wotwiki

Interview #108: Sydney Independent Theatre Q&A, Entry #19

Question

Are you a very disciplined writer? You must work, for example, between nine and five. How does that fit in with the pressure to complete the series, for example, from publishers?

Robert Jordan

Well I’ve never looked at the page of something more common. That’s simple fact. I get up in the morning, I have breakfast, I go back down the long garden to the carriage house where my study is. And Maria, my chief assistant is in and she will… Phone messages from yesterday mainly that I should maybe call back about. I’ll look at my email and see what I want to answer and what I’m going to ignore. And then I start working, I start writing. And that’s probably… that could be, depending on how late I slept. I could be at work from nine to eleven which is about the time I start writing. About four o’clock in the afternoon I realize that I haven’t stopped for lunch and I’m a bit hungry but it’s too late to stop for lunch now. Cause I’m figuring I’ll knock off at six and go in to eat with Harriet. And sometimes I do and sometimes I forget the time again and I get a phone call saying, “Are you ever coming in?” I look up and realize it’s dark outside and I quickly go into the house. I don’t know whether you call it disciplined or obsessed but there are very few things I’d rather do than write. When I get into the story, I’m really into the story. The creation of it is at that moment the most important thing in the universe. I’ve had windstorms breaking branches and rain hurling things all over the place. The big window beside my desk to this side. Glass sided door, long garden over here, glass front door… And I didn’t know there was a storm. I didn’t know it was raining, I didn’t know there was wind, I didn’t know there was anything…

Contributing

If you are viewing this on github.io, you can see that this site is open source. Please do not try to improve this page. It is auto-generated by a python script. If you have suggestions for improvements, please start a discussion on the github repo or the Discord.