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- Sep 25, 2007
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- 201
Hi all,
The following extract is from an article in the November 17th edition of the Globe and Mail. It is the convocation address J.K. Rowling gave in June to the graduates of Harvard University. If you don`t know the story of J.K. Rowling here it is in a nutshell - divorced, single mom on welfare; starts writing a book in coffee shops; becomes a billionaire. I have been listening to "Think and Grow Rich" on audio cd again in my car recently. It struck me again that her success, like all success, began with an idea, was realized through effort and a willingness not to give up and finally accepting the resulting rewards. It also reminds me of what Steve Mcknight said at the last workshop, "The enemy of a great life is a good life." I would say that not having a fall back position tends to focus the mind and steel the resolve. The "it could always be worse" syndrome can keep people from "making it better".
The arts are no different. British mystery author John Creasey was rejected 743 times before selling his first novel – and went on to publish at least 500 more. Pearl S. Buck had a dozen rejection slips before The Good Earth found a publisher.
British author J.K. Rowling is the world`s most successful living writer – a billionaire who has sold hundreds of millions of her Harry Potter books – and yet her convocation address this past June to the graduates of Harvard University was entitled: The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination.
Harvard grads, she said, might not be very well acquainted with failure, but before they come up against it – as we all do – they might like to look at it in a different light. She wasn`t claiming failure was any fun, but she did think it sometimes necessary and often helpful.
There was a time, Rowling told the puzzled students, when "by every standard, I was the biggest failure I knew." Seven years after her own graduation, her marriage had failed, she was a single mother and unemployed.
She began scribbling away in coffee shops on a book about wizards.
"Failure," she said, "meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged."
Setbacks, Rowling argued, make one stronger, not weaker. Knowing you can survive a setback and move on makes one "secure in your ability to survive" and teaches you more about yourself than any examination can.
"It is impossible," she said, "to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default."
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/sto...beSportsHockey/
Keith
The following extract is from an article in the November 17th edition of the Globe and Mail. It is the convocation address J.K. Rowling gave in June to the graduates of Harvard University. If you don`t know the story of J.K. Rowling here it is in a nutshell - divorced, single mom on welfare; starts writing a book in coffee shops; becomes a billionaire. I have been listening to "Think and Grow Rich" on audio cd again in my car recently. It struck me again that her success, like all success, began with an idea, was realized through effort and a willingness not to give up and finally accepting the resulting rewards. It also reminds me of what Steve Mcknight said at the last workshop, "The enemy of a great life is a good life." I would say that not having a fall back position tends to focus the mind and steel the resolve. The "it could always be worse" syndrome can keep people from "making it better".
The arts are no different. British mystery author John Creasey was rejected 743 times before selling his first novel – and went on to publish at least 500 more. Pearl S. Buck had a dozen rejection slips before The Good Earth found a publisher.
British author J.K. Rowling is the world`s most successful living writer – a billionaire who has sold hundreds of millions of her Harry Potter books – and yet her convocation address this past June to the graduates of Harvard University was entitled: The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination.
Harvard grads, she said, might not be very well acquainted with failure, but before they come up against it – as we all do – they might like to look at it in a different light. She wasn`t claiming failure was any fun, but she did think it sometimes necessary and often helpful.
There was a time, Rowling told the puzzled students, when "by every standard, I was the biggest failure I knew." Seven years after her own graduation, her marriage had failed, she was a single mother and unemployed.
She began scribbling away in coffee shops on a book about wizards.
"Failure," she said, "meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged."
Setbacks, Rowling argued, make one stronger, not weaker. Knowing you can survive a setback and move on makes one "secure in your ability to survive" and teaches you more about yourself than any examination can.
"It is impossible," she said, "to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default."
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/sto...beSportsHockey/
Keith
