Once upon a time there lived a little girl named Joanne Kathleen Rowling. She was born in the little British town of Chipping Sodbury on July 31, 1966, a country girl from the start. This little girl had a huge imagination, dreaming up vivid fantasies and wistfully telling complex story lines to her many friends. One of her favorite stories was that of Rabbit and Miss Bee, two imaginary characters that had exciting and outlandish adventures. She told these stories to her younger sister, Di, on a daily basis and shared all her dreams and hopes for the future with her. Joanne wanted to be a writer.
This is the story of renowned author J.K. Rowling's early years in life. She wanted to be a writer from the very start, but didn't want to tell anyone because she was embarrased. Being a writer was not in her parent's plans for her. Rowling maintained her creative streak all through her school years, and of course, now, but she became less and less social as time went on. She preferred solitary ativities such as reading and writing, and not many people knew what to make of a little girl who used big words and told strange stories of other lands. By the timeshe reached her senior year of High School, however, she regained confidence in herself and was nominated Head Girl of the school.
When J.K. Rowling was released into the world of work, she first found a job researching human rights violations for Amnesty International. After two years of that she secured a long strand of what she described as boring and tedious sectretarial postions. She hated every minute of it, plus she wasn't good at it in the first place. All Rowling wanted to do was write, but she was following her parent's wishes. With each of her jobs, she still managed to squeeze in a fair amount of writing, but she lacked the confidence in her stories to send them in to a publisher.
If this deathly boring line of jobs was bad to J.K. Rowling, it was nothing compared to what was in store for her. Health problems persued her mother. Her relationship with her boyfriend was at an emotional standstill. She felt like a failure and became slightly doubtful of her ability to take care of herself. Then, as if to top it all off, her mother died. Rowling felt unable to write anything of value because her own life was so painful. She became a teacher, one of her other goals in life, and got married to what she thought was the perfect husband. But it was too good to be true. Rowling discovered she was pregnant and was thrilled, but soon after the baby, Jessica, was born, her husband left her to take care of the little girl by herself. Just in time to pull her out of her depression, Rowling recieved an invitation from her sister, Di, to come and stay in Edinburgh, Scotland with her. She was able to afford a "grotty flat" as a roof over her and Jessica's heads, but not much else. She struggled to find food and clothing, basic nessecities of life.
Finally, J.K. Rowling decided that she had to write for a living. She had been brewing on the idea of Harry Potter for awhile and now chose to persue it for all it was worth. She knew that this time she could not afford a writers block. At long last, after tweaking and tuning the story to exactly her liking, J.K. Rowling sent her first story to an agent named Christopher Little. He sent her story out to several publishers and in 1997, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was published. Now the stakes had gone up. Aurthur A. Levine, an editorial director, gambled $100,000 on her first novel, and she had to crank out popular sequels or else he would lose everything. Rowling suddenly felt an overwhelming amount of pressure. What if she wasn't as good the next time around? What if she couldn't think of anything to write about? Still, she tried her hardest, and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets was published in 1998. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was also released in 1998. The latest addition to the series, which is getting to be quite a long time ago, was Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, released in 2000.
And J.K. Rowling lives well now, wealthy and famous, remarried with another young child. She is and has been working on her fifth book, which is to be released on May 11 in UK, and around June 21 in the US. Happy reading!
Source:J.K. Rowling; The Wizard Behind Harry Potter by Marc Shapiro
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