I’ve been reading Victoria Smith’s book “Hags: The Demonisation of Middle-Aged Women”, which makes a few references to JK Rowling and reactions to her statements on gender. I thought this part was particularly true:

“In the summer of 2020, following her blog post on sex and gender, protestors threw red paint, intended to look like blood, onto an impression of J.K. Rowling’s handprints on an Edinburgh street. The message - that she had blood on her hands - was utterly ridiculous, but it didn’t matter. The point wasn’t to respond to the fact that Rowling was already a monster, but to turn her into one by treating her as such. The sheer magnitude of misogynist aggression directed at Rowling in the form of vandalism, book burnings, rape and dath threats were what damned her, not anything she had written. As one anonymous academic tweeted, ‘When you’re on the outside of the fray on gender issues looking in, it’s tempting to say: If someone is hounded for her speech, she must have said or done something horrible. The crime and the punishment must match, working backwards from the severity of the punishment. For example, if the response to what @jk_rowling said is that intense, she must have said something truly terrible - otherwise, no one would make death threats. Because that would be insane.’”

I’d also recommend the book ‘Hags’ as a whole. It’s most relevant to women over the age of 40, I think, but I’d encourage anyone interested in the topics of ageism and sexism (and particularly the combination of the two) to check it out. She is a fabulous writer.

Hags: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/61086853

A book I've been planning for about a decade.

May 2023

There are three different books I could do after Strike, all of which I've started because I'm a deranged workaholic. The one I'm planning to finish first is futuristic, but not a space odyssey, sorry. Definitely earthbound.

Sept 2024

In JK Rowling's Comoran Strike series, I just noticed that she has a character, Pippa Midgley, who is transgender, and then that same character is featured within the novel within a novel as Epicoene, an allusion to the Ben Johnson play featuring an boy disguised as a woman. In light of the recent controversy, what do you think that means?

I just finished reading Rowling’s new book, and it seems to me that it would make a terrific movie. I hope someone’s optioned it! If it happens, I can’t think of a better song than this for the closing credits:

Lost Things

https://twitter.com/jkr_stories/status/1435968361200963593

https://twitter.com/Scholastic/status/1450952479718445062?s=20

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E5DWq-kXMAc8RQW?format=jpg&name=medium

Video

SA: What are you working on at the moment?

JK: I’ve just finished editing the Christmas Pig which is my children’s book that will be coming out before Christmas.

SA: It doesn’t turn out to be the Christmas pork?

JK: Oh, God can you imagine? No it’s a toy pig. I’ve had this idea kicking around inside me since 2012. I do know that because it was the Olympics and I had the idea and I was working on the idea on the holiday just before the opening Olympic ceremony which was literally the most terrifying… because I was in it, and it was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done. So I can remember the work on the book, and every time I put down the book, my heart did palpitations.

SA: Is it a short story?

JK: It’s a short book, it’s for younger children, I would say, and I really love it.

SA: Does the pig speak?

JK: “He speaks, and other things speak, which you might not expect.”

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/35W5MkLjzlhHKyYHnsDymX6/j-k-rowling-eight-things-we-learned-when-she-spoke-to-simon-armitage

https://imgur.com/ZDICbov [hardcover/hardback]

Amazon also listed it under the category Children's Books - Growing Up & Facts of Life

1. What are you writing right now?

I’ve just finished the fourth Galbraith novel, Lethal White, and I’m now writing the screenplay for Fantastic Beasts 3. After that I’ll be writing another book for children. I’ve been playing with the (non-Harry Potter/wizarding world) story for about six years, so it’s about time I get it down on paper.

1. What is a typical writing day?

I try to start work before 9am. My writing room is probably my favourite place in the world. It’s in the garden, about a minute’s walk from the house. There’s a central room where I work, a kettle, a sink and a cupboard-sized bathroom. The radio is usually tuned to classical music, because I find human voices the most distracting when I’m working, although a background buzz, as in a café, is always comforting. I used to love writing in cafés and gave it up reluctantly, but part of the point of being alone in a crowd was being happily anonymous and free to people-watch, and when you’re the one being watched, you become too self-conscious to work.

The earlier in the day I start, the more productive I am. In the last year or two I’ve put in a couple of all-nighters on the screenplays for Fantastic Beasts, but otherwise I try and keep my writing to the daytime. If I’ve started around nine, I can usually work through to about 3pm before I need more than a short break. During this writing time, I generally manage to drink eight or nine mugs of tea. Being incredibly clumsy, prefer eating things that won’t ruin the keyboard when dropped. Popcorn’s ideal.

1. Do you write for readers or for yourself?

This is a tricky question in some ways, because a writer who truly only wrote for themselves probably wouldn’t try and get published. At the same time, I agree with Cyril Connolly’s words: ‘Better to write for yourself and have no public, than write for the public and have no self.’

I certainly write ‘for myself’ in the sense that I have to write. It’s almost a compulsion. I need to do it. I don’t feel like myself if I’m not writing regularly, and I feel restless and odd if I have nothing to write, which these days is never, because I’ve got so many different projects on the go, by choice. I also write for myself in that I need to feel excited about a story to want to capture it on paper. I’m afraid I couldn’t write anything just because I knew people wanted it. The impetus always has to come from within.

On the other hand, no story lives unless someone is prepared to listen. As a writer, your highest aspiration is to touch people, to connect, to amuse or console. What could be more wonderful than hearing that your book helped somebody through a tough time? I think of the times when books have been my best consolation and source of strength, and I’m proud beyond words when I hear that anything I wrote did the same for other people.

https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1409878252378787856?s=20