In response to Rowling’s anodine New Year’s advice to writers in the form of ‘Answers to FAQs’ on her website, a nasty bloke or madame asked her two more questions, namely, ‘Why is your writing so shit?’ and ‘How are you so politically delusional?’ She chose to respond to the troll under the internet bridge.

She explained that her ‘writing is so shit’ because, well, “I do the best I can with the talent I’ve got, but I know my writing isn’t to everyone’s taste.” Her millions of followers, of course, rushed in the thread to reassure her that her writing is very good indeed. I’m not sure you take this as authentic humility, fishing for praise, or some combination of insecurity and rising above the nastiness. Your call.

In answer to the question of how she arrived at her “political delusions,” though, I think we see a remarkable shift in her tweeting posture, if it is a sincere response and not a one-off dismissal to a troll. She wrote that “my politics probably spring from my life experience and my temperament, like everyone else’s.” Which is to say, as ardent as the opinions she shares in her tweets and re-tweets about Brexit, Trump, and illegal immigration on the American border can be, that she recognizes they are only opinions rather than demonstrated truths that no thinking or kind or honest person can deny or disagree with. The opinions she has are only some mixture of temperament and experience.

She added a third answer, this time to a question “unwritten but implied” by the nastygram tweeter. “Try being less of an asshole.” Rowling’s admirers and detractors on the comment thread seem to have played the Jeopardy game of finding the question from the pithy answer and come up with either “What is my best advice for you, Gentle Reader?” or “What is my New Year’s Resolution for 2019?”

I’m hopeful that it is the latter and that Rowling will simultaneously continue to embed her political views in her work, more or less balanced in despising radical left and right if Lethal White is any measure, and back-off the vulgarity and condescending dismissals of those with whom she disagrees via Twitter. This post when combined with her sixteen point KJV thread and prophecy of late last year may mark a turning point of sorts in Rowling’s political savvy and maturity. Not the end of the nonsence, obviously (and I know she implies via re-tweet that all yellow vests protestors are Nazis…) but a sign of the beginning of the end?

I suspect you must disagree, especially if like many of her neo-Marxist followers, you fist pump every time Rowling laughs at or derides the bad guys. I hope you will take Rowling’s third answer to heart in 2019, as will I.

Rowling has made two New Year’s additions to JKRowling.com, both answers to FAQs about writing. You can read them here and here. They’re worth the time it takes to read them.

In a nutshell, Rowling’s advice to wannabe writers is “keep at it” and “ignore those scam artists who want to sell you magic beans in the shape of ‘writing rules’ that successful story tellers all follow.”

This is simultaneously encouraging and, well, bullocks.

Rowling is doing a good job as “Most Successful Author of the Millenium” in saying the encouraging words that those who dream of repeating her Cinderella story long to hear. Here’s hoping there is a writer out there of Rowling’s quality who reads these words inspiring courage and carries on to finish that manuscript (or to make the fourth revision that makes the story magical — and appealing to a publisher or literary agent).

But that there are no rules for writers beyond persistence and reading widely? C’mon. I get the idea that she is discouraging wannabes from being taken in by online programs that claim they have the secret sauce that will help the talented and the deluded to ‘Write Like Rowling.’ But the suggestion she makes is that her rules for writing, ones we know well that she follows, either do not exist or are not repeatable.

As in planning a slow narrative release over several stories, the Rowling signature. Or ring composition story scaffolding, the template of human stories from time immemorial that Rowling uses in all her novels and screenplays. Or literary alchemy, a symbol set used by Rowling, Meyer, and Collins in the best selling series of our times and one which strectches back to Shakespeare and Chaucer and winds its way through many of the English ‘Greats.’

Those are rules that writers can learn and which will improve their writing. The least Rowling could have said, I think, is what she has said continuously since 1997, that her success as a writer is due mainly to her planning, what close reading of her works suggests most would call “obsessive planning.”

We can all agree that there is no magic formula to great writing or, if there are, then without creative genius and the writing skills to bring them to life, they are worthless. But there are rules for great story telling — or guidelines and parameters or models if the R-word makes you flinch. Wannabe writers who think they are going to be great or just ‘writing like Rowling’ without getting into the tool bag she has built up and learning the rules she follows are as misled by the ‘No Rules’ delusion as they might be by magic beans salesman.

Now that I have that off my chest, let’s get back to the important work of trying to read the notes under that peacock paper-weight that headed both of the JKRowling.com posts. It looks like stray thoughts on Fantastic Beasts to me. You?