London King’s Cross railway station

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Don’t Write A Book, Write A Poster – Part 2

Back in August, I blogged about a poster I saw at Platform 9 3/4, the Harry Potter shop at King’s Cross Station. I was astounded – and inspired – by the image which contained all 76,944 words of JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book.

HPPOser

For a writer, facing the challenge of the blank page – or 375 of them for a 75,000 word book – can be daunting, but seeing a whole story on a poster somehow makes that task appear more achievable. So imagine my delight on Christmas Day when a good friend presented me with a bangle on which she’d had the words –  76,944 words. write a poster – inscribed.

bangle

Thank you, L. I’m going wear it every day in 2014 as I work on my writing, using it as inspiration to write my own ‘poster‘.

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Don’t Write A Book. Write A Poster!

The idea of sitting down to write anything from a 50,000-100,000 word novel is pretty daunting. The former consumes at least half a box of paper, the latter will eat up the entire 500 sheets.

Sgtaplspaper

Add in revisions, synopses and query letters…  that’s a whole lot of dead trees and empty pages to fill.

Even more challenging than completing the physical pages is the emotional energy expended creating a book.  As Red Smith said:  There’s nothing to writing.  All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.

500 pages.

Gulp!

This summer I visited Platform 9 3/4, the shop containing all things Harry Potter at King’s Cross Station.  In amongst the wands and Gryffindor scarves, I noticed something that – to me –  was truly magical. A poster containing the full text of of JK Rowling‘s Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone.

HPPOser

It so captivated me that I went back to the shop three times to look at it before finally buying it.  A poster, no matter how small the text, couldn’t contain the WHOLE text – 76,944 words – could it?

Well.. yes it could.

I might not be able to write a book as amazing as Harry Potter –  and the idea of facing 500 empty pages may be very intimidating – but I CAN write a poster.

And so can you!