“The castle grounds were gleaming in the sunlight as though freshly painted; the cloudless sky smiled at itself in the smoothly sparkling lake, the satin-green lawns rippled occasionally in a gentle breeze: June had arrived.” J.K. ROWLING, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
PHOTO: “Scotney Castle Landscape Gardents, Kent, UK” by ukgardenphotos, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
“There’s nothing better when something comes and hits you and you think ‘YES’!” J.K. ROWLING
In 1990, while looking out the window during a train ride, J.K. Rowling got the idea for the entire series of Harry Potter books. Now that’s an epiphany! Here’s now Rowling describes the experience:
I was travelling back to London on my own on a crowded train, and the idea for Harry Potter simply fell into my head. I had been writing almost continuously since the age of six but I had never been so excited about an idea before. To my immense frustration, I didn’t have a pen that worked, and I was too shy to ask anybody if I could borrow one… I did not have a functioning pen with me, but I do think that this was probably a good thing. I simply sat and thought, for four (delayed train) hours, while all the details bubbled up in my brain, and this scrawny, black-haired, bespectacled boy who didn’t know he was a wizard became more and more real to me. Perhaps, if I had slowed down the ideas to capture them on paper, I might have stifled some of them (although sometimes I do wonder, idly, how much of what I imagined on that journey I had forgotten by the time I actually got my hands on a pen). I began to write Philosopher’s Stone that very evening…”
Silver Birch Press 