The unknown author conjured the idea of a young adolescent boy as she waited on a delayed train for London.
Her sudden born thought led to the birth of the magical world and thus the Harry Potter series.
But it took her far more than a spell, to take the book to almost every corner of the world. Yes, it is the story of J.K Rowling, a classic example of riches to rags.
Her parents were not those who received a college education. And for years, she lived under Government care as a single mother battling rejection after rejection to become an overnight star-studded author.
J.K. Rowling, born with the name Joanne Rowling grew up in Gloucestershire, England.
From a tender age, the idea of being an author sprouted in her and grew strong as she did.
She once said in an interview in 1998 that the first story she wrote was about a rabbit called a rabbit.
She said, “he got measles and the friends who came to meet him included a giant bee. Ever since Miss Bee and the rabbit story, I wanted to be a writer”.
She moved near the Forest of Dean which she featured in the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and lived there for the rest of her childhood.
As a child, her overactive imagination was regarded as quirky by her parents and they never thought it would be any help to see some bread.
Young and difficult years
Rowling said her life was not as bad as Harry’s living with the Dursleys but it was filled with difficulty.
When Rowling was just 15 years old, her mother was diagnosed with sclerosis and when the author was 25.
Meanwhile, consumed by the grief of her mother’s demise, Rowling sought refuge in a new and adventurous life and fled to Portugal and taught English.
She scrawled the beginnings of Harry Potter before evening classes and hit the clubs. It was during this time she met the aspiring journalist Jorge Arantes and fell in love with him.
She discovered that she was pregnant and moved in with Jorge Arantes and his mother followed by miscarriage and marriage in 1992. She became pregnant again and gave birth to a baby girl, Jessica.
Meantime Arantes grew to become more abusive and the last lick happened with an ugly fight in 1993.
He slapped his wife and threw her out of the house without the daughter. She didn’t succumb to fear and weakness instead she returned to get her daughter with the police.
Within weeks she flew back to the UK with her daughter and the first three chapters of Harry potter.
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Life in the UK
With the help of loans and time from her sister and friends, Rowling worked at her brother-in-law’s café and continued to work on her series of magical worlds.
As time passed she could barely get by with the help of family and friends. She grew despondent and angry over her failures.
Slowly, she started harboring thoughts of suicide and that is when she pulled herself back and decided to get her act together just for the sake of her daughter.
She went for therapy and took up one-year teaching training with the thought of the boy wizard lingering in her mind.
The phase of rejection
As she completed the first book of Harry Potter in 1995, she hunted for literary representation for her book.
After 12 rejections, she found Christopher Little, a literary agent in London. He, following a dozen rejection, found a taker in Bloomsbury publishing house which offered a £2,500 advance and printed 500 copies of the book.
The year 1997 paid her sense of success and her efforts saw fruition with the publication of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
She chose the Pen name of J.K. Rowling due to concerns that the boys wouldn’t respond to a female writer.
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Her opulent growth
Only after a few days, the wizard boy came to reality, Scholastic publishing house came fleeting for the American publishing rights and bid more than $100,000.
The second book Harry Potter and the Chamber of secrets followed in 1998 and Rowling’s fame rose to great heights.
Warner Bros proposed a feature-film deal in the same year.
The rest was like a fairy tale that anyone would imagine. J.K. Rowling pullulated to be a billionaire by 2004 with the release of Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and the first two Harry Potter films. In 2001 she published two supplementary books “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” and “Quidditch Through the Ages”
She then married Neil Murray in a private ceremony in 2004. In 2007, her manuscript of the magical world came to an end with Harry potter and deathly hallows. Her life went on with other projects.
The authors’ life might seem like a bed of roses when you measure her only by the success of her books but sure it had thorns and she faced problems and scars in reaching her goal. Without determination and hard work, the success she enjoyed would have been a fruit out of reach.