How Rowling’s Twitter tips could spell success

SHE has an estimated fortune of £700million after becoming one of the world’s best-selling authors.

Now JK Rowling is coaching fans on how to realise their dreams of following in her footsteps – offering online tips to other budding writers.

In Twitter exchanges this week, Miss Rowling, 54, advised one follower: ‘Start writing! You’ll probably hit a point where you need to stop and do a bit more worldbuilding, but if you’re itching to start, then do it.

‘The worst that can happen is you’ll need to rewrite a bit later.’

And to another follower who asked if she had any superstitions or favourite places to write, Miss Rowling replied: ‘I can write anywhere – and I mean anywhere.

‘As long as there’s a hard surface to rest paper and pen on, I can do it. My favourite place to write is the room I built in the garden, but I don’t need to be there, I just like it. No superstitions, only a preference for black ink.’

The Harry Potter author also revealed: ‘I’ve only ever had one job where I had a business card and I got made redundant before I had the chance to hand one out (true story).’

Last week Miss Rowling, pictured, admitted she constantly doubted herself as a writer. Asked by follower Jonathan Drennan ‘has there ever been a time when writing you have started to doubt yourself?’ She replied: ‘I’ve lost count.’ She admitted her success only came after she felt ‘a conspicuous failure’. Miss Rowling also told aspiring writers: ‘Fear of failure is the saddest reason on earth not to do what you were meant to do. I finally found the courage to start submitting my first book to agents and publishers at a time when I felt a conspicuous failure.

‘Only then did I decide that I was going to try this one thing that I always suspected I could do, and, if it didn’t work out, well, I’d faced worse and survived.

‘Wouldn’t you rather be the person who finished the project you’re dreaming about, rather than the one who talks about “always having wanted to”?’

And she added: ‘The harshest critic is often inside your head. These days I can calm that particular critic down by feeding her a biscuit and giving her a break.

‘Part of the reason there were seven years between having the idea for (first Harry Potter book) Philosopher’s Stone and getting it published was that I kept putting the manuscript away for months at a time, convinced it was rubbish.’

Miss Rowling has written a number of other books, including crime fiction under the pen-name Robert Galbraith.