Will you publish Robert Jordan’s notes??
As for the notes Mr. Jordan left behind, I’m actually trying to come up with a good way that we can release them. The thing is, I know that he was very nervous about people reading his unfinished writing. He wouldn’t even show a section to Harriet until he’d done ten or twelve drafts! I think it would make him uncomfortable for people to read his notes and unfinished drafts.
But at the same time, I think fans have a right to know what I added to the books, and what I drew from the notes. I’m thinking that we’ll eventually release a companion volume which includes sections of the original notes, with my explanations of why I adapted them as I did. I think this would strike a nice balance.
Of course, Harriet Rigney, as his wife, his editor, and executor of his estate has final say on any project like this.
Were there there a lot of notes or material left by Mr. Jordan to work from?
He left LOTS of notes behind. He wrote complete scenes in places, dictated other scenes, left piles of notes and materials. The prologue was almost all completed by him (that will be split half in this book, half in the next.) The ending scenes were written by him as well. In the middle, there are a lot of scene outlines as well.
That’s not to say there wasn’t A LOT of work to do. The actual number of completed scenes was low, and in some places, there was no direction at all what to do. But his fingerprints are all over this novel. My goal was not to write a Brandon Sanderson book, but a Wheel of Time book. I want this novel (well, these three novels, now) to be his, not mine.
You say there were LOTS of notes. How many is LOTS?
Mr. Jordan left behind notes for the series which, word-length wise, is in EXCESS of the length of the written novels. That was just too much for me to handle. I’ve used Mr. Jordan’s assistants for fetching information from these reserves, and have focused most of my efforts on the notes specifically left for AMOL. The Guide has been very helpful. But mostly, if I need to know something from the notes, I send Maria and Alan searching while I work on the actual prose.