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In June 2014 I decided to undertake The WOT challenge.

In June 2015 I finished The WOT challenge.

Here is my interview about it with . . . err . . . me.

Q. What’s The WOT challenge?

A. Reading all The Wheel Of Time books back to back.

Q. Is that a trilogy?

A. 5 trilogies.

Q. ???????????????

A. Exactly, 15 books (including prologue). It’s a series of high fantasy novels by the late Robert Jordan (pen name of Oliver Rigney Jr.).  Completed by Brandon Sanderson after Mr Jordan’s passing, it weighs in at a total of around 4.4 million words.

Q. 12 months reading 1 series of books? Was it worth it?

A. Yes.

Q. Will you do it again?

A. At some point – once I can look at someone with a braid in their hair and not think of the Two Rivers’ Womens’ Circle or see a skirt and not think of ‘smoothing it’ or ‘plucking at it’.

Q. Any regrets?

A. – There was a moment in the middle of the series where I wondered whether I had made the right decision. There were other (non swords & sorcery) books that I wanted to read, I was running out of space on my shelves and there are some passages that drag in places (Valan Luca, I’m looking at you…)

But . . .

Those other books weren’t going to go stale. And for every braid pulling, muttonheaded moment in The WOT there were passages that were gripping. For each dip in the middle of the central books, there was a rise towards the end that carried them over to the next. For every man that would never understand a woman and vice versa (Nynaeve, I’m looking at you…) there were moments of ‘how did he (they) come up with that?’ For every ‘good’ character that we lost, there was an equally satisfying comeuppance for the ‘bad’. And some of the sense of humour (Talmanes, I’m looking at you!) and creativity (e.g. the use of ‘Gateways’ in the Last Battle) towards the end is fantastic.

Q. “It’s all been done before/ it’s a rip off of LOTR/ what’s with the bible references/ it’s a black and white cliche/ just look at sentence X as an example of him being a bad writer…”

A. Blah blah woof woof. Yes. Many of the themes have been done before. Most stories have been ‘done before’, most songs have been sung before. Many stories, regardless of the setting, explore similar themes: loss, alienation, hate, revenge, jealousy and so on. In other words, love – feeling, ‘owning’, the lack of, search for or resentment of love. (And possibly also death and the fear of dying and failure, these fears are arguably very similar). Life and living comes down to one thing – love. All these essential elements of any type of story telling through words, sound or picture are present in The WOT.

And for those of you who are pulling out one sentence as an example of Mr Jordan being a ‘bad author’. Count the number of words in that sentence and then work that out as a percentage of the total number of words in the series.

Q. – Enough teenage cod psychology, back to the challenge! Why did you do it?

A. First reason – I hadn’t found time to read the last book (The Memory of Light) after it was published. When I started reading it I had forgotten some of the details. Logical solution: read everything again.

Second reason – I had given up on fantasy novels, I thought I was too old for them. Then George R.R. Martin became an ‘overnight success’. (1) All of a sudden, fantasy was acceptable again. I gave into peer pressure and read Game of Thrones and really enjoyed it. Yes, GOT is more graphic and realistic than many fantasy novels and has so been deemed by some as more ‘grown up’ (2) and so is ok to read. But for me, it was a logical step to read WOT again. Going back to my formative days as a reader (Druss, Belgarion, Sam Vimes and, yes even you, Frodo Baggins, I may be looking at all of you again at some point).

Third reason – why not? (3)

Fourth reason – a friend of mine had just started the challenge and inspired me to do the same.

Q. As a reader what did you get out of it?

A. A lot of enjoyment.

Q. As a rookie author what did you get out of it?

A. The imagination put into the world building (‘Randland’) and the histories are both inspiring and daunting.  As for how the authors managed keep track of the various plots and characters, I have no idea. I have a lot to learn. A lot. Really. Lots…

Q. What was your thought on finishing the series?

A. Is there going to be a sequel?

– X –

1 – I’m being ‘ironical’.

2 –  ‘Adult fantasy novels’ sound very different to ‘grown up fantasy novels.’

3 –  This post is turning out a little more gushing that I planned. WOT is a fantasy series. It’s not everyone’s thing. I get it.

A friend of mine recently made a comment about feedback from beta readers and editors:

“It’s your house, you can paint it what colour you want.”

He’s right. You can do whatever you want with your house. You can paint it in an eyecurdling mix of colours. You can fill it with a smorgasbord of cultural goulash. Go obscure, contemporary, cool, sentimental or just ‘you’. Don’t even clean it! It’s your house.

However, if you want someone to rent or buy your house, or even visit from time to time, you may want to tone it down. If you want people to do more than just poke their head round the door, choose a less deafening combination of colours. If you don’t want your visitors to suddenly remember there’s a nicer place a few doors down, batten down your eccentric urges. People complain they get lost in the corridors? Get rid of the sprawling extension.

If your tastes are a little distinct and you want people to look at, eat, listen to or even read what you are creating, remember that not everyone will appreciate your individuality.

That said, standing by your principles and having faith in what you are doing is admirable. I need to do more of it. If more people ‘walked the walk’, the world would be a better place to live in.

A few of the colour schemes clash something awful.

I’ve built my house. I’m now redecorating it. Again. There are a few draughty windows that need fixing and a couple of leaks. Some of the cracks are now showing through the wall paper.

I’ve found a builder to have a look at it and make suggestions. Hopefully, I’ll soon be able to open the doors to the public. Hopefully, that public will want to come back, with their friends.

As I mentioned in my last post, the feedback is starting to come in from the ‘beta readers’. It’s been an interesting experience, trying to remain objective (and mature) while my babies are torn to pieces in front of me.

“Why are you capitalising a pronoun after speech marks?” He shouted.

Some of the comments are technical, typos and grammar errors which I missed. Some were careless mistakes. Others were things I wasn’t sure of while I was writing the rough draft and just pushed on in order to get the words down. It’s mildly annoying on a level as I was quietly smug about my grammar not being too bad (another bubble burst). But, it’s all part of the learning curve and avoiding these things in future will save time and make the reading smoother.

You say tomato…

There has been good feedback: “very evocative language”, “I like the plot and characters”; and negative: “too much going on”, “too many people”, “it’s a slow burner but now I’m hooked” (i.e. the beginning is boring). Some opinions have been polar opposites; Dr. Swann has been described as an irrelevance by one reader and one of the most rounded characters by another. Some readers prefer short sentences, others long (though to be fair, a few of my sentences seem to have an allergy to full stops).

Subtle is good. Obtuse isn’t.

I’ve had to explain why X happened or Y said Z. Sometimes the reader had missed something, other times the world which is so clear in my head hasn’t reached the page. But the more explaining I had to do with certain passages, the more I realised I hadn’t achieved what I wanted and needed to rework them.

There have been questions over the motives, reasonings and actions of some characters but all in all the overriding message has been “I enjoyed it.”

I was never expecting the story to come back with no concerns or question marks. Nice though it would have been to have someone say ‘It’s perfect, the best thing I’ve ever read!’, I’d’ve been a little suspicious and it wouldn’t have helped.

I’m immensely grateful to the people who have given me feedback and those that are waiting in the wings. The fairly blunt opinions I’ve had to listen have been both bruising at times and refreshing in an odd way.

Once the last few critiques come in I’ll see where I stand. Then, I’ll have to decide which of my babies (and there are just over 116K of them) I’m going to cut and paste into the great word graveyard in the sky.