A powerful sleeping pill is all that works, finally, to get him, and the voices in his head, to shut up. After that he plays video games or whatever until 5 am. Most days, he wakes up at 1 pm, exercises, and writes for four hours. His schedule is budgeted down to the minute, months out, to maximize the time he spends, rather counter-ergonomically, on the couch, typing away. The concept of a vacation confuses Sanderson, he once said, because for him the perfect vacation is more time to write-vocation as vacation. Graphomania is the name of the condition: the constant compulsion to get words out, down, as much and as quickly as possible. It’s not that Brandon Sanderson can’t write.

“Well, we have a piece coming up in LDS Living,” he told me. As far as I can tell, Sanderson, who has been topping bestseller lists for the better part of the 21st century, has not been written about in any depth by any major publication ever. On the other, the ignorance goes far beyond WIRED. Sanderson has millions upon millions of fans all over the planet it doesn’t matter that some losers at a single magazine (even if it is one of the nerdier ones) had never heard of him. Nobody had the first clue who or what I was talking about. How’d he do it? Why now? Is Brandon Sanderson even a good writer? On the day of his record-breaking Kickstarter campaign-$42 million of that $55 million-I came to the WIRED offices ready to gossip. By Sanderson’s estimation, he’s the highest-selling author of epic fantasy in the world. For a writer of young-adult-ish, never-ending, speed-written fantasy books, it’s huge. This is obviously a lot of money for anyone. Most years, Brandon Sanderson makes about $10 million.

Brandon sanderson's white sand volume 1