Just ROWL(ing) With It
As I was snuggling up to escape into the Magical Wizarding World of Harry Potter by watching whatever movie I could find online for free, after a long couple days of essay writing and studying, I realized I had to write my blog post! So, what better topic than the creator of my happy place?
JK Rowling first got her idea for Harry Potter on a train ride from Manchester to London in 1990. It took her five years of planning on countless scraps of paper whenever she had the chance, in between raising a child alone on government welfare and dealing with the loss of her mother, to finally send out a copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone to publishers. She was rejected quite a few times but once she was picked up and published by Bloomsbury, JK Rowling and the Harry Potter franchise became a fast sensation.
Rowling has been questioned countless times of how she came up with the magical idea of the wizarding world, and unlike how some people think creativity works, the whole series didn’t just pop into her head. In “Creativity Across Cultures,” Lubart describes the four stages of the creative process in Western Culture: preparation, incubation, illumination (Lumos anyone?), and verification. Rowling’s writing process follows this well with an emphasis on the preparation phase . It took her years of planning on handwritten tables of characters and chapters and subplots and spells before she even started writing the story. She created and meticulously planned a whole world that her stories take place in and has used it to write a seven-book series and multiple supplementary books.
JK Rowling first got her idea for Harry Potter on a train ride from Manchester to London in 1990. It took her five years of planning on countless scraps of paper whenever she had the chance, in between raising a child alone on government welfare and dealing with the loss of her mother, to finally send out a copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone to publishers. She was rejected quite a few times but once she was picked up and published by Bloomsbury, JK Rowling and the Harry Potter franchise became a fast sensation. 
Rowling has been questioned countless times of how she came up with the magical idea of the wizarding world, and unlike how some people think creativity works, the whole series didn’t just pop into her head. In “Creativity Across Cultures,” Lubart describes the four stages of the creative process in Western Culture: preparation, incubation, illumination (Lumos anyone?), and verification. Rowling’s writing process follows this well with an emphasis on the preparation phase . It took her years of planning on handwritten tables of characters and chapters and subplots and spells before she even started writing the story. She created and meticulously planned a whole world that her stories take place in and has used it to write a seven-book series and multiple supplementary books.
I think it's amazing the community JK Rowling created, not only the fictional magical world but also the fanbase surrounding Harry Potter franchise. This franchise connects multiple generations together and keeps them young at heart, maybe believing there is some magic still in the world. I think Rowling's reasons and influences to write Harry Potter in the first place is incredibly brave, heartbreaking, and inspiring.
ReplyDeleteOne thing that I think makes J.K. Rowling extremely creative is her ability to connect seemingly insignificant details to the overall plot. When I read Harry Potter, there were so many things that came together at the end of the series. I was thoroughly impressed by how Rowling was able to keep track of all the details and interconnect them. It's interesting to see how hard she worked to establish the world before she even started writing the books!
ReplyDeleteRowling is an excellent example of how the writing process should work. The reason the wizarding world feels so realistic is because of the number of hours she spent researching old mythology and languages like Latin and French to really bring the magic to life. There are a lot of authors today who would benefit from more research and preparation to make their books, whether fantasy, fiction, or nonfiction, more complete and engrossing, the way Rowling has done with Harry Potter.
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