Alright people, it is Confession time.

Since the next Harry Potter movie is coming out in t-minus 10 days and many a person seems to be caught up in Harry Potter mania (re-reading the books, HP movie marathons, arguing about HP facts in the streets, etc.) I thought I'd join in with a little Harry Potter confession of my own. Ok here goes Iusedtowriteharrypotterfanfiction. Yup you read that right Harry. Potter. FanFiction. Now I'm going to make it sound like it was a cool thing to do.

It all started with my Grade 7 teacher. She introduced us to Harry Potter by making us read the first book for a school project. I then spent the next two years  reading and re-reading the first 4 books. I was a huge Harry Potter nerd. I corrected people when they pronounced spells wrong and made everyone pronounce Hermione HerMOINE because I thought that was the right way, I was an HP bully. I also finally gave up my childhood crush on Wesley from Star Trek (c'mon you know who I mean... the doctor's son? no...?) to crush after Ron Weasley... in the wizarding world everything was possible, redheaded boys could be good-looking, I was sure of it.

Luckily this mania had started to fade by Grade 9, but another secret mania began. I've always been a writer, in high school I don't think there was a time when I wasn't writing something. I even remember sitting in the mall by my work writing before I had to start. So, naturally my two manias from this time of my life eventually converged in the form of FanFiction. And I had fans. Yup, people emailed me if I didn't finish my next chapter in time. I got hate mail from fans who wanted to know what happened in my stories next if I didn't update them fast enough. By Grade 11 though real life had just got too busy to allow me any time for updating. I never finished either of the stories I had started. I remember getting one email from a reader complaining about an unfinished story. I responded saying something like 'I'm sorry I'm in Grade 11 its a stressful time of my life, theres a lot going on' etc. etc. She responded telling me she understood, she was in 2nd year University. I thought that was so cool... I had a fan in university.

I think I only ever told one friend that I was doing this while I was writing. I might've told others afterwards I can't remember. But I always sort of felt it was socially unacceptable to be writing fanfiction (why on earth would I have thought that?!). Now, though, if I think about it... that was pretty cool! I mean how many other 16 year olds were writing pretty much full out novel sized stories and had readers to boot? I was really organized too. I recently found a notebook where I'd written out chapter summaries - so that I knew what was supposed to happen when and how to lead up to events I wanted to happen later on. I mean sure I'd stolen the setting but some of the characters were my own and the plot was all me. Basically, I think it was really awesome and I shouldn't have been ashamed of it at all.

So there you go, that's my confession. And if you can't handle it you can just go shove a Crumple Horned Snorkack up your....