I Want to Write a Book Like Harry Potter

I want to write a book like Harry Potter. I feel like I'm not allowed to say that (and not only for the obvious reason about its author).

I’m working on the second draft of my debut novel with the help of a coach. I hired Katarina because I’ve never done this before, and every time I try on my own, I get overwhelmed and give up. My manuscript and I need a lot of help.

After our first session, Katarina gave me homework: nail down my theme, characters, world-building, and plot, and write a page on each so she can understand my choices and how they connect. I also owe her three comps (books comparable to mine) so we can pin down the tone.

The hardest part, she told me, is “being 100% certain about all of these things.” Who knew that kind of confidence was a job requirement? Ugh. It makes sense. If I don’t know what the book is for, the reader won’t either. But every time I sit down to commit, I hear myself going well, sort of, but also—like someone on a first date being asked what they're looking for.

Theme is the worst of it for me right now. Plot I can fix. Characters I can revise. Comps I can fudge. But theme is me standing up and announcing what I actually think about being alive, on the page, in a book a kid might one day read under the covers with a flashlight. That’s the whole thing about Harry Potter, isn’t it? It’s not the wands. It’s that Rowling knew exactly what her book was about (love, death, choice, the difference between what’s easy and what’s right) and she was certain. You can feel it on every page.

Do we ever feel 100% certain about anything?

Small decisions happen on instinct. No Mexican food tonight for me because I had it yesterday and my stomach hasn’t forgiven me. Yes to ice cream, because it’s hot out. No to going out, because I’m tired. Big decisions get more runway. I can date someone for years before deciding to move in or get married. I can make an offer on a house before I actually buy it.

For me, doubt creeps in later at night, when I’m tired and don’t have the wherewithal to fight it. (My husband and I have a rule about not making big decisions after dark since the answer is almost always no when we’re tired, and sometimes yes the next morning.) The choices that stick are the ones I’ve put through my own scientific method: weigh the options, check my gut, test-drive it if I can, sleep on it, and only then call it the right one.

And even then, the work isn’t done. There are always moments after making the choice when I have to tell my doubting brain: remember, I did the work. I made the best decision I could.

But none of my usual tricks work for this. I can’t test-drive a theme. I can’t sleep on whether my book is about grief, growing up, or the cost of being chosen. At some point, I just have to decide and say it out loud to myself, to Katarina, and to my future readers…and live with it.

This week I’m making tough decisions and saying the thing I want my book to be about and then walking around like it’s true, the way Rowling must have walked around in 1995 with a notebook and the unhinged confidence to think yep, this one’s about love.

I am going to write a book like Harry Potter.