I remember when Dance With Dragons was released I would read it my car waiting on my 10 ten year old son while he took karate lessons.
He turns 20 years old this year.
I, too, frequently post in threads about topics I don't care about.
GRRM reminds me of one of those people who claim that they're an author. But then when you ask them to show some of their writing, they are always very cagey about it....When in reality, they never wrote anything, and they just liked to call themselves an author because they felt a sense of accomplishment from bragging about it.
I know GRRM was a previously published author but his excuses sound eerily reminiscent to those kinds of people. Every year it's "I still have hundreds of more pages to write." It's a black hole of progress that sounds more like a scam every year that passes with nothing to show for it.
A Game of Thrones - August 1st, 1996
A Clash of Kings - November 16th, 1998 (2 years, 3 months)
A Storm of Swords - August 8th, 2000 (1 year, 8 months)
A Feast for Crows - October 17th, 2005 (5 years, 2 months)
A Dance with Dragons - July 12th, 2011 (5 years, 8 months)
If TWOW came out today, it will have been 9 YEARS and 6 MONTHS since the last book, nearly double the typical timeframe, and 5 times longer than the first three books. AND you're telling us there are hundreds of pages left to write? It feels like he never had a realistic plan to actually release TWOW. He was just fucking around and reveling in his newfound fame.
Mistborn Era 2 is still top notch though. That's finishing this year and should have a banger finale.
I'm back to thinking winds will come out but no way we ever get a 7th book
And no way dany makes it to Westeros by the end of winds too much shit in essos to deal with
So we will never reach act 2 proper lol
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
Just take the scripts of season 8 and add some prose around them. lol
FaegonJust take the scripts of season 8 and add some prose around them. lol
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.
Let him do his thing.
He doesn't owe you anything and can do what he wants.
Eh idk if he consented to that thoughI 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.
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.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.
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.
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.
IIRC, most of the sample chapters he released were cut from ADWD.You could just flat-out espouse the baseless conspiratorial rhetoric that he hasn't written anything. People are openly doing that.
Not all authors work at the same pace, and certainly not at the breakneck pace of the world's Sandersons. Especially not when they aren't hungry or writing as their full time job.
You realize it took Tolkien two decades to write LOTR, right? Which, combined, is only slightly longer than ADWD alone. Moreover, he worked on the larger Middle Earth world for basically his entire life, establishing a detailed mythos not totally dissimilar to what GRRM has been doing with ASOIAF's various works.
And Tolkien died before completing his work on Middle Earth, with much of what we now know coming from his son piecing together his notes.
This theory -- really, let's call it what it is: lunacy -- that GRRM hasn't been writing is exasperating. He writes by PoV and inspiration, rather than linearly. When he changes something at one place in the story, he has to potentially do massive rewrites to bring everything into congruency. Repeat ad nauseam.
He's wildly inefficient, both in how he types (at his home, at his ancient computer) and how he writes. But he writes a shit ton. That's just a fact. I mean hell, we already have about 10 pre-released TWOW chapters (which are amazing, by the way).
Disgusting.
he's been tryin to think of a way to add trolls to the universe and can't.I give the man credit for keeping this troll fest going for 10 years.
Nah. Him not honoring the social contract he forged with his fanbase however.. ha!
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
Don't fucking remind me of this :(Anytime I hear about GRRM writing I'm reminded that he types on an oldschool DOS computer with one finger.
Anytime I hear about GRRM writing I'm reminded that he types on an oldschool DOS computer with one finger.
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!