Delusional Thursdays: A Concise History

I was going to start this post with a shocking revelation: our blog schedule. That’s right. We have a blog schedule. We are not seven authors who just happen to synchronize perfectly, like ants or Apple products.


As exciting as it sounds to start with a shocking revelation, though, I changed my mind halfway through (I’ll give you a hint where I changed my mind, in case you’re interested).

The reason I changed my mind about how to start this post is because a) the revelation is not all that shocking. It has never really been a secret. After all, we do have labels where our schedule is prominently displayed (just check out the label cloud in the sidebar here). We also usually mention the topic of the day in our posts. Also, b), Tara and I had something of a mind melt this week – she posted almost exactly the opening I meant to post in yesterdays (brilliant) post. Oh, well.

Reading Monday and Writing Tuesday are self-explanatory, I think. Tara covered Random Wednesday yesterday. Motivational Friday will have to be experienced (check back in tomorrow to see what Jason has to offer on the subject). Delusional Thursday, however, have a history.

Delusional Thursdays originated in the HPANA era. Several of us were part of a hard core Harry Potter theorizing group where straying was not allowed. A little straying was nonetheless achieved, but the only officially recognized non-canon discussions took place on Thursdays. Thursdays were the days when no theory was too crazy. This was when you could suggest that Harry Potter was not a wizard; he was an alien. Or you could claim that Professor McGonagall was Hermione’s grandmother. Or that Snape once washed with permanent shampoo so that he never really needed a bath ever since. (Actually, that last one was probably too delusional even for a Thursday.)

Anyway, the point is that many of our best theories were born on Thursdays. When we went outside the box, wrung our brains to come up with silly and half crazy ideas based on random details from the books, we formulated the most hilarious (though rarely the most accurate) theories.

I believe this is also often the case with writing. Sometimes it is okay to be delusional because it allows us to put into words ideas that otherwise might be discarded as ridiculous. I’m fairly sure JK Rowling herself more than once wondered if she was being delusional in thinking that she could actually get away with writing seven several hundred page long children’s books about a kid whose dead parents were famous wizards. Similarly, I think many other successful authors have (or should have) felt the same. I have put together a selection of authors I suspect one time or another thought to themselves “Have I lost my marbles or can I really write this?”:

Stephen King. As if high school wasn’t delusional enough without telekinesis…

JRR Tolkien. Inventing a world inhabited by elves, dwarves, and tiny people with hairy feet. Not delusional at all…

Virginia Woolf. Did she know when she started writing about Mrs Dalloway’s efforts to plan a party that it one day would be considered an important work in world literature?

H.G. Wells. Sure. Not only are there aliens out there – they are evil and about to invade the Earth!

Dante. Oh, yes, write a book about travels in Hell. That’s got to be popular!


So yes, sometimes it goes a long way to be a little delusional.







(This is where I changed my mind regarding the beginning of this post. No, I am not delusional. This really is halfway through. Because when I realized I had to change the intro of the post I had to go back all the way to the first paragraph, didn’t I? So the end really is halfway through. So there).