Author Rainbow Rowell on writing “Harry Potter” fan fiction
Many of you will be aware of Rainbow Rowell’s recent novel, Fangirl, which looks at a teenage girl who is a big deal in the fanfiction world but struggling to start a new life at college. The book speaks to many Harry Potter fans because of its parallels with the Harry Potter fandom – and it’s simply a brilliant read.
On Rainbow’s recent book promotional tour for Landline, her latest novel, she has spoken about her own experiences with writing Harry Potter fan fiction. Rainbow has been in the UK promoting the novel and traveling the country.
In an interview with the Bookseller, Rainbow said that
she wrote Harry Potter fan fiction after getting ‘kind of depressed’ between writing two of her own novels.
Rainbow spoke about herself as a teenager and the inspiration for Cath, the main character in Fangirl:
I was always the sort of teenager who would get really excited about things and then not always have anybody to talk to about them. And so just the idea that I would have been able to make that connection [online], I would have felt so much less alone as a teenager, but… if I had had this Internet life I wonder, with my social anxiety and shyness, I might have had a harder time breaking through that?
Why even try when you can have a rich real life online? So that’s where I got the idea of Cath from, who I don’t think is choosing between real life and the Internet, but I do think she’s sort of choosing how much she is going to relate to people face to face and how much she’s going to push herself and how much of her childhood is she going to take with her into adult life.
She also revealed something about her fan fiction story itself:
It’s funny because it’s where I was in life. It’s Harry and Draco as a couple who have been married for many years, and they’re raising Harry’s kids, with Ginny, she has not been vilified.
It’s them dealing with attachment parenting and step-parents and all these middle-aged issues of what it means to be a step-parent.
Further, Rainbow commented,
Someday I’ll meet J.K. Rowling, and I’ll be mortified. If our paths were ever to cross, I don’t want this to come up.
Rainbow is due to be at LeakyCon later this month, where she will read an extract from her Harry Potter fan fiction! If you’re going to be at LeakyCon, this is something you won’t want to miss. MuggleNet is also lucky enough to be having an interview with Rainbow at LeakyCon, so look out for the interview soon!
If you haven’t had a chance to read Rainbow’s novels, check out our reviews here and here. And of course, if you’re looking for Harry Potter fan fiction, don’t forget that MuggleNet has a thriving fan fiction community!
Have you read Fangirl? Are you looking forward to seeing Rainbow at LeakyCon (if you’re going)? How much do you want to read Rainbow’s fan fiction?!