Categories: Warbreaker A Memory of LightWarbreaker 6.0 is done! I worked on it a good ten hours today, and managed to push through to the ending. I'm too tired right now to post it, but I'll get it up early next week. The revision took a little longer than I would have wanted--almost three weeks--but it feels very good to have it done and off the plate. That leaves only a couple of impending time-stealers from AMOL. I'll need to do draft work on Alcatraz Three sometime in September, though that should be VERY quick. (It's one fifth the size of Warbreaker, and there is a lot less to do on it.) I'll also need to do the copyedit for Warbreaker; that should come sometime in November, and should take me about a week. Other than that, there are two convention visits (Worldcon and Dragon*con) and the book tour in October that will be bumps in the road. However, I'm confident that I can get a good chunk more written before Worldcon even arrives. Next on the plate is to do a couple solid drafts on the 25% of AMOL which I've finished. I need to get it into a state that Harriet can look at and send it too her as soon as possible, as this chunk threatens to be the one that could need the most revisions. How well she thinks I did on these pages will be a very good barometer of how much draft work I'll have to do on the entire book once it's complete. However, I do intend to divide my time between that revision and--occasionally--dipping into writing some new words. So the percentage bar should start moving again next week, if slowly at first while I spend a lot of time drafting.

Last night I finished a major plot arc of A MEMORY OF LIGHT. This is important, since it's one of the big pieces that Mr. Jordan didn't write himself. (I figured that I would write this chunk early, rather than one of the ones that had a lot of work done on it already. That way, if I did a terrible job, there would be plenty of time for Harriet to set me straight regarding it.) I can't tell you who or what it details, but it turned out really well. I wish I could say more, but...well...I'm also happy that I can't. I'm very open with the projects I work on; that is my style. However, one of the things about the Wheel of Time has always been that Mr. Jordan releases very little information about upcoming books. That adds to the mystery and the tension, and is part of the Wheel of Time process. I will promise you, though, that just like Mr. Jordan said...there are dead mules in the prologue.So why even mention this? Well, just to let you know that the book IS continuing. It's going to be awesome. (Also, you should note that I'm at a conference this next week, and will be focusing on revising this chunk of AMOL and doing a new draft of Warbreaker. So, the progress ticker may stall for a week or two. It doesn't factor in editing or revising, only rough drafting.)Also, I want to leave a note for all of you who wrote me about Lightsong and Warbreaker over the last couple of days. It has been extremely helpful, and while I can't write an individual response to every one of you, I can leave a very large--and humbled--thank you here. So far, this project has been very fulfilling and successful. I don't know if that will help or hurt sales, but it has been useful in ways that sales can never indicate.

I'm sorry to be so sparse with the posting this week. If you've been following the progress bar, you might have noticed that AMoL jumped up one percent each day for the first three days of the week. I've been hitting the drafting hard, as I want to get a large chunk done before Worldcon distracts me in two weeks. I've been working on mostly material that Mr. Jordan left behind, which is the larger reason why I've been able to move so quickly. There's still a lot to do on many of these sections he wrote, however. Some are in outline form, others were dictated in an almost 'screenplay' format without anything other than dialogue. Some others are complete as-is, and I can just drop them into the document without changes.Overall, however, what has been left behind has allowed let me move at about double speed. We'll see if I can keep it up for another few days or so, as it would be nice to be at the 1/3rd mark by the end of the week. (Though that would take another 12k in another three days. Whew!)

A GiftCategories: A Memory of Light Wheel of TimeRecently, I've been reading interviews that Mr. Jordan did before he died. (Thank you to those who have sent these to me.) I had already read some of the questions and answers, but others were fresh to me. I'm very interested in his comments as I want to make extra certain I don't miss-step and contradict anything he said in an interview, even if that information didn't appear in the books or the notes for the final volume.I've found a lot of his answers very interesting. Among the more tragic are the ones that came when people asked him what would happen to his series if he died before it was finished. It kind of twists my heart a little bit each time I read a question like that, knowing what eventually happened.In response to most of these situations, Mr. Jordan was joking and whimsical. Common responses were along the lines of "You'd better hope that doesn't happen, otherwise you'll never get to see that last ending I've been planning all these years!" He often indicated that he'd leave instructions to have all of his notes burned and his disc drives wiped, then reformatted six or seven times so that nobody would ever know how the story came out.Humorous tone set aside, I see something in these responses. Inside, I think the concept of anyone else working on the Wheel of Time was very painful for Mr. Jordan. I really think that early on, he was against the idea of anyone else finishing the last book, should he die.However, Harriet has talked to me of the last days before his death, and I also have transcripts of the final dictations he made. Transcripts that talk about what should happen, how people should end up, and how the ending should be written. The tone of these writings and of what Harriet talked about is very different from his earlier comments. It's humbling to see how he changed, instead becoming determined--insistent, even--that the last book be finished after he passed away. Harriet mentioned to me that he didn't want to select someone himself. That thought was too hard for him. I can understand why.In the end, I see this as his last gift to all of us. As an artist, I can completely understand why he wouldn't want someone else to work on his world and his books. And if he had actually decided to leave instructions for the final book not to be completed, I am sure--very sure--that Harriet would have seen to it that his will was followed. But that wasn't what he decided. He demanded that this book be written. Even though I know that the idea brought him pain.This was his final sacrifice and gift for you all--the decision to give us the last scenes and instructions for the book, rather than taking that knowledge to the grave with him. From what I've heard of the last months of his life, I know that he spent a surprising amount of time giving dictations, telling about places that nobody else knew existed, and explaining how the characters were to end up.There are a fair number of people who are against this project happening in any form. They don't make up the bulk of the fan community; in fact, they seem like a very, very small percentage. There are others who aren't opposed to the book being finished in general, but who are opposed to me specifically working on it--though this group is even smaller than the first. Either way, I can sincerely understand both complaints. It seems to me that the Robert Jordan of five years ago would have been in the first group himself!I have repeatedly acknowledged that I can't replace him. But he wanted this book done, and I'm increasingly confident that I'm the best choice for this project. There are plenty of fantasy authors out there who are better writers than I am--George Martin, Tad Williams, Neil Gaiman , and Robin Hobb all come to mind, among others--but I don't know of another author publishing in fantasy right now who has been as close to these books and these characters as I have been over the last eighteen years.Knowing that Mr. Jordan was distressed about the concept of anyone finishing the books makes me even more determined to write a book that he would have been--that he will be--proud of. He loved you all very much. Those who complained about the time he took to finish books, or the length of the series, did not know the man at all. He did not write this series to the length he did because of money; he did not 'artificially inflate' the Wheel of Time because of any external pressures. He wrote this series the way he did because he loved it, and because he knew that we loved it.And I think that's why he chose to have this novel completed. In the end, your good was more important to him than his own good. What grander summary could be made of a man's life than that?This book is going to be beautiful. I promise you that.

Humorous tone set aside, I see something in these responses. Inside, I think the concept of anyone else working on the Wheel of Time was very painful for Mr. Jordan. I really think that early on, he was against the idea of anyone else finishing the last book, should he die.