Hacker News Reader

Comment by JaakkoP | Hacker News Reader

The headline here spills the beans but it's definitely worth watching his announcement video "It's time to come clean" at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a-k6eaT-jQ

I was certain he is announcing he's working with a team of ghost writers given his extraordinary writing speed.

View on HN

And given how bad some of the later books like Alloy of Law are compared to the original misborn? Some of the b reel books are terrible.

I mean, they weren't LoTR-level, but they were still enjoyable. Wheel of Time ending and Stormlight 1/2 may still be his best works, but the Alloy of Law stuff was still solid, at least in my opinion.

What did you dislike about Alloy of Law?

Not OP, but it felt less polished to me than his others. Part of it was also that he was intentionally tweaking his style for the series (inspired by pulp Westerns). No dramatic difference, but enough to be slightly off.

His B-reel books are usually decent ideas, but you can tell when it's Brandon's voice leaking through the characters instead of the characters themselves. He tends to take a bit more care of his larger, mainline books.

I'm a big fan of the Stormlight Archive where all main characters have some form of mental disorder. That said the last book was getting a bit repetitive, always waiting for the same character to snap out of his seasonal depression in order to save everyone just in time. I'm still a fan, I even watched some of his lectures on creative writing but there is definitely a formula to how he works.

I enjoyed this blog post where he talks about his writing process. https://www.brandonsanderson.com/my-work-life-balance-as-a-w...

He seems very disciplined.

Hate to say but I'm glad I'm not one of his kids. He wakes up around noon and then writes for five hours, and _then_ he hangs out with his family. So basically his kids don't see him all day until shortly before they go to bed.

> He wakes up around noon and then writes for five hours, and _then_ he hangs out with his family.

This sounds like an awesome schedule. Sleep in, work for a very reasonable number of hours, and then have plenty of energy left to hang out with your kids (somewhat earlier than most commuters get home).

Fair enough. I was assuming the kids’ perspective in my comment. And the context of his description is Covidtimes when everyone is at home. They miss him in the morning and all day, all the while he’s behind a closed door in the house.

I probably shouldn’t express my personal opinion here. To each their own!

Compared to what? "Dad goes to work at an office 9-5, then has a commute to come home, then focuses on his own hobbies"?

Frankly, this sounds like a lot of focused family time:

""" At 5:00 I stop, and 5:00 until 10:00 is family time for me. And that is walled off. I don’t work on books, even in the back of my brain. It’s got to be a really steep wall for me to make sure I am there for them. And I have to mentally say, “You are there for them.” When your kids ask you to do something, that’s the time you say, “Yes, I’m going to go do that.” """

I literally have never met anyone who spent that much time daily with their family while also having an intense job. Taken at face value it's nothing short of marvelous.

No, the context is WFH covid times. This sounds like my dad sleeping in until noon while I ran around the house, had brekkie, etc, and after waking up he locked his door and didn’t come out until 5pm.

But sure yeah, that’s some good focused time at the end there.

I regret making my original comment.

How is that any different from someone with a regular job? Especially someone who has to leave before the kids are up?

And how is 5PM "shortly before bed"?

I don’t know man, you tell me.

The context is everyone at home during covid, by the way. And the context of my comment was assuming the child’s perspective.

I thought young kids go to bed really early, like 6:30 to 7:00ish pm for the very small ones, and some of that time would be taken up preparing and feeding them dinner.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com