Marsworks: J.K. ROWLING ~ AN INSPIRATION

J.K. Rowling Before Fame

Her real birth name being Joanne Rowling,the famous author was born in 1965, to Peter and Anne Rowling, who first met at a train in Kingscross Station.

She grew up in small villages in England and enjoyed reading and writing from a young age. She was a big fan of author Jessica Midford's work and used to write fantasy stories for her little sister.
Fast forward to her young adult age, she attended the University of Exeter and claims that even then, she preferred reading Charles Dickens and others rather than doing work.
She was on a delayed train trip , a four hour ride, when she first got the idea of a wizard boy with glasses who did not know his identity. (Read on to learn more about how she created the wizarding world.) However, the first book of her best-selling series "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" was not published until five years later due to a few sad mishaps in the middle. Her mother died from a disease when she was 25. Two years later she got married, but her husband was abusive. At age 28 she got divorced and was diagnosed with severe depression and anxiety. She was living on welfare and was almost on the verge of homelessness. She skipped meals so that she could feed her baby daughter (who she named 'Jessica' after her favourite author). Her baby was all she had left. At one point she couldn't pay her rent. By age 30 she wanted to commit suicide. But she did not and instead directed her passion into doing was she did best, and indeed no one can argue about that, her writing.

How Harry Potter came into being

As you read, Joanne first got the idea of Harry on a train. She said it was the most physical bust of excitement she had ever felt. " I could see Harry very clearly. This scrawling little boy." she quoted. At that moment she had nothing to write these thoughts down on. For four hours ideas were building up in her head. As soon as she got home she wrote all of them down and decided that she wanted to write a book. After about six months of writing, she had written the first chapter, "The boy who lived", in 155 different ways.

Rowling kept on writing most of her time. She used to sit in cafès with her baby daughter for hours and write. A lot of characters and parts of the books were inspired by her own life. For example, dementors,the creatures that suck your soul out and destroy all your happiness, were inspired by the feeling Rowling experienced during the hardest times of her life. Chocolate always made her feel better so in Prisoner of Azkaban when Harry faints by looking at the dementors, Professor Lupin offers him choclate. Dolores Umbridge was inspired by a teacher that Joanne had, whom she hated on sight.

Rowling also wrote the final chapter, the epilogue, of book seven around the same time of writing the first book. This was her way of telling herself that she would get there one day.

She quotes "It was a way of saying to myself 'you will get it.' You will get a book seven one day."

After being published

After she finished her first book, Rowling tried to get it published many times but no one would buy it. About twelve or so publishers threw it on the rejection line. We can only imagine the regret they feel now😂. Finally Bloomsbury publishing accepted her book and it immediately became a huge hit. Millions of copies of the book started selling and were printed in many different languages.
But that doesn't mean everyone loved the story of Harry Potter. Specially after Book 2 and 3 were published, Rowling got a lot of hate. Parents starting saying that they did not want their children mixed up in witchcraft. People thought her books were increasing the practice of dark arts. She got a lot of hate letters from mothers saying that her books were too dark and disturbing as well as full of deaths. Rowling reacted by telling them that if they did not like her books they shouldn't read them further and that she would continue writing the way she wrote.

Joanne Katherine Rowling

FUN FACT: You already know that in the name "J.K. Rowling", J stands for Joanne. But what does K stand for? The author added an extra initial into the name that was being printed upon the Harry Potter book series. This was because the publisher told her to change her name up a bit so that just by looking at it, no one would be able to tell the gender of the author. He said that if people knew that she was a girl, young boys would choose not to read her books. Joanne decided to put the letter K because it stands for the name Katherine, the name of her grandmother.

Joanne gave so much to charity that she lost her billionaire status👇👇👇