Well, in terms of doing what feels right, your creative output since Elantris was published in 2005 has been very high, including not only seven novels in your own right but also completing Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time, with a two further books published in that series. So I have to ask: how do you do it? (And can I bottle the formula?!)
One of the things that you have to remember is that I wrote Elantris back in 2000, so I have a much bigger head start than it looks like. I sold Elantris in 2003, and had all of 2003 up through a big part of 2006 to write the Mistborn trilogy before the first book of that came out. So what you’re seeing is my big head start that I had by having that book already done, then launching right into the trilogy.
I don’t think I write faster than any other fantasy writers, but I do write a lot. I love to do it; I spend a lot of time doing it, and it’s one of my favorite things to do, to tell these stories. So if you want to bottle it, all you really do is spend ten hours a day writing, and boom, you’ve got it.
But it does look more impressive than it really is, because I have those extra years. A lot of the years where I had two books come out, I had written one much earlier and the other I wrote the year before. My popularity has made my publishers start increasing the publication schedule of some of my books, so you get overlap—a book I wrote long before and then a book I’ve recently turned in come out at the same time, because when I turn in the new book they want to publish it as soon as I can. So that’s why this year, for instance, we only have one book— The Alloy of Law —and it’s a very short book. That’s because the publication schedule finally caught up to me.
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