J.K. Rowling spoke candidly about the years after her own graduation when she failed on an epic scale: a short-lived marriage had imploded, she was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it was possible to be in modern Britain without being homeless. She was, by every usual standard, the biggest failure she knew. But Rowling explained that failure stripped away the inessential. She stopped pretending to be anything other than what she was, and directed all her energy into the only work that mattered to her. Set free because her greatest fear had been realized and she was still alive, she found she still had a daughter she adored, an old typewriter, and a big idea. From that lowest point, she built the foundation for everything that followed.