CRITICAL ARTICLE #1

In the first article the writer, Beth Backkum, interviews Gregory Maguire and she finds out what his writing process is, how he gets his ideas for novels and why he writes books. In 1990 during the Persian Gulf War Gregory Maguire became interested in "good" and "bad" people and he started to wonder if individuals were born that way. Because of this Gregory Maguire began to become more interested in one of literatures most evil characters, and that character is the Wicked Witch of the West. In the Wizard of Oz the audience knows the wicked witch is evil as soon as they see her. We know that she is evil because of her green skin, her appearance, the music playing in the background, and how she is so different than Glinda the good witch. In Gregory Maguire's book, Wicked, he goes more in depth and gives readers a chance to know about Elphaba's past. In this novel, readers can sympathize with Elphaba and we learn that she was not born evil.

In the article, Gregory Maguire says that writing helps him see things more clearly. The process of writing a story has not changed much for him since grade four, and he creates the basic characters and situations they will have to overcome. He begins by writing in hand instead of on a computer or word processor because he will write slower and really think about what he wants to happen in the story he will be telling. When he is stuck and does not know what to do he turns to things that have given him comfort in the past and one example is the fairytales he knew as a child. With these fairytales he was able to explore and really look at all of the character's roles and give the background characters a chance to share their story and he lets them be known for something different rather than, the evil witch, or the evil stepsister or stepmother. He gives the background characters a story so people will remember them. For him, writing is a daily process in which he digs deeper to get the interesting, out of the ordinary stories he is known for.

Bakkum, Beth. "Gregory Maguire." Writer 3(2007):66. eLibrary. Web. 19 Oct. 2011. http://elibrary.bigchalk.com/elibweb/curriculumca/do/document?set=search&dictionaryClick=&secondaryNav=advance&groupid=1&requestid=lib_canada&resultid=4&edition=&ts=168A6173EDD97DBFBBA897F0B5A3D762_1298607039655&start=1&publicationId=&urn=urn%3Abigchalk%3AUS%3BBCLib%3Bdocument%3B135547074