Stories of Reinvention: J.K. Rowling

Joanne Rowling was born on July 31, 1965, near Bristol, England. A relatively typical middle-class upbringing, Joanne (Jo) enjoyed reading and writing from a young age. She attended primary and secondary school with typical grades and a fairly average experience. She got rejected by Oxford University, so she chose to attend the University of Exeter, where she majored in French and the classics, even though she had always wanted to be a writer.

Rowling could best be described as an average student with an average social life and a typical, average existence.

After finishing University, Rowling moved into a flat in London with friends and began working with Amnesty International, documenting human rights issues in Africa. Falling in love, Jo was planning to move from London to Manchester. It was on one of these train trips to visit her boyfriend in Manchester that the characters of Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and Hermoine Granger came into her imagination. After the move to Manchester, tragedy struck. Her mother passed away, her relationship ended, and she was laid off from her job. In a state of flight or fight, Jo decided on flight and moved to Porto, Portugal, to teach English as a foreign language.

It was in Portugal that she got married and had her first child. Wedded bliss was short-lived as her relationship turned abusive, and she decided again on flight, moving to Edinburgh, Scotland.

Seven years out of university, the failure continued. Jo was broke, living on government assistance, had a failed marriage, and was trying to care for a young child. Even as her life seemed to crumble and the failures continued to stack up, Jo continued to write about Harry, Ron, and Hermoine, hoping to one day finish and publish her story.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was completed in June 1995. Of course, it would be great if this was the end of the story if a publisher immediately saw the brilliance in the story and published the book, allowing Jo to go from broke to critically acclaimed author and millionaire, but life doesn't often work like it is supposed to. Jo's manuscript was rejected by twelve publishers before Bloomsbury Publishing bought it. Two years later, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was published with an initial print of 5,650 copies.

Eventually, of course, the Harry Potter series would become one of the best-selling books in history. They would go on to have a massive movie franchise, theme park, and cult-like following. Still, there are many points leading up to the publishing that Jo Rowling could have said, "Alright, enough is enough, I can't continue spending my time writing this children's book," but even as the failures continued to stack up, she continued to put in the time and the work.

To the unknowing, reinvention can look like a series of failures and missteps, but when we take a look at Rowling's life, we see that underneath the seemingly unbearable failures, there was always a goal in the future. Now, whether that goal was to publish a best-selling book or simply to publish a book can be debated, but when you are trying to achieve big goals, there will always be setbacks, there will always be failures, and it will often feel like life is getting in the way. But you can't let those short-term setbacks and failures keep you from achieving your long-term goals.

Reinvention might look like a surprise to the outsider. But reinvention is often remembering that even when others can't see your long-term goal, you know it is there, and you know the work it takes to get there.