How long did it take you to formulate the Wheel of Time series before you started the first book? Had you had this ruminating in your mind?
Extending back to the first clear thought I had that I can say led into the Wheel of Time was maybe 10 years before I began writing. I’m not saying I knew 10 years before I began writing what it was going to be, or that I was actually on to something that would become the Wheel of Time.
I thought I had a story set in my head, a set of stories, fixed. And when I began writing the Wheel of Time— The Eye of the World in particular—I realized I didn’t have as much of it as clear as I thought I did. There were things that I needed to work on. So The Eye of the World took me four years to write. I guess you could say, in a way, it was about 14 years of development to get the thing set.
Did you ever think it was going to turn into this epic series?
No. The story is the same story that I set out to tell. I knew before I began writing what the story was. There were details of how it worked that I didn’t have fixed that I thought I knew and suddenly realized I didn’t. But, I knew the beginning and the end and the things that I wanted to happen in the middle. I literally could have written the last scene of the last book before I began writing The Eye of the World . The problem has been over-optimism.
In what way?
Well, when I went to the publisher with this at Tor Books and I said, “Look, this isn’t a trilogy that I’m talking about. It’s going to be four or maybe five books.” I said. “It could be six. I don’t think so, but it could be.” And I really believed that. But the over-optimism has been, “How much of the story can I get into one book?”
With every book I start out thinking I can get more of the story into this book than I actually turn out to be able to. I suddenly realize that I have to stop here or I’m going to have to write another thousand pages to really make it fit together. Or I realize that I’m going to have to take some things and do them later or I’m going to write a 2,000-page hardback, which they really would have to sell to people with a shoulder strap.
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