Hogwarts Houses + Writing #MHAWS!
An old post written before JK Rowlings revealed herself to be Voldemort
Hello darlings!
Are you ready to dominate this week? You better be!
I’m still vacationing my way around Australia, so a quick (and fun and fucking redic) quiz for you!
Do you love Harry Potter? (If you don’t, who are you and why are you here?) Do you know your Hogwarts House? (if not, I consider Pottermore the best quiz, but there are a lot of them out there). Here is some absolutely bullshit writing advice that I’ve come up, based on your Hogwarts House.
Gryffindor:
The good news: you are great at starting new projects, taking writing and research risks, and you are highly ethical researchers. You want to know what is the RIGHT way to do things and when you figure it out, you are good to know.
The bad news: y’all are super arrogant, self-righteous assholes. You hold grudges. You want people to PAY when they have wronged you. Because of this, you are NOT good coauthors. You will engage in bean-counting, trying to make sure that you and your coauthors all contribute the same amount of work. But coauthorship doesn’t fucking work like that. You also will re-write (over and over) until things are perfect and it will drive your coauthors NUTS. So – either finding a very flexible (Hufflepuff!) coauthor or working alone might be the best idea.
Slytherin: (this is me, surprising no one)
The good news: Folks, you are CLEVER. You can figure this shit OUT. You are really good at solving research puzzles, designing smart research, and making connections across bodies of scholarship. You are also highly ambitious, which is not true of many academics. This means that you push yourself – and don’t necessarily need external deadlines and expectations (like tenure or merit) to motivate yourself. Slytherin’s might be more likely to be the children of academics.
The bad news: You are an asshole. Like, ALL the time. You don’t want to sacrifice for others, including coauthors. You might burn bridges when things go wrong. You also are likely to take shortcuts and sometimes are sloppy as you want to skip ahead to the good parts. You will be highly served by a) having a submission checklist, b) using an editor, c) swapping your work with others, or d) having detail-oriented coauthors who can come behind you and do the final bits and pieces.
Hufflepuff:
The good news: you are probably a good person and that translates into your work and coauthor relationships. You are exceedingly friendly and people generally like you and want you to do well. You are a very hard worker and thrive in an environment where you divide your research into lots of little steps. You are also a people-pleaser, so external accountability (particularly to your friends) may be motivating.
The bad news: You are NOT ambitious. Indeed, competitive environments make you nervous and may be demobilizing. This means that some departments are terrible places for Hufflepuffs. You are also very humble and won’t take credit, which means that sometimes you get fucked over by your coauthors and colleagues. A coauthorship contract in the beginning of a project would really help you!
Ravenclaw:
The good news: You are fucking SMART, friends. Like smarts coming out of your ass. You are also creative and can figure out how to make shit HAPPEN. You are a very good solo author because you can figure out solutions to your problems on your own and you can really grind to get it done. But you also are a good coauthor because you love talking to smart people about ideas.
The bad news: You know you are smart. A lot of other people are much more stupid than you, which means you often don’t have patience for explaining dumbass shit to them. But you do actually have to do this. Have patience. You are also very cliquish, which means that you aren’t good at making new connections and can be insular and excluding – not because you want to, but because it just doesn’t occur to you to do anything else. Be purposeful about making your circles wider and deeper. Finally, you are a fucking weirdo. That’s cool. But also sometimes it gets out of hand. Don’t alienate people.
That’s all for this week, friends! As Stephen King says: "Harry Potter is about confronting fears, finding inner strength and doing what is right in the face of adversity.”*
This works for writing as well – our writing is about confronting the fear that we aren’t smart enough or strong enough or knowledgeable enough, finding our inner strength to just fucking WRITE, and to do what is right in our research. Let’s get after it.
XOXOXOX
Mirya
*King also says that in comparison, “Twilight is about how important it is to have a boyfriend.”