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GRRM (Blog): "Reflections on a Bad Year" - "Still have hundreds of more pages to write" (TWOW)
- Thread starter BossAttack
- Start date
The fun part is how the wait for Dance of Dragons felt endless too. Feast of Crows/Dance of Dragons were two halfs of one book we had been waiting since 2000 for.
Obviously I mean I don't care about the books. And I said it was sad because I used to love them and was insanely hyped at one point.
TBF I think GRRM was writing the first three books before the first one was released. He originally thought he could be finished in three books. the second book was meant to be the winds of winter.
So in a way you can say we've been waiting 24 years for winds.
Sick. I am currently working on the last book of Mistborn Era 1 and loving it
There was a time when this thread would have angered me, but honestly all I can do is laugh now. I'm beyond caring. I really enjoyed the books, but I've moved on. I figure this will come out in the next 5 years, but Spring never will so what's the point.
I know you guys are tired of waiting.... And that you guys are not interested anymore after the failure of Game of Thrones (which was to be expected since season 5, after not adapting FeastDance and important storylines such as Young Griff's). I totally understand why you guys feel that way, but your negavity comes across as fairly toxic at times.
I am almost certain that The Winds of Winter will be so big that it will have enough material for two books (It is doubtful that he can complete all those storylines in one volume). I estimate about 95 POV chapters as the minimum, but I wouldn't be surprised if the book ends up being almost as big as A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons combined.
And besides, there are indications that The Winds of Winter was almost completely rewritten in late 2015, after it was pretty much finished. He was dissatisfied with the end result. With the scrapping of so much material, George R. R. Martin ended up in a long-term depression.
In any case, The Winds of Winter is by no means an easy book to write. There are twenty POV characters who more or less have to come together. Moreover, GRRM is a writer who very often rewrites chapters, experiments which POV point of view is best suited to the situation, etc. The smallest change in one chapter causes the butterfly effect and results in adjustments having to be made in other chapters. So there are many variations of certain chapters, which never end up in the final book.
Anyway, he will now also have to plan for A Dream of Spring while writing The Winds of Winter. He will already have material for that book, though, because GRRM needs to have an idea of how the book will conclude and how a character gets to that end point.
It is the quality of the final product that counts for me. He takes the time to create a good final product. In the end, it will not matter how long it took him to complete the saga. His fame gained through Game of Thrones does him no favors. He is expected to get involved in (far too) many projects. He is retired, but still has a busier schedule than many his age. He cannot be expected to spend 100% of his time writing. Creative work also involves taking inspiration from other works, or just taking a moment to rest himself (it's in these moments that the best ideas come). At the very least, I grant him quality time with family, especially at his age.
If he says he will stop tomorrow and hand the work over to another quality author who understands the themes well (e.g., the human heart in conflict with itself), then I am at peace with it. He could then spend the time with his siblings' grandchildren or something. He deserves it. But knowing him, he will stick to his magnum opus until the bitter end. It's mostly side projects like Dunk & Egg (3 to 9 more books planned in that series) that have an uncertain future.
I am almost certain that The Winds of Winter will be so big that it will have enough material for two books (It is doubtful that he can complete all those storylines in one volume). I estimate about 95 POV chapters as the minimum, but I wouldn't be surprised if the book ends up being almost as big as A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons combined.
And besides, there are indications that The Winds of Winter was almost completely rewritten in late 2015, after it was pretty much finished. He was dissatisfied with the end result. With the scrapping of so much material, George R. R. Martin ended up in a long-term depression.
In any case, The Winds of Winter is by no means an easy book to write. There are twenty POV characters who more or less have to come together. Moreover, GRRM is a writer who very often rewrites chapters, experiments which POV point of view is best suited to the situation, etc. The smallest change in one chapter causes the butterfly effect and results in adjustments having to be made in other chapters. So there are many variations of certain chapters, which never end up in the final book.
Anyway, he will now also have to plan for A Dream of Spring while writing The Winds of Winter. He will already have material for that book, though, because GRRM needs to have an idea of how the book will conclude and how a character gets to that end point.
It is the quality of the final product that counts for me. He takes the time to create a good final product. In the end, it will not matter how long it took him to complete the saga. His fame gained through Game of Thrones does him no favors. He is expected to get involved in (far too) many projects. He is retired, but still has a busier schedule than many his age. He cannot be expected to spend 100% of his time writing. Creative work also involves taking inspiration from other works, or just taking a moment to rest himself (it's in these moments that the best ideas come). At the very least, I grant him quality time with family, especially at his age.
If he says he will stop tomorrow and hand the work over to another quality author who understands the themes well (e.g., the human heart in conflict with itself), then I am at peace with it. He could then spend the time with his siblings' grandchildren or something. He deserves it. But knowing him, he will stick to his magnum opus until the bitter end. It's mostly side projects like Dunk & Egg (3 to 9 more books planned in that series) that have an uncertain future.
Because he wrote part 1 of a promised 7 part series. I bought it based on that promise. As an author, he has an ethical obligation to finish it to the extent he is able. He has given up on that obligation. I am quite sure he even actively dislikes many in his fanbase, which I'm sure discourages him from finishing.
I read this and realised/remembered that holy shit Dany is still in Essos in the books and mentally screamed.
I even managed to finish my phd thesis last year lol. For a long while, I wasn't sure which of my thesis and twow would end up most overdue lol
At this point, I am more excited for the post mortem on this book than the book itself. When considering what he cut from ADWD, the preview chapters and teases he's posted on his blog over the past ten years, and now this update that he wrote hundreds of pages in 2020, the equation doesn't make sense. He should not have hundreds of pages left to write. Bantam will ultimately publish, at most, a thousand or so pages, because that is how much they can physically bind together. He should be well over a thousands pages by now. He could have written nothing for several years and still be over a thousand pages.
ASOIAF has five released books that are in total 1,736,054 words long. That's an average of 347,211 words per book.
GRRM announced that he completed A Dance with Dragons on April 27, 2011. It has been 3,570 days since then.
To complete an average book in ASOIAF, if George would have written just 97 net words per day, he would have completed it by now. That's it...97 finished words.
ADWD is 414,788 words long. If TWOW is the same length, it would have taken 116 words per day to write.
This post contains a total of 113 words lmao. Just to illustrate how little he needed to work on this to get it done.
GRRM has absolutely NO ONE to blame but himself if TWOW has became an untraversable mess. He has editors, he chose to ignore them. GRRM made this bed, now he has to sleep in it. But instead, it looks like he'd rather watch football.
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Editors can't really help him when he decides what he's written no longer works and decides to scrap it.
When Dream of Spring is inevitably ghost-written, that's exactly what they'll do.
Faegon
Arianne martell
The others not being defeated in a trade federation control ship phantom menace way
Book accurate characterizations of tyrion dany jon and sansa completly contradictory to the show
Wizard euron
You can not reverse engineer season 5 6 7 and 8 into the books
Like taking a messed up cake and trying to turn it back into eggs and flour to try again
Eh. It's one thing to write words, it's another to tell a story, especially with so many threads.
I take a different approach. When you start and publish a book series, especially one that propels your success, you enter a social contract with your fan base. Every reasonable attempt should be made to finish.
George is completely free to break that implicit agreement. Likewise, his fans are free to drag him for it.
The saddest thing about this saga is that the never ending churn of new converts swearing that this time everything will different seems to be coming to an end. There's not even many people quoting Gaiman anymore to laugh at. No one really seems to have much hope anymore.
I read that last one back in 1L or 2L year of law school. I've been in practice for 8 years now.
Who the fuck is Young Griff? At this point I can't bring myself to care.
Who the fuck is Young Griff? At this point I can't bring myself to care.
I don't think that GRRM has any problem writing words - the problem he has is in writing usable words. Ever since ASOS GRRM has been spending a ton of time unwriting what he just wrote, and it's safe to assume that the time dedicated to this has only been accelerating for TWOW.
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The biggest twist will be that once he starts writing ADOS in 2026, he will also tell us that there will need to be another book after it. He can't finish this up in only two books.
Working on a book for years and years. Hundreds of pages written just last year, hundreds more to go. No end in sight. His general defeated tone. Real Grady Tripp from Wonder Boys vibes from George.
IIRC, most of the sample chapters he released were cut from ADWD.
Nah. Him not honoring the social contract he forged with his fanbase however.. ha!
Shall we hope that he's still locked down another year? Yes.
Disgusting."Wrote hundreds and hundreds of pages" has this vibe:
he's been tryin to think of a way to add trolls to the universe and can't.
The whole point of a contract though is two parties consent to it, this social contract thing just seems like another way to say he owes you something, he doesn't
I'm waiting for when we hear that his computer finally crapped out on him and he lost his manuscript...
The perfect way to begin winding down an epic tale for the last book or two - add a completely new element that upends where the story was headed!