What I like about that Tolkien letter is that itâs a reminder that stories donât present themselves fully formed. This seems an obvious thing to say, but I think people sometimes forget it while writing. Tolkien is pointing out the underrated and essential part of writing which is âgoing away and having a big think about thingsâ or, in other words, âimaginingâ.
You have to make stuff up before you can write about it, and that mostly involves inhabiting the spaces and minds of the places and people youâre writing about. Most of that wonât ever appear on the page. Tolkienâs case is different in a couple of ways. Firstly, the sheer extent of the world heâs imagining. (Of course the book takes years to write! Heâs making up the history of NĂşmenor and Gondor from thin air!) Secondly, we have unusual access to his world-building materials in the Appendices, which makes the book feel even more fully formed and authoritative. We also have unusual access to his creative process in HoMe. Itâs fucking incredible watching NĂşmenor get invented. People joke that Tolkien didnât finish things, and use his NĂşmenorean time travel story as an example (Lewis publishes the reciprocal three book space travel stories). But that material IS published in a deeply meaningful way. Itâs the whole texture that supplies the unique depth and believability of The Lord of the Rings. Sometimes people joke, âOh, Tolkien barely published!â Yes, but he published The Lord of the fucking Rings. And an essay that revolutionised the study of Beowulf. Iâd take that.
This quote also by necessity downplays the rewriting process of LotR which of course was years of painstaking craft and revision, and is its own story. But, yes, of course these things didnât exist! He had to make them up! So if in doubt, go away and lie in the hammock or on the bed and gaze into nothing and really think about what the world of your story is like and how it feels and what it must be like to be inside the minds of the made-up people whose lives, for some bizarre reason, you want to make up. This actually is part of the work and itâs not frenetic. And thereâs no real shortcut. But what is nicer? Why rush this?
(I read an excellent story fairly recently which was clamouring for a sequel. The writer knew this, and was trying to write it, but was stuck and had been for a couple of years. I suspect the writer was trying to pick up directly after the dramatic events of the written story and progress from there. But that would be retelling the initial story, and why do that? Itâs already told. That work is done. No wonder they were stuck. I think this is particularly difficult if the story has been extremely successful (which it was) and a creative stretch (which I suspect it was) because the temptation to go back to that well must be overwhelming. But that well has been drawn upon. The solution most likely would be to pick up with the characters a few years down the line and see where they were now. In which case of course the sequel will take a couple of years to write because the writer would need a while to detach from the deep immersion of the previous story, and the time to immerse in and explore a new reality. Often we donât talk about these aspects of creative practice which I think can leave them very bewildering and confusing. Lots of things happened to me between Enigma Tales and TEoTDB, and lots of books too, but one thing thatâs probably of interest only to me, but is of enduring interest to me, is observing the difference between something you might write in your early 40s and something you might write in your early 50s. This relates both to reasons and need for writing a story, and the changes in competence and craft after ten more years practice.)
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