JK Rowling’s writing advice: be a Gryffindor
On her website, the Harry Potter author has listed essential qualities for budding authors – including resilience, humility and courage
JK Rowling has taken time off from a recent (and inexplicable) venture into laying out wizards’ toilet habits from days of yore to give her readers a glimpse into the thinking behind the writing that has made her one of the world’s best loved and highest paid authors.
Steering clear of what she calls “lists of must do’s”, Rowling points out that she found success as an author “by stumbling off alone in a direction most people thought was a dead end, breaking all the 1990s shibboleths about children’s books in the process. Male protagonists are unfashionable. Boarding schools are anathema. No kids’ book should be longer than 45,000 words.” So instead of advising would-be writers what they have to do, she tells them instead what qualities they can’t do without.