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Eu não estou escrevendo por dinheiro: é por mim e por lealdade aos fãs

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Treneman, Ann. “I’m not writing for the money: It’s for me and out of loyalty to fans,” The Times (London), June 20, 2003

At one minute past midnight, the fifth Harry Potter book will hit the bookshops. In an exclusive interview, J. K. Rowling tells Ann Treneman how she has finally come to terms with celebrity, and how marriage and her children have made her happier than she has ever been.

JOANNE KATHLEEN ROWLING is a happy woman these days, and it shows. She greets me at the top of the staircase at her home, babe in arms. His name is David and he is round and soft and cooing. We all go into the front room and there, on the shelf, is the other baby in her life: a 1kg doorstop that is the fifth book in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

“It is big. Very big,” she says. “I didn’t dare do a word count.”

So how big is big? After all, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the fourth book, was 636 pages.

Joanne peeks at the last page. “It is 766 pages. When I finished it, I thought, Oh my God it’s bigger than Goblet. I knew already it was but I thought, well maybe it’s slightly bigger and then I spoke to my editor at Bloomsbury and she said, ‘You know how long it is, obviously?’ And I said, no, I don’t actually. And it was a quarter of a million words.” Her voice goes almost to a whisper. “I nearly died.”

Don’t you have an editor who cuts things, I ask rather abruptly.

She laughs and takes on an actor’s voice: “Don’t you have an editor? Does anyone ever try to stop you!” She reverts to her normal voice. “Yeah. Of course they do. But they truly felt that the information contained in the book was necessary.”

This is the third time I have interviewed J.K. Rowling. The first was in 1997, after the publication of the first book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. She was a rising star with no idea of the galaxy into which she and Harry would soon soar. “I never dreamt this would happen,” she said then, when sales reached 30,000. “My realistic side had allowed myself to think that I might get one good review. That was my idea of a peak. So everything else really has been like stepping into Wonderland for me.”

Wonderland indeed. Three years later, in May 2000, we met in an Edinburgh hotel room. She had just finished Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and was quick and funny and nervous, smoking five Marlboro Lights in two hours and talking like a machine-gun at full rattle. At that time she had sold 30 million copies, a film was coming out and merchandising deals were brewing. Her wealth was estimated at £15 million but her life, which revolved around her daughter and writing and friends, had none of the gloss that money can bring.

Fast forward three years. Rowling has now sold almost 200 million books and is worth an estimated £280 million. She is wealthier than the Queen and is listed as the 122nd richest person (and the ninth richest woman) in Britain. Some people would revel in these facts, flashing them about like a diamond in sunlight. I doubted Rowling would: the last time we met she .denied she was famous and said her only major purchase had been an aquamarine ring that she called her “No One Is Grinding Me Down” ring.

I was curious to meet her again and see how she had changed. It is true that I had not seen Joanne showing off her lovely dining table in the pages of Hello! magazine or anything like that, but you never know: money and fame can corrupt as much as power. Facts are few. She is 37 now and married Dr Neil Murray, an anaesthetist, 18 months ago. Jessica, her daughter from an earlier marriage, is almost 10, and David was born in March. The family has houses in Edinburgh, Perthshire and London.

Her main home is in Edinburgh and that is where we meet. For some reason I had decided that she might be a minimalist – a hangover, or so my logic went, from the days of poverty. Wrong. Her home is vibrant with colour and patterns, and the front room busy with books and photographs. It is not a showcase but a lived-in family home. Apparently there is a dog somewhere in the house. Certainly there is a baby in the room who provides a gurgling backing track for the interview.

J.K. Rowling looks terrific. She gave up smoking three years ago and, as she is breastfeeding, has even had to forego the Nicorette. She explains this as she reaches for a pack of Wrigley’s and advises me to buy shares in the company. The interview, as events tend to be when tiny babies are involved, is the result of meticulous planning. She spent all weekend wondering how she was going to get the baby fed and changed and herself presentable “with all my buttons done up properly” at the correct time.

It takes one minute to see that she has changed. Definitely. She is more relaxed, her edges rounded off. The machine gun has been replaced by a lower and softer voice, though her chuckle-laugh is the same. I say that she seems different, calmer.

“I’m loads calmer. Yes. Loads. I think I’m loads happier now, which would make me calmer.”

Well, I say, you weren’t the last time we met.

“But you saw me probably during the worst time. The last time you interviewed me was not a happy time. Writing Book Four was an absolute nightmare. I literally lost the plot halfway through. My own deadline was totally unrealistic. That was my fault because I didn’t tell anyone. I just ploughed on, as I tend to do in life, and then I realised I had really got myself into hot water. I had to write like fury to make the deadline and it half killed me and I really was, oh, burnt out at the end of it. Really burnt out. And the idea of going straight into another Harry Potter book filled me with dread and horror. And that was the first time I had ever felt like that. I had been writing Harry for 10 years come 2000 and that was the first time I ever thought, Oh God, I don’t want to keep going.”

Rowling, who had the idea for the seven-book Harry Potter series on a delayed train to Manchester in 1990, had not taken a break since she began writing in earnest as a broke single mum. She wrote mostly in cafés then. When she finished one book she began the next immediately, sometimes on the same day. And so, fresh from producing Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the fourth book, she felt immense pressure to start the next.

It was not the first time she had felt the strain of the deadlines. “The first thing that I did when I finished Prisoner of Azkaban was to discuss repaying the advance for the next book.” I look shocked at this. “Yes, you can imagine. People were a little bit shaken, I think. I said: I want to give the money back and then I will be free to finish in my own time rather than have to produce it for next year.”

And now, after Book Four, she again told her editor that she couldn’t make such a tight timescale for the next book. “Because I knew I couldn’t do it. Well, I probably could have done it. Because I do work hard. I COULD have done it, but the book would have been lousy and I would have then collapsed completely and said: That’s it, no more. I can’t do it any more. So, I said this to them.” Her publishers told her to produce the book at her own pace.

She had a break from Harry but kept on writing because, as she says, “I have to write”. She wouldn’t say much about what she was writing, except that it was “totally for me” and a story. Like a novel? “Yes,” she says. It is unfinished.

The break lasted the best part of a year. “I was also really conscious – and I didn’t need anyone to tell me this – that I needed to stop and I needed to try to come to terms with what had happened to me. I had to really try to cope with what had happened because I wasn’t coping. I wasn’t coping at all. For a long time people would say to me, ‘What is it like to be famous?’ and I would say ‘I am not famous’. Now this was patently untrue. It was the only way that I could cope with it, by being in so much denial that I was virtually blind at times.

“I always felt like I was racing to catch up with the situation. So I could cope now with the fact that I was being doorstepped but I couldn’t cope with the fact that they were now going after my private life. I was always several steps behind. I couldn’t grasp what had happened. And I don’t think many people could have done. The thing got so huge.”

She is always asked why Harry Potter has been so successful. “And I cannot answer that question. I can’t. It sounds coy. It sounds disingenuous. I never think of it like that. I think it would be dangerous for me to think about it like that, to sit down and analyse it, to decide why. It would be an exercise in navel gazing. It would also possibly lead me to deduce that I was doing certain things right and maybe certain things I should drop and if you start writing like that…”

From your head and not your heart, I say.

“Exactly. Then I think you are lost. And I would certainly be lost if I stopped enjoying it. And ultimately I need to do this. I mean, what is the point? I could have stopped writing four years ago and we would have been fine financially. So I’m not writing for the money. I could really do without the fame. The only point is to satisfy myself now and out of loyalty to the fans.” And Harry too, I say.

“Absolutely. When I say for me, it is for Harry … being true to what I know will be his end.”

How would you describe your feelings about fame?

“I never wanted it and I never expected it and certainly didn’t work for it and I see it as something that I have to get through, really. It does have nice aspects but for me, personally, probably the negative outweighs the positive. And we are talking here about being famous as opposed to having the money because the money has obviously relieved me of an enormous amount of worry and it has made my children secure in the sense that I do know they will have enough to eat and so on. And that is what the money means to me.”

Yes, I say, but you are way beyond that.

“Absolutely. It went way beyond that.”

Is it odd?

“Yes, it is very odd. And you feel guilty about it. A friend of mine said to me the other day, ‘But I would just go in a shop and I’d just say I will have one of those, one of those and one of those in every colour. Why don’t you do that?’ But the fact is that once you can do that, you don’t really want to do that. The amount of stuff you actually want to buy, when you can, shrinks a lot. Whereas when I was completely broke, I would have bought anything.”

So you wanted to acquire things, then?

“Yes. Because I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I mean, a new tea towel, I could get quite excited about. You think I’m joking!”

What do you mean about feeling guilty?

“It just seems, well, this came to me through doing the thing that I love doing most. So I suppose I feel that I haven’t suffered enough pain for it.”

I say that is not how it works.

“I know. I know. We all know it doesn’t work like that. The world is completely screwed up. When David was born I had a company sending me free Babygros. I found it quite upsetting and I actually got quite tearful at one point. I remember Jessica, if someone had given me free Babygros then, that would have been a very big deal. That would have made my whole week. It is just very unfair, isn’t it?”

Rowling says she loves to write, has to write, happy or sad, but that it is far easier if she is happy. The new book has been written during the happiest period of her life. She had already started work on it before her marriage on Boxing Day, 2001. I say it must have been thrilling to meet someone new. “It was incredible. I always wanted to have more children and I had reached the point where I thought, OK, I’ve been so lucky. I’ve got the books. I’ve got Jessie. I cannot complain and then this has been just amazing.”

Is it true, I ask, that you meet someone when you aren’t looking for them?

“Yes. Definitely. I did not expect to meet anyone, actually. I thought the baggage was too much and it is a truism that when you do get famous, it’s not that I didn’t meet anyone, it’s that I didn’t meet anyone I wanted to have a relationship with, much less marry. Of course, you do meet people but it tends to be those who are very keen to approach you and maybe not those you would really want to meet.”

She says it is fortunate for both her and her husband that their careers are so divergent. “The night we met he told me he had read the first ten pages of Philosopher’s Stone on a late-night shift at the hospital and he thought it was quite good. And I thought that was fantastic. He hadn’t read the books. He didn’t really have a very clear idea of who I was. It meant that we could get to know each other in quite a normal way. I think he’s up to speed now, poor bloke. At the time he didn’t really have any idea about it all.”

She wrote most of the new book in Edinburgh and some in Perthshire. She no longer writes in cafés because people watch her and it makes her self-conscious. At home she writes all morning in her office, which is the size of single bedroom and the smallest room in the house, until she gets hungry, about 12.30pm usually. She breaks for a sandwich, then goes back to the computer until Jessie comes home from school (she has not had a nanny since becoming a two-parent family). They walk the dog, a Jack Russell. She makes tea. Neil comes home. Depending on how tired she is, she may write more in the evening.

One day a week is spent doing “charity stuff”. She has a charitable trust and is the patron of several groups, including one for single parents and the Multiple Sclerosis Society Scotland (her mother died of the disease in 1990 at the age of 45). I say that I believe she gives quite a lot of money away anonymously and she stares at the carpet, lips pressed.

Rowling became pregnant mid-book and knew she wanted to finish before the baby came. “I was getting bigger and bigger and bigger and then, just before Christmas, I realised I had finished the book and it was the most amazing thing. An incredible thing. It actually really took me by surprise. I was writing the last chapter, rewriting bits of it as you do, and then I wrote myself to the end of a paragraph and thought: Oh my God, I’ve finished the book! I couldn’t believe I’d done it.”

I make some comment about how long it is and she says: “It’s hysterical. They went in one day from saying, ‘She’s got writer’s block’ to saying, ‘She’s been self-indulgent’. And I thought, well, what a difference 24 hours makes.”

The “they” in that sentence is the press. She resents the idea that it has been reported that she had writer’s block almost as much as she resents the pressure of a deadline. She admits to being “too thin-skinned”. “But that is who I am and I couldn’t do the books if I weren’t who I am.” She was genuinely distressed by the accusations, levelled by the American writer Nancy Stouffer, that she was a plagiarist and she celebrated when a New York court ruled last year that she was innocent. She is fierce about protecting Jessica’s privacy, never using her in publicity or going with her to film premieres. She rarely talks about her, although, when I ask why she bought the London house, she laughs and says she had been staying at Claridge’s and “my daughter was getting a bit too used to room service”.

It is easy to forget, sitting in this warm and light-filled room, about the darker side of Potter mania. But it is out there. Some people are obsessed with the idea that her books are teaching children about evil and magic and believe Rowling is a witch of some kind. “I found death threats to myself on the net,” she says, describing how she was looking for something when she found herself on a Potter-hater site. “And then halfway through this message board I found, well, people being advised to shoot me, basically. Which was not a nice thing to find. It is bizarre.” She sighs. “But what can you do?”

“Fame is a very odd and very isolating experience,” she says. “And I know some people crave it. A lot of people crave it. I find that very hard to understand. Really. It is incredibly isolating and it puts a great strain on your relationships.” Most of her friends have been doorstepped and offered money by newspapers for their story and that makes Rowling feel guilty.

Her views on some journalists are embodied in Rita Skeeter, a character who, when last seen, had become a beetle and was trapped in a jar. “I have a fascination for Rita and I have grudging respect,” says Rowling. “She has the rhino hide that I would quite like to have but haven’t. And you’ve got to admire her tenacity and ingenuity. But I wouldn’t like to meet her.”

It is difficult to do an interview on a book that I have not been allowed to read. She sympathises, but neither does she give much away. “This book is a bit of a departure. Harry is very angry. Very angry. And he’s angry for most of the book. But I think that is fair enough given what has happened to him and that he hasn’t been given an awful lot of information. So it’s not a very gentle tale. And there is a nasty death in it as well. Nasty because it is someone I care about as a character.”

She adds: “This time it is someone I consider to be a main character.” She cried when she wrote the death scene, as she did twice when writing Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Harry now “is very much in puberty, having as easy a time of it as I did.” And that was? “What I was, I wasn’t sure and I don’t think anyone else was either! I just think it is a very confusing time. Yes, he’s very confused in a boy way. He doesn’t understand how girls’ minds work.” I say that, at age 15, boys don’t normally say anything at all. She laughs and says Hermione is more than happy to fill in all those silences with her advice.

“This time Harry really, for the first time, does have a relationship of sorts. The emphasis very much on the ‘of sorts’. That was really fun to write, actually. I think you will find it painful. You should find it painful, it is painful, but it was such fun to write. Poor Harry! What I put him through.”

She has already started to write Book Six. “I started it when I was pregnant. That was a different situation because I knew I didn’t have to so that immediately meant that I wanted to! You know, the absolute reverse of Goblet of Fire. And I’m also in a very lovely position. Contractually, I don’t even have to write any more books at all. So no one can possibly write that I have missed a deadline because I actually don’t have a contractual deadline for Six and Seven.”

So you have freedom, I say.

“I do have freedom. I want to spend some time with David because I didn’t have him to hand him over to a battalion of nannies. But I do really want to do Six and Seven.”

Surely, I say, Six will be shorter. And she agrees. “Seven, on the other hand, will probably be massive …it has been such a massive part of my life now. I can see myself being really scared to let go of it. I will probably reach the end of Seven and think, I’ll just tweak it a bit more, I will just tweak it a bit more. The fact that I will have finished will be extraordinary.”

But isn’t the last chapter of Seven already written? Yes, she says, it’s hidden away. In a secret place? “Guarded by trolls.”

Doesn’t anyone know?

“I’ve told no one. Literally no one. If you ever hear anyone claim that they know what happens in the end, they are absolutely lying. I’ve never told anyone.”

Maybe if you got drunk …

“I would never tell anyone. I just know I wouldn’t. You couldn’t get me drunk enough!”

It is time to go. David has exhausted his mobiles and swings and we have talked for one and a half hours. This interview is very different from the previous one, and it seems to me that in the past three years Joanne Rowling has grown up. She has faced her personal demons about fame, money and insecurity. She has balance in her life and now, in addition to everything else, freedom. It is a heady mix, certainly a Wonderland, but she will tread softly there. “I am the kind of person who expects Mr Catastrophe to be lurking around the corner because he often has been. “I try to strike a balance between being very grateful for what has happened – because I am so hugely grateful for it – and I am terrified of hubris because I think it could all go wrong tomorrow.”

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Entrevista de J.K. sobre a Ordem da Fênix

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Tradução: Rö. Granger
Revisão:Adriana Snape
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Paxman, Jeremy, interviewer. “JK’s OOTP interview,” BBC Newsnight, 19 June 2003.

There are books, and there is Harry Potter.
They’re the biggest phenomenon in the history of modern publishing. 200 million copies, about a boy who discovers he’s a world-famous wizard.

They’re sold in over 200 countries, and translated into over fifty languages. Beyond the books is an industry – films, dolls, games and merchandise making hundreds of millions pounds a year.

All this from an idea which wandered into the mind of the then pretty penniless JK Rowling as she sat on a train. She imagined his story as a series of seven books, each spanning a year at the Hogwarts School for Witches and Wizards.

The fifth book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, goes on sale in 28 and a half hours. It is confidently expected to have the biggest print run in history.

The author of this phenomenon lives in Edinburgh.

(Jeremy and JK Rowling sitting at table, looking at a copy of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix – in the office of JK Rowling in Edinburgh)

JEREMY PAXMAN: So this is it?

JK ROWLING: This is it.

JEREMY PAXMAN: Are we allowed to look inside it?

JK ROWLING: Hmmmm. Yes a bit. You can have a look there….yes so, that’s it.

JEREMY PAXMAN: How many pages?

JK ROWLING: 766 …. All with writer’s block, which I think you’ll agree is a bit of an achievement.

JEREMY PAXMAN: But do you find the whole secrecy issue, the need for secrecy, a bit ridiculous?

JK ROWLING: No.

JEREMY PAXMAN: Why not?

JK ROWLING: No not at all. Well, a lot of it comes from me.

JEREMY PAXMAN: Really?

JK ROWLING: Yeah definitely. I mean, of course one could be cynical, and I’m sure you would be disposed to be so and say it was a marketing ploy, but I don’t want the kids to know what’s coming. Because that’s part of the excitement of the story, and having – you know – sweated blood to create all my red herrings and lay all my clues…. to me it’s not a …this is my ….this is my….I was going to say this is my life, it’s not my life, but it is a very important part of my life.

JEREMY PAXMAN: Has it come at a price this success and fame?

JK ROWLING: The fame thing is interesting because I never wanted to be famous, and I never dreamt I would be famous. You know, my fantasy of being a famous writer, and again there’s a slight disconnect with reality which happens a lot with me. I imagined being a famous writer would be like being like Jane Austen. Being able to sit at home in the parsonage and your books would be very famous and occasionally you would correspond with the Prince of Wales’s secretary. You know I didn’t think they’d rake through my bins, I didn’t expect to be photographed on the beach through long lenses. I never dreamt it would impact my daughter’s life negatively, which at times it has. It would be churlish to say there’s nothing good about being famous; to have a total stranger walk up to you as you’re walking around Safeways, and say a number of nice things that they might say about your work … I mean of course you walk on with a bit more spring in your step. That’s a very, very nice thing to happen. I just wish they wouldn’t approach me when I’m buying you know…

JEREMY PAXMAN: Loo roll?

JK ROWLING: Items of a questionable nature, exactly. Always, always. Never when you’re in the fresh fruit and veg section. Never.

JEREMY PAXMAN: Do you think success has changed you?

JK ROWLING: Yes.

JEREMY PAXMAN: In what way?

JK ROWLING: I don’t feel like quite such a waste of space anymore.

JEREMY PAXMAN: You didn’t really feel a waste of space?

JK ROWLING: I totally felt a waste of space. I was lousy. Yeah I did, yeah . And now I feel that, it turns out there was one thing I was good at, and I’d always expected I could tell a story, and I suppose it’s rather sad that I needed confirmation by being published.

JEREMY PAXMAN: And what about the money? A lot of people when they suddenly make a lot of money, feel guilty about it. Do you feel guilt?

JK ROWLING: Yes I do feel guilty about it. Definitely I feel guilty.

JEREMY PAXMAN: Why?

JK ROWLING: When it first happened I didn’t immediately become very rich. The biggest jump for me was the American advance which was enough for me to buy a house, not outright, but you know we’d been renting until then. And I didn’t feel guilty, I felt scared at that point. Because I thought I mustn’t blow this: I’ve got some money, I mustn’t do anything stupid with it. And then yeah, yeah, I felt guilty. Yeah I did. I mean at least I could see cause and effect. I knew I had worked quite hard for quite a long time. Of course the rewards were completely disproportionate but I could see how I got there so that made it easier to rationalise.

JEREMY PAXMAN: Let’s talk a little bit about the next book. Harry and Ron and Hermione are all going to be older. How are they going to change?

JK ROWLING: Quite a lot because I find it quite sinister, the way that, looking back at the Famous Five books for example, I think 21 adventures or 20 or something, they never had a hormonal impulse – except that Anne was sometimes told that she would make someone a good little wife whenever she unlaid the picnic things.

JEREMY PAXMAN: But that’s the usual pattern of children’s books isn’t it? Swallows and Amazons is the same isn’t it? The children never age. But your….

JK ROWLING: And it reaches its apotheosis in Peter Pan obviously, where it is quite explicit, and I find that very sinister. I had a very forthright letter from a woman who had heard me say that Harry was going to have his first date or something and she said “Please don’t do that, that’s awful. I want these books to be a world where my children can escape to.” She literally said “free from hurt and fear” and I’m thinking “Have you read the books? What are you talking about free from hurt and fear? Harry goes through absolute hell every time he returns to school.” So I think that a bit of snogging would alleviate matters.

JEREMY PAXMAN: So there will be some pairing up will there in this book?

JK ROWLING: Well in the fullness of time.

JEREMY PAXMAN: Unlikely pairings? Not Hermione and Draco Malfoy or anything like that?

JK ROWLING: I don’t really want to say as it will ruin all the fan sites. They have such fun with their theories … and it is fun, it is fun. And some of them even get quite close. No-one has ever – I have gone and looked at some of it and no-one’s ever … There is one thing that if anyone guessed I would be really annoyed as it is kind of the heart of it all. And it kind of explains everything and no-one’s quite got there but a couple of people have skirted it. So you know, I would be pretty miffed after thirteen or fourteen years of writing the books if someone just came along and said I think this will happen in book seven. Because it is too late, I couldn’t divert now, everything has been building up to it, and I’ve laid all my clues.

JEREMY PAXMAN: Is Harry going to become a bolshy teenager?

JK ROWLING: He’s a lot, lot, lot angrier in this book. He really is quite angry a lot of the time and I think justifiably so, look at what he has gone through. It is about time he started feeling a little bit miffed at the hand life has dealt him.

JEREMY PAXMAN: Well when you look at a lot of that marketing stuff, that merchandise, when you look at things like the Harry Potter Ice Pumpkin Slushie maker and all that junk.

JK ROWLING: Is that a real thing or have you made it up?

JEREMY PAXMAN: I’m serious. There’s a list of about 50 of these things. Harry Potter Embroidered Polo Shirts, the Late Night Ride Towel, Harry Potter and Ron Weasley alarm clock. I mean it goes on and on.

JK ROWLING: I knew about the alarm clock. How do I feel about it? Honestly, I think it’s pretty well known, if I could have stopped all merchandising I would have done. And twice a year I sit down with Warner Brothers and we have conversations about merchandising and I can only say you should have seen some of the stuff that was stopped: Moaning Myrtle lavatory seat alarms and worse.

JEREMY PAXMAN: I thought that sounded rather fun.

JK ROWLING: I knew you were gonna say that. It’s not fun. It was horrible, it was a horrible thing.

JEREMY PAXMAN: But you could have said “No, I’m not gonna have any merchandising”.

JK ROWLING: I don’t think I could at the time. Not at the time. I’m so bad with dates. It must have been about 1998-99, I started talking to Warner Brothers, and at that point I just didn’t have the power to stop them. That is the nature of the film world. Because they are very expensive films to make, and if they keep making them which is obviously not guaranteed, but if they do keep making them, they are going to get really even more expensive, and I mean I shudder to see what they say when they see Book Five. Because I think they are starting to feel I am writing stuff just to see if they can do it. Which of course I’m not. But I know there are headaches about the scale of the world that I’m writing.

JEREMY PAXMAN: But do you never worry that perhaps your legacy will be not this entire world that you created but lots of bits of plastic?

JK ROWLING: Do I worry honestly? Completely honestly. No. I don’t worry about it. I think the books will always be more important than the bits of plastic. And that’s…I really, really believe that, and maybe that sounds arrogant but that’s how I feel.

JEREMY PAXMAN: Do you even know, when it gets to the level you’re at. Do you even know what you are earning?

JK ROWLING: No…

JEREMY PAXMAN: Do you know what you earned last year?

JK ROWLING: No.

JEREMY PAXMAN: Well it’s tens of millions, I guess…

JK ROWLING: I met my accountant recently and I said “They say in the rich list that I am richer than the Queen, so that means you’ve embezzled quite a lot of money.” I mean I do know what ball park I’ve got. I mean I’m not that clueless. And I certainly have not got £280 million.

JEREMY PAXMAN: What is it roughly?

JK ROWLING: Would I tell you?

JEREMY PAXMAN: I don’t know. You can’t blame me for asking.

JK ROWLING: No I don’t blame you for asking

JEREMY PAXMAN: You mentioned in the previous books you finished one and immediately started the next. Have you started the sixth one?

JK ROWLING: Yeah.

JEREMY PAXMAN: How far are you into it?

JK ROWLING: Not that far because I had a baby. But yeah, I started it when I was still pregnant with David. And I actually did get some writing done the other day, and that’s not bad going considering he’s only ten weeks. So he’s pretty full time at the moment. But yeah I did a bit more the other day.

JEREMY PAXMAN: Are we going to discover in book 5, why Voldemort has such an animus against Harry’s parents?

JK ROWLING: Yes.

JEREMY PAXMAN: Can you give us a clue as to…

JK ROWLING: No. It’s not long now. Come on. Yes you do find that out in book 5.

JEREMY PAXMAN: What else are you willing to tell us about what’s in book 5?

JK ROWLING: Obviously a new Defence against the Dark Arts teacher.

JEREMY PAXMAN: Is that going to be a woman?

JK ROWLING: Yes. And it’s not Fleur which everyone on the internet speculates about. And it’s not …Who’s the other one they keep asking about? Mrs Figg. It’s not Mrs. Figg. I’ve read both of those.

JEREMY PAXMAN: Are we going to discover anything more about Snape ?

JK ROWLING: Yes.

JEREMY PAXMAN: And Harry’s mother? Did he have a crush on Harry’s mother or unrequited love or anything like that?

JK ROWLING: Hence his animosity to Harry?

JEREMY PAXMAN: Yes.

JK ROWLING: You speculate?

JEREMY PAXMAN: I speculate, yes, I’m just asking whether you can tell us.

JK ROWLING: No I can’t tell you. But you do find out a lot more about Snape and quite a lot more about him actually.

JEREMY PAXMAN: And is there going to be a death in this book?

JK ROWLING: Yes. A horrible, horrible

JEREMY PAXMAN: A horrible death of a significant figure.

JK ROWLING: Yeah. I went into the kitchen having done it….

JEREMY PAXMAN: What, killed this person?

JK ROWLING: Yeah. Well I had re-written the death, re-written it and that was it. It was definitive. And the person was definitely dead. And I walked into the kitchen crying and Neil said to me, “What on earth is wrong?” and I said, “Well, I’ve just killed the person”. Neil doesn’t know who the person is. But I said, “I’ve just killed the person. And he said, “Well, don’t do it then.” I thought, a doctor you know….and I said “Well it just doesn’t work like that. You are writing children’s books, you need to be a ruthless killer.”

JEREMY PAXMAN: Is it going to upset people?

JK ROWLING: Yes. It upset me. I always knew it was coming, but I managed to live in denial, and carry on with the character and not think about it.

JEREMY PAXMAN: So you know what is going to become of all the major characters over the span of the series?

JK ROWLING: Yeah..yeah.

JEREMY PAXMAN: Why stop when they grow up? Might be interesting to know what becomes of Harry as an adult.

JK ROWLING: How do you know he’ll still be alive?

JEREMY PAXMAN: Oh. At the end of book 7?

JK ROWLING: It would be one way to kill of the merchandising.

JEREMY PAXMAN: That really would be killing the Golden Goose wouldn’t it?

JK ROWLING: Yeah well. I’m supposed to be richer than the Queen what do I care?

(JK Rowling and Jeremy Paxman in the kitchen)

JK ROWLING: I’m happier now I would say than I’ve ever been in my life, yeah definitely…..

JEREMY PAXMAN: But that’s not just to do with writing of course….

JK ROWLING: No … but it does have a lot to do with that. I needed to take off the time between books four and five, and I really feel like I got to grips with a lot of things. I sort of put my head up and got a big lungful of air, and I looked around, and I saw what had happened, and I allowed myself time to deal with it a bit better. I think if you’d interviewed me four years ago, I don’t think I would have been nearly as relaxed.

JEREMY PAXMAN: There’s an element in which, a way in which you’ve become public property.

JK ROWLING: Yeah.

JEREMY PAXMAN: That you belong, because of what you’ve created, that people feel like you belong to them.

JK ROWLING: Yes that’s definitely true. I think we get a thousand letters a week to this office – come and open my fete, write a personal letter to my daughter, come to my son’s birthday party – you know what I mean. And in some ways that’s very touching , that they think, really that they think that I have the time.

JEREMY PAXMAN: Well if you don’t ask you don’t get.

JK ROWLING: I don’t blame them for trying, I absolutely don’t. Except for the woman who wrote to me and said would I please make her and her husband an annual payment because they hadn’t been to the theatre in 3 years – and as begging letters go that wasn’t a great angle.

JEREMY PAXMAN: As begging letters go…you must get loads…do you give a lot of money away?

JK ROWLING: Well …mmmmm. I give money away, that’s all I can say.

(JK Rowling and Jeremy Paxman at the table, looking at notes)

JK ROWLING: This must not be seen too closely. This is the plan for Order of the Phoenix. I have these grid things for every book – well I have about twelve grid things for every book. It’s just a way of reminding myself what has to happen in each chapter to advance us in the plot. And then you have all your sub-plots. It’s just a way of keeping track of what going on.

JEREMY PAXMAN: And these scraps of paper which you’ve filed elegantly in a carrier, they’re plot ideas or …

JK ROWLING: Well some of them are totally redundant now because its been written and I keep them out of sentimentality’s sake, I suppose. But some of it has backstory in it like this – in here is the history of the Death Eaters and I don’t know that I’ll ever actually need it – but at some point – which were once called something different – they were called the Knights of Walpurgis. I don’t know if I’ll need it. But I like knowing it. I like to keep that sort of stuff on hand.

JEREMY PAXMAN: What’s your preferred way of working? I mean lots of people sit down and say “I must churn out 600 words or a 1000 words a day”. Do you work like that ? How do you do it?

JK ROWLING: No, well it’s like painting a fence isn’t it?

JEREMY PAXMAN: No – well, some distinguished writers have written like that.

JK ROWLING: That’s how you do it …

JEREMY PAXMAN: No – “distinguished writers”, I said… Somerset Maugham used to write 600 words a day and he’d stop more or less whether he was mid-sentence.

JK ROWLING: No I couldn’t do that.

JEREMY PAXMAN: So what do you do? You sit down and keep going until you’re too exhausted to continue….

JK ROWLING: Yeah pretty much actually. It’s the flogged horse school of writing. The thing about the 600 words, I mean some day, you can do a very, very, very hard day’s work and not write a word, just revising, or you would scribble a few words.

JEREMY PAXMAN: We know that you’ve written the ending.

JK ROWLING: I’ve written the final chapter of book seven.

JEREMY PAXMAN: So you know where you are going to get to. Do you know how you are going to get there?

JK ROWLING: Yes. Yes. I mean I allow a margin. It would be so boring if I really knew. It would be joining the dots, wouldn’t it? It’s not that well worked out. But it’s fairly well plotted. I mean it would be worrying if it weren’t at this stage, wouldn’t it, if I slid off book five and wondered what shall I write out in book six?. You know, it’s a complicated story so I need to know what I’m doing.

JEREMY PAXMAN: Do you ever wish you hadn’t started on it?

JK ROWLING: Yes. But not for the reasons you might expect. Sometimes, yeah, I’ve had very low moments when I thought “What the hell do I do this for?” But very rare. Very rare.

JEREMY PAXMAN: Why do you think that occasionally?

JK ROWLING: I haven’t thought it for a long time now, but it was while I was writing book four. I went through a very bad patch. The funny thing is that the press were writing that I had writer’s block with Phoenix.

JEREMY PAXMAN: That’s the next one.

JK ROWLING: Yes, the one that’s about to come out. And there was speculation that I was finding the pressure …well, it was funny because literally on consecutive days, either you’d have, either I was feeling the pressure too much and I was cracking up – or I was too happy being married. And that was stopping me writing. And you kind of couldn’t have both. But in fact, the Order of the Phoenix never gave me any trouble. It was quite a docile book to write. And then a lot of fun to write. Chamber of Secrets, I really did have writer’s block. Briefly, I think. It wasn’t a very serious case, it was only about five weeks. And compared to some people, what’s five weeks? Goblet of Fire, I was very unhappy towards the end of writing Goblet, and at the point where I realised I was fantasising that I would break an arm and therefore not be able to… I really mean this. I mean I was just a little way away from actually thinking “How can I break my arm so I can tell my publishers that I can’t physically do it?” and then that would give me more time. Because I committed to a totally unrealistic deadline. And I made the deadline But I really did make it by working round the clock really. I was so unhappy.

JEREMY PAXMAN: So you didn’t have writer’s block. The reason this book has been – what three years…. Three years since the last one isn’t it? Why has it taken so long?

JK ROWLING: Well it hasn’t.

JEREMY PAXMAN: Huh?

JK ROWLING: Well it hasn’t. The book didn’t take that long. I decided… What happened was, so Goblet of Fire, I was really in quite a state by the time that book was finished, and I mean at that point I really did feel a lot of things came together with Goblet of Fire. I mean the press attention had reached an hitherto unknown level, and I couldn’t work outside the house anymore, and just a hell of a lot of stuff was going on, you know. It was the fame thing. Do I still feel like that? No. But that’s because I took the time off. And I was still writing during those three years because I never stop writing. But I didn’t want to be published again. That was the big difference. So when I finished Goblet of Fire, I said to – there were only two publishers who had bought the next book – and I said to both of them, I want to repay my advance. And both of them, you could almost hear them having cardiac arrest on the end of the phone. “Why do you want to repay your advance?” And I said, because I don’t want to publish next year. I want to write this book in a more leisurely way and I want to take some time off. Because I had had … I finished Philosopher’s Stone, I literally started Chamber of Secrets that afternoon. I finished Chamber of Secrets, I started Prisoner of Azkaban the next day. And I finished Azkaban and I’d already started Goblet of Fire because they overlapped – so there was absolutely no let-up. And I knew I couldn’t do it. I just knew I couldn’t do it; my brain was going to short circuit if I tried to do that again. So they said “Well, how about we do still get the book when you finish it, but we don’t have a deadline?” So I said okay. So that’s how we worked it. So there was no deadline. So, just once and for all, and for the record, I didn’t miss the deadline. Because there was no deadline.

JEREMY PAXMAN: And you didn’t have writers block on that book?

JK ROWLING: No! I just produced a quarter of a million words. It’s quite hard to do with writer’s block.

JEREMY PAXMAN: That’s longer than the New Testament you know.

JK ROWLING: Oh God, stop it. With all these new facts that I didn’t know. Is it?

JEREMY PAXMAN: Yeah. By about 70,000 words or something.

JK ROWLING: Do you know the Christian fundamentalists will find a way to turn that into a reason to hate me as well. She’s more verbose than God.

(JK Rowling and Jeremy at table, looking at notes and books)

JEREMY PAXMAN: Has Book Five – that thing that’s the size of a house brick – it was originally much longer than that, was it?

JK ROWLING: No, actually it wasn’t . It’s about the size – originally I thought it would be slightly shorter than Goblet of Fire – and what is the phrase? The tale grew in the telling. It did. The thing is, I’ve got so much now, so much backstory to tell, but I really mean it this time. Six will not need to be that long. I had to move them around a lot in there, there’s a lot of to-ing and fro-ing in there.

JEREMY PAXMAN: Are you going to have a lot of loose ends to tie up in 7?

JK ROWLING: Oh god, I hope not. I’m aiming to tie it all up neatly in a nice big knot… that’s it , good night.

JEREMY PAXMAN: So that may not be particularly long either….

JK ROWLING: No, I think that will be long because I won’t want to let go. I’ll just keep writing. I’ll probably just start a completely new plot in book seven. It’s going to be very difficult to leave it . I mean, I do look forward to a post-Harry era in my life, because some of the things that go along with this are not that much fun, but at the same time, I dread leaving Harry… because I’ve been working on it over what I sincerely hope will prove to have been the most turbulent part of my life and that was the constant, and I worked on it so hard for so long – then it will be over and I think it’s going to leave a massive gap.

JEREMY PAXMAN: Do you know what you will go on to next after that?

JK ROWLING: Well, while I was in between, during the three years I’ve just had, I was writing something else for a while which was really great, it was good, and I might go back to that. I don’t know.

JEREMY PAXMAN: Is that an adult novel?

JK ROWLING: Mmmm. It’s just something completely different. It was very liberating to do it.

JEREMY PAXMAN: Be quite difficult for you though. You’d have to publish under a pseudonym wouldn’t you?

JK ROWLING: Exactly. But they’ll find out within seconds. I don’t underestimate the investigative powers of the press, but I don’t know what I’ll do. I mean, I know I will definitely still be writing. Will I publish? I don’t know. It’s what you said, of course you write to be published, because you write to share the story. But I do think back to what happened to AA Milne, and he of course tried to write adult novels, and was never reviewed without the mention of Tigger, Pooh and Piglet. And I would imagine that the same will happen with me. And that’s fine. God knows my shoulders are broad enough, I could cope with that. But I would like some time to have some normal life at the end of the series, and probably the best way to get that isn’t to publish immediately.

JEREMY PAXMAN: It’s not a bad thing to go to your grave with – having invented this entire world and made children want to read?

JK ROWLING: Oh God. No. Not at all. Of course I am immensely proud of Harry, and I’m never going to disown it, and I promise I am never, ever, ever going to apologise for it. Never. Because I am proud of it and I will defend Harry against all comers.

JEREMY PAXMAN: JK Rowling, thank you.

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J.K. nos Simpsons, o desenho vai ao ar no final do ano

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Tradução: Bruno Radcliffe
Revisão: Adriana Snape

“JK on Simpsons, show to air at end of year.” BBC Newsround, updated 28 February 2003.

The episode of The Simpsons which JK Rowling will appear in is called The Regina Monologues, we can exclusively reveal.

In it the Simpson family visit the UK. It’s expected to air in the US in November or December of this year.

JK’s one of the world’s busiest authors and is constantly bombarded with TV requests. So why has she agreed to appear in The Simpsons, as we told you on Wednesday?

She’s been a fan of the show for years, and was especially pleased when the programme did a Potter spoof in 2000, with Bart and Lisa going to wizard school.

“I love The Simpsons because of the detail – there are so many layers and it works for kids and for adults.

“That’s one of the reasons I like it so much.” JK Rowling told us then.

“When I lived in Portugal, a group of us used to sprint to a cafe after work so we could watch The Simpsons.

“It was the highlight of our TV week – if only I had known one day that they’d be spoofing me!”

Huge fan
The Harry Potter Hallowe’en spoof was a great success. And Simpson’s creator Matt Groening is a huge fan of Harry Potter anyway. But now, he’s gone one step further letting JK playing herself.

When Newsround first told him a few years back that JK loved The Simpsons too and asked if he’d include some Potter references, he was very pleased. “Wow, I am honoured, my kids have devoured all of the books. No doubt we’ll do some Harry Potter references.”

That promise has now come true. J K Rowling has recorded her lines, but the animation takes a bit of time and has not yet been completed. There’s no word yet on when it’ll air in the UK.

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A fama de J.K. Rowling deteriora sua cultura café

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Tradução: Salas Wulfric
Revisão: {patylda}

Ferguson, Brian. “JK Rowling’s fame spoils her cafe culture,” The Scotsman, 6 February 2003.

THE story of struggling single mother JK Rowling penning her first Harry Potter book in the warmth of an Edinburgh cafe has become part of the legend of her success.

But now the internationally famous author has revealed that she still wants to write in cafes – but cannot because of her fame.

The revelation from the notoriously private author in a scoop interview by Edinburgh schoolchildren may even explain why her latest book was so long in the writing and delayed. There had been speculation she was suffering from writer’s block.

Now the multi-millionaire has told how she longs to return to the kind of environment where she spent hours dreaming up storylines while her daughter Jessica slept in a push-chair.

In an the interview for an Edinburgh school’s magazine, the usually guarded Ms Rowling has revealed how she still sees a large cafe with a window seat as her “ideal writing space”.

But she has admitted it is now impossible for her to sit in cafes like Nicolson’s, in Nicolson Street, where Harry Potter was created, because of her fame.

In the interview for Broughton High’s magazine, the author also tells how she had suffered feelings of “general hopelessness” while writing the first book, how she worried that she would never finish it, and of the “indescribable” feeling of pride she felt when she saw it on sale for the first time.

Ms Rowling has denied basing any of the characters in the books on real people, except for herself, attacked people who have called for the books to be banned as “misguided”, and told how one of her remaining ambitions is learning to drive.

The school magazine’s team secured an interview with crime writer Ian Rankin for the same edition, and have also interviewed celebrities such as Gail Porter and dance music guru Moby in the past.

But they are remaining tight-lipped about how they managed to secure the JK Rowling scoop, saying only they were helped by a “go-between”.

The famously-guarded Ms Rowling, whose first Harry Potter book was published in 1997, has granted very few interviews over the last couple of years.

Three senior students working on the magazine – Nicola Nairn, Adam Knight and Jennifer Milne – worked on a list of questions which were sent via e-mail to the author.

She told the magazine: “My ideal writing space is a large cafe with a small corner table near a window overlooking an interesting street (for gazing out of in search of inspiration).

“It would serve very strong coffee and be non-smoking (because I’ve now given up for two years and don’t want to be tempted) and nobody would notice me at all. But I can’t write in cafes any more because I would get recognised a lot.”

In response to being asked if she felt like giving up writing the first book, she said: “Several times a feeling of general hopelessness would come over me and I’d wonder whether I wasn’t deluding myself. But this feeling never lasted longer than an evening.

“It was an indescribable feeling of pride (seeing the first book on the shelves), something close to the feeling I had when I saw my daughter for the first time.

Ms Rowling also revealed how the main female character in the books – Harry’s friend Hermione – is an “exaggerated” version of herself, but insists all the others are completely fictional.

Wendy Munro, head of media studies at the school, said students were completely responsible for writing, editing and designing The High magazine.

She said: ” Our contact vetted all the questions that we compiled, they were then sent on to her for approval and a week later was got all these replies.”

Nicola, 17, associate editor at the magazine, said: “We were so surprised to get the interview but it all turned out great.”

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