It doesn’t matter if it’s a blog, a school essay, or even a long text. If you’ve written something or created anything, there’s a point where you look it over and think to yourself, “This is shit, I am shit.” Because of that fear, that apprehension, we almost missed out on the greatest fantasy series of all time, The Lord Of The Rings.
JRR Tolkien is now a world renowned author. But that wasn’t always the case. The idea of “Middle Earth” started with Tolkien’s fascination with Norse folklore and a yearning for England to have similar tales of its own. So he began telling his children bedtime stories of a mythical land of elves, dwarves, gods and men. In fact, the first written accounts of Tolkien’s universe stemmed from sending letters to his kids to keep up the bedtime tradition while he was traveling.
But JRR Tolkien wasn’t an author, he was a nerd. He was a literature professor at Oxford, famous for his translation of “Sir Gawain and The Green Knight” and essays on Beowulf. He was a linguistics expert. So he started practicing his stories in front of friends at a local bar.
There is such a fine line between famous author and hardcore party animal. Seriously. Another friend of Tolkien’s, was Lewis Carroll. If you’ve read or seen Alice In Wonderland you know he’s taken all the drugs. But Tolkien regularly met with his group, The Inklings, made up of other Oxford professors who told their newest stories to one another weekly while getting hammered at the local pub. Among them was famed writer, CS Lewis, author of The Chronicles of Narnia.
It’s been reported that The Inklings were initially uncomfortable listening to Tolkien’s tales of Middle Earth. The lore was clunky, some of the language was made up, and the characters were over complex. JRR Tolkien was actually teased in the halls about his fantasies by colleagues asking him “How’s your Hobbit?”
Tolkien believed his main work to be the The Silmarillion. The creation story of the Middle Earth universe set thousands of years before The Lord Of The Rings story. It was CS Lewis who encouraged Tolkien to pursue a story centered around the Hobbits in his universe.
In 1932, Tolkien read aloud his finished book to his drinking buddies, The Inklings, and was met with applause. From here it’s mostly legend on what came next. Some say that Tolkien gave an early copy to a student who then gave it to a publisher. Other reports even suggest that CS Lewis broke into Tolkien’s house and mailed the copy to a publisher since the author himself was too afraid to. Whatever the case may be, that early manuscript was The Hobbit.
The reviews came in for Tolkien’s masterpiece and people…. didn’t love it. It was widely viewed as a children’s book. It wasn’t selling and was on the brink of being a failure. That is until CS Lewis, a close friend and a famous author in his own right, decided to take matter into his own hands. His review was just as much a praise of Tolkien as it was a lashing to the public who didn’t recognize it’s greatness. The last line of Lewis’ review reads:
“The Hobbit on the other hand will be funniest to its youngest readers, and only years later, at a tenth or twentieth reading, will they begin to realise what deft scholarship and profound reflection have gone to make everything in it so ripe, so friendly, and in its own way so true. Prediction is dangerous: but The Hobbit may well prove a classic.”
Following his friend’s encouraging review, Tolkien had an immediate bestseller. Tolkien’s works went on to produce movies that broke box office records and won seventeen Oscars. Both the series and the individual books stand on every list of the most sold books of all time. It’s estimated that over 150 million copies of Tolkien’s works have been sold. The Hobbit first edition and first print is now worth well over $100k.
You never know what you have. It’s a vulnerable thing to put words to a page. You won’t know if people like what you have to say until you put it out there. But determination and support from good friends go a long way. Odds are none of us will be Tolkien, but don’t be scared homie. Post that shit.
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