I never know who is going to show up at my door for The Signed Page—whether an author is nice or an egotistical bore—but most of the time the author is a person I could end up being really good friends with. It is my theory that due to the business we are in, writers tend to be pretty humble no matter the amount of success they have bestowed upon their work; it simply took so long for them to get published they have been scarred by humility and carry it the rest of their days.

Patrick Rothfuss, author of The Name of the Wind, is one such writer.

We met in person for the first time over this last week, at a signing event here in Seattle. He arrived late like a rockstar (I tease him about this, he actually didn't double check the address and went to the wrong venue), but once he was there he was ready to go. Afterward, he and some of his friends invited me out for drinks and food and for the next few hours got to talk shop and become "real" friends.

The next day he came over to sign his books. We had planned to wait for his book's map illustrator to get off work so they both could sign the books, and while we waited he dragged my manuscript out of his bag to talk about it. Pat has had Song of the Fell Hammer for a few weeks and is about 1/3 into it, but regardless of not having finished it he wanted to sit down and talk about it. I was extremely apprehensive about this—he is the first professional to have read my book and depending on what he thought could mean whether or not another professional would take me on as a client or writer. Bias is one thing, but even bias knows when a writer is a good one or not.

Pat is a cool cat. He really is. He has a wild sense of humor and it never lets up. It seems witticism is his constant companion and it sets a person at ease immediately. By the time we both sat down at my kitchen table and cracked my manuscript to all the red markings, I was ready to hear his impressions on my craft.

He did not let me down. Pat taught at Washington State University while gaining his Masters degree, and I could see that part of him revelled at being unleashed on my poor baby. He began at page one and worked his way through the 15 or 16 chapters he had read. All of the comments he had either circled, underlined, and explained in red ink were right on the money and I felt daft for not seeing them before even though I had only gone over the manuscript in a quick edit once before. He has worked and reworked The Name of the Wind so many times editing has come naturally to him, and his personal "religion" when it comes to the craft has been honed to a razor's edge. He was quick to point out areas that could be brought out through dialogue rather than large chunks of text or when I had crossed over the boundary of solid description. Sitting with him, going over my book, I learned a great deal about the craft, most of the things I had guessed at but never had someone say, "You are right."

And a remarkable thing happened as we went through the book.

His comments got fewer and fewer. He attributed it to me learning my craft as I went, discovering what worked well as I was writing. That pleased me. Even though I know I have a lot of the craft to learn, at least I am still learning and growing. That's all I ever want while I write—to learn how to do things better.

His impressions: I have a solid book but it resides beneath layers of words that need to be chipped away much like a sculpture chisels stone away to get to the art hiding within the stone.

So that made me happy. I might have something worthy.

When he finishes the book and has used up all the red ink in the world, he will send my manuscript back to me. I hope to by then have heard back from an agent, but if not I will begin with his comments and work my way meticulously through my first draft, giving it a thorough rewrite. I want the book to be the best it can be, and Pat was kind enough to give me a concrete path to walk on.

But for now, while I write Well of the Word, I thought I'd start using some of his advice right away. Today I went through Chapter Four of the new book and took a really close look at it like Pat would have. I was very surprised; I found a great deal to be fixed. I slimmed it down, removed excess description I used to put myself in the scene rather than what the scene demanded, and I broke down a few paragraphs of narrative and created argumentative dialogue to move the story forward while developing characters. By the end of the afternoon, I realized I had a pretty solid chapter, one that was better than the original.

And Song of the Fell Hammer is mostly like the "original." In short, I have a lot of work ahead of me but work I am really looking forward to! And I hope it will be work an agent would like to be appraised with.

So thank you, Pat, for taking time out of your busy schedule. Congratulations on all of the critical praise thus far. You deserve it, from what I know. I hope we remain craft friends, if nothing else.