Oh yeah, and I had similar feelings when I got the X-Wing books. What I’d like you to talk about if you can is, what was the experience like having gone through the books as a fan and then having to go back through as a writer, now using this as core material? What were the changes that went on and the things that went on in your head as you were suddenly approaching this not as fun and games any more, but as actual work?
Right. Yeah, I did a read through of the entire series right after I was offered the project. The first thing I did was sit down with my notebook to re-read everything. And those were some of the strangest months of my life. It took me three months to re-read, taking notes, because I was making that reconciliation. I was looking at it now as a writer. And in one way, I was trying to make the decision at that point how much I was going to try to imitate Robert Jordan’s style. You know, I had looked at Robert Jordan through the eyes of a writer before. I’d looked at his work because I was a big fan, and I was wanting to write myself, and so I spent time analyzing his work. But now, as a professional writer, I looked at it very differently. And looking at this, I had to decide: am I going to try to imitate his voice? How can I make a book that I write feel like a Wheel of Time book, while at the same time not sounding like a parody of Robert Jordan? How can I do this? That was a big aspect of it. But another aspect of it was kind of what you mentioned there, where I was reading through, and I was having to approach it in a completely different tack. To give an example of this, there were many times when I was reading along, and that fan inside me would say, ‘oh I wish this would happen.’ And then I would stop, and I would say, ‘well, I can make that happen if I want it to.’
(laughter) Exactly.
Right. But then the question becomes, is it appropriate in the story? Is it gonna make a better story? Just because the fan wants it, is it right to do? And so, working on this book, I have to say, it’s been one of the hardest experiences in my life, working on this trilogy, and one of the most rewarding. And it’s taught me so much. I mean, there are two thousand named characters in the Wheel of Time with whom I have to be intimately familiar. I have to keep track of all of this stuff, and all of these plot lines. There are several dozen different plot lines. And these are not small books—400,000 word novels, several of them are. And so, keeping all of this in the air and becoming essentially an expert on all of it has taught me a great deal about plotting as an epic fantasy writer. It’s, I think, just made me a better writer overall.
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