Happy Birthday J. K. Rowling

J.K. Rowling by Mellodee

Joanne Rowling, known under the pen name J.K. Rowling, was born on 31 July 1965. She is a British author and screenwriter, famous for her Harry Potter fantasy series. The books have won multiple awards, and sold more than 500 million copies becoming the best-selling book series in history.

She conceived the idea of Harry Potter in 1990 while sitting on a train from Manchester to London King’s Cross: it was then when she began forming in her mind the characters of the novel. The train was delayed for over four hours, and she realized she had a problem: “To my immense frustration, I didn’t have a pen that worked, and I was too shy to ask anybody if I could borrow one.”
When she arrived home, she began writing the book immediately. Over the next years, she built up a mass of notes, many of which were scribbled on odd scraps of paper.
However, the long period that followed saw the death of her mother, the birth of her first child, the failure of her marriage. She traversed enormous personal hardships, poverty, and depression: a jobless single mother with a dependent child, surviving on state benefits. She described her economic status as being “poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless.”
Writing was the only way to divert her focus from the misfortunes that threatened to crush her spirit. She started to write in cafés since taking her baby out for a walk was the best way to make her fall asleep
Her manuscript was rejected from twelve publishers before a quite small one, Bloomsbury agreed to take the book on, in 1997: it was the beginning of her passage from “rags to riches”. She progressed from being on welfare to being the world’s first billionaire author, a status she lost after giving away much of her earnings to charity.

Here are five of J.K. Rowling quotes:

“The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive.”

“We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.”

“It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”

“Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.”

“I have never been remotely ashamed of having been depressed. Never. What’s to be ashamed of? I went through a really rough time and I am quite proud that I got out of that.”