7 Creativity Lessons From J. K. Rowling Circa 1998
I recently discovered a fascinating 1998 interview with J. K. Rowling. Other than making me feel old (I can’t believe the first Harry Potter book was published a generation ago!), it highlighted a few lessons that are worth calling out (all quotes are from the interview).
Lesson 1: Even overnight successes aren’t overnight successes.
JKR started writing Harry Potter in 1990. The idea “just fell out of nowhere” and kept growing over time. The first book was published in the UK in 1997 and took off when it was published in the US in 1998.
JKR’s story is sometimes thought of as “an overnight success”, as the first book she tried to get published became a global phenomenon. Her “overnight success” took eight years from idea to stardom, five of which she spent writing the book.
Lesson 2: We have to anticipate and overcome the vision vs. reality gap.
“I see things before I write them—I visualize things quite clearly and then it’s about trying to express what I’m seeing”. She was talking about specific scenes, but it’s a pretty universal experience: Creators often have a clear vision of what they want to create, only to get frustrated and quit in the translation process when the result looks very different from the vision. This is often due to either a skill or a resource gap. To use JKR’s example, you may visualize a scene but you’re not a good enough writer—yet—to make it come to life on the page. Or you envision the website you want to build but don’t have enough money to pay for a top-tier design and development team. The people who succeed understand that closing the gap is a gradual and iterative process and requires time and patience. To paraphrase Alain the Botton, if you’re not embarrassed by what you created last year you are not learning enough.
Lesson 3: Obscurity is freedom.
Commenting on the time she was still an unknown, JKR said “I was really quite happy, and just writing purely for me.” It’s easy to get frustrated in obscurity because it feels like you’re talking to the void—few people listen or care. But obscurity is the best place to experiment in without the pressure of expectations (see the next lesson).
Lesson 4: The fears never go away.
There was an auction amongst New York publishers on the first Harry Potter book and the winning bid was a lot higher than JKR expected. She felt “utter terror” and couldn’t write for a month: “The stakes were upped so much that I thought book two was now going to be a horrible letdown to everyone and every word had to be worth a certain amount of dollars—and I found it very scary.”
Uber-successful people like JKR have the exact same fears as people who haven’t started: Failing, not being good enough, not measuring up. It’s a daring adventure all the way through. If you wait for the fears to go away in order to start something you’ll be waiting forever.
Lesson 5: Curiosity will show you the path to meaning.
Lesson 6: Your identity should fit your purpose, not the other way around.
JKR never thought of herself as a children’s writer. Everything she had written before Harry Potter was for adults. But the moment the idea came to her, she followed her inspiration—and continued to do so in the 6 months she wasted on a draft that made her “want to vomit”. Many people would have dismissed a children’s book idea because of their notion of the kind of writer they are or aspire to be, or stopped when they didn’t see results after 6 months. She just kept following her curiosity, saw where it led her, and was open to changing her approach and redefining her identity as a writer.
Lesson 7: Creative geniuses are just like us.
“I spend an entire day staring at a piece of paper and… come away with 3 lines of writing. Other days I can write 2,000-3,000 words and be happy with most of it. Probably the most difficult part of it is you never can tell when inspiration can strike.”
You have to do the work consistently, not decide whether it’s worth the effort based on the output. At some point, inspiration will strike even if you’re not JKR—yet.
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