JK Rowling

I just watched A Year in the Life of JK Rowling. And I loved it.

(If you're in Canada, you can watch it too at the above link. For all non-Canadians, someone please find a website where the rest of the world can watch it and send me the link!)

This documentary on CBC's The Passionate Eye takes a closer look at JK Rowling, specifically at her childhood and the process of writing the Harry Potter series. It follows her during the year she finished writing the last Harry Potter novel. It's a very personal and intimate look at her life.

I enjoyed it because it takes a special look at her inspiration and challenges as a writer. I was struck by the situation of pain and brokenness that led her to begin creating the character of Harry Potter and the battles he would fight. I was surprised by some of her fears and goals as a writer. And I related to some of the wounds she's suffered, like the loss of a parent, which went on to add depth and nuance to her stories.

Talk about heavy stuff!

But here's what made me smile: When she talked about failure. Yes, failure makes me smile.

Rowling summed it up in two satisfyingly frank comments (roughly paraphrased):

1) When wondering whether to sit down and write her first novel, she figured, "What's the worst that can happen? Every publisher in Britain rejects it. Big deal."

Hmm, I like her style. As a writer-hopeful, I'm the kind who'd temporarily forget my reason for living at my first rejection, nevermind my second. And third. Oh my! But hey, if she can handle a whole country worth of rejections, then so can I!

Here's the other thing she said (also roughly paraphrased):

2) "In order for some people to love the book, some have to hate it."

In other words, if you try to please everyone, chances are no one's going to like your work. I knew this of course, but it's always comforting to hear again. If you turn out a quality product and pour yourself into it, you'll inevitably have fans as well as critics.

So I'm feeling reasonably affirmed (again) that it's okay to have critics. The only thing I really have to worry about is whether I'll be willing to learn from the critics, even those who get up on the wrong side of the bed the day they read my stuff.

I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure - which is: Try to please everybody.
- Herbert Bayard Swope

Some of you might appreciate this article by Tyndale Publishers:

New Free Media Diet Calculator Planned to Launch Dec. 26

Aims to Bring Awareness of Family Media Intake Versus Real Life Interaction

Nashville, Tenn. Dec. 15, 2010… After a season filled with record-setting cell phone and gaming gifts to teens and tweens, iShine is announcing the upcoming Dec. 26 release of the Family Media Diet Calculator. The calculator is a new tool providing customized awareness to families in regards to how much time they spend connected to media in comparison to the amount of hours they spend plugged in with real life interaction and content consumption.

By visiting http://www.familymediadiet.com/, parents nationwide will be able to plug in amounts of time their families spend texting, browsing online, consuming television and more. They will then be able to print a free custom analysis of where their families are spending their time in comparison to their involvement in recreational and faith-based activities along with family time and reading. The campaign is not an anti-technology movement. It is about use awareness and being intentional about the content.

It is estimated that the 20 million tweens in this country spend 25 hours a week watching television and playing video games and only one hour in church. George Barna (The Barna Group), a pioneer in research on Christian culture, recently noted that kids spend more time absorbing media than anything else in their lives, except sleeping. A recent article in The New York Times titled “Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction” (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/technology/21brain.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=technology) also discussed the effects of technology compared to focusing and learning.

“We as parents must be deliberate of what media our kids consume, understanding that it is forming the way our kids look at everything – self image, friends, parents, leaders, themselves,” remarks iShine Founder and Chief Creative Officer Robert Beeson. “If we as parents aren’t actively forming the person our kid’s are becoming – make no mistake – someone else is.”

iShine, known for bringing family-friendly media options through tours, music, television and radio mediums, is sponsoring the free Media Diet Calculator. The organization will also be releasing a new interactive Bible for tweens with Tyndale House Publishers in Feb. of 2011.

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http://ishinelive.com/

More about iShine:

iShine is a Christian media group dedicated to ministering to “tweens” and their families. Tweens are defined as children between the ages of 7 and 13, and represent the single most influential age group in the world today. Mainstream media and consumer marketing groups focus their messages of identity, popularity and value predominately to the “tween” marketplace for a reason. iShine reaches today’s “tweens” through Biblically-based live concerts events (iShineLIVE!), unique television programming seen weekly on TBN (iShine KNECT), iShine artist releases to CD and DVD, interactive websites and coming in 2011, an entire line of books and Bibles all specifically designed to be relevant to this vital audience.

Given that we've just relinquished our cable TV subscription, my family has turned to other forms of entertainment whenever we want to relax together at the end of a long and exhausting day. My brother discovered this Japanese anime series called Monster a few years ago, and we're finally getting around to watching it.

If you're a fan of, say, Law & Order: SVU, then I think you'd really like this series. If you don't mind it being a cartoon, that is. Although it's animated, it's definitely NOT for kids, as it deals with heavy and disturbing issues that are suited for an adult audience.

We're not far into it yet, but from what I can tell, besides my brother's hearty endorsement, it's got three things going for it:

1) compelling three-dimentional characters with complex histories, relationships, and motives, who you come to care about very quickly;

2) a sophisticated, brain-tingling, intricately designed and suspenseful plot (if it were a book, it would be the kind of page-turner you can't put down at night);

3) and an uncommon combination of cultures (the lead character is a Japanese man who immigrated to Germany), settings (cities and villages around central Europe), and issues (secret government projects, sociopaths, fairytales, child abuse, immigration, communism, fascism...).

I won't try to summarize the plot of this fantastic story for you, since Wikipedia has already done the work for me:

The series follows Dr. Kenzō Tenma (天馬 賢三, Tenma Kenzō?) as he pursues a young psychopath/sociopath named Johan, whose life Tenma once saved. The story rapidly progresses through a number of locations: it starts in Düsseldorf, Germany, passes through Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich, Wiesbaden, cities in the Czech Republic such as Prague, and other cities and villages. (...)

Dr. Kenzō Tenma is a young Japanese doctor working at the Eisler Memorial Hospital in Düsseldorf during the 80s. A highly accomplished brain surgeon, he appears to have everything on his plate: a promotion in the offing; the favor of the director of the hospital Heinemann; and Heinemann's daughter Eva as his fiancée. However, Tenma grows increasingly dissatisfied with the political bias of the hospital for treating patients, and seizes his chance to change things after a strange massacre brings the twins Johan and Anna Liebert into his hospital. Johan has a gunshot wound to the head and Anna keeps muttering about killing, and Tenma decides to operate on Johan instead of the mayor of Düsseldorf who arrived afterwards. Johan is saved, but Mayor Roedecker dies. Tenma loses all his social standing and Eva as a consequence. However, Director Heinemann and the other doctors in Tenma's way are mysteriously murdered, and both children disappear from the hospital soon after. The police suspect Tenma, as he benefits greatly from this turn of events, but they have no evidence, and so can do no more than question him.

At this point, the story advances to nine years later. Tenma is now the Chief of Surgery at Eisler Memorial Hospital. However, he is about to come face to face with a sociopath - a sociopath that he helped save.

If you can get a hold of this somewhere, maybe at a DVD rental store, at a library, or an anime store, or even on YouTube, definitely give this one a try, and tell me what you think. :)