Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone.
Rowling was a struggling single mother when she wrote the beginnings of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's stone on scraps of paper at a local Café. But her efforts soon paid off, as she received an unprecedented award from the Scottish Arts Council enabling her to finish the book. Since then, the debut novel has become an international phenomenon, garnering rave reviews and major awards, including the British Book Awards, Children's Book of the Year and the Smarties Prize. J.K. Rowling lives in Edinburgh with her daughter. .
Since J.K. Rowling was about five or six years old, .
She had always wanted to be a writer, though she rarely .
told anyone because she was afraid .
they'd tell her she didn't have a chance. As J.K. Rowling .
approached teen-hood she started writing a lot mainly about .
funny fantasy like stories. When J.K. Rowling was.
working as a secretary she never paid much attention in .
her meetings because she was usually scribbling bits of her .
latest stories in the margins of the paper or choosing .
excellent names for the characters in her book. Which .
became a problem since she was supposed to be taking .
minutes down at the meeting. When she was 26 she gave up .
on offices completely and went abroad to teach English as .
A Foreign Language in Brazil. Since she only worked .
afternoons and evenings she had mornings free for writing. .
This was particularly good news as she had now started her .
third novel because the first two had been abandoned when .
she realized how bad they were. The new book was about a .
boy who found out he was a wizard and was sent off to .
Wizard school. When she came back from Brazil she had half .
a suitcase full of papers covered with stories about Harry .
Potter. She set a goal and decided to have the Harry Potter .
Novel done before starting work as a French teacher.
It was a year after finishing the book before a publisher bought it.