Writing Questions

Since I want to know all of these questions from you, I'll ask them of myself first:

1. Whose writing does your own most resemble?

Answer: My writing is probably most similar to Shannon Hale's YA lit.

2. Which writer's writing and revising habits does your method most resemble?

Answer: Gustav Flaubert. He'd work and rework a sentence for a month to make it right. I tend to revise my stuff eleventy-seven times before I find myself willing to send it out to anywhere really important.

3. Of past writers, which do you wish you had been in another life?

Answer: I wouldn't wish to live their lives (none were that happy), but I wish I'd written Shakespeare's stuff (obviously!)... if not his, then Austen's, Dickens's, or Chaucer's (even the bawdy ones). I'd also love to have written Hawthorne's novels.

And now, your answers...

Which Character are You?

I finally saw Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince yesterday... and I couldn't get to sleep last night (or sleep past 6 this morning) from thinking about it. If you haven't seen it, though, don't worry. I'm adept at not spoiling the plot of movies. You won't find any clues in here about what goes on in the film.

I've always identified myself with Hermoine--book smart and loyal--yet I discovered while watching the film that I find links to many of the HP characters, even Dumbledore (perhaps it's the professor in me). The only character I consistently don't identify with is Ron Weasley. 

But this is not new. I find myself identifying with other characters in other books, too, in various ways. That is the magic of literature, a power writing has to create a fictive world which ties strongly to the real one we are living within, despite huge differences between worlds. I can feel, for a few hours, as if I am Harry Potter, undervalued, lonely, yet capable of great things. I can feel like Emma Bovary, unsatisfied with my world as it is, wondering how to make it better (even if I wouldn't make the choices she did in Flaubert's novel). It seems many readers identified themselves with Emma, and some claimed Flaubert wrote the novel based on them, yet when asked who Emma was, he said, "C'est moi." ("It is I.")

I may most identify with the main character of Robin McKinley's The Blue Sword, for she seems utterly ordinary, yet finds herself drawn, inexplicably, to a world far different than her known world... and others see the potential in her long before she realizes it herself (rather like Harry Potter). I also identify with Spider Man (yes, yes, I said it!), mainly because my talents are hidden to most people--both by chance and by my own design.

With whom do you identify? What characters are most like you? Feel free to choose any book or film you like, or several characters from several books or films, but tell me what characters resemble you. Perhaps we have a few characters in common.