Okay. Your turn. Ask your payback question.
So, when’s book three going to be out? And don’t you already have it written? Because I’ve heard you say before that you already have it written. So what’s the holdup?
Yeah. I’ve heard that one before. That’s actually a pretty reasonable question.
Here’s the deal:
In some ways, I do already have the trilogy written. I wrote all of Kvothe’s story all the way to the end back in 2000.
So yeah. In some ways, the whole trilogy is finished.
But really it depends on what you mean by “Finished.”
Back in 2000, I thought the story was pretty much done. I thought it was awesome. I thought it was ready to be published.
Since then, I’ve learned a lot about writing. A lot. When I recently re-read the third book, I could see huge glaring mistakes that weren’t obvious to me before. That’s a good thing.
The other problem is that the first two books of the series have changed considerably since 2000. I’ve added characters and plotlines. I’ve probably added, 250,000 words worth of new material since then. Back in 2000, Devi wasn’t in the book. Neither was Auri. Neither was the Draccus.
That’s part of what took me so long with book two. I didn’t just have to write a sequel. That would have been hard enough. I had to take a book I’d already written, and re-write it so that it matched up with all the changes I’d made to book one.
I think doing that is harder than starting from scratch. Re-writing the beginning section of The Wise Man’s Fear was really, really hard. But adding a 60,000 word subplot later in the book was really easy, because I wasn’t revising it, I was creating it all fresh.
Book three is going to take a couple years because now I have to integrate all the changes from TWO books when I’m re-writing. Luckily, now I have a better idea how to do that. I’m a much better writer than I was two years ago, and I’m actually looking forward to digging in and starting on the project.
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