The Real Magic of Harry Potter

Did you hear it? You have to be real quiet. There! A page of a book was turning. And there. . . I hear a chuckle.

Isn't it amazing how one author can turn a nation (world) of movie fanatics into readers of books? Applause and cheers for J.K. Rowling and her Harry Potter series. Not only are children fascinated with her characters, but adults as well. I admit it; I have read the books many times.

I am reading The Half Blood Prince very slowly so I can savor the book. The last two I devoured in hours and missed too much of Rowling's writings to enjoy it. I compare it to gulping a gormet meal to get to the dessert. I will savor every bite or this book, taste every morsel, swirl it on my palate and swallow slowly.

My two older boys have read it all and are being very quiet about the outcome and I thank them.

Why is the well dry?

Our house is built on low ground. We knew this, but still decided to put in a basement. The floor of the basement sits inches above a water table, sometimes below. To keep our basement dry, we have a system of holey pipes or "drainage tile" embedded into the perimeter of the foundation. Some tiles sit under the basement floor. All the water collected in the pipes flow into a sump crock at the corner of the basement. In this crock is a sump pump that pumps the water up from the basement and out to a drain.

During the spring when the snow melts, water constantly flows into the crock, sounding like a horse emptying his bladder. I often go down to the basement to do laundry and never think about the tile, crock or the sump pump doing their intended job, keeping our basment dry.

Until yesterdy. I lugged down a load of laundry and noticed the quiet in the basement. It was eerie. I feared the worst. Had the system stopped working and water was backing up into the crock? When water reaches the tile, there is no sound of water falling.

With trepidation, I went to the crock and lifted the lid. To my total horror, the crock was dry!

I gazed at the sight beneath my feet. The edges of the tile showed no sign of any water. The pump sat on the bottom of the crock surrounded by dried silt. Thinking of the weather the past months reminded me that we hadn't had any rain. The ground was dry and no water flowed into the crock.

There was no water. The crock was dry.

And so it is with my writing. The crock is dry. There are no ideas flowing into my brain. There are no ideas flowing onto my keyboard. You cannot pump water out of a dry crock.

Why has my well of ideas gone dry? I have been trying for months to bring back the magic I had when thoughts flowed from my brain to my fingers so fast that it was hard to keep up with typing.

Lately though, nothing has flowed from my fingers. I have tried many different exercises to bring back the magic. I am reading novels, writer's how-to books, motivation books (and quoting them digustingly). I am trying to write small essays like this one. If something in the news gets me riled up, I'll write a letter to the editor. Heck, I've even tried writing smut, ...er erotica.

But no water has been flowing into my crock. There is nothing to pump out.

Do I wait for the rainy season to come back? Will it? Do I keep trying to prime the pump?

Quick post

Just a quick post from vacation-land. I am sitting in the library ~er.. "infozone"... of the Children's Museum of Indianapolis. Three of the four boys have deserted me and the remaining one is sitting next to me playing an internet computer game while I check my mail and blogs.

I am amazed at the speed of the internet service! My dial-up crawls compare to the hyper-speed of this computer. Of course, the downside is that I have five kids standing behind me, breathing down my neck waiting for me to get off.

[[pause in typing to give the evil eye to the kids reading over my shoulder]]

Vacations are great. Sleeping in, swimming, spending money recklessly... what a way to live. I'm glad I don't do it all the time. Tomorrow we go to the lake.

I have discovered that there is a serious flaw in my gothic manuscript. . . . it needs a story. I have a great ending with all the intricate web of deceit to reveal. but I need to go from the first stalking event (the beginning) past the murder (body on the stairs that disappears) to the climax, (FBI agents storming the house to save our heroine from the villian). I can't seem to creat a story for this plot. Maybe I need to concentrate on the romance story first and weave the action around the romance.

Hey. . . maybe that's what I'm doing wrong. I'm trying to write action and I should be writing romance.

~~And maybe our herione can save herself and hold the gun on the villian while waiting for the FBI~~