While writing her first novel Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, author J.K. Rowling went through a dark period in her life.
At one point, she was jobless. Her short-lived marriage ended. She lived in a mouse-ridden apartment as a single parent on government assistance.
She reflected on those difficult times:
“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…
Some failure in life 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.”
Source: The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination