J.K. Rowling on Writing and Depression
A catastrophic marriage
Depression hit Rowling when her first marriage to a television journalist broke down after just two years.
She had moved to Portugal to teach English and gave birth to her first daughter Jessica.
She said: “I’d had a short and quite catastrophic marriage. I had to get my baby back to Britain and re-build us a life and adrenaline kept me going.
“It was only when I came to rest it hit me what a complete mess I had made of my life. That hit me quite hard. We were as skint as you can be without being homeless and at that point I was definitely clinically depressed.
“That was characterized by a numbness, a coldness and an inability to believe you will feel happy again. All the color drained out of life.”
Afraid for her daughter
Rowling hit an all-time low when she convinced herself something awful was destined to happen to her two-year-old daughter. She said: “I loved Jessica very very much and was terrified something was going to happen to her.
“I’d gone into that very depressive mind set where everything has gone wrong so this one good thing in my life will now go wrong as well.
“It was almost a surprise to me every morning that she was still alive. I kept expecting her to die. It was a bad bad time.”
Revisiting the scene film crews took Rowling back to the flat a few miles from Edinburgh where she overcame depression by writing first novel Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
Where the healing began
Tears began to flow as she walked into the small lounge room where she first put pen to paper.
She said: “This is really where I turned my life around completely. My life changed so much in this flat. I feel I really became myself here. Everything was stripped away. I’d made such a mess of things.
“I just thought I want to write so I wrote the book. What was the worst that could happen? It could get turned down by every publisher in Britain. Big deal.”
From article: J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and Depression.
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July 5th, 2008 at 10:21 am
Sorry to hear how depressed Miss Rowling was.
Especially with regard to her daughter.
Depression is not nice, it’s awful.
I’m a writer, I’m not clinically depressed although I was when my Mother died.
I had gone quite soon from leaving an abusive husband to caring for my Mother full-time as the only care giver. I did it for twelve years until her death. During that time I didn’t date or anything–hence the depression as I had careved out no life for myself.
I did however turn once again to writing seriously. Went to workshops, worked, and met my second husband. And am happily married.
The funny thing is now, hard at work on a crime novel–I go from feeling terrific about it (after a full day of writing) to finding myself very near to feeling depressed.
It’s painful and awful. It’s not depression but it’s close.
Enough about me–just want to comment about Miss Rowling, you are not only a gifted writer, you have been so brave and so honest in sharing this painful episode in your life and I can’t tell you how very much I admire you for that.
Hats off to you, what an example you set!
February 19th, 2010 at 9:15 pm
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