Wednesday, February 26, 2014

No Take Backs!

I'm a very indecisive person.  If we go to a restaurant that I've been to at least once I will probably get the same thing I got the last time but I will stare that menu down as if I'm trying to decide which wire to cut on a device that's set to blow mere seconds before the waiter comes.  Then I still make everyone else go first before I'm forced to finalize my decision.

Quick! The blue one, cut the blue wire!....  I mean I'll have the chicken strip basket, please.  Thank you.

I hate decision making.  Especially, big decisions... like my food. (joking. XD) I wouldn't be surprised if, on that magical day when my future agent tells me my book has been picked up and when it's all ready to be published, I decided that something should have gone differently in my book after everyone has already read it.

So why are people so upset at J.K. Rowling?

Awhile ago, Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series, said in an interview that Harry should have married Hermione.  (Here's the article I read about it.  http://cnn.it/1bRw10w)  That apparently enraged a lot of readers.

Awkward.....
I can understand that.  I get a little defensive when someone doesn't love a book as much as I did or thinks a part of it was bad.  That's normal...  I think.  But it's almost going to far.  Why be upset that an author makes a comment about her own characters in her own book?  It wasn't an unreasonable thought.  I can't say that I haven't thought of them ending up together myself.  Especially after that dance scene in the tent...


This kind of reminds me of what happened with Veronica Roth's Allegiant. (Here is a VERY VERY SPOILERY post from Roth's blog about the endinghttp://bit.ly/1khO05H  
I'll try not to be spoilery here but if you would prefer to look away this is your warning.)


She got so much backlash about the ending of the trilogy.  It's kind scary as a writer to hear about it.  I mean, comments?  Ok.  Letters?  Alright.  But I heard rumors of death threats and a petition for her to rewrite it...  Death threats???  Way too far.

I'm sure that none of the decisions either Rowling or Roth made for their characters were taken lightly.  They love their characters as much we do.  In real life, we tend to think back on big decisions and wonder 'was that the best way to go?'  These characters and others, however real they feel to us, are not in fact alive.  But much like real life, things are going to happen to them that we won't like and we can't just go back and rewrite a part of it and pretend that the original never happened.

....Unless you do a fanfiction of it and are able to live in very deep denial.  But I think that's for another blog post.

2 comments:

  1. I knew we shared more than an inability to taunt well. The restaurant thing is definitely me. It's also part of what makes revision so hard, because I'm afraid I'll end up making things worse instead of better. I think most authors probably have things they obsess over, second-guessing long after the book hits shelves. The best advice I've heard for overcoming this is to focus on your next project, always having something new to go to and eventually obsess over. :)

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    1. Lol! There was bound to be a few things in common between us. That sounds like good advice though. Moving on to something new as sort of a way of letting the other one go.

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