How J.K. Rowling Created Her Famous Series, Harry Potter

J.K. Rowling. Everyone who has ever read a book in their life knows the name J.K. Rowling, or at least I hope they would. She is one of the most well known authors of our time. Why? Her seven book series that almost every book fanatic in the world has read at least once, (in my case 12 times), Harry Potter. It seems everyone knows Harry Potter and everyone knows that J.K. Rowling is the one who wrote the famous books. But not everyone knows much about her.

Joanne grew up constantly reading, so you can understand how she ended up being a writer. In fact, she had a dream of being a writer since she was little. She finished her first story at age six, and her first novel at age eleven. Joanne attended Exeter University. After finishing school, she lived in London and worked multiple jobs, moving around a lot.

While sitting on a postponed train going from manchester to London, King’s Cross, Rowling had her first idea for Harry Potter. For the next five years she planned out the seven book series, mostly writing notes on scraps of paper.

Moving to Northern Portugal to teach English, she took all her notes with her, determined to put them into a book, or books. In the year of 1992 she got married, and had a baby in 1993. However, after getting divorced later that year she moved back to the UK, to Edinburgh with her daughter, her notes, and the first three chapters of “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.”

Now in Edinburgh, Rowling trained as a teacher and started to teach at some of the schools in Edinburgh. Being a single mom was busy, balancing her daughter and work, but she continued to work on Harry Potter whenever she had a free moment.

After she finished writing the book, she sent a portion of it to multiple publishers. The book was finally published in June of 1997, by Bloomsbury Children’s Books. The book was a hit right off the bat, quickly gaining popularity. The next six books were released and had record breaking success.

In 2001 the first Harry Potter Movie was released, followed by seven more, and their success rivaled the success of the books themselves. J.K Rowling has also written companion novels and screenplays, as the thirst for more Harry Potter is shared by the whole world. To this day, Harry Potter fans still hope Rowling will surprise us with another novel, however unlikely that is.