Magic of Believing

I love a good rags to riches story, and the story of JK Rowling is probably one of the best.  For those of you who do not get out much (like at ALL!),  JK Rowling is the best selling author of the Harry Potter books.  Not just a best selling author though, oh no,  according to Forbes, Rowling is the first person to become a billionaire from writing books.    Say it with me - Bill…ion…aire ………nice huh?  Kinda rolls right off the tongue doesn’t it?  Anyway - I digress….

Jo Rowling had loved writing fantasy stories, even as a small child, and on one particular trip from Manchester to London in 1990, she got the idea for a story of a young boy attending a school of wizardry.  She said the idea “came fully formed” into her mind.

“I really don’t know where the idea came from.  It started with Harry, then all these characters and situations came flooding into my head.”

“The idea that we could have a child who escapes from the confines of the adult world and goes somewhere where he has power, both literally and metaphorically, really appealed to me”

Sadly enough the project was put on hold as her mother

passed away from her battle with Multiple Sclerosis.

After a few months she took a position as an assistant teacher in Paris, and eventually full time English teacher in Portugal.  She settled down and married while in Portugal, and in 1993 she gave birth to her daughter Jessica.  Sadly the marriage didn’t last, and finding herself suddenly a single mother, she returned to Britain, diagnosed with clinical depression.  She later revealed that during this time of depression was when she got the idea for the Dementors in her books.   She soon received a phone call from her sister in Edinburgh, Scotland, who suggested she move to Edinburgh to be near her.  Jo arrived with her daughter and the manuscript of the first Harry Potter book in her suitcase.

Her first thought was to start teaching again but dropped the idea because she says she would never have finished the book.

“I knew that full-time teaching, with all the marking and lesson planning, let alone a small daughter to care for single-handedly, would leave me with absolutely no spare time at all,”

Living off welfare payments in ‘grotty and depressing’ government housing, Rowling developed Harry Potter’s world as a means of escape. She would wander around town pushing baby Jessica in a carriage until she would fall asleep, then head for her favorite coffee house to write. She would stay all day - Jessica sleeping at her side - as she wrote out the stories in longhand, drinking water and espresso.

A Scottish Arts Council grant helped her to pay for a typewriter and she hammered out the manuscript which would eventually convince the publisher Bloomsbury that Potter could be a hit.

Could be a hit?  Today’s total worh of the entire Harry Potter franchise is about $15 billion dollars.  Not too bad for having an image form in your mind.  And her rags to riches story took less than 5 years to complete.

“You sort of start thinking anything’s possible if you’ve got enough nerve” - JK Rowling