J. R. R. Tolkien

Well, then here’s a fun fact for you:

So did the man, the father of modern-day fantasy and author of still the number one best-selling Epic Fantasy series of all time, the legend himself, JRR Tolkien.

In fact, his procrastination was so bad it often took him over six months to revise a particular scene or fix a certain plot hole (which his manuscripts were filled with—he was THE master of plot hole writing).

What about his perfectionism fueled by anxiety and insecurity?

Well, it took him TWENTY YEARS to “finish” Lord of The Rings after The Hobbit was released. I say “finished” because he wouldn’t stop tinkering with the damn thing and was basically forced to put it out there by his fellow colleagues.

It’s a miracle The Lord of The Rings got published at all.

Seriously.

Tolkien easily made over 50 revisions—each time rewriting the whole damn thing from scratch basically.

Even more.

If it wasn’t for C.S. Lewis, the author of the popular Narnia books, the Lord of The Rings as we know it today wouldn’t exist at all. Lewis was the person who convinced Tolkien to write about more than just “Hobbits sitting around talking to each other in the Shire all day” (which is what fascinated Tolkien the most).

You can read more about the story behind the Lord of The Rings, the writing, Tolkien’s inspirations, and C.S. Lewis’s contributions to the whole thing in the book “Bandersnatch”.

But I hope I could at least give you some sort of hope that you’re definitely not alone.

Writing is hard.

Any creative type of work is hard. It feels like you’re never finished, sometimes you absolutely despise your own work, but at the end of the day, none of it matters if you don’t get it finished and put it out there into the world for everyone to see.

Who knows, maybe you have a new best-selling series in your hands without even knowing it?

Or maybe you have your next best-converting sales letter or launch emails ready to go without even realizing it.

One way to learn how to write better sales emails (and actually get them out there) is by checking out Email Valhalla.

More information can be found here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla

So here’s a question for you.

If you’re anything like me—an avid enjoyer of fantasy—you might have noticed how almost all dwarves in popular media nowadays get portrayed as Scottish.

(Something that’s, as I’ve recently learned, not unique to just dwarves, Vikings often get the same treatment in modern media—just look at How To Train Your Dragon).

But why?

I thought about this just a few days ago when, for both educational and inspirational reasons, I started playing The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt for the first time ever (yes I know, shame on me, should’ve played it already a long time ago).

In the game, you’ll come across many species, including dwarves, which are all portrayed as Scots.

This isn’t the only case, far from it.

At first, you might rightly want to point fingers at Tolkien’s Lord of The Rings—like almost every fantasy trope out there.

Simply watch the films and you’ll confirm that idea.

Except, Dwarves were never mentioned or hinted to be Scottish in Tolkien’s original books. If anything, they appeared to be Jewish more than anything else.

So where do you go looking for historical fantasy influences if not for Tolkien’s works?

That’s right, Gary Gygax’s Dungeons & Dragons.

And you’d be mostly correct.

It so turns out that the Scottish Dwarf can be traced back to early D&D novels. Some sources say Gary Gygax was influenced by yet another work of fiction a few decades before there was any mention of Dungeon & Dragons at all.

But that’s truly the end of our little rabbit hole.

Either way.

If someone mentions Dwarves in today’s day and age, chances are you’ll think of a short, red-headed, somewhat chubby, little fellow, going around, throwing out insults with his Scottish accent while wielding either an axe or a pickaxe in his hand.

Because as everyone knows…

If a dwarf ain’t a blacksmith or a miner, he ain’t no dwarf.

And that’s all because of one man who knew what he wanted to do, was passionate about his work, didn’t let anyone else tell them what he could or couldn’t do, and wouldn’t shut up about it until he was sure everyone knew what he was working on—and even then he’d keep on talking about it day after day, because that’s how much he enjoyed it.

Goes to show you the power of persistently sharing your work and talking about your interests.

As far as that goes nowadays, there’s simply no better way to do so than through daily email.

To learn more about how to go about writing daily emails, click here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla