I wanted to know. I asked a lot of questions and she would say, "Read, read."…So she inspired me a great deal.

Wonder Why would say, 'Why is the sky blue?'…Then Wonder Why would tell you. I was fascinated, because I wanted to know how things worked ... that was my introduction to science.

To me, part of what I love about puzzles is that they fuel my curiosity and I’d say curiosity and gratitude are my two favorite virtues. My last book was about gratitude; this book is all about curiosity. Curiosity is what drives puzzlers. They’re like, ‘Why is it? What is it?’

really watching a lot of work. Also finding the right people to associate with and learn from in terms of work.

I can remember feeling elated after writing the first Quidditch match, which flowed out of the pen and was barely revised afterwards.

I cannot possibly reveal the full horror of my most embarrassing moment, but it took place in a pub in Exeter (which is a town in the south coast of England, where I went to university) in 1984 and involved a joke made by me that backfired spectacularly. The whole debacle was witnessed by my friend Pauline, who is mentioned elsewhere on this fansite (I have to keep her happy in case she TELLS).

So given a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.

I have to say that I can’t stand lists of ‘must do’s’, whether in life or in writing. Something rebels in me when I’m told what I have to do before I’m fifty, or have to buy this season, or have to write if I want to be a success.

The same thing Molly Weasley saw when she let a Boggart out of the locked cabinet in ‘Order of the Phoenix’ – my loved ones, dead. If, however, you are talking about a fear that concerns only me, it would be being buried alive. I’m not sure how a Boggart would represent that; perhaps turn into a coffin around me? Urgh.

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure 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. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.