I mean, that's why I have a blog. Because I enjoy writing, and because some of my best writing is done about my life. I enjoy writing about things that happen to me, even when those things are miserable and they make me want to yell phrases like "POOP IN A CHUTE!" which is a recent acquisition mostly adopted for the amusement of the Prodigy, and according to my mother does not befit a young woman of nineteen. But I'm not nineteen this summer. I'm eleven years old and whiny and childish, because I have no life and I spend my free time writing as four eleven-year-olds.
And that brings me to my primary use of time that is not spent working, this summer. I write, yes. I usually spend my time writing bad fantasy that I pretend is decent, the occasional realistic piece which I tend to believe is better than my fantasy stories, and very, VERY occasionally, poetry. I've always preferred to read poetry rather than write it, because no matter how hard I try, I cannot match Dylan Thomas, who wrote BEAUTIFUL poetry, or Emily Dickinson, who I love because I know that we would have been friends in an alternate universe, or Walt Whitman, who is my Favorite. Poet. Ever. And yes, that three-word phrase deserved the special attention it got. I love Walt Whitman. O Captain, my Captain. I just get CHILLS every time I read that poem.
But beyond WHAT it is I write, I should probably explain that I have spent much of my free time this summer writing four eleven-year-olds. And they are not just creations out of my own head. No, no, no. Three of them are accepted characters who show up at the very, VERY end of a series that I love dearly and which has brought much joy to my life. One is my own creation, and I have to admit that she's sort of my pride and joy because I made her believable enough to fit in with the other four.
If you haven't guessed, I am referring to the children of Harry Potter, who show up in the epilogue of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, book and movie. I only actually write about one of his kids though. But more on that later, because it would be probably prudent to explain how this happened.
I mentioned that I had made these two awesome friends at college, and they both have names starting with M, so I have to give them nicknames anyway, because if I just call them the M's then it would be too easy to start a series of jokes about "M&M" and then they would never, ever, ever forgive me, and while I would laugh at myself for maybe five minutes- oh, ha ha, Sarah, you are so funny- I would then proceed to beat myself in the head with a frying pan.
Anyway, they are both awesome, and the one of them, who I'm just going to refer to as Superwholockmarauder (which if you don't get that then you haven't been paying attention to like my LIFE), shares a lot of my obsessions with British television and books and things. So we decided that we were going to write each other stories over the summer, and possibly continuing on into the year (because we're roommates for this next semester, but we live on opposite sides of the country and stuff), and because we both ADORE the Harry Potter series, and because it is very easy and intriguing stuff to write about, we already had it lined up. She decided that she would write about the Marauders, who consisted of Harry Potter's father and friends, and also Harry's mother and her friends. And ever since we started following each other on the website that shall not be named, I hear a lot of things about OTPs and shipping and James and Lily and I just love it dearly, because I can always look forward to a chapter of her story when I'm having a sort-of-decent week but an overall depressing summer.
I, on the other hand, chose to write about the other end of the Harry Potter timeline, which consists of Harry's children, Ron and Hermione's children, Neville Longbottom's children, Draco Malfoy's child, and so on and so forth. For those of you unfamiliar with the way it works: Harry marries Ginny Weasley (my personal OTP for those of you who speak the language, if not, then disregard this parenthetical) and has three children: James Sirius Potter (named for grandfather and grand-godfather of sorts), Albus Severus Potter (named for Dumbledore and Snape) and Lily Luna Potter (named for grandmother and probable BFF of mother). I write about Albus, because he is a middle child and I relate to middle children; also, Albus is the most like Harry, which I find interesting, and he is the one featured at the end of Deathly Hallows, so he was given more of a personality for me to work with. I love him quite a lot. Ron Weasley marries Hermione Granger (which everyone who reads the books has been saying "WOULD YOU PLEASE GET TOGETHER" since their third year) and they have two children: Rose and Hugo. I write about Rose. Rose and Hugo are probably thus named (because who in their right mind would name their son Hugo?) because Ron and Rose begin with R and Hermione and Hugo begin with H, and in addition, by naming Rose a flower name, they're sort of giving a nod to Lily Evans Potter and Petunia Evans Dursley, who were flower names as well, and also to Fleur. The only other flower name in the series is Pansy Parkinson, but she can just... yeah. Never mind. The last mentioned child in the series (last character introduced in the books, in fact) is the son and heir of the Malfoy fortune: Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy, only child of Draco Malfoy and a girl named Astoria Greengrass. She's not made up- J.K. Rowling herself ordained this match from on high- and I am glad of this, because I would NEVER have been able to think all of these characters up myself. However, I can manage a few, such as my last one. Neville Longbottom, instead of ending up with Luna, had instead a fun summer of nargles and pudding with her, and then fell in love, eventually, with Hannah Abbott of Hufflepuff, and they were married. Neville was Herbology professor; Hannah was landlady of the Leaky Cauldron; it's a good time. J.K. never gave them kids, or at least she never said if they had kids. I gave them children. In my HP-next-generation-universe, Neville and Hannah Longbottom have two daughters: Frances Augusta (known as Frankie affectionately) and Norah Alice. I decided to write Norah, because Norah is younger and more shy and timid and I know what it's like to be shy and timid, and even though I'm the talented older sister in my family, I know that the Beauty must find it frustrating to live in the long shadow I cast, and in some ways, I find it difficult to live in her shadow.
But anyway, these kids- Albus, Rose, Scorpius, and Norah- are all the same age, eleven years old (in the year 2017, that is) and they are starting Hogwarts, and I have written all sorts of things about them, such as how they became friends and the pranks they pull and the fights they get into and there's even a villain I invented, who's trying to figure out how to do something that has been decreed by J.K. herself magically impossible. But he's a crazy, and telling any more would be, well, telling. Wink, wink.
(Above, from left to right; Albus, Rose, Scorpius. There is no picture of Norah because the only pictures of Norah are the ones I've drawn, and 1) I have no scanner and 2) I am a crappy artist and you don't deserve to have your eyes bleed if you read my blog.)
This is what I do in my free time, primarily. I write a chapter about ten pages long and every week I email it to Superwholockmarauder, who emails me her chapter on the Marauders and their escapades. It is a great deal of fun and quite innocent, as I have no plans to make profit off it, except for profit in the form of praise and appreciation from Superwholockmarauder, my mother and my sister, and maybe a few people on the internets.
Writing about universes that already exist and were invented by other people is called fanfiction, and it is something I have always enjoyed the idea of, even though I didn't know it had a name. I have to admit that fanfiction sometimes gets a bad rep- people see it as cheating or ripping off the original author, and the pornographic fiction series Fifty Shades of Grey is more or less fanfiction- the author read the Twilight books and was disappointed that they didn't have sex until like after they were married, like people should do, and so she wrote three books of smut and made millions. CURSE YOU, SIR. CURSE YOU.
Anyway, this is what I mostly do. I do other things, too- lately I've had a period movie streak, watching all of my mother's Jane Austens. I watched my favorite Mansfield Park with every Doctor Who fan's favorite Billie Piper and the divine Blake Ritson. I watched Sense and Sensibility with Willoughby who looks like a pug and a teeny, tiny house that they live in. Then I watched the Sense and Sensibility with Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet in my mother's room, and I was like OH MY GOSH ALAN RICKMAN WAS LIKE ATTRACTIVE BUT NOT BUT YES, because I still hear Snape when he talks but Colonel Brandon makes the Snape voice forgivable. And I watched Northanger Abbey with Felicity Jones, which is a good version- very cute, and with John Thorpe as a perfectly pimpled pig.
Sometimes I've read books- I re-read all of my John Greens after getting a new one for my birthday, and I read my Jasper Fforde books which are JUST. SO. FLIPPING. GOOD. and I re-read The Host and Madeleine L'Engle's Time series, which consist of well-known A Wrinkle In Time and lesser-known A Wind in the Door, Many Waters, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, and An Acceptable Time. These are all lovely books that combine religious principles, physics, and sometimes even magic in a way that is wholly unique from other authors and is still just beautiful.
Sometimes I make things- I had a few days where I was making Popsicle-stick marionettes, because it's fun and easy, and sometimes I make bracelets or necklaces. My mother is helping me make a dress, because making clothes is fun and cheaper than buying them. I've made many, many graph-paper designs in my graph-paper book, where I color in squares because I can.
And sometimes, I waste a lot of time on Facebook and Pinterest and the website that shall not be named and very occasionally 9gag, which I feel somewhat guilty about frequenting because while it is a hilarious website, it is also wildly inappropriate and I feel bad about laughing about many of the jokes on it. However, it is a way to pass the time- you can spend hours there and be surprised they've passed when you next check the clock. If only my one job were like that; but real life is slower than the internet.
These are all things I'm grateful for, these things I do, because they show me that I am a fairly educated person and that I am good at creating things- at making bracelets or marionettes or dresses or small universes for characters to live in. Creativity and the desire to MAKE things is something that will stay with me throughout my life, even when I have nothing else. If I become poor and sick and starving and dying, I will still have my imagination, and it is there I can return to even when I have no other home. And that jam is permanent, like raspberry preserves or grape jelly, the constant jams in my house. It will always be there for me.
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