Last night, as you probably already know, Timmy and I trotted out of the office a little bit early and headed over to the Borders in Springfield, where Pat Rothfuss had agreed to stop on his way home to Wisconsin to do a little reading, talking and signing. For me, this was a treat – having fun on a work night? Plus, the night before I had finally hit the 80K mark in my novel (more on that factum in a later post). It was time to celebrate!
I’m not sure what I expected, to be honest. You get a feel for someone’s personality from the way they right their blog (unlike mine, his is stitch in the sides funny sometimes), and he did have that whole one book published thing that seems to be really taking off for him. So with no real expectations, I was far from disappointed last night 🙂
There was singing (sort of), and signing (a lot of). We got to hear the opening to book two (all you other fans out there, don’t be hating!), as well as a few more of the college help articles and a poem (poor woman). But just as much time, I’d wager, was spent entertaining questions from the audience as it was with almost planned activities. And it seems a lot of his fans, at least the ones that show up at a Borders on a Monday night, are aspiring authors as well. It was weird, really, feeling both not-alone in the crowd, and slightly shocked that I wasn’t alone in the crowd, both at the same time. Those aren’t the same feelings, in case you wondered – one is a sense of belonging, of feeling a kinship. The other is shock (but not outrage) at discovering you aren’t unique, that at this one location there are at least a half dozen or a dozen others, which means there were probably similar pockets in other audiences.
I will say, he’s a great speaker. Funny even in real life that you don’t notice that he started on topic A, was diverted to B, rounded C, visited W, and somewhere around Y rediscovered A. There was a lot of insight into writing, at least his path to being published, that’s worth thinking about. Fans of authors tend to expect, when given Book One of a series, to have Book Two in their hands the next week. Hollywood does it for us all the time, and what is a book but a written out story? (I am not serious)
Pat conceded last night that it took him ten years, and that yes, he has already written all three books. So why is only one book out? Because it took two plus years of revision and rewrites to get the first one polished enough for publication, and that was after getting an agent and getting a publisher to agree to printing it. Then he did something I can just imagine myself doing – “I’ll take a break, get some rest, relax for a little while! I’ve already written book two. A little revision, and it’ll be all set.” Except that so much went into revising book one that now book two doesn’t mesh back up. (Gee, that seems eerily familiar).
And there were plenty more little gems like that (including a bullet hole in the illusion of how easy and affordable it is to be a full time writer). All in all, a great evening, truly inspiring. And as for my partner in crime TImmy – well, here he is while my copy was getting signed (twitter and facebook friends – sorry for the repeats of this photo today, it really was the best one I had).
I’ll share what he wrote in another post (its more appropriate to a catch up post on the WIP anyway).