The other huge difference is the mysterious Ranger in the corner of the inn. It’s... Trotter the Hobbit, a tough-as-nails wild hobbit with wooden shoes.

Trotter stays as a hobbit for many chapters before he gets rewritten as a Man. It’s amazing how little text gets changed, though. Sort of freeing, too - I must try making more radical changes in my own drafts and see how it goes.

More writing advice: do not promise your publisher that you’ll submit your new book in early 1939 if it’s going to take another decade to finish.

(And if you do, don’t demand they also publish your giant largely impenetrable epic at the same time, dump them in a fit of pique, and then come back when the other publisher doesn’t play ball.

To get away with that, your sales would have to be... oh)

(Stopping here again for a bit, but come back soon for “Tolkien gives really good advise on revising” and “Tolkien absolutely screws up by tying his hobbits in knots”)