Alexander Patten

My parents joined the boycott against these movies and books, along with many other Christians at the time. Yet, Harry Potter became the first book series I ever read and continues to be one of my favorites of all time.

Leading up to the release of 4th Harry Potter film, The Goblet of Fire, my parents decided the series was not actually teaching children to pursue witchcraft, at least not on purpose. We therefore rented the first three films from Blockbuster Video, and thoroughly enjoyed them.

When we went and saw the Goblet of Fire, the return of Voldemort was one of the more terrifying scenes I’ve witnessed in a theater (the other one was Rasputin’s villain song from Anastasia). Things had gotten very dark very fast, and I had no way of knowing what would happen next. Until…

I should probably mention here that I hated reading, after multiple abandoned attempts in my homeschooling years to read more than a Dr. Seuss book. It was those pesky words like “though,” and “through,” and “thought,” which look so similar but sound completely different, that turned me off to the practice. I decided written English was silly and needlessly difficult.

My eldest brother led the way as he often did, buying the available Potter books shortly after seeing the 4th film. The 5th and 6th books had already been released, and he enjoyed them so much I got jealous. It must have been about January 2006 when I grabbed that copy of The Sorcerer’s Stone, sat down in that high back checkered armchair and started reading in earnest.

I would regularly have to call up to mom in the kitchen, reciting off the spelling of a word I couldn’t read, and getting the answer back. My eyes started to hurt, and the grew chair increasingly uncomfortable, yet my reading got better and better page by page. Even early on, as I struggled to get through a single chapter, I could almost hear Hagrid’s booming voice through mere words on a page.

I enjoyed the full series so much that I decided to write my own epic fantasy book about a teen boy and his friends who stumble into a secret world with full of unique magical relics. It was bad, and I abandoned the project after penning a few short chapters, still available in a box under my bed.

I had had the blurry notions of the story I wanted to create but didn’t know how to put them together or flesh them out. Perhaps writing just wasn’t for me.

Just today, as I write this, I learned JK Rowling had desired to be a writer since a young age, yet never had that spark she needed until one glorious train ride. There she got the idea of one skinny boy who learns that he is a wizard, destined for a magical school.

Then there are authors like Jim Butcher who say ideas and inspiration don’t matter, but that it’s all down to the author’s skill. And if you’re a huge Furies of Calderon fanatic, then maybe he was write. Still, I think rest of us mortals might need a little inspiration, at least starting out. Then, eventually we may become skilled enough to write without inspiration.

The Harry Potter series finally gave me something to strive for, but it was only a fuzzy landscape of fantastical worlds and events that wouldn’t sit still and become realized in my mind. My next attempt at an epic fantasy would have been even more hilariously bad than the first, except that I abandoned it sooner.

Inspiration had yet to strike, but my writing journey was only beginning.