And thought.

It took me a long while to think of any quotes at all from the book. Which seems odd to me, as I’ve spent the better part of the last year revising it.

For some reason, this isn’t a problem with The Name of the Wind. I have to know a hundred little quotable bits from that book. I can probably do a dozen off the top of my head right now.

There’s  the classic ones:

“It was the patient, cut-flower sound of a man who is waiting to die.”

“You may have heard of me.”

Kvothe obviously has a bunch of good lines, as he’s not only the protagonist, but the narrator for most of the book as well:

“The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.”

“We are more than the parts that form us.”

“Metal rusts, music lasts forever.”

A few from Bast:

“We all become what we pretend to be.”

“You are not wise enough to fear me as I should be feared.”

“You do not know the first note of the music that moves me.”

A few from Elodin:

“Blue! Blue! Blue!”

“You lack the requisite spine and testicular fortitude to study under me.”

“Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.”

And from some of the supporting characters:

“Yes I am, isn’t it wonderful?”

“All stories are true.”

“A poet is a musician who can’t sing.”

I could go on and on….

Despite this, I have a hard time thinking of The Wise Man’s Fear in terms of quotes. I think it might be because I’ve been focusing on it in terms of plot, character development, story arcs, etc etc. Not in terms of tidy little quotable soundbites.

Or maybe it’s just that The Wise Man’s Fear isn’t as quotable is The Name of the Wind.

So I’m curious, do y’all have some favorite quotes from The Wise Man’s Fear?

And since I’m asking, I wouldn’t mind knowing what some of your favorite quotes are from The Name of the Wind, too….

If so, would you mind posting them in the comments below?

Curiously yours,

pat

P.S. Also, a little attribution wouldn’t hurt. By which I mean it would be nice if you mentioned which book your quote was from, and who exactly said it….

I had no such thing. Nor did I really have any desire to write one. Not only do those brief narrative summaries always bore me to death, but I suck at summarizing my own book. My best advice, of course, is that if you really can’t remember what happened in book one, you should probably re-read it. Most of what’s in there is pretty important to the story, y’know. I put it all in there for a reason…

Still, a lot of people were asking. So I got together with Nathan Taylor and we did…

Well, just have a look. You can see for yourself what we did:

There you go folks. Share and Enjoy.

pat

Nate is the guy who illustrated The Adventures of the Princess and Mr. Whiffle. He’s also the one who did the Kvothe Online comic I put up on the blog a while back.

I thought he might have sent me some of the sketches for an upcoming project we’re working on. Or maybe the original art for the Kvothe Online comic.

But what I found inside was treasure of an entirely different sort.

You see, Nate is one of the few people that read The Name of the Wind long before it was ever in print. I met him when I was in grad school back in 2000.

Even rarer, Nate is one of the people who has role-played in my world. I’ve run a few games over the years.

He’s also one of the people I recently trusted to read a beta version of book two and give me some feedback on it.

That means Nate knows all kinds of things about the world that other people don’t. Nate knows all manner of secrets.

This is what he sent me:

When I unrolled the poster, I laughed. It was a big evil-mastermind kind of laugh. Because once again Nate has managed to ring the bell beyond all reasonable expectation. This is the perfect depiction of the Amyr. It fills me with a dark and terrible joy….

In other news, for those of you who would like a small, pretty-much spoiler-free peek at a piece of book two, you can find a small scene over here.

Share and Enjoy,

pat

But first I need to you take a look at this:

That’s a screenshot of the product details on the Amazon page for The Wise Man’s Fear.

It doesn’t look like a lot at first, but there’s a cool piece of info there.

No, I’m not referring to the mammoth listing of 1008 pages. (Which isn’t true, anyway. The book is actually a mere 992 pages.)

Neither am I attempting to draw your attention to the fact that it’s coming out on March 1st. (Which is pretty cool in its own right.)

No. I’m referring to that bit at the bottom. Where it points out that right now, the sales rank of The Wise Man’s Fear is #8.

That means out of all the books on Amazon right now, only seven other books are doing better than mine.

Here’s a picture of Amazon’s top 10 list:

Yeah! Suck it, Rumsfeld! And you up there! Yeah you, arty-looking book with the parasol! I’m coming for you next!

Okay. Enough of that. Now some serious business.

Today I was hoping to post up the FAQ that would answer (most) everyone’s questions about the upcoming tour.

Unfortunately, on Monday I was brought low by a bout of food poisoning. I won’t trouble you with the details. But suffice to say that I was brought very low. Very. VENI VIDI VOMI.

So today, I’m just going to give one urgent update and one strong piece of advice.

The Urgent Update:

If you’re planning on attending my reading in San Francisco on March 3rd, you’ll want to e-mail them right away and reserve your seat.

You need to drop an e-mail to March32011@gmail.com telling them you’d like to attend. Give your full name. They’ll bounce you back an e-mail confirming that you’ll be able to get inside, and that e-mail will effectively serve as your ticket to get in the door.

Now if you don’t really care about the reading and all you really want is to get your book signed, you don’t need to drop them an e-mail. In that case, you can just show up the address around 9:00 instead of 7:00. Borderlands bookstore will be there at the theater, selling books, and I’ll be there, signing them. No ticket required.

The Strong Piece of Advice:

A lot of people have e-mailed me, asking if there are any particular rules for attending my signings. They wonder if they need tickets to attend, or if they need to call ahead to the bookstores to make sure there will be X copies available for them when they show up.

Here’s the simple answer. I honestly don’t know. Each bookstore does things a little differently.

I do know three things though.

1. Generally speaking, it’s considered polite to buy a book at the place that’s hosting the event.

2. Generally speaking, bookstores love it when people pre-order books.

3. It’s probably safer to call the store and see what their plans are for the signing, rather than be caught by surprise the day of the event.

So here’s my advice.

If you go over here to the Tour Page, you’ll see I’ve added phone numbers for all the bookstores on the tour.

So, if you’re planning on driving three hours to come to my signing in City X, you might want to give them a ring and make sure you don’t need to reserve a seat first. Even if you know you’ll be able to get a seat, it might not hurt to call and see if they’ll reserve you a book.

That way, not only will you have a better idea what to expect when you show up to the bookstore. But depending on how many call to ask about the event, the bookstore will have a better idea of what to expect in terms of attendance.

You see? Everyone wins.

Just in case you missed it, here’s the link to the tour page with the phone numbers again.

Share and Enjoy,

pat

Much to my relief, he still recognized me. We hung out in the airport for a while, catching up on all the news. He poked at my shoes and said, “boots.” Then tugged up my pantleg, found my leg, and told me it was there. I was relieved.

Then we went for a walk. He informed me that the baggage carousel was a “vroom,” and I had to agree.

He also let me know that clocks are still the in thing. That’s reassuring to me, as I was worried the fashion might have changed while I was gone. But no, he continues to point whenever he sees one, announcing to everyone who cares to listen that there is a clock. I agree to this as well, even if that particular clock happens to be, say, a thermometer.

There is an art to conversation, you see, and part of that art is the ability to occasionally let a trifling difference of opinion slide by without making a federal case out of it.

So he says, “Clock,” and I think, Okay. Fair enough. I see your point.

“Clock,” I agree.

At some point Sarah asks me if I’m crying, and I tell her that no, in fact I’m weeping, thank you very much. Because weeping is slightly more dignified, as it’s derived from the Old English wepan shedding of tears, not the the sissy Old French crier which implies a wailing noise.

Oot says, “up,” and I pick him up. Then he pushes my nose and says, “beep.” It’s impossible to explain how cute this is. Then he pushes his own nose, which is exponentially cuter.

After dinner and more hanging out with Sarah and Oot, I slept from 9:00 PM until 4:00 AM. Then, after a little e-mail, I decided that getting a full eight hour’s rest was so much fun that I might as well do it again, so I went to bed and slept from 8:00 AM until 3:00 PM.

In brief, it’s good to be home.

I’m well aware that Wednesday’s picture of The Wise Man’s Fear rather resembled a grainy photo of bigfoot. I wasn’t being coy, it’s just that I was using the camera on my little netbook. Functional, but not elegant by any means….

Here’s what it really looks like.

Strangely enough, the book is just about the same size as The Name of the Wind, but The Wise Man’s Fear has 994 pages, compared to Name’s measly 662. From what I understand, they did this using some manner of tesseract. Or perhaps through the sacrifice of a black she-goat. Or thinner paper. Whatever the source technology, the result is that The Wise Man’s Fear is feels really solid. As if each revision I did somehow increased the gravitational density of the book.

Have I said that it’s pleasing to hold? It is. It very is.

Back in July when I was out at Comic Con, I did an interview with Shawn Speakman. (He’s the lovely gent that’s selling signed versions of The Wise Man’s Fear for those of you that can’t make it to a signing.)

Anyway, Shawn recently posted it up on Suvudu, so I thought I’d share it around for those of you who might be interested….

We chat about a bunch of things, and at the end of the video I answer a bunch of questions that readers sent in.

Honestly? I can’t remember a damn thing I said, as at that point in the convention I was in a fugue state brought about my overexposure to cool people, catgirls, and caffeine.

Share and enjoy….

pat

I’ve been away from home for about a week. I’ve gone from a booksigning to a convention, then off to my publisher to do some promotional stuff for book two.

While I was out here, guess what I got to see for the first time?

This is it folks. The real thing. One of the first copies of The Wise Man’s Fear to come off the press. The first one I’ve ever held.

It’s a gorgeous book. It’s heavier than The Name of the Wind. The paper feels good against my fingers.

Needless to say, I’m fond of it…

Tomorrow I’m flying home. It’s nice to see the book, but tomorrow I’m really looking forward to seeing Oot again.

More soon,

pat

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

• “Do you need another Beta Reader? I’d be happy to help….”

• “I read on one of your latest blogs something about beta readers. I had no clue there was such a thing, but now I know about it I want to be one.”

• “I think beta-reading sounds like the best job in the world–next to testing the softness of puppy-tummy-fur with one’s face all day.”

People have given many credentials and uttered many a plaintive plea. There have even been blatant attempts at bribery. People have offered me cash, computers, and promises of their undying love. About the only thing people didn’t offer is livestock and sexually explicit pictures of themselves.

I should have seen it coming, but honestly, I didn’t.

I know a lot of people would love to help me out by giving a beta read…

Wait, that’s not entirely true, is it?

What I meant to say is that a lot of people would love to read an early copy of the book, and, largely by coincidence, help me out with a beta read.

But I just can’t feel good about it. ** [See edit below.]

• “I’d like to volunteer.  I know there is probably some precautions you have to take to make sure it’s not leaked, but I’ll do whatever you need, sign a contract, send in a testicle, mail in a kid for collateral, whatever… seriously though I can keep my mouth shut.”

Ultimately, this strikes at the heart of the issue.

Back when I was working on The Name of the Wind, I would give a copy of the book to anyone who even hinted they wanted to read it.

Getting other people’s feedback on the book is a key element of my revision process. You see, I’ve read this book so many times in so many versions, that I need an external view of it. A triangulation point, if you will…

But these days, I can’t just hand it out all higgledy piggledy. Things are more complicated. These days I have to worry about people leaking early, crappy versions of the book onto the net months before the pub date.

I know, deep in my heart of hearts, that most people would never dream of doing such a thing. But all it takes is one jackass….

And yeah, I have a non-disclosure form. Everyone signs it before they get the book. Even Sarah signed it.

It’s a vicious fucking thing that goes something like this:

You, by signing below, agree that you’ll do everything in your power to protect this manuscript and keep its contents secret. If you fail in this, and are a big chatty Cathy about it, I, Patrick Rothfuss, will fuck you up.

I will do this on all possible levels: financially, socially, physically, and spiritually.

If you lend it to your girlfriend who leaves it on the bus and then some jackhole finds it and it ends up on the internet, I will de-corn your cob. Seriously. Your entire cob. Every single kernel of corn. I am not even fucking kidding….

It goes on like that for some time. It is so terrifying that one of my friends said he didn’t feel comfortable leaving the house with his copy of the book.

But really, the non-disclosure form isn’t going to help. If the book gets leaked, I’ll be pissed forever, and suing some daft bastard into the ground won’t fix that.

• “Do i have to invade a small nation? Do I have to sing show tunes in Times Square? Or is it just one of those “inner sanctum of friends” kind of thing?”

Ultimately, yeah. At this point it is. I have to know you personally, so I can trust you. It’s also important for me to know you because that helps me put your comments in context.

The other problem is that for me to really get the most out of a beta reader, I like to be able to sit down with them over coffee and chat about the book. I like to be able to leaf through the manuscript, ask them questions about their comments, and pick their brains about certain key issues. And seeing how most of you don’t live here in Stevens Point, that’s kinda hard.

So this blog is to say thanks to everyone who offered to help. I’d love to be able to take you up on your offers, but I’m afraid I’ll have to pass.

More soon,

pat

** Edit – May 18th

When I looked at the comments today, I was surprised to see people offering hugs of consolation, and giving me support, and telling me not to let the messages get me down.

This was kind of a surprise to me, as the messages I got from people asking to be beta readers were, by and large, lovely, considerate, flattering things.

So I re-read the blog and found the problem. It’s the following line:

“But I just can’t feel good about it.”

What we have here is a classic case of unspecific pronoun. It seems like I’m saying that I can’t feel good about all the people asking to read book two. But that’s not the case. I’m cool with that. As I’ve said, it’s really rather flattering, and I wish I could take people up on their offers. Because, as I’ve said, I love feedback.

That sentence should read, “But I just can’t feel good about handing out copies of book two to strangers.”

This, my friends, is why I do a lot of revisions. One misused pronoun and the entire emphasis of a piece of writing gets fucked up.

Just wanted to clarify.

Love,

pat

It’s the third draft she’s read, but it’s the first one I’ve really had any confidence in. The first one was pure crap. The second one was mostly complete but still pretty shaky in parts.

This draft was good. I’m verging on being proud of it. It still has a few problems, but they’re manageable problems.  They’re problems I can percieve and get my head around, and that means they’re problems I can solve.

So Betsy got back to me with her feedback on the manuscript: a list of 27 things she felt needed attention in the book, arranged in nicely worded bullet points. (The formatting was at my request. I’m fond of bullet points.)

Some of her 27 points are small things. Some are bigger issues. We agree about most of them. Two or three will require a bit of negotiation.

It’s really not a long list, especially when you consider that my own list of things-that-need-fixing-in-book-two currently stands at about 50 or 60 items.

Every time I sit down to work on the book, I try to resolve a few of those issues. Sometimes I fix something and cross it off the list. Other times, a beta reader will bring something to my attention and I add it to the list. As I work, sometimes new problems occur to me, and I add those to the list as well. Sometimes I fix something, and that causes a new problem. So I cross something off and add something at the same time.

It’s kinda like trying to iron all the wrinkles out of a shirt. A huge, living, n-dimentional shirt.

As an example: tonight I worked on the book for about 9 hours. I crossed off four things on my list and added six things. But most of those six things are small, while two of the things I fixed were moderately big and complicated. So it was a good day’s work. (Unfortunately, because one problem tangled me up for four hours, I didn’t get home until 1:30 AM, which means I didn’t get to say goodnight to Oot, which sucks.)

Anyway, earlier today I talked on the phone with my editor about the book. We talked about her 27 points.

My editor asked me if I could have the book done by September.

I thought about it. I thought about her 27 points and my ever-changing 50-60 points. I thought about who I can still use as beta readers, and how many drafts I’ll be able go through in four months. I thought about how many times I will personally be able to read the book in four months.

I said I was sure I could finish it by September.

She asked me if I was sure. Really sure.

I thought about it. Back in 2007, I was sure I’d have the book done by 2008. But I was hugely ignorant and optimistic back then. So I was dead fucking wrong. That caused a lot of grief.

I told her I was really sure I could have it finished by September.

Come hell or high water? She asked me.

Come hell or high water, I said.

So we agreed that I’d have the book finished by September. It was nice. It made us both happy.

So that’s part of the news, that I’ll be finished writing The Wise Man’s Fear by September.

But here’s the rest of the news: that means that the book can’t come out until March of 2011.

Why? Well, for a bunch of reasons. Mostly because there are a lot of things that have to happen before a mass of text becomes a printed book on a shelf. It needs to be copyedited. The edits need to be confirmed.  It needs to be proofed, checked for consistency, fiddled with. Fonts need to be chosen. It needs to go through layout. Then it needs to be proofed again. Marketing needs to happen. It needs to be sent to reviewers, and the reviewers need to have time to read it before they write the reviews. It needs to be put into catalogs of to-be-published-books so people who run bookstores can learn about it and order copies for their stores. It needs to be printed, boxed, warehoused, shipped. We need to sacrifice a black she-goat and pray to strange and terrible gods. Then we need to proofread again.

A lot of these steps are going to take longer than normal because my book is 2-3 times longer than most ordinary novels. Other things are going to take longer because this book is kinda important to a lot of people, and we want to make sure everything gets done just right.

The simple truth of the matter is this: that’s just the way it is. I wish it could be sooner, and I’m guessing many of you feel the same. Believe it or not, if the publisher could wave a magic wand and make that happen, they would. (Remember, they don’t make money on the book until they can sell it.)

But there’s no way the book can come out earlier and still have it be the best book possible.

So that’s what happened today: I found out the publication date for The Wise Man’s Fear – March 1st 2011.

Honestly, it would be way easier for me to sit on this information for a while. I could wait until the date was a little closer, thereby avoid some of the great wailing and gnashing of teeth I expect will follow this announcement. That shit brings me no joy. It damages my calm and makes it harder for me to write.

But I promised y’all I would pass along the *real* publication date as soon as I knew it. So that’s what I’m doing.

March 1st 2011.

pat

So today I was going to pass along some news about the book in a blog titled, “Why I don’t talk about Book Two.”

Here’s the news: I’ve finally finished my latest draft of The Wise Man’s Fear.

Oot is shown in order to give a sense of scale. And because my baby is frikkin adorable.

So before we all go leaping to a bunch of unfounded and erroneous conclusions, let’s talk about a few things.

Is this going too fast for anyone?

The book is a big step closer to being done.

The book is way better than it was before. That last draft of the book was okay. It had some great parts, some parts that were “meh” and some that were “huh?” Overall, it averaged out to about 70 percent awesome.

Then, depending on how much work we think it needs. We put it into the production schedule. That means we’ll have a publication date. Which I will tell you. On the blog. With words.

But first, I get to relax. I’ve been working on this fucker nonstop for months. And now, finally, I get to take a break while I wait for Betsy’s feedback.

pat