What Tolkien Can Teach Us About Life & Writing
On channeling grief, the beauty of friendship and the power of reading.
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was a creative genius who created magical works. He managed to create worlds, histories, stories and languages, and go down in history as one of the greatest writers of all time. Writers and artists everywhere can learn from Tolkien’s mastery and all that influenced him.
Channel Your Grief
Tolkien’s father passed away when he was just 3 years old, and his mother passed away when he was 12. Tolkien began writing when he was just 7, no doubt using the cathartic process to help him through the emotional trauma he had experienced. Later on in life, he would join the British Army to fight in World War 1, where he would eventually lose many of his closest friends. One traumatic experience in particular for Tolkien was the Battle of the Somme, which began in July 1916 and wouldn’t end until November that year— Tolkien would be in the trenches here for four months. The British Army lost 60,000 soldiers on the first day, and over 1 million lives in were lost in total. Soon after the Battle of the Somme and whilst recovering in hospital, Tolkien began to write stories that would eventually become his Silmarillion mythology.
“A light from the shadows shall spring.”
The Fellowship of the Ring
We will all go through our fair share of hardships, many of which will be debilitating. It’s easy to fall into a slump when we are feeling at our lowest, but if we take a leaf out of Tolkien’s book (no pun intended) we could channel that grief and write through the pain. Not only is it soothing for a writer’s soul to do so, but the writer can then go on to express and explore the grief in a way that helps the reader. Many of Tolkien’s novels deal with the anguish of grief and death in a very poignant way, no doubt because it came from Tolkien’s real life experiences. We can very rarely control what pain and misery heads our way, but we do have control over what we do with it.
“Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.”
The Fellowship of the Ring
Surround Yourself With Like-Minded Friends
After the death of Tolkien’s mother, leaving both John and his brother orphaned, they were allowed at King Edward’s School on charity.
It was at this school where Tolkien met some of his closest friends and members of what would eventually become the “Tea Club, Barrovian Society” or “T.C.B.S” (a semi-secret society). The “big four” of this group included Tolkien, Christopher Wiseman, Robert Gilson and Geoffrey Bache Smith. The brotherhood of aspiring poets and artists would often discuss art and literature while daydreaming about their futures, and of course, drinking tea. They kept in touch until Smith and Gilson died in World War 1.
Tolkien’s friendships within the T.C.B.S show the importance of surrounding yourself with like-minded friends. Those who have similar aspirations and goals will inspire you with your own. You know the famous quote, “You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with.” I’m not so sure about its accuracy, but the people you surround yourself with most certainly have an impact on your motivations, willpower and feelings of self-worth. Tolkien places a lot of importance on camaraderie, friendships and ‘fellowships’ if you will, throughout his works. We could all use a little T.C.B.S in our lives.
“I am a wild and whole-hearted admirer, and my chief consolation is, that if I am scuppered to-night — I am off on duty in a few minutes — there will still be left a member of the great T.C.B.S. to voice what I dreamed and what we all agreed upon. For the death of one of its members cannot, I am determined, dissolve the T.C.B.S… Yes, publish…. You I am sure are chosen, like Saul among the Children of Israel. Make haste, before you come out to this orgy of death and cruelty… May God bless you, my dear John Ronald, and may you say the things I have tried to say long after I am not there to say them, if such be my lot.” — Smith’s last letter to Tolkien, before his death in WW1
Read, Read, Read!
Tolkien was a tenured university professor, a renowned philologist and a specialist in old-English Literature. To say that he read “a lot” would be quite the understatement. From fairytales to Norse, Persian, Sumerian, Greek, Roman and Celtic Mythos, Tolkien basked in many different forms of art and literature as it wasn’t just his passion but his life.
Whenever you read a book, you’ll pick up on nuances from other writers and learn from the best. You’ll learn which writers you would like to emulate, to draw inspiration from and what genre suits you best. Your vocabulary will expand and you will become more articulate. The best writers are avid readers.
Write What You Know, Add Magic
It’s fair to say that Tolkien had many experiences to draw from throughout his life, many involving excruciating pain and loss, and also camaraderie and love. Tolkien would take what he knew (his experiences, surroundings and acquaintances) and use them as a base for his characters and worlds. His experience in war inspired the turmoil and horror in his battles. Luthien was inspired by his real-life wife. Many of his settings were based off his childhood town of Birmingham, England.
We are far more capable of creating rich and vivid landscapes and settings if we can see it clearly in our mind’s eye. We can create characters with depth and substance when we draw from personality traits of particular people we’ve actually met, and the feelings we get when we think of these people.
“There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after.” — The Hobbit
Conclusion
Not many writers can live up to the magic that Tolkien created, and I think it’s suffice to say that we are all okay with that. But he was still just a man, experiencing love, pain, grief and loss and using these experiences to create works that will stand the test of time.
