I watched an interview with J.K. Rowling, and the interviewer found it hard to believe that she didn’t know Harry Potter would be such a huge success.
The interviewer kept on asking how Rowling envisioned what it would be like to get famous, but she kept denying any visions of grandeur. “You are wasting your time,” she said at last when asked for advice to writers who are sure they’re destined for the top, “Just get on and work.”
When we start writing, it’s easy to imagine our stories becoming bestsellers, adapted into blockbuster movies, and gaining widespread acclaim. But fantasies don’t finish drafts. The path to becoming a successful writer is paved with hard work, determination, and the willingness to face the challenges head-on.
Not to mention, she literally had nothing to do with HP’s success as a franchise - that was down to her publisher and the marketing the publisher did. There’s 100 books a year published that are as good or better than HP’s first book, but they just won’t have the combination of good marketing and publisher support that HP had.
I also find it meaningless to ask successful people how they became successful, because there’s always a strong element of luck and random chance. Not only can a person only catch lightning in a bottle once, but they can’t instruct someone else how to do it.
If they could, we’d all be successful.
Holy shit, the crab bucket mentality here is off the wall. I haven’t read them myself, but do you really think marketing is the reason her books are so insanely popular?
Especially since her books are popular with one of the most cynical and marketing wary groups of people in existence.
When you name the only Asian character in the book “Cho Chang” and the only black person “Shacklebolt”, the writing itself really isn’t good.
Rowling is a bigot and her work is as derivative as it gets. But she did work hard writing, and she was extremely lucky that her books became so popular. Thousands of excellent books are published every year that are just as good or better and they don’t catch on the way the HP series did.
All of those things can be true at the same time, and it’s not crab mentality to point them out.
The lessons to be learned here are this:
Keep writing. Until your ideas are on paper, they are just ideas.
Don’t be discouraged by a lack of success. If your writing doesn’t sell, doesn’t immediately capture hearts or resonate with the masses, this doesn’t mean it isn’t good or worthwhile. Write for yourself. This was the point that JK was trying to make, I think.
Success requires help. Nobody does it alone. JK would absolutely be nobody without editors and publishers and marketing helping her books reach an audience. Find people that share your vision and support your dreams. Aspiration is good, and expectation is counterproductive.
Be excellent to each other. Rowling is a bigot, and that’s part of her legacy. But she’s just an author. She’s not an authority, she’s not a leader, and she’s not a role model. Don’t be a bigot. It will improve your writing, but that’s a tangential benefit of being a good person.
There’s understandably a pretty big hate boner for Rowling on federated sites. The initial controversy she got into was saying that using the term “people who menstruate” as a general term instead of women was a partial erasure of women and their struggles and identity, and that there’s nothing wrong with using women instead. To be fair it was in reply to an article on menstrual health. I think it’s not great but it’s an averagely not great comment and the lgbt+ community has a tendency to overreact and go from 0-100 (My opinion, not everyone’s). Here’s the initial comment which blew up, make your own opinion, do more research into what has actually been said. I just want people to be informed in whatever position they hold.
https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1269382518362509313
I think her prose is dry as shit but her world building and sense of what her audience wanted and desired at that point in history and culture were fantastic. I’m of the belief that there’s nothing wrong with separating art from the artist
The original comments have completely overshadowed what she’s moved onto doing. She now openly associates with alt right assholes because they’re as transphobic as her. Like she keeps digging herself deeper into this hole.
Yeah you’re not wrong I’ve had a quick look and she’s pretty heated… definitely went down a twitter rabbit hole during lockdown. I can’t help but wonder if she would have been less heated if she wasn’t so publicly cancelled for her initial comments, not to absolve her of any responsibility for her actions. I do think she’s moderately in the wrong
If she wasn’t associating with actual Nazis now, maybe I’d have some sympathy. But her writing has always been particularly problematic (fucking house elves, retroactively trying to make the books more diverse for clout) before any of this. It really feels like this has just always been who she is. You don’t get forced into associating with Nazis
If you haven’t read them yourself then you don’t understand how truly horrible her writing is. Her prose is wooden, her dialogue is forced, and she named a Chinese character “Cho Chang” with a straight face. There are plot holes so big that she has to continually go back and retcon random bullshit, like the literal plumbing at Hogwarts. The big scary spell is “abracadabra” with one letter changed.
She’s a hack.
Don’t forget about the only black person in the book being named “Kingsley Shacklebolt”. Or that the house elves all actually want to be slaves! Or her drawing of the wizarding schools of the world where all of Eastern Europe shares one school but England and Scotland have their own schools.
I agree with you!
I read the all the books some months ago out of curiosity. The game came out, the school library had all the books, and i was just searching for a new book to read when i saw them. In my opinion, the first ones were okay, but the last ones are badly flawed in every way possible. Ron becomes dumber with each book, the romance of harry is so bad written i couldn’t believe it how terrible it was, and the worst of the worst are the obvious plotholes.
J.K. Rowling had more luck than skill.