it but couldn’t help but wonder what it was that made the series so successful. So a couple of years ago, having never read any of the books or seen any of the movies, I decided to read one of the books, just to see what the big deal was. Starting with the first book I read through it with the aim of analyzing it and trying to figure out what made it appeal to so many people. I figured if I wasn’t into it I could stop reading at any time, but I finished the first book and didn’t stop. Halfway through the series, I found myself, begrudgingly, becoming a fan.

I read through the entire series and also bought and watched all of the movies that had come out up to that point. That was a couple of years ago, the books that I read were copies that I borrowed from the library but about a year later I felt like reading the series again and decided to buy my own box set. I meant to read them soon after buying them but had a lot of other books lined up in front so I decided to put it off until the beginning of this year. On February 14th, I passed the halfway mark of the series for the second time, and a lot of things resurfaced that I had pondered on the first time around. Most of it had nothing to do with what made it popular, but with the mechanics employed by the author.

One thing that strikes me about J.K. Rowling, as well as other British authors, is that even though they speak English just like we do here on the other side of the Atlantic, they almost speak an almost entirely different language. They have a different word for nearly everything over there: they call French fries chips, they call chips crisps, they call a car trunk a boot, they call the hood of a car a bonnet, they call a radio antenna an aerial, and they spell tires “tyres.” I often wonder if North American children know what Rowling and other British writers are referring to when they use terms like these when we don’t use them over here. Since her books are translated into so many different languages, couldn’t they translate them into “North American” English?

For the uninitiated, things could become a little confusing. For instance: Rowling often uses the word “sacking” to describe someone losing their job. This appears to be a very common British slang term, but over here in North America, “sacking” in its main slang form has an entirely different meaning. While it can, in very infrequent instances, refer to someone getting fired, we primarily use it to refer to a male being struck in the crotch region. Given this difference in regional definitions, I personally wouldn’t want to live in England if people are getting sacked all the time. If I did live there, though, I’d make sure I was wearing a cup at all times, you never can be too careful. Given the choice, I’d rather get fired than get sacked.

Rowling uses this term with great frequency, as well as another one: “screwed up.” This also seems to be a common British term as I also recall Douglas Adams using it on occasion. In the British vernacular it means something like crumpling or wrinkling something up. Rowling often uses it to describe someone making an unpleasant face or squinting. Here in North America we mean it to say something is ruined or disfigured, so if a British person were to say someone had a “screwed up face,” it would mean something very different than if they said it here.

I find that Rowling uses these, and other terms, a lot. As somewhat of a writer myself, I’m very conscious of repetitive words that I myself and other writers use. When I read another writer’s work, I dissect their style and when they utilize specific sayings repeatedly, it jumps out at me since that’s something I look out for. When I’m writing, I try avoid doing this as much as I can. If I use a certain word more than once in a paragraph or sentence, I’ll take one of them out and replace it with a synonym to provide some variety to the reader.

While I’m more than halfway through the book series, I feel I’m also halfway through this blog post as it is getting a little lengthy. I’ll continue on with some more of my thoughts about the literary stylings of J.K. Rowling very soon.

Until then, remember: don’t let the Muggles get you down!

Between A Blog And A Hard Place – Part II

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When last we left, I was trying to decide what direction I’d be taking this blog in. That was, until I went off about shoveling snow. It’s still snowing, by the way, it’s quite ridiculous how much has been coming down lately.

Anyway, getting back to my brainstorming session on blog usage, I asked myself a few questions to try and get some idea as to what I’d be writing about. I have a few more to consider, one would be: who am I? Obviously, I’m someone who enjoys writing. A lot. It’s one of my many creative outlets and one that has become more prominent lately. I think it’s due mostly to the fact that I haven’t been doing much of it in recent years and I have some future writing projects in mind so I figured this blog would be good practice. It forces me to think about creating a finished product and not just outlines and plot summaries like I’ve been doing lately. These blog posts are very much like essays and writing them gives me an opportunity to start flexing my writing muscles and getting back into form. Committing myself to this project gives me motivation to take responsibility for something and see it through.

In the previous part of this post I asked myself why I write. I explored the reasons behind it but thought of a few more things recently. In a way, writing requires a certain amount of conceit, it’s a little presumptuous to assume there are people out there interested in what I’m thinking. While I don’t think anyone’s out there losing sleep waiting for my next post, I do think there is some interest and it’s reassuring for me to know there’s an audience. Writing is also a way for me to organize my thoughts, it’s therapeutic for me. I put my thoughts out there and feel a sense of satisfaction knowing that others can involve themselves to some extent by reading what I have to say. It’s mutually beneficial: I entertain others and fulfill a need that I have at the same time.

In the last post I did also ask myself what I’d be writing about but didn’t really get specific. So another question to ask myself could be: what are my main subjects of interest? Mostly, they’re hockey, computers/technology, music (listening to it and playing instruments) First Nations culture/art, and probably most of all, complaining. I really enjoy that last one, in fact this could very well become a Festivus with, not just an annual, but weekly or daily airing of grievances.

Given that I have a lot of different things to write about, I need to consider how I’m going to organize everything. There are two solutions I can think of right off the bat: either create separate blogs for separate subjects, or keep everything in this blog and just include tags for posts with similar subjects. I’ve noticed that Tumblr allows for multiple blogs for one user. I could, conceivably, create a separate blog for each major subject: one for hockey, one for computer/tech issues, this one for miscellaneous rambling, etc. Then the problem would be trying to maintain all of them, I have things to say about each but I don’t know if I have enough material to warrant an entire blog for every one of them. Keeping everything here and just attaching different tags for each post might be easier for me as it would allow me time to keep this blog continually updated.

A final question (I do ask myself a lot of questions, don’t I?): how often will I make new posts? It will definitely be an on-going project. Originally I thought I’d be posting frequently to start with, everyday perhaps, but taking a closer look at my schedule I started to rethink that. With starting my own business, having multiple Facebook and Twitter accounts to manage, reading in my leisure time and watching hockey, I don’t really have as much free time to write as I originally anticipated. I imagine I’ll be posting once or twice a week, more if time allows. That post about shoveling snow was somewhat spontaneous and ended up being much longer than I thought it would be, and while it was fun writing it, it did take up a fair amount of my time. I’ve been wanting to finish this post for more than a week now and every time I thought about tackling it, something else would come up and I would get sidetracked.

At this point in time, with everything that I have going on in my life, I’ll probably post once a week. I do have a lot of subjects lined up right now but once those have been addressed, how often I will post will depend on whatever comes to mind at that time.

I’ve certainly given myself a lot of things to think about, this was an interesting exercise for me and we’ll have to see how things turn out. I find myself between a rock and a hard place in thinking about where I’m going to find the time that maintaining this blog on a regular basis will require, but I’ll get it done somehow. I always do.

See you next week sometime. Maybe.

Between A Blog And A Hard Place – Part I

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Now that I’ve started this blog, I need to decide how I’m going to use it. As I stated in my first post, I’m going to be concentrating on writing. Though part of me thinks I should do more than that, as reading alone might get a little repetitive for people no matter how interesting the subject might (hopefully) be. I will likely be including pictures and maybe even some audio and video from time to time to add a little variety.

When I do write, the articles will probably be lengthy but I’ll try to keep them between 500-1000 words. If a post gets to be longer than 1000 words I’ll break it up into separate parts, though I don’t think that will happen often, if at all. On the other hand, unshackled by character limitations and with a sense of new found freedom I may be tempted to make really long posts, so you’ve been forewarned. My first article was more than 600 words and I could’ve added more, I’ll attempt to keep the majority of my posts shorter than that.

In order to figure out how I’m going to use this blog I should probably start by myself a few questions. First: what exactly is a blog? Basically, it’s an online journal or diary, but it’s used in many different ways. Some people have blogs where they post mainly pictures, some videos, others prose. There are endless possibilities, really, it depends on what the author’s interests are. Since my main area of interest is in writing, that’s primarily what I’ll be doing. I envision it as basically as an extension of my Facebook and Twitter accounts, the shorter updates will go on those two pages, the longer stuff will go here. What I don’t have room for elsewhere will be brought here.

Another question I should ask myself is: why do I write? Well, I do it to express myself and to entertain others as well as myself. I’m a visual artist and I always feel compelled to express myself in some form. Usually it’s through art (computer graphics, mostly) but I enjoy writing as much as anything else I do and think I have something worthwhile saying.

The next question is: what will I be writing about? The material will primarily consist of observations on everyday occurrences, things that pique my interest and seem worthy of discussion. I’m very much an observer of society, I’m constantly watching, listening to and analyzing all that’s going on around me. I think I pick up on what most people wouldn’t notice or give any thought to. I have my own view of the world and much of what I observe happening in it seems unusual so I’ll offer interpretations in order to make sense of them and will likely rant about a few things.

This post appears to be getting a little long now so I’ll cut it off here. To be continued.