Tolkien Tuesday: What Tolkien Taught Me About Writing
Learning more about Tolkien's composition process has taught me a number of valuable lessons about the ethos and craft of writing.
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Welcome to Tolkien Tuesdays, where I talk about various things that I love about the lore and writings of Tolkien, whether in a chapter reading or a character study or an essay. I hope you enjoy reading these ruminations as much as I enjoy writing them and, if you have a moment, I’d love it if you’d subscribe to this newsletter. It’s free, but there are paid options, as well, if you’re of a mind to support a struggling writer. Either way, thank you for joining me!
I’m once again taking a bit of a break from my chapter analyses of The Lord of the Rings to focus on something else that’s Tolkien-related. Don’t worry, though. I’ll be back to those next week. After all, we’re about to journey with Frodo, Sam, and Gollum into the Dead Marshes, one of my absolute favorite chapters of the second half of The Two Towers.
I want to talk today about Tolkien and writing, specifically the act of creation and of the act and process of composition itself. After all, there are few writers–of fantasy or of any other genre–who were quite as meticulous in the act of creation as Tolkien. This is a man who spent the better part of his life constructing not just an elaborate history and mythology for his fictional world, but also fictional languages (well, actually, the languages seem to have come first, but I digress). Most of this rich history hovers in the background of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, of course, but it provides the rich texture that makes these novels so compelling to read and that gives them that escapist quality that remains one of their great pleasures. When you read these books, you truly feel as if you are immersing yourself in a different world.
So much of the process that went into the creation of these great works of fantasy might have remained lost to the public were it not for the tireless efforts of Tolkien’s son Christopher to bring it to light and share it with the general public. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that one of the most valuable things that the younger Tolkien ever did was to publish The History of Middle-earth. This magnificent series, which runs to twelve volumes in total, can make for dry reading at times, but it’s an invaluable resource for the insight it provides us regarding Tolkien’s process. It shows us just how much changed–and how much didn’t–as Tolkien built his world and its inhabitants from the ground up. Even today there’s something truly exciting and illuminating about seeing the origins of the Elves, though I will say that several volumes of this History will make little sense to you unless you’re one of those brave souls who’s managed to make their way through The Silmarillion (as a relative latecomer to the latter, I can say that it is most definitely worth the effort).
As a result of reading both The History of Middle-earth and many of Tolkien’s letters, I’ve taken some valuable lessons from the Professor when it comes to my own composition process. Though it can be quite tempting to just want to jump right into the plot of a new story or novel and let the world reveal itself to me as I write, like Tolkien I also find it pleasurable to just build a world from the ground up, even if I must confess that I have far less facility with language than he did. When I was fresh out of college and working at a dead-end job at a call center, I used to spend hours filling up notebook after notebook with fictional histories and character sketches. Even though I ended up abandoning that particular outing, bits and pieces of that history continue to bubble up in my present writing, an indication that no act of secondary creation is ever wasted. Given how often Tolkien abandoned some of his own conceptions, I like to think that he’d agree.
Just as importantly, I’ve also learned that it’s okay to sometimes not know where you’re going as you set pen to paper (or fingers to keys, as the case may be). When you read The History of The Lord of the Rings, one of the things that really leaps out at you is just how many elements of the story only came to seem inevitable in hindsight. Like many of the rest of us, Tolkien sometimes had no idea how things were going to go, which helps to explain why it took so many years to see LotR to completion. As he was so fond of saying, the tale grew in the telling.
This leads me to the next great writing lesson from Tolkien. While it can be tempting to want to micromanage every aspect of a story so that it fits all of the right beats, sometimes it is best to just let the story, and the characters, guide you. When it comes right down to it, as a writer your job is to tell a good story, and sometimes that involves letting your creations wander off in new and unforeseen directions. Tolkien’s example allows us to see the extent to which fiction, even more than other types of writing, tends to flourish when it’s allowed the chance to find its own way. However, as authors like George RR Martin demonstrate, sometimes a little of this goes a very long way.
Relatedly, one can’t be afraid of change. Reading through The History of the Lord of the Rings, it’s really quite remarkable to see just how long Tolkien held onto the idea of naming Frodo “Bingo Bolger-Baggins.” It’s really impossible to imagine anyone being able to take a protagonist with a name like that seriously, just as it’s impossible to imagine The Lord of the Rings with a hobbit with wooden shoes named Trotter (if you don’t know, that was the original idea for Strider). Fortunately, he eventually saw the light and changed both of these, much to the benefit of the story as a whole.
Lastly, but in some ways most importantly, writing takes time and patience and determination, and for me this is one of the hardest lessons I’ve learned from Tolkien.There are days when I get frustrated at the lack of forward momentum to my own writing career. Like Tolkien, I can be a bit of a tinkerer, and for me the hardest part of any given project is actually seeing the damn thing over the finish line and sending it out into the world. It’s as if there’s a part of me that can’t bear to let my piece go. More bluntly, I’m also encouraged by the fact that he was 45 at the time The Hobbit was published and The Lord of the Rings didn’t see the light of day until he was 62. Even though I’m now 40, I know that there’s plenty of time to achieve my writerly dreams. Sometimes it just takes a while to get to that point in your life where you can actually write the book you’re destined to write.
And that, I think, is a very encouraging thought.