One reader emailed me, noticing that the A Memory of Light progress bar has been zipping up quite quickly lately. They were wondering if I’d hit a section where Mr. Jordan had done more writing. (I can’t find the actual email right now, it’s buried in the inbox.) The answer, my astute reader, is yes. I’ve hit a section where Mr. Jordan did more work before he passed away than he did on other sections. Much of it here is in outline form or dictation form, and so I’m having to do a lot of the physical construction of the chapters, but having a detailed outline makes the process move much more quickly. That’s part of why I felt I could leave 20% to be done in December and still feel I could meet my self-imposed deadline.
We’re getting much, much closer to my goal, by the way. Over 350k done so far, with less than 50k to go. Another reason it’s going to well is that I was forced to spend much of the last two months doing other things. I still got some writing done, as you probably saw with the progress bar updates, but with all of the traveling I did, I had to work hard to simply get the 10k minimum goal I set for myself in a week. Now that I’m back, I’m eager to get back to work.
This is how it often happens with me. I started writing books because . . . well, I like writing books. It’s what I love to do, and those who know me will tell you that I’d probably spend sixteen hours a day working on my books if life would let me. October/November is always hard for me, since the touring keeps me from writing. It’s great to tour and meet the readers, and I think it’s an important part of the writing business. It helps keep me grounded and in touch with those who read my works. If I DID spend sixteen hours a day writing, with no contact with the world around me, I think my writing would become more and more insular and less relatable. (Pemberly and Limebaby’s jobs, in part, are to constantly remind me that there are things to write ABOUT by making me get out of my basement and experience them.)
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.