While on a train at age 25, an idea struck J.K. Rowling like a bolt of lightning: Boy doesn't know he's a wizard goes to wizard school. Not having a pen on her at the time, Rowling sat on the train as the ideas came flooding in. That night, she began writing her first book—Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. She didn't know it at the time, but years later, those very words would spark the imagination of millions of children worldwide.
25 歲的 J.K. 羅琳坐在火車上時，一個想法如閃電般閃過腦中：一名不知道自己是巫師的男孩到巫師學校上學。當時羅琳手邊沒有筆，靈感源源不絕流瀉進來時她正坐在火車上。當晚，她開始著手寫她的第一本書－－《哈利波特：神秘的魔法石》。當時她不知道，但幾年後，書中的那些文字點燃了世上幾百萬名孩子的想像力。
Shortly after she began writing, however, her mother passed away. Regrettably, Rowling had never shared with her mother the wonders of Harry Potter. The years after her mother's passing were hard for Rowling. As a struggling writer, she married and had her first child. However, the marriage was short-lived. Reflecting on this period, Rowling says, "I'd failed on an epic scale." In her own words, this is when she entered the darkest period of her life and questioned whether she would get through it.
Amidst the darkness, Rowling found comfort in her writing and went on to complete the Harry Potter series. These very years, the ones that tested her resolve and inner strength, formed much of her writing and ultimately how the series would unfold. Many of the characters and creatures that make up the wizarding world arose from this dark period of her life. She would later reflect, the books wouldn't be what they are if she hadn't have died. I mean, her death is virtually on every other page of the Harry Potter books.
Harry Potter has since become the best-selling book series in history. The books have sold over 400 million copies, and the movie series has grossed 5.3 billion dollars in total. Rowling is now credited with doing more for childhood literacy than any other person in history. She now views her dark period as providing the very direction she needed to focus on the only work that mattered to her: being a mother and telling great stories.
"And so rock bottom became the solid foundation upon which I rebuilt my life," Rowling acknowledges. In life, it is not what happens to us that matters, but rather how we choose to interpret what happens, and therefore who we become as a result. You know you've found the hidden wisdom in your deepest scar, when you view it as your greatest gift.