Well, I’d like to have known that I’d be successful! That would have removed a lot of stress. Though actually, according to stories I’ve read, nothing good ever seems to come of knowing that sort of thing ahead of time. Seeing the future tends to be a bad thing in…
Oct 19, 2008 NOTE: The following is kind of a response to a thread on my now defunct forums. It grew too long to post there, and I felt that it might be of more general interest to other readers out there. So I’ve moved it here. I reference the boards…
Having children has certainly been a big help in understanding the way that younger people think. I spend a lot of time reading with them, and seeing what engages them in other books. This has been an excellent help to me in my writing. So far, I haven’t taken any…
For me, setting aside a project is almost always a bad thing for that project. That doesn’t mean I don’t have to do that sometimes, but if I set aside a project rather than continue to work on it until I’ve fixed the problem, I’ve found that my personal makeup…
Hmm… Perhaps a historical. Something I could really sink my teeth into. I could also see myself writing a mystery or a thriller. The thing is, unless I’m under some kind of restriction, I know that any of those three would probably end up having fantasy or sf elements. …
Part One: Ideas are everywhere One of the most common questions that authors get has to be “Where do you get your ideas?” Though some authors apparently get annoyed by the question, I’ve always found it to be a very good one. What is more pertinent to the writing process…
Ahh…the good old “Where do you get your ideas?” question. Inspiriation comes from all over. Often things I see. Color magic in WARBREAKER came from watching b/w movies. The mist in mistborn came from driving through a foggy night at 70mph. Sazed came from a Buddhist monk I met in…
In plotting an epic like The Way of Kings, to what extent do you outline the whole story? How does that compare with the outline and notes provided by Robert Jordan for the remaining volumes of WoT? Robert Jordan and I plot differently. In the notes he tends to talk…
Many things about the writing process seem fascinating, even mystical, to the layman. A lot of people I meet at book signings or through email seem quite awed by the concept of conceiving, building, then executing a book the length of ELANTRIS or MISTBORN. (Both of which are around 200,000…
Both. There are two different ways I write books. One is the long gestation book, the book built off of themes I’ve been thinking of for years. I first wrote Dalinar (by a different name back then) in a story when I was a teenager. Same for Hoid. I wasn’t…