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The Way To Success
Like that of her own character, Harry Potter, J. K. Rowling's life has the luster of a fairy tale. Divorced, living on public assistance in a tiny Edinburgh flat with her little daughter, Rowling wrote Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone at a table in a caféduring her daughter's naps — and it was Harry Potter that rescued her. First, the Scottish Ants Council gave her a grant to finish the book. After its sale to Bloomsbury ( UK) and Scholastic Books, the accolades began to pile up. Harry Potter won The British Book Awards Children's Book of the year, and the Smarties Prize, and rave1 reviews on both sides of the Atlantic .
A graduate of Exeter University, a teacher, and then unemployed single parent, Rowling wrote Harry Potter when" I was very low, and I had to achieve something. Without the challenge, I would have gone stark raving mad. "But Rowling has always written books, and her first book was called Rabbit. " I was about six, and I haven't stopped scribbling since. "
The following is an abstract from what J. K. Rowling wrote about herself. From which we might keep track with the growth of the person who gave birth to the living ambition of the world, Harry Potter the Little Wizard.
I wrote a lot in my teens, but I never showed any of it to my friends, . .. I went to Exeter University straight after school, where I studied French. This was a big mistake. I had listened too hard to my parents, who thought languages would lead to a great career as a bilingual secretary. Unfortunately I am one of the most disorganized people in the world and, as I later proved, the worst secretary ever.
When I was twenty-six I gave up on offices completely and went abroad to teach English as a foreign language. I loved teaching English, and as I worked afternoons and evenings, I had mornings free for writing. This was particularly good news as I had now started my third novel. The new book was about a boy who found out he was a wizard and was sent off2 to wizard school. When I came back from Portugal half a suitcase was full of papers covered with short stories about Harry Potter. I came to live in Edinburgh with my very small daughter, I set myself a deadline; I would finish the Harry novel before starting work as a French teacher, and try to get it published.
It was a year after finishing the book before a publisher bought it. The moment when I found out that Harry would be published was one of the best of my life .