Writing Resource: WriteAboutDragons's Brandon Sanderson Lectures

Since his first publication in 2005, Brandon Sanderson has become one of the standout fantasy writers of the 21st century, with bestselling stories of his own - notably the Mistborn trilogy and ongoing Stormlight Archive series - and his role in concluding Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series.  But beyond his prolific career and worldbuilding prowess, he is also notable as one of the most accessible and open writers in recent memory with regard to his own writing process, and in his ability to share what he has learned with others.  In many ways, his decision to teach the same creative writing course at BYU that he himself took as an undergraduate influenced my resolution to teach several legal writing courses at my alma mater law school - the very same courses that I took as a law student several years ago.

One of the most rewarding aspects of teaching is how the process of teaching others forces you to reexamine your own methods and perceptions, often resulting in new flashes of insight and understanding that not only help you to share what you've learned with others, but also offers a deeper comprehension of the processes underlying your writing, inevitably improving upon it.  Watching Brandon's BYU lectures not only gives you a closer look at the mechanics and practicalities of fiction writing, but also a model of how an expert in a field can effectively share his hard-won knowledge and understanding with others.

This series of 2012 lectures is made available through WriteAboutDragons, which is run by Scott Ashton, a former student of Brandon's who wanted to share the "vast quantities of pure gold that issued forth from Brandon's lips every time he opened his mouth."  Scott will also be sharing lectures from Brandon's 2013 course, with the first video due on June 1st.

Writing Resource: Brandon Sanderson's YouTube: Writing Videos

Brandon Sanderson has done for the YouTube age what Harlan Ellison did when he wrote an entire short story in the display window of a department store:  put the usually private act of fiction writing out there for the whole world to spectate.  Through his YouTube channel, in a series of videos that receives an update every week, he is sharing his process in writing an interlude scene from the upcoming second book of The Stormlight Archive series.

I for one have always wanted to peak over the shoulder of a published (and prolific) author to see how they do what so many try to do, but rarely succeed in doing so well.  Brandon makes that wish come true, and the answer is both reassuring and humbling at the same time:  they write their books the same way every person on the planet writes: one letter at a time.  There's no magic method at work here; just hard, consistent work and skill earned from experience.