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When You Go Viral But People Steal Your Idea
In April of 2012 at a library book sale I procured a wonderful book entitled “The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien”. The book was vintage, published in 1981 by Houghton Mifflin and edited by Humphrey Carpenter with assistance from Tolkien’s son Christopher.
As a longtime fan of Tolkien I found it to be a treasure trove of insight into the writing processes of my literary hero. I have maintained “Writing Is Hard Work” for some time, a blog I started in 2011, a place for me to post articles about writing tips and other struggles that an indie writer faces and how I overcame them. I have since moved the blog to my new website.
I decided to spend however much time it took to annotate the letters one by one, using the index and my own curiosity to glean what Tolkien thought about the writing process. I spent a good 10–12 hours just rifling through the letters, annotating and making notes as I went, and soon I discovered 10 excellent “tips” or bits of advice that Tolkien probably would have expressed to any writer if he were still with us.
