An Interview with J.K. RowlingQ: How did you get the idea for Harry Potter? A: I was taking a long train journey from Manchester to London in England and the idea for Harry just fell into my head. At that point it was essentially the idea for a boy who didn't know he was a wizard, and the wizard school he ended up going to. Q: How long did it take to write the first book? A: 5 years, although during that time I was also planning & writing parts of the six sequels. Q: What did you have to do to make sure readers could start with HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS and not be confused? A: It's becoming more of a challenge to keep new readers up to speed with every new Harry book (I'm currently writing the fourth). In the case of CHAMBER OF SECRETS matters were relatively straightforward; I tried to introduce information about Harry and his first year at Hogwarts in as natural a way as possible. However, by the time I reach books five and six, this is going to be much harder. It makes me think of 'previously on ER...' when you have to watch thirty minutes of clips to understand that week's episode. Maybe I'll just write a preface: 'previously in Harry Potter...' and tell readers to go back and read books 1 - 4! Q: What kind of manuscript changes had to be made to make the U.S. version more understandable to American readers? Specific things, like the title change of the first Harry Potter book? A: Very few changes have been made in the manuscript. Arthur Levine, my American editor, and I decided that words should be altered only where we felt they would be incomprehensible, even in context, to an American reader. I have had some criticism from other Britis...
