- She's a British novelist best known as the author
of the Harry Potter fantasy series.
The books have gained world wide attention,
won multiple awards and have sold over 400 million copies.
In 2004, Forbes named her the first person
to become a billionaire by writing books.
She's JK Rowling and here are her top 10 rules for success.
- Failure gave me an inner security that I had never
attained by passing examinations.
Failure taught me things about myself that I could
have learned no other way.
I discovered that I had a strong will
and more discipline than I had suspected.
I also found out that I had friends whose value
was truly above the price of rubies.
The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger
from setbacks means that you are, ever after,
secure in your ability to survive.
You will never truly know yourself or the strength
of your relationships, until both have been tested
by adversity.
Such knowledge is a true gift,
for all that it is painfully won
and it has been worth more than any qualification
I ever earned.
I was on the train from Manchester to London
and it came, just came.
- Had something like that ever happened to you before?
- Yes, truthfully.
I mean, other ideas have just come to me,
because I think, if you're a writer
and that's what you spend a huge amount of time doing,
ideas do come to you.
But nothing had ever come, so, with such a,
I felt God, I'd love to write that.
When I got off the train, I went straight home
and I started writing.
It is one of the amazing and wonderful things
about literature as about film and music is,
it's utterly subjective.
- [Interviewer] It's somebodies opinion.
- That's the point of it, you know, that's the point.
Of course, you move in that world.
If you expect to just stand under a shower
of perpetual praise, there's something wrong with you.
- [Interviewer] That's exactly right.
- You will get criticism.
I knew that going in and the funny thing is,
I'm not a particularly,
I was never a very confident person
and there are areas in my life
in which I'm very thin-skinned.
But not in this area.
In this area, I think it's right and proper
I should be criticized and that's literature.
- [Interviewer] And can you learn--
- [Interviewer] Did you write in here?
- Mm hmm, this is really the room where I finished
Philosopher's Stone in here.
This is really where I turned my life around, completely.
I mean, my life changed so much in this fact.
I feel I really became myself here.
And that everything stripped away.
I've made such a mess of things, but that was freeing.
So I want to write, so I write the book, I wrote the book.
What is the worst that can happen?
It gets turned down by every publisher in Britain,
big deal.
So you know, it's really back to the wool time here.
The bedrooms are not, well, my bedroom,
the bedroom is a lot tidier now.
God.
God, that's much--
The place was a tip when I lived here.
Oh, there are Harry Potter books.
Now that is really freaky.
And for years now I felt like, if it all disappeared,
and some days I do feel like that, is it real?
Then this is where I would come back to, you know.
This would be my baseline.
I'd be back in Neath.
Obviously if I'd known that,
well was it 10 years,
yeah, 10 years on, I'd come back here with a film crew
and there would be my published books in someone else's
bookcase in this room.
I mean, it's really incredible to me.
Really, I mean,
yes.
Because it's such a well worn part of my story now,
its a big yawn to here how I wrote it
as though it was all some sort
of publicity stunt I did for a year.
But it was my life and it was very hard.
I didn't know there was going to be
this fairy tale resolution.
Coming back here is just full of ghosts.
I remember once, and it was like,
well, like I'm going to call it a flash of clairvoyance.
Now, obviously, if it hadn't come true,
it would just be some round and crazy thought I'd had,
but I do remember one day, writing Philosopher's Stone.
I was walking away from the cafe where I'd been working.
- Philosopher's Stone which became Sorcerer's Stone.
- Which became Sorcerer's Stone, exactly.
So that's the first novel.
I had this moment where I suddenly thought,
it was like another voice speaking to me.
The voice said, "the difficult thing's going
to be to get published."
"If it's published, it will be huge."
- [Oprah] Wow.
- And that is exactly what it was.
- So there was some hint that the voice had said to you.
- [JK Rowling] Well the thing is, you've got to believe,
haven't you?
- Yes.
- You know, I was not the world's most secure person.
I wasn't someone with an enormous amount,
in fact, I'd say I was someone with not much self belief
at all and yet in this one thing in my life, I believed.
That was the one thing in my life, I felt,
I can tell a story.
There's always trepidation.
I think that people might be surprised to know
that I felt trepidation every time I produced a Potter book.
You know, the weight of expectation there was,
I won't say crushing.
It was extraordinary and wonderful to have that weight
of expectation.
But at times--
- [Interviewer] You were competing with yourself?
Yeah and with the expectations, a lattaly of millions
of fans, all of whom were very invested in the story
and wanted to see what they wanted to see,
and I knew where I was going.
I had to put on mental blinkers a lot and just think,
I know where I'm going.
I must not be influenced by this.
Given a time turner, I would tell my 21 year old self
that personal happiness lies in knowing that life
is not a checklist of acquisition or achievement.
Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life,
though you will meet many people of my age and older
who confuse the two.
Life is difficult and complicated and beyond anyone's
total control and the humility to know that
will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.
I often get asked by younger readers what I would advise
if you want to be a writer.
This is the way I did it, so that's the only advice
I can give.
You've got to read as much as you possibly can,
'cause that's the best way to recognize good writing
and to learn what makes bad writing,
and those are very good things.
You'll probably go through a phase where you imitate
your favorite writers.
That's perfectly okay.
That's another learning process.
You resign yourself to writing lots and lots of rubbish.
You've just got to write that out of your system
and sooner or later, you'll hit what you really
should be doing and what is your genre.
And perseverance.
You've got to persevere, 'cause it is a career
with a lot of knock-backs, but the rewards are huge.
I don't mean, in the sense that if that's what you really
want to do, to be able to do it lifelong
is the best thing in the world.
Very rewarding.
But it's not a career for people who are easily discouraged,
that's for sure.
To their parents,
don't tell them its unrealistic.
Never say that.
Because even if they're not published, writing,
well, writing is the passion of my life, so,
it's an important thing to do.
I've always, always, always wanted to be a writer.
Obviously you want to be a writer.
You want to, you dream of supporting yourself
through writing, definitely.
But it is a bit of both because I was very much aware
that children's books, the possibility of supporting
yourself solely by writing children's books is slim.
That's the reality of it, which I was fully aware of that.
In that sense, this has all come as a huge, enormous shock.
I'm delighted, because I always wanted to write
and always have written, but my realistic side
had not allowed me to dream of half of what's happened
to me, truthfully.
If you choose to use your status and influence
to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice,
if you choose to identify, not only with the powerful,
but with the powerless, if you retain the ability
to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not
have your advantages, then it will not only
be your proud families who celebrate your existence,
but thousands and millions of people whose reality
you have helped change.
We do not need magic to transform our world.
We carry all the power we need inside ourselves already.
We have the power to imagine better.
- Thank you guys so much for watching.
I made this video because Natasha asked me to,
so if there's a famous entrepreneur that you want me
to profile next, leave it in the comments below
and we'll see what I can do.
I'd also love to know which of JK Rowling's top 10 tips
meant the most to you.
Leave it in the comments.
We're going to join in the discussion.
Thank you so much for watching.
Have a great day.
Continue to Believe and we'll see you soon.