When someone asks what I do, I struggle to say ‘I’m a writer’. To me, a writer is someone who spends their entire day tucked away in an office or café spinning some tale that will eventually make their reader forget, if only temporarily, that the words on the page aren’t reality. I have yet to finish anything longer than a short story or research paper. New York Times bestselling author, I am not.
The follow-up question, once I’ve blurted out that I’m a student-slash-writer, is ‘What’s your favorite book?’ This question is never easy. A few years ago, I would have told you The Great Gatsby, a common choice for teenagers who, like me, studied it in their high school English class. Around Christmas time, I probably would have selected The Last Lecture, which never fails to make me weep and reevaluate my decisions, my relationships, and everything in between. Last summer, I would have emphatically chosen The Fault in Our Stars—never mind that I’m slightly too old for the young adult genre. But these answers change fluidly based on my mood or current reading preferences.
I’m a would-be writer. I’m a bookworm. I used to tear through books before I had even gotten in the car after leaving the bookstore, much to my mom’s dismay. Why is it so difficult for me to nail down one book or one author that stands out above the rest? I didn’t grow up glued to a television, so surely something must have shaped the person that I am today. Something had to have inspired me to dedicate my life to writing.
The short answer is J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was released in the U.S. in 1998, when I was six years old, which meant that I grew up during the peak of Harry Potter mania. My dad read the first two books aloud to me at bedtime before I became too eager to wait for him. In my middle and high school years, when the last three books in the series were released, I refused to eat or sleep until I had finished reading. I still dream of the day that my Hogwarts letter finally arrives and I will proudly tell anyone that I own all eight movies and all seven (well-loved and oft-reread) books. One of my closest friendships in college was forged through a mutual obsession for all things Potter.
The effect of J.K. Rowling’s boy wizard has lived on long past the DVD release of the last movie; the most recent in a series of psychological studies inspired by Harry Potter was done by the State University of New York at Buffalo. Researchers found that the fictional houses reflected real personality traits and dimensions in their participants.
In other words, my childhood admiration for Ravenclaw and Gryffindor stretched beyond the page and influenced who I grew to be as an adult. I strive to be described as witty, clever, or intelligent. I value a quality education over all things. I grew up to become what I long hoped to be: a Ravenclaw (although I think Pottermore’s Sorting Hat has a little more faith in my brains that it should).
To this day, each time I pick up The Sorcerer’s Stone, thinking it will be a casual read, I get sucked in for hours, days, weeks, maniacally reading each book as if I don’t know what will happen next. No matter how many times I reread them, I still cringe in fear when Voldemort is resurrected and I reach for the tissues when Harry loses one father figure after another. I get so deeply immersed in the world that I forget to eat and, let me tell you, it’s not easy to make me forget that.
It takes a special kind of magic to make a world that powerful, but it takes a once-in-a-lifetime writer to create a world that continues to shape its readers’ lives years after the books have been released. J.K. Rowling’s fictional world actually shaped the woman I grew up to be, and that’s a surreal effect that I personally don’t think any other book has accomplished. The recent success of the recent real-life incarnations of Harry Potter in London and Orlando prove that fans aren’t forgetting about this phenomenon any time soon. It’s not only a crazy moneymaker, it’s – for lack of a better word – magic.
The fantasy genre is not my forte. But each time I sit in front of a blank document in hopes of writing a masterpiece, I strive to create the same kind of magic that J.K. Rowling created for me. If I can make at least one person as passionate about my books as I am about Rowling’s, then I will have earned the job title ‘writer’.
About the contributor:
Stephanie knew she wanted to be a writer when she started her first, still-unfinished mystery novel at ten years old. Today, she is an aspiring novelist and world traveler who prides herself on her insatiable appetite and dry humor….although no one else seems to find her as funny as she does. One of these days she’ll start a blog, but for now she can be found on Twitter and Instagram: @stephredd10.
