So just a couple minutes ago, I was reading through my fanmail and I got to the following letter.
Mr. Rothfuss,
I don’t know how to go about this, so I will just explain: I write a fictional blog set in the zombie apocalypse, and today in my post I referenced you… Since this is a work of fiction I have tried to get permission from any person I mention by name, and I wanted to make sure that this is alright with you. If you would like to read the entry, here’s the link.
If you would like me to edit you out, please let me know, and I will do so immediately.
I am a HUGE fan, by the way. I have purchased no fewer than four hardback copies of The Name of the Wind, and two paperbacks. People love them as gifts.
Looking forward to Wise Man’s Fear.
Joshua
My first thought was that Joshua was terribly polite. So I hopped over and checked out the link to make sure he didn’t have me dancing around in a leopard-print unitard or anything like that. Then, when I saw that I wasn’t, I dropped him an e-mail telling him it’s all cool.
My second thought was that while he didn’t ask me a question, there’s definitely one implied in his post.
Specifically: If there was a zombie apocalypse, and society collapsed, would I still keep working on my books?
It’s a good question. And after thinking about it, I’m a little surprised to say yes. I would.
The reason this is surprising to me is that I’m at the end of a long, LONG, jag of revisions.
How can I put this in perspective for you…?
How about this: I’m assuming most of you have written papers for school. And, because I assume most of you are kinda like me, I’m guessing you put off writing those papers until the night before they were due. (Or, in the case of more involved college research papers, you put them off until the weekend before they were due.)
So let’s go back and remember those long, desperate nights of paper-writing together: It’s late at night. You’re exhausted. You are absolutely fucking sick of the paper because you’ve been banging away on it for hours and hours.
Then you finally finish it. Relief. You are free. You can rest.
But then you think to yourself, “I should really read through it one more time to catch any last minute mistakes.” Because while you might be a procrastinator, that doesn’t mean you’re an idiot.
So you start to read even though you’re weary. Even though you hate your paper so much that re-reading it is like chewing sand. You read it one last time even though the topic you’re writing about fills you with such loathing that you could just shit yourself with rage.
And, as you read it one last time, you find a handful of mistakes that would have made you look like an absolute fuckwit. So you’re glad you put in the effort. But still, it was pretty excruciating.
Are we unified in our shared experience? Do you remember what that last read-through is like?
I did that read-through of the book six months ago.
And I am still working on the book.
Now in the interest of complete honesty, I should mention that I took a bit of a break after that sick-to-fucking-death read-through.
And I don’t mean to imply that every minute is excruciating. Sometimes I read a bit I’d forgotten about, and I think, “Wow, that’s really good.” Sometimes when I finally fix a long-standing problem (like how to plausibly arrange events so Bast, Ambrose, and Elodin can have a threeway) it feels great.
But the fact is that working on revisions is just that: work. What’s more, it’s work I’ve been doing it every day for months and months. I haven’t seen a movie since I caught Sherlock Holmes in the theater.
No. Wait. That’s not true. In a fit of madness I rented Transformers II about five months ago. While I was watching it, I remember thinking, “Huh? This makes no sense. Has it been so long since I watched a movie that I can’t understand them anymore?”
But no. It was just a horrendous pile of shit. Someone deserves to be punched in the neck for that movie.
Wait. What was I talking about again? Oh yeah. Revisions.
My point is that I’ve been doing revisions when I’ve really wanted to be doing other things. Like play with my baby, or re-watch Firefly, or go outside on the rare, jewel-like days when the weather here in Wisconsin isn’t like living in the crack of Satan’s ass.
Simply said, as I’ve mentioned before, everybody hates their job sometimes.
That’s why I was surprised when I asked myself that question. It only took me a few seconds to realize the answer: Yes.
Yes. If society collapsed, I would keep working on the books. I’d do it even if I knew they’d never be published.
And you know what? I’d still be every bit as obsessive about my revision as I am now. The only difference would be that my timetable would be more relaxed, and I’d probably have to work a little harder to find beta readers….
This was actually a rather nice revelation for me. It’s easy to focus on the fact that I *have* to work on the book. That line of thinking can get overwhelming for me sometimes. There’s a lot of pressure. A lot of stress.
It’s nice to remember that I also *want* to work on the book. It’s nice to remember that I love telling this story and that I’m lucky to have the freedom to revise obsessively, as is my nature.
But for all that, I have to say, I’m going to be really glad when it’s finished and I can move on….
pat
Book Two and a Reading in Duluth
Okay. In keeping with my tradition of slapdash scheduling. I’m going to be doing a reading/signing/Q&A session next week up in Duluth. It’s at the local Barnes and Noble on Tuesday the 12th at 7:00.
More details are over on the tour page. I also created a facebook event, if you want to use that to invite your friends without having to go to all the unpleasant work of actually talking to them.
If y’all would help spread the word a bit, I’d appreciate it. I hate doing these things on such short notice, but I only found out last week that I’d be up in the Duluth area.
And now, a piece of fanmail:
Dear Mr. Rothfuss,
As you are no doubt aware, in your April 28th blog post, you mentioned that the manuscript would be done by September.
I’m guessing you are furiously trying to put the finishing touches on the manuscript, but us fans would love an update about how the work is going. I really enjoyed your August 16th post about what revision work actually entails, and always enjoy getting a view of what your day to day work is like.
Thanks for updating the blog so frequently, it makes the waiting a lot easier, and we love hearing from you.
-Asa
Asa,
I did actually get the manuscript to my editor on schedule. She’s probably reading it even as we speak. Um. Type. Or rather, as you read what I have typed. In the past.
You know what I mean.
That means I get a little bit of a vacation while I’m waiting to hear back from her. Or rather, it means that I would get a bit of a vacation if I wasn’t still obsessively tinkering with the book.
Yesterday, for example, I re-read 87 pages of book two.
(Note that these pages aren’t the length of a paperback page or a manuscript page. They’re my own page layout that I use for editing.)
Anyway, I spend yesterday re-reading these 87 pages of the book. As I read, I try to winnow out the extra verbiage, making the book quicker and easier to read. My philosophy is that if I take out everything that is merely meh, all that’s left will be the parts that are really super-wow. That means that the book will be, in the parlance of our time, good.
Sometimes while I was reading I would get an idea for a different part of the book, and I’d skip off to another part of the book to make the change. Sometimes I would make a change that necessitated making a few other changes throughout the book to maintain consistency.
But mostly I was just word-winnowing.
So yesterday I re-read 87 pages of the book. Pages that I’ve already read at least 100 times. It took 8 hours during the time that is, theoretically, my vacation.
At the end of those 8 hours, the book was 600 words shorter. I hadn’t trimmed a scene. I’m long past that stage. All the chaff scenes were gone months and months ago. These days if I want to tighten up the book, I have to hunt out little bits and phrases. Lines of dialogue that don’t sparkle. Non-essential snippets of description. Single superfluous words.
As I was going home, I wrestled with a familiar thought. Specifically, I wondered if I was insane.
Again, I’d spent an entire day making changes to the book that nobody would ever really notice. And I have to ask myself, is it really worth it?
Then I did the math.
A paperback page holds about 340 words, less if you use a lot of dialogue. (Which I do.) So by trimming 600 words, I’d effectively made my book about two pages shorter.
I’m guessing a quarter million people will read book two. In the US anyway. Last I heard, that’s about how many copies of NOTW have been sold.
That means, taken all together, I’ve spared my readers 500,000 pages of *meh* text.
Let’s assume it takes about a minute for a person to read a page. Roughly.
500,000 minutes = 8333 hours = 347 days.
That means, taken all together, I’ve saved my readers a full year of meh reading. That’s not counting foreign translations, book club versions, and people who read the book multiple times.
When I think of it that way, I guess it doesn’t seem so crazy. Which is good, because I don’t think I could stop being obsessive like this even if I wanted to.
Later all,
pat