“Tolkien way of creating was different. His creation process lasted years. Decades. In fact, his entire life. He never ceased working at the Silmarillion, building ever over what he had already written. Adding layers. Adding meanings. Not linearly, but globally. Once the story laid down, he kept revising it. He improved events and connections between events. He introduced new characters and stories to connect existing ones. Always with the entire picture in mind. When something new entered the story, he readjusted everything that came before and after the new addition, so that in the end it felt like the new element had always been part of the story. So all the parts of the Silmarillion grew together, creating that peculiar harmony, that feeling that everything is connected to everything else that I haven’t quite found with the same degree in any other author.”

This whole piece is so interesting, but this analysis is fascinating. As a writer myself, it’s exhausting just to think about putting that much work into one project for so many years, reworking, rethinking, revising…

I suspect, though, Tolkein got some joy out of doing it that way. HIS way. Pure genius.