Harry Potter Made Me Want to Write by Sarah Gate

When the Olympics was on earlier this year, my mum posted a tweet encouraging young people to start using our medallists as role models instead of C list ‘celebrities’. To which I replied ‘But I don’t want to be an athlete. Can J.K Rowling be my role model instead?’

Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone was published in 1997. I didn’t read it until three years later, by which time the second and third books had been released and the world was eagerly anticipating the fourth instalment. I devoured each and every word until I was caught up and then, whilst Hollywood got its act together, hired a cast and made a movie, I had to wait with the rest of the world for three whole years before the next book came out.

After Harry Potter came into my life, people became automatically assigned to one of three clubs for me; people who read Harry Potter (favourites), people who had seen the films (cop outs) and people who hadn’t done either (idiots).

Harry Potter made me want to write a book. I was so totally in awe of how this piece of writing had made me feel, that it inspired me to really want to do something like it myself. Ben Hatch, author of best seller ‘Are We Nearly There Yet?’, fell similarly in love with the idea of novel writing after he read Catcher in the Rye. He said;

“I thought it was so amazing I couldn’t think of anything better to do than having a go at trying to write something half as good.”

Harry Potter is still the only example in which my love for a book is so strong that I cannot understand how everyone in the world does not share my wonder at it. I am astounded by Rowling’s imagination, her ability to knit together complex but riveting bits of detail and how easy she made it all look. Like Ben, it is the need I feel to try and write something even vaguely as well that has propelled me forward as a writer.

I wonder then, what book made you want to write your own? I am genuinely intrigued. I am adding Catcher in the Rye to my reading list (I am a little ashamed to admit I haven’t read it yet) and I would quite like to add on some of your own favourites. Surely if a book has grabbed even one person hard enough that it made them want to writer their own book, then it must have grabbed others. Therefore, it must be worth a read. If we put them all together, we might have the world’s best reading list, and I would quite like work my own way through that. 

I can only hope my own work might appear on someone’s list one day. 

For more information on Ben Hatch and Are We Nearly There Yet? Visit http://www.amazon.co.uk/Are-Nearly-There-Yet-ebook/dp/B005K15D4W

by Sarah Gate

The Unofficial 'Brit Writers and Writers Everywhere' blog.