Hi all, I think that Brandon Sanderson himself should speak on this subject:

ITEM THE SECOND: A MEMORY OF LIGHT

During the early part of the year, I began another read-through of

the Wheel of Time. This was to prepare for writing the final book.

I got stopped in March, however, in order to do copyedits and

proofreads. I got back into it in April, but found myself anxious

to actually start work on the book.

This isn't unexpected. I enjoy writing quite a bit, and it relaxes

me. If I go a long time without working on a book, I start to feel

anxious. I want there to be progress. And so, I started working on

the prologue of the novel as I read. As I did, I found that I

actually liked this better. Rather than separately reading the

series, then writing on it, I was doing both hand-in-hand.

I'm still in the middle of The Fires of Heaven in my reread, moving

through it slowly. (Though I do intend to finish the series by the

time I'm done with AMoL.) I'm also about 10% of the way through

writing the book. My goal is to do around 10k words worth of

writing each week, which should put me on track to finish the book

somewhere around my end-of-the-year deadline.

As I've mentioned before, the need to do so much rereading this

time around is pushing the book back from its initial November

release date to sometime in 2012. I don't know WHEN exactly in

2012. It will depend on publishing schedules, and upon how long it

takes to write the novel. But I will finish it this year, and you

can follow along on my website as I post updated percentages.