JK Rowling's inspirational message about why it's OK to fail sometimes

JK Rowling's latest book acts as something of a self-help manual; charting what she learned from being “the biggest failure I knew” to becoming one of the most celebrated authors on the planet.

Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination is based on the speech Rowling gave to Harvard graduates at the prestigious university's Commencement ceremony in 2008.

In what Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust called “the most moving and memorable” speech she’d ever heard, Rowling advised students on what she calls "the benefits of failure".

Now, I’m not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life is a dark one and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy-tale resolution.

• JK Rowling

Reflecting on her own time at university, in which she "spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures", Rowling offered the students advice on what to expect from life, warning that "some failure is inevitable".

It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.

• JK Rowling

She spoke of being "as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless", yet still being "incredibly fortunate" to live in a democratic society.

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.

• JK Rowling

Proceeds from the 70-page book, which is published in April, will go to Lumos, a non-profit international children’s charity founded by Rowling to help end the institutionalisation of children around the world.

Watch JK Rowling's full speech at Harvard here (starts at 3:00):

You can read a full transcript of the speech here.

You can pre-order the book from Amazon here or Waterstones here.

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