Your web site mentions that Elantris was the sixth novel that you had written, yet the first to be published. What do you think it was about Elantris and the Mistborn novels that managed to capture the attention of a publisher in a way that the precluding novels did not?
My first five books were very experimental. I wrote a comedy, a science fiction, a bunch of different types of things trying to figure out what I was good at and what I wanted to do. When I wrote Elantris I knew I wanted it to be an epic fantasy, and I’d had some practice writing in that style. Also, my big hang-up with my earlier works was editing. I’d finish a project and be so excited about going on to the next project that I wouldn’t take the time necessary to make changes. By the time I wrote Elantris I’d learned how to revise, so when I sent it out it was a much more polished product. These two reasons, and the fact that it was a standalone, were what I think made Elantris sell when my earlier stuff did not. Mistborn was actually part of the two-book deal in the contract I got for Elantris , so the publisher bought it sight-unseen. Luckily, they liked it!
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