How did J.K. Rowling think of writing 'Harry Potter'?

honesty79

On December 30, 1990, Rowling’s mother succumbed to a 10-year battle with the condition multiple sclerosis. Rowling commented, “I was writing Harry Potter at the moment my mother died. I had never told her about Harry Potter". Rowling then moved to Porto, Portugal to teach English as a foreign language. While there, she married Portuguese television journalist Jorge Arantes on 16 October 1992. They had one child, Jessica Isabel Rowling Arantes, born 27 July 1993 in Portugal who was named after Jessica Mitford. They separated in November 1993. Their divorce became final on 26 June 1995. In December 1994, Rowling and her daughter moved to be near her sister in Edinburgh, Scotland. Unemployed and living on state benefits, she completed her first novel. She did her work in numerous cafés (e.g. Nicolson's Café and Elephant House Café), whenever she could get Jessica to fall asleep. There was a rumour that she wrote in local cafés to escape from her unheated flat, but in a 2001 BBC interview Rowling remarked, "I am not stupid enough to rent an unheated flat in Edinburgh in midwinter. It had heating." Instead, as she stated on the American TV program A&E Biography, one of the reasons she wrote in cafés was because taking her baby out for a walk around was the way to make her child fall asleep, and as soon as she was asleep, she would go into the nearest café and write. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._K._Rowling Aug 20 07, 10:56 AM

lanfranco

To make a long story short, if for some reason you don't want actually to read the Wiki site: Rowling has stated many, many times, and publicly, that the idea for the Harry Potter books came to her during a 1990 train trip from Manchester to London. I think we need to take her word for it. She owns the character, she's the ultimate authority. Aug 20 07, 5:05 PM