This is a must-read, albeit poring over scans of an old gaming zine; you really get a sense of where TP was at that point in his life, just before Mort came out:

“Before I could stop myself I was typing ‘The First Universal Church of the Cosmic Confidence Trick’ This is a nutty sect for all those people who’ve been very badly burned by other nutty sects. The venerated icon is the ceremonial gold brick which is made of brass, the holy colour is green, you’re not baptised but wet behind the ear, and the motto is “there’s one born every minute’. This hit me in the middle of what I thought was going to be a serious science fiction work. Then, before I knew where I was, the intelligent computer turned out to be intelligent not because it was eighth generation, but because a repairman had reincarnated into it at the moment of switch-on. After that I gave up. I got 70,000 words into it before I thought a plot might actually be a good idea.

https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/2024/12/16/terry-pratchett-interview-in-adventurer-11-june-july-1987/