What Motivates J.K. Rowling, Author of the Harry Potter Books:
"The greatest reward is the enthusiasm of the readers".

Divorced, living on public assistance in a tiny Edinburgh flat with her infant daughter, Rowling wrote Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone at a table in a café during her daughter's naps - and it was Harry Potter that rescued her. 

"Harry just strolled into my head fully formed."  Several publishers turned down the finished manuscript before one took interest.

In 1998, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was published in the United States, kicking off Harry-mania. Suddenly, kids were reading again, and their parents wanted to read the same books!  Since then J. K. Rowling has won the Hugo Award, the Bram Stoker Award, the Whitbread Award for Best Children's Book, a special commendation for the Anne Spencer Lindbergh Prize, and a special certificate for being a three-year winner of the Smarties Prize, as well as many other honors.

"The idea that we could have a child who escapes from the confines of the adult world and goes somewhere where he has power, both literally and metaphorically, really appealed to me."  The level of fame she has achieved is not of her creation and, on hearing J.K. speak, not to her desire.

She says that she's still learning to deal with it. "I'd say for the first two years of me being in the paper -- I didn't call myself famous. I didn't think of myself that way -- but for the first two years, I think I was in denial. I kept thinking it would go away. It will go away."  But we doubt that will happen anytime soon.

Meanwhile, one of the positives of not being an onscreen celebrity is that she's not often recognized in public when going about her everyday business, something that has likely been helped by coloring the bright red hair that her readers first came to associate with Harry Potter's creator, a more subdued dark blonde.

Though the Harry Potter series of books continue to top lists wherever they're made and to outsell almost anything previously written, Rowling has disallowed any of this to give itself texture in her writing. "I think I've been lucky in that I planned the series so long ago that it's almost set in stone: not much can affect it. I'm still writing from the plan I had in 1995."

Throughout the nearly incredible rise to popularity of the Harry Potter books, Rowling has been asked if she was aware of being part of a crusade for reading and literacy. She denies it, but not without some pride. "I wrote the book for me. I never expected it to do this. That it's done it I think is wonderful. If I can honestly think that I've created some readers then I feel I really wasn't taking up space on this earth and I feel very, very, very proud. But I didn't set out to do that and my first loyalty, as I say, is to the story as I wanted to write it."