Rowling Meets the Challenge

(No spoilers here...I promise)

Usually I spend a few hours per weekend writing posts for this Challenge Dividend blog.  But starting Saturday afternoon at 1:15pm and ending Sunday afternoon at 4:45pm, I read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  In pondering the end of J.K. Rowling's series and sitting down to write toward what I hope will be a best-seller of my own, I see a small Challenge Dividend lesson in between the lines of her work.

Overall, the seventh and final book in the series has exceeded my expectations.  I was a fairly late arrival on the Harry Potter bandwagon.  About five years ago my wife was up to reading the fourth book and I finally caved in to her frequent suggestion that I join Dumbledore's Army.  I quickly caught up in no time and thoroughly enjoyed the stories.  I read books Five and Six a few weeks after each came out.

But this year was a little different - I went back and re-read book Six during a beach vacation a few weeks ago, and soon began counting the days to the final book's release on Friday.  I even convinced my wife to take our 6-year-old to a nearby midnight book store party - which drew roughly two thousand people.  With the book safely in hand I started reading in earnest the following day.

I hoped for the best, but also feared that the book would turn out to fall short of my and millions of readers' high expectations.  After all, there are very few book or movie sequels that come anywhere close to even meeting the success and skill of the original.  Take Fletch Lives...please.

But Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows succeeds where these many have fallen.  I do not want to give anything away by fawning too much, but let me just say that it brings intense excitement, emotion and closure.  It rewards our years of reading and waiting, and reaffirms many meaningful parts of life.

Perhaps this is another example of challenge driving improvement.  Rowling surely recognized the challenge to continue success for seven books straight was massive.  Imagine her fear of letting down a generation of children and adults.  I am sure that this pressure to make all of us happy drove her to take her story and character to higher and higher levels.

And now, the Harry Potter series will serve as a bar for generations of aspiring authors.  She has shown us a harrowing path, but one with a potential reward of fame, money and making millions of readers happy.  We will surely reap the dividends from her challenge - both the writers and the readers. 

Thanks, J.K.