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How JK Rowling Beat Depression
How JK Rowling Beat Depression
Harry Potter: one of the most recognisable names in the modern world. The boy wizard was largely developed during an episode of severe depression for author J.K. Rowling, who fought her own dementors by creating the magical world of Hogwarts in her tiny Scottish apartment.
I just stumbled upon this page about the author's trials, and how her daily ritual of writing helped to maintain structure at a chaotic time in her life, and transform despair into something beautiful.
Does your writing bolster you in a similar way?




I like to think it does, but I start thinking I don't deserve to be happy and coming up with reasons not to write every day. But a daily ritual sounds wonderful 😊
You definitely deserve to be happy! But I would hope that if the days were long and you ran out of time to write, for whatever reason, you wouldn't be feeling needlessly guilty about that, either. Be kind to yourself!
There's absolutely something about that feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment when you've created something from nothing that is awesome.
And sometimes it can be cathartic and a good kind of roleplaying therapy to put your characters in situations with similar emotional themes or problems or whatever. Allows you to channel your feelings into something more productive (yay, now my story has more emotional depth!), and it can help you work through things yourself by inserting that little bit of extra distance to where you can be like "Well, that's dumb the character is doing that. They should do this instead." and you can find solutions for yourself, or at least understanding of yourself ("Well, that's dumb the character is doing that. Why are they doing that? I guess it's because...").
I also love escaping into a good story when I'm depressed, because it allows me to experience another world and life beyond my own that's keeping me down. So why not do it with your own story, and then you can make sure it all goes exactly the way you want??
Yes, yes to all of this, thank you.
Really thoughtful detail, yes!
Thanks for posting this. It was a heartening read. I do think writing provides personal structure. It's a concrete activity and a documented accomplishment; even a page full of nonsense is something.
Oh heck yes, it does. I don't know where I would have ended up this month if I wasn't able to crank out more or less insane amounts of words every day. I don't even care if it's particularly good words, I just need the distraction and the sense of accomplishment that comes with having put yet more pieces of story to paper, a lot of which have been stuck in my head for years.
And I'm right there with Rowling on the "I've got nothing to lose" and the "direct all my energy to finishing the only work that mattered to me" parts.
I've always considered my writing as an exorcism. Pouring my moods out on the page has always helped me. But I have to let it come naturally. Forcing it never works for me. So I always keep my journal or notebook on me so that when it does come, I'll be ready.
Good article, BTW.