Christopher Tolkien Dream

I believe it’s important for writers to write down their dreams. Unfortunately I just have a stub of my most recent one. Everything else faded.

I made a phone call to the Tolkien Estate. To my surprise, Christopher Tolkien, the son of J.R.R. Tolkien, answered. He pronounced his name tol-ken, instead of tol-keen. Rather stupidly, I asked him if that was how the name was pronounced. He said yes and repeated himself.

That’s all I remember of the dream. I undoubtedly had it because of all the buzz about The Silmarillion. But it so affected me that while I was sitting at work I thought about how the name was pronounced tol-ken, then I realized it was just a dream.

So I was thinking at work about how J.R.R. Tolkien made charts of the phases of the moon for The Lord of the Rings. He remarked that he could not have Aragorn look up and see a full moon one night, then have Gimli see a full moon a couple nights later. He also kept charts of how fast Shadowfax, Gandalf’s horse, could run.

I’ve developed a spreadsheet for my novel manuscript Fairy War, a retelling of The War of the Worlds. Cylinders from Mars are landing in different major cities of the world, and this is how I kept track. Learn for the best.