We are both in an odd situation—for different reasons and in different ways, but it’s somewhat similar in that five years ago we were both unknowns, and right now our names tend to come up very frequently when people are talking about fantasy. Looking at Pat Rothfuss, you’re as much of a fantasy superstar to most people as George R. R. Martin is. How does that feel?
Heh. I think there’s probably only a handful of people that think of me as being on the same level as Martin. But I know what you’re talking about.
Mostly it feels weird to me. Good but weird. Mostly weird.
For me, when I go to a forum where people are talking about fantasy, and they’re talking about me, that’s been a surreal experience because just a few years ago I could participate in forum discussions and no one knew who I was, but now the conversations are partially about me. Reconciling that has been an interesting experience for me, and I can only imagine it’s been even more so for you because your career has skyrocketed faster than mine. The Wise Man’s Fear is probably the second most highly anticipated fantasy novel of the near future, right after A Dance with Dragons . How does it make you feel?
That’s easy to answer: Terrified.
That’s another big piece of the reason that book two took so long. I was paralyzed with fear.
It’s like this, if people read your first book and don’t like it very much, that’s heartbreaking, but it provides some real motivation. You think to yourself, “I’ll show them! My next book will be even better!” Then you knuckle down and work your ass off to produce something that will really dazzle them.
But when someone e-mails you and says your book was the best they ever read. Or that they read it with their kid who was sick with leukemia and it brought them closer together. Or they tell you they’re more excited about your upcoming book than their own birthday…
I mean really. How the fuck and I supposed to deal with that? How am I supposed to write anything ever again when the bar gets set so high?
I wondered if that was the case. It is strange for me because you know, we had a similar quick rise to success—I mean, you’ve been around for what? Three or four years? And I’ve been around for five and when I was reading fantasy, when I getting into this genre, it felt to me that most of the writers I’ve been reading have been around forever. Now that’s not true because I was a young kid and what being around forever meant to me then is different from what it really means. But I was reading Anne McCaffrey, and in my perception Anne McCaffrey had been around forever. She’d been writing for twenty years. I’d been reading David Eddings and Terry Brooks and these are people who had been writing for twelve years before I picked up their books. And now my books are doing really well and I’ve only been around for a few years and it feels to me like I don’t have the credibility that I think I should have before I reach this level of recognition, if that makes any sense.
I’m more impressed with people’s longevity in a field and having a long-lasting impact. Someone like George R. R. Martin is hugely impressive to me because he’s been around for forty years in the business. He has slogged away hard and released book after book and edited anthologies and worked in TV, and finally after all of this work he gets this big best-selling series and it’s like, yes! You finally get the recognition you deserve. You are a major inspiration and success story, and you just stuck in there and stuck in there forever. Then you get someone dopey like me and it’s like, whoop-dee-do, you know, my third book hit the New York Times Bestseller List and suddenly I’m hitting number one on the list, and it’s a weird experience because in a way I don’t believe that I deserve it. Though I’m very proud of my writing, I don’t feel I’ve put in the time to deserve the success. I don’t know if that makes any sense or resonates at all.
Yeah. You’re singing my song again. I hit the NYT Bestseller list with my first book. Everyone says, YAY! You’re brilliant! And I have to remind them, No, I just wrote one book. You can’t plot a graph with one point of data. I’m the flavor of the day. If I write two good books, then you can call me a professional writer. Until then, I’m a fluke.
So yeah. I completely know where you’re coming from when you say you feel like you haven’t earned it the same way folks like Martin did. My first book was a success. But it was a success because I got very, very lucky. I got the right agent, then the right publisher. The audience was ready for my sort of book. I was in the right place at the right time.
But that’s not something you can repeat. You can’t rely on luck. That’s where a lot of my stress came from after the first book came out.
How do you deal with it?
That’s easy to answer too: Badly.
For about a year I struggled to get any productive writing done.
Then, slowly, I started to get used to it. It was kinda like the emotional and social equivalent of getting into a really hot bath. At first it felt scalding hot, but now I’ve acclimated to it, and it feels kinda nice. It’s kinda relaxing, in fact.
I also engage in a daily regimen of not taking myself too seriously. My friends help with this, of course.
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