I thought about this quite a lot during the months when I was reading the Wheel of Time again straight through, trying to figure out how I would approach writing the final book. Obviously, this project wasn’t going to be like anything I’d done before. I couldn’t just approach it as I did one of my solo novels. And yet, it felt like trying to match Robert Jordan’s style exactly would have made me lapse into parody.
A lot of the mental ‘retooling’ I did focused on getting inside the characters’ heads. I decided that if I could make the characters sound right, the book would FEEL right, even if some of the writing itself was different. I also decided that I would adapt my style to fit the project. I became more descriptive, for one, and wrote viewpoint with the more intimate, in-head narrative style that Mr. Jordan used. Neither of these were attempts to match how he wrote exactly, but more me trying to match my style to The Wheel of Time, if that makes any sense.
Another Answer:
It was difficult, but in a lot of ways very fulfilling. For instance, I had been reacting to Robert Jordan a lot in my writing over the years. There were certain things I didn’t touch. I love magic systems, but I never did a teleportation magic because of gateways in the Wheel of Time was one of his magic systems–a very involved teleportation mechanic. I loved how he did it, and I kept thinking of ways I would love to play with that, but I kept saying, “No, Robert Jordan’s done that. I should do different things.” So, in getting to finish the series, I got to say, “Here’s this hoard of ideas I’ve had as a reader for twenty years that now I have an outlet for in playing with his magic system.” That was really awesome. In other ways it was really intimidating to finish the series because of how he does viewpoint. It’s how I learned to do viewpoint, and he is just the grand master of that style of storytelling. Stepping into his shoes is really daunting when he is the one that I hold up as being the best at that thing. So trying to do it and trying to match his style was intimidating and frightening and hard. And living up to the expectations I had for myself were very difficult as well.