'Towers of Midnight' progress bar

[mb]

The progress bar has today changed to 53 percent.

http://www.brandonsanderson.com/page/56/A-Memory-of-Light-Progress-Bar-FAQ

 

[mb]

Now 54 percent.

 

[Ludmian]

From Twitter:

 

Way ofKings halfway revised. AMOL2 proceeding well.

 

http://twitter.com/BrandonSandrson

 

Good news.

[Razor]

Hope so, seems stuck at 54 for a while.

[JenniferL]

The progress bar isn't updated regularly. It can stay stuck at a particular number for quite awhile, before jumping ahead quite suddenly.

[Ludmian]

Most likely Brandon is still revising the portion of the manuscript left after he chopped off what will become The Gathering Storm. That's why the progress bar (that, naturally, reflects writing new material) is moving up so slowly.

[mb]

Now it is 55 percent.

 

[Razor]

woo hoo!  Go Brandon! 

[Mr Ares]

I'm on the edge of my seat. The anticipation is too much, knowing that any day now it might go up to 56%

[Thorum]

So, at 1 week per percent, plus about half a year reviewing, publishing, etc...

 

We should have book 13 by the end of october 2010.

 

Isn't that quite exactly what the initial plan was?

[JenniferL]

The progress bar can move very quickly, if Brandon hits a part that Jordan already had completed.

[Thorum]

Wasn't that in the original 50% already?

[mb]

Wasn't that in the original 50% already?

If I remember correctly, the beginning was 45 percent or 49 percent; somewhere in the 40s for sure.

Some other thread started it.

 

[JenniferL]

No, he doesn't include it until it's incorporated into the manuscript he's currently working on.

[CUBAREY]

No, he doesn't include it until it's incorporated into the manuscript he's currently working on.

 

Correct, as he has to polish even those sections that were ostensibly written by RJ. Those sections go much faster as all Sanderson has to do to them is edit them. Likely, there is not much of the story that will be included in the second book that was written by RJ. So the  progress bar will tend to go much more slowly. On the up side RJ is said to have completed much of the final battle sections so book three should go much faster.

[mb]

Turned to 56 percent.

 

[cosmicpanda]

I'm on the edge of my seat. The anticipation is too much, knowing that any day now it might go up to 56%

 

I hope that Mr. Ares is happy.

[Mr Ares]

I'm on the edge of my seat. The anticipation is too much, knowing that any day now it might go up to 56%

I hope that Mr Ares is happy.

Alas, it just got worse. How can I cope with the anticipation? The long hard wait for it to be 57% Plus, I'm running out of seat.

[mb]

Now it is 57 percent.

 

By how often the progress bar changes, it seems working on it is during just weekends.

 

[JenniferL]

Or he just updates the progress bar on weekends. 

[JenniferL]

From Brandon's Twitter acount just now.

Work on WoT 13 going very well. Slow, careful, but well. The middle book of a 3 book arc needs a delicate hand. Will hit 175k words soon.

[Mr Ares]

Now it is 57 percent.

The anticipation got too much. I fell off the edge of my seat. No injuries, slight loss of dignity.

[Jonn]

No, he doesn't include it until it's incorporated into the manuscript he's currently working on.

 

Correct, as he has to polish even those sections that were ostensibly written by RJ. Those sections go much faster as all Sanderson has to do to them is edit them. Likely, there is not much of the story that will be included in the second book that was written by RJ. So the  progress bar will tend to go much more slowly. On the up side RJ is said to have completed much of the final battle sections so book three should go much faster.

 

The other theory is that in the process of cutting the sections of finished work into viable material for the first book, Sanderson may have made his job more difficult in putting together a...coherent- middle novel.

 

In fact, by his own statements, this is probably more true than the assertion that it's because RJ didn't write a lot of material in that section.

 

From Sanderson's blog about the split. He is talking about what to expect of the next section after The Gathering Storm:

 

"I feel that the next chunk [comprising book 2] is going to need a lot more revision than this one did. Partially because I cut into the 450k completed portion with the hacksaw and pulled out 275k. What's left over is ragged and in need of a lot of work. I'd say five months of revisions is more likely. So, if it were all done, we'd have the second book coming out five months after the first."

 

So prior to cutting the book into three books, he had 450K words completed. He claimed to have [hacked] out 275000 words, bolstered that section, leaving behind the rest to comprise the second book. What was left over he said was enough for around half of the second book. He estimated that he needed 4-6 months to work in the rest of book 2...

 

"But it's not all done. It's around halfway done. I've got a lot of writing left to do—four to six months worth, I'd guess."

 

Well, it's been almost 4 months since, and he's made 7% or thereabouts worth of progress. He's made no mention that I am aware of regarding how much of the material is RJ's, so I'm afraid I can't take CUBAREY's guess as to the reason for the slow pace too much to heart.

 

Sanderson, one of his strengths is that he is a prolific writer, able to produce material relatively fast.

 

Four months removed from his statements about the second book and only 7% progress from his assumption that he was around half done counting the material he had up till the decision to split.

 

"...ragged and in need of a lot of work."

 

That tells me that making that cut wasn't the easiest thing to do, and the slow movement is further proof that the cut itself may be creating the difficulty.

[Cairodin]

I'm pretty sure he didn't start work again on the Wheel of Time until more recently than four months ago.  His twitter shows that he didn't add a progress bar until early May.  If we assume he didn't start on it again until that time, then he's spent between two and three months working on it.  During that time he's been working on other obligations of his (Way of Kings) and has probably been mostly rewriting what he already had.  Why update the progress bar all that often when he hasn't been writing new stuff?  Then again, we don't really know when he started writing.  Either way, let's not get too uptight and worried about the progress bar.

[JenniferL]

Here's Brandon's explanation of the progress bar. The gist is, treat it as an estimate, not an absolute.

 

http://www.brandonsanderson.com/page/56/A-Memory-of-Light-Progress-Bar-FAQ