Terry Brooks has a lot to be proud of. The American author has written more than 23 bestselling books and sold 25 million copies. He is the author of The Sword of Shannara, A Knight of the World, Running with the Demon, and dozens of other fantasy books that have become fan favorites.
Needless to say, his legacy is secure. However, when Brooks began work, his first editor Lester Del Rey warned him that not all readers would notice his talent. Brooks recounts early conversations with editors and how they shaped him as a writer.
Terry Brooks said during the Titans of Fantasy panel at New York Comic Con 2022: “I never got a call. I didn’t deserve to get a call.” “I got a letter saying that I thought this book could be useful for my job, but I needed some work first. Like I said, I wasn’t surprised by this. I’d never written anything before, so I thought, ‘Hmm, this looks promising.'”
Brooks and Del Rey got in touch and their collaboration began. “After a lot of effort to explain to him who he was, which I didn’t need to explain to him because I already knew who he was and I had read all his work during the science fiction stage of my life, he said he would send me some notes to help me write this book. After 25 pages, I got the notes, worked on the notes, and said, he’s not bad, try again. That was the first year.”
“This went on for three years and he said rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. Do better, do better, and finally he said this is fine. And then he said to me, ‘There are two schools of thought for you. You’re going to have a school of thought that’s the biggest Tolkien rip-off ever, and people are going to hate you for it and hang you on a puppet. And I said, “What’s the second half of this?” “Others will love you and think you’re great and say you’re actually much better than Tolkien,” he said. And I thought, okay, I can live with that. But the problem, of course, is that he said, “Neither of them are telling the truth.” Remember, you are somewhere in between. ‘And I took that to heart. ”
It’s no exaggeration to say that Brooks has proven himself. Still, there are worse things in life than being told you look like J.R.R. Tolkien.
