WoB Count: 4419
Reddit: 100%
Twitter: 100%
Blog: 79%, 114/145 pages
TWG: 0%

Making up for lost time on these updates, since I was able to complete a lot of work in the last week. I had four solid days where I was rained in during Hurricane Harvey, and I was able to import nearly my entire database into the new Shard archive, and finish up my Twitter review while I was at it. (Well, everything in Twitter from 2015 on had already been taken care of, so I didn't have to do as much as I thought I was going to.) For both of Brandon's main forms of social media, we are up to date and have reviewed the entire available records. Most of the good stuff was in Reddit, which I have already shared, but there is some good stuff in Twitter, too, that you all will have to wait to see.

It's a little sad, closing my Access database for what is probably the last time. But all of my stuff has migrated over, so there's no need to maintain my own database anymore. I'll give you one last WoB count here; if you recall from the last time I gave you numbers, I had been just shy of 1000. That's everything that is in the new system; it takes a little bit of work to get that number, so I might not continue doing it. There is still a lot to go, but it is cool to see how that 10% of our currently documented WoBs come from the 2015 AMA. Which was by and large lost to Theoryland.

Looking forward, I'll be splitting my attention. My personal priority is to dig up the stuff that nobody knows about; now that I've passed along all the social media stuff, my conscience is clear to go back to the blog and then to the TimeWaster's Guide. But I will need to spend some time working on getting old Theoryland events into the new system. It's not quite at the point where they would take it live, so I can't go back to my room just yet. Interviews had been my lowest priority, but now I'll need to give them some love.

I've taken them off the progress updates above, since that isn't my personal project, and I also don't have a good way of accounting the percentage.

So, to close out, back to some interesting discoveries I made, about the early development of the cosmere. Everything kind of started in one book, that had elements of both Dragonsteel and Stormlight Archive:

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I decided to push Rock's people in the direction of a human/parsh hybrid strain. This also was part of moving Rock himself from Yolen to Roshar, following after Dalinar and some other characters, who came earlier during the original Dragonsteel/Stormlight split in the early 2000s.

Source.

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Q: how long did it take you to develop the idea / world of The Stormlight Archive?

A: I wrote down the first ideas 1993. Kept working on the world through college. First draft done 2002.

 

Source.

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Q: And of course that’s on top of the fact everyone knows the Cosmere itself is totally M:tG, specifically Alara. Right, @BrandSanderson?

A: Except for the fact that the cosmere books pre-date both…

 

Source.

Elantris was written in 1999. The first draft of White Sand was done in 1997 (though it wasn’t brought into the cosmere until it was rewritten, after Dragonsteel). Magic: The Gathering was first released in 1993. So, Brandon isn’t talking about any of the unpublished drafts he includes in his personal writing history. This was an ancient book, one that contained the seeds that would grow to become Dragonsteel, the Stormlight Archive, and the rest of the Cosmere. And, believe it or not, we have a page from that book! You can find it here. Dalinar was named Jared in that book. (Hoid’s name looks to be Kamp.) I guess things have spun out of control quite a bit since then.