Writers, remember this.
…you guys…
Just read an excerpt from a productivity/goal setting book that concerned Tolkien.
His publisher mentioned that people wanted more about the hobbits after Tolkien published The Hobbit.
So Tolkien started another novel.
And apparently bounced between the depths of despair and the height of confidence for the entire process (he said that: “his ‘labour of delight’ had been ‘transformed into a nightmare.’”)
He gave up multiple times.
That book? Fellowship of the Ring.
You know what kept him going? C.S. Lewis’ support.
First lesson: if you’re stressing over your book, remember that Tolkien did too.
Second lesson: Writers have to support each other. Seriously. It might be the difference between a book that becomes beloved by hundreds of thousands (maybe even millions) even existing or not.
This is fair! This is so nice! I love this!
You know what else kept him going while he wrote Lord of the Rings? Well,
- having an income while he wrote, that he didn’t really have to work for. In fact, he held his dream job (Professor of Literature) with a full-time income, that came with a pleasant private office. He sat at work, for which he was being paid to do something else, and actively avoided doing his actual job while he pursued his own unrelated novel.
- having a stay-at-home wife to run his entire home and family for him.
- having servants…. that helps….
- having a large, pretty house within a pleasant 25-minute walk of work.
- never having to do:
- household maintenance
- laundry
- cooking
- cleaning
- Life Admin
- the not-fun gardening
- the not-fun childcare
- The work day of Men of His Time ended when they came home. Women of His Time, and Staff, existed to run the rest of his life. And that’s what they did. Jonald Ronald Rolkien Tolkien was the center of his household universe, which existed to support him in every possible way.
- Let’s be real: he was not the person who was up in the night with a teething baby. That was what the nanny was for, followed by the wife. It would have been unthinkable for a man of his time/class to do his own childcare.
- Actually, it’s worth noting that he had in particular a Very Intelligent Icelandic nanny, who lived in his house and looked after his four children all day, and was never given a holiday, and told the children lovely bedtime stories about trolls and the Icelandic Edda, and who provided a useful resource for the language and myth he used in LoTR, until his wife became too jealous.
- I mean, what could YOU do if you had that much support? Write an epic! probably!!
- Because nobody was forcing him to do anything, ever, he slept late and woke up late. sounds nice
- Tolkien did not do laundry. He did not cook meals. He did not clean the house. He did not wrestle rice pudding down the necks of his screaming babies, while calmly and lovingly answering his schoolchild’s questions. He wasn’t making a cake while talking to his boss on the phone and wiping up the dog’s sick. He did not spend hours every day in the process of keeping his home together, or sorting the affairs of his four children, or sorting out the wifi. The Care and Keeping of Tolkien was outsourced to wife, servants, scouts, assistants, waitstaff.
- He would have received free meals at work, although he usually walked home for lunch, where he was served food and alcohol that he took into his private study. but if he didn’t want to do that, Oxford profs of His Time could just get free lunch. He could ring a bell to be brought tea and snacks at work. And then he would go home and be served dinner.
- Going to the pub with his friends, who supported and admired him! Sure!
- not having to go home in the evening to his four toddlers and children, because he was a Man of His Times! and he could totally just spend evenings holed up in a pub with his admirers, because he was not required at home to help, or parent, or do anything in the home, except be served a glass of beer and go into his study.
- god, imagine spending hours in the pub on a work night with a bunch of highly qualified literature professors telling you how smart and lovely and amazing you are. heck YES you’d be encouraged.
- The Hobbit was already popular so it was probably quite helpful to know that while writing the next work.
- Working and writing in a place that is generally considered to be an inspiring setting for academia and literature. Want to write Elrond’s Council? Sit down at a beautiful old stone table and start writing about the table. Want to write about a tree? Go write under your favorite ancient tree in the Botanical Gardens. Want a snack? Ring a bell and a scout will bring you toast and a cup of tea.
- I mean, he wasn’t exactly spending his 40 hours a week under a manager’s baleful eye while he manned the self-checkouts at the Tesco in Coventry, or pumped gas for minimum wage in Montauk, scribbling notes into his phone. He floated around The City of Dreaming Spires, dreamily making art, while several people labored very hard so that he would be untroubled by Real Life while he floated.
Let’s be real. Tolkien’s literary accomplishments are very impressive, but he L I T E R A L L Y
was doing them on his work clock with the full support of a pit crew.
To be fair, I love the man. And I love the huffy apologism in the Tolkien Gateway: “Writing [The Fellowship of the Ring] was slow due to Tolkien’s perfectionism, and was frequently interrupted by his obligations as an examiner, and other academic duties.”
I’m ??? sorry that writing a novel on the company dime was frequently interrupted by occasionally having to do his job???? oh my god I love and hate this so much,
Dianna Wynne Jones, of Tolkien’s students at Oxford, commenting “of Tolkien, they said he was wasting his time on hobbits when he should have been writing learned articles…”
maybe because that’s what academics are SUPPOSED TO DO, it is their job,,,
He would also deliberately mumble incomprehensibly, ignoring his students, deliberately delivering terrible lectures, so that they would all go away; but Dianna actually wanted to receive some of the education she’d been promised:
“I imagine I caused Tolkien much grief by turning up to hear him lecture week after week, while he was trying to wrap his lectures up after a fortnight and get on with The Lord of the Rings (you could do that in those days, if you lacked an audience, and still get paid).”
God love the man! Deliberately teaching so badly because he planned to alienate his students and collect a paycheck! He would be flayed on social media for less, today. There would be news articles about the Lazy Professor. He would be fired, and buried, and dug up, and fired again.
In conclusion: yeah, CS Lewis was very encouraging and that helped immensely! But probably so did a secure income, freedom from chores and labor, and a crew of support staff. Who knows what we might do, if we all had that kind of encouragement. We’d probably be very productive.
A choice Diana Wynne Jones quote on Tolkien’s mumbling, from her essay “The Shape of the Narrative in The Lord of the Rings”:
“When I was an undergraduate, I went to a course of lectures he gave on the subject—at least, I think that was the subject, because Tolkien was all but inaudible. He evidently hated lecturing, and I suspect he also hated giving his thoughts away. At any rate, within two weeks he succeeded in reducing his substantial audience to myself and four others. We stuck on, despite his efforts. He worked at it: when it did appear that we might be hearing what he said, it was his custom to turn around and address the blackboard.”
It’s a lovely essay about The Lord of the Rings, but you can tell that she was still very salty about the man’s lecture style, however many years later it was that she was writing this essay.
One of my Uni tutors had also gone to lectures by Tolkien, and said more than once that whatever else he had learned, the most important was “This is how not to give lectures”…
