At noon on Wednesday, October 11, 2012, J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter Series, visited Hawthorne High School. Members of the Creative Writing Club enjoyed her visit via live webcast.

The 45-minute webcast allowed students to visit Rowling in real time from her home in Scotland. Rowling read favorite passages and answered interview questions. The author gave the students insight into her career, her life, and her books. Asked about her favorite scene, Rowling recalled that she especially enjoyed writing the graveyard scene in Goblet of Fire. She said that her best memory personally during this journey is her second American tour when she saw lines of people along the street waiting for her and she realized how popular her books had become. “It was extraordinary,” she said, “and also terrifying.”

Club member Cassie Rivera was thrilled to be at the live event. “Hearing Rowling read her own words out loud to us was really great. She knows the characters and the story better than anyone else and her reading was better than anyone else could do it,” commented Rivera.

Helping the students understand why writers say “character is plot,” Rowling discussed the creation of her characters. She explained that in order to write a long book, she needed to know in advance who the main characters would be and what kind of people they would be. Although she did not know exactly what challenges the characters would face, she knew that Harry would have two friends with certain characteristics. Harry, she knew, would be the hero who would have to fulfill a quest. Ron Weasley would be a fun friend who was loyal and very human, but who was insecure.  Hermione Granger would be an exaggerated version of Rowlings herself as a clever girl who is book smart, but needs to loosen up and learn that there is more to life than what can be found in books. Rowling said that knowing these strengths and weaknesses of the characters right from the start gave her material to allow them to grow as people and have conflicts along the way that helped them gain self-knowledge. “Self-knowledge,” said Rowling, “is what we’re all after.”

Rowling introduced viewers to her online site called Pottermore (@www.pottermore.com). On this site, visitors are divided into the four Hogwarts houses according to their answers to given questions. Answering her own questions, Rowling found that she would fit in the Gryffindor House!

Rowling showed the Creative Writing Club members her passion for writing. “If I wasn’t a writer,” she said, “I would be depressed. There is nothing else I would want to do.”

When asked what she hopes readers take away from her books Rowling told her viewers: “The knowledge that in my books there is always somewhere you can go where you’re loved and you’re safe.”