Those were rocky days that she spent living in a “grotty flat” off borrowed money, desperately writing. She decided that her goal was to finish the book in a year and look to publish it as soon as possible.
            It was during these days that, with the lack of money and child support, Joanne would find herself in a desperate poverty trap. But she held her head up high and wrote in a nearby café, Nicholson’s, where she found it was easy to conjure up fantastic elements for her story.
            Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone was completed in early 1994. Joanne searched for an agent, which she found almost right away. Her new agent, Christopher Little, helped her look for a publisher. After an extremely long line of rejection notices and no-thank-yous, Bloomsbury Press agreed to publish Harry for the modest budget of $4,000.
            Harry Potter became a huge hit in Europe in 1997. Joanne signed it to be released in the US under Scholastic Books not long after. In the US, it was slowly becoming a huge hit as well.
            All the while Joanne was teaching part time and writing Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. About halfway through writing the book she got a sudden and large burst of publicity which startled her into writer’s block for a couple of weeks. During this time, she plotted out the rest of the Harry Potter series, all the way up to book 7. When she finally felt comfortable writing again, Joanne began writing the second book again.
            Today, after the success of her first four Harry Potter books and the first Harry Potter movie, J.K. Rowling sits in her house (no longer grotty flat) in Edinburgh and happily writes Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, due out sometime in 2003, probably June. The second Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, is due out November 15, 2002.

JKR INTERVIEWS