[Werthead]

I have modified my position on one point. I had previously supported his decision to post about whatever he wanted and if he wanted to talk about the figures and so on but not ADWD, that's up to him.

However, one of my friends did point out there is a huge inconsistency going on with the author saying, "I don't want to talk about ASoIaF, but I do want to talk about ASoIaF merchandise,". The two are inextricably linked and with the best will in the world, he knows that 90% of the people going to his blog want to know about ADWD and it seems off not to give them what they want but then ask them to spend money on other products. Some give and take could be a better idea here. If he doesn't want to do that, that's still up to him, but as a student of human nature (as all writers are) he should expect people to get frustrated by that, although that certainly doesn't excuse some of the more extreme reactions on the other side.

[wolf_2099]

New post regarded from ADWD from GRRM blog.

http://grrm.livejournal.com/92848.html

Quote

I almost hate to say anything here, for fear of jinxing it... but for what it's worth, the last six weeks or so have been the most productive period I've had on A DANCE WITH DRAGONS in... well... a year at least, maybe several. In the last three days I've completed three new chapters. Not from scratch, mind you, these were all chapters that had been partially written, and in some cases rewritten, for months if not years. But they're finally done, and I've just reread them, and I'm almost convinced that they're Not Crap.

We'll see how I feel tomorrow.

Anyway, I know I don't talk about DANCE frequently here, and that's not going to change. Sorry, but I'm never going to be one of these writers who blogs daily about how many words they produced today. I don't like to talk about the good days for fear of jinxing myself (all writers are superstitious at heart, just like baseball players), and I don't like to talk about the bad days... well, just because. Writing is like sausage making in my view; you'll all be happier in the end if you just eat the final product without knowing what's gone into it.

But I am making a small exception now because... well, I'm feeling rather jazzed right now, and for the first time in a very long while, I think I can see a glimmering that might just be a light at the end of the tunnel.

Now if I can only slash through the Meereenese knot that I've been worrying at since 2005, I may actually start to get excited.

From the sounds of it, it seems like he has been having a tough time with this book, which makes me wonder, is it just this book, or will the next one be more of the same?

[Werthead]

And more here as well:

Quote

The book won't be finished in June. Maybe August. He and I have been writing back and forth the last few days and he told me progress is going slower than he'd like. So I'd say don't expect it until November or December at the earliest.

The good thing is his manuscripts are neat and clean and barely need any editing. The publisher already has the lay out ready, so in short the turn around from turning the manuscript in to getting it on the shelves will be smaller than other books.

By the way, he didn't tell me August. I surmised August. Since he is going to be gone for some of the summer, maybe it will be September. Either way, he is at the end and that's what's important.

The guy doing the talking is Shawn Speakman, blogger for Suvudu (GRRM's publisher's blog) and webmaster for the Terry Brooks forum, and I can vouch he does have regular contact with GRRM, so that sounds positivie. Although it is worth reading the rest of the thread for the bit where he goes off the deep-end. Reminds me of some of the old arguments we used to have round here only more ostentatious

[wolf_2099]

After reading Wertheads post, I am curious.

Has anyone ever done the math on how many months of the year GRRM is at home?

I don't want to start another fanboy argument, just curious.

[Werthead]

wolf_2099, on Jun 24 2009, 07:38 PM, said:

After reading Wertheads post, I am curious.

Has anyone ever done the math on how many months of the year GRRM is at home?

I don't want to start another fanboy argument, just curious.

I dunno. Ten? Ten-and-a-half. The "He's always going to cons!" thing is a bit overblown, as a lot of those cons are reasonably close to home. Finland obvious isn't, though

[Terez]

Did anyone post the Gaiman "GRRM is not your bitch" blog? I just read the 5-page WoT thread and don't feel like reading this 7-page one.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/05/enti...ent-issues.html

[HoosierDaddy]

Yes it was posted. I think. Or, maybe I just read it somewhere else. But, I'm pretty sure it was posted.

I disagree. G.R.R.M. is my bitch... but it's just role-play so it's all good.

[Yellow]

I liked this quote:

Quote

It seems to me that the biggest problem with series books is that either readers complain that the books used to be good but that somewhere in the effort to get out a book every year the quality has fallen off

Rang a bell

[blackzoid]

Not for me.

[Yellow]

Excellent! Have a biscuit.

[Werthead]

Yellow, on Jun 25 2009, 08:53 AM, said:

I liked this quote:

Quote

It seems to me that the biggest problem with series books is that either readers complain that the books used to be good but that somewhere in the effort to get out a book every year the quality has fallen off

Rang a bell

Yeah, Terry Pratchett and Alastair Reynolds put out a 400-page novel each year and they're usually top-notch with no major decline in quality so I don't entirely agree with Gaiman on this.

Erikson definitely needs a few more editing passes on his books though, especially the last few. When you could pull about 400 pages out of Toll the Hounds and not affect the book's storyline one iota, something is clearly wrong. The fact that he's said the six new Malazan books will come out longer than at one-year intervals is quite telling, I think.

This post has been edited by Werthead: 25 June 2009 - 05:44 PM

[blackzoid]

Werthead, on Jun 25 2009, 06:44 PM, said:

Yellow, on Jun 25 2009, 08:53 AM, said:

I liked this quote:

Quote

It seems to me that the biggest problem with series books is that either readers complain that the books used to be good but that somewhere in the effort to get out a book every year the quality has fallen off

Rang a bell

Yeah, Terry Pratchett and Alastair Reynolds put out a 400-page novel each year and they're usually top-notch with no major decline in quality so I don't entirely agree with Gaiman on this.

Erikson definitely needs a few more editing passes on his books though, especially the last few. When you could pull about 400 pages out of Toll the Hounds and not affect the book's storyline one iota, something is clearly wrong. The fact that he's said the six new Malazan books will come out longer than at one-year intervals is quite telling, I think.

Thats true I guess, but there is a case where something that was written quickly, while being messy and perhaps a bit self-indulgent, may flow better then something that was written over a longer interval. If parts of a book are written years apart, I presume more editing is necessary to get them to "feel" right?

Also Erikson in his eargerness to write quickly may have the luxury to be more spontaneous with storylines then perhaps Martin can be. Martin is agonizing over chapters to get them just right while Erikson is powering ahead (and making both good and bad storytelling choices depending on a readers point of view). I find as a result that Erikson's low points are worse then Martin's but correspondly his highs are better then Martin's (and that includes Erikson's recent books)
Martin would be more consistent throughout.

[Abyss]

Martin ended a book with a sword falling on a POV character's head.

SE has always, without fail, ended the books on a solid finish. He's warned us that DoD will be a cliffhanger, but that's book nine of a ten book series that's been written on a consistent timeline.

GRRM dropped a sword on a character, then took untold years to get to the next book which was allegedly half done back when the sword fell.

SE wins on this one, imnsho.

- Abyss, ...once spent six years under a wall...

[Terez]

Abyss, on Jun 25 2009, 04:24 PM, said:

- Abyss, ...once spent six years under a wall...

Now there's a true fanboy.

[Werthead]

Abyss, on Jun 25 2009, 10:24 PM, said:

Martin ended a book with a sword falling on a POV character's head.

GRRM dropped a sword on a character, then took untold years to get to the next book which was allegedly half done back when the sword fell.

You're talking about the ending to A Clash of Kings (the sword falling on Jaime's head)? As the gap between that book and A Storm of Swords was the shortest out of the series (less than two years). And ASoS, as far as we know, wasn't half-done when ACoK was finished, although there was a bit of an overlap between the last few chapters of ACoK and the first few of ASoS.

Quote

SE wins on this one, imnsho.

Really? Erikson once had a 1,150-page novel where we were constantly told that the T'lan Imass are getting their arses kicked on Assail and they needed the Genabackan contingent to go help out before they all die horribly. The book eneded with the Genabackan Imass going, "Yo!" and heading off to the face the evil, imminent and vast threat which even unnerves the gods.

Eight years later, we still know jack about the threat, its scale, what it is or what happened to the Imass after they strode off at the end of Memories of Ice. And when we do find out (still likely four or five years away), it will be from a different author altogether. This is an altogether different scale of cliffhangeriness.

[HoosierDaddy]

That's a cliffhanger in the same sense that everything about the old Valyrians (I think?) is a cliff-hanger. Memories of Ice had nothing to do with Assail, the Imass plot in that book revolved around Silverfox and the Second Gathering, which took place and turned out differently than they thought it would. I just don't see any cliffhanger there at all, Wert.

If that's a cliff hanger, then nearly the entire universe is a cliff-hanger because it is mentioned and then no information is really given about it: Korel, the K'Chain, the Sundering of Emurlahn, the Just Wars, the Jaghut War, the fall of Toblakai civilization, Shal Morzinn...

[Illuyankas]

I believe he's talking about

Spoiler

Brienne.

Personally, a populace going off to effectively throw themselves at/into a non-expansionary social equivalent of a blender (since we get enough hints to work out that much about Assail) is considerably different from having a Schrodinger's POV character. Besides, their part in the story was done, the other felt like GRRM had cut out half a chapter and forgot about it.

This post has been edited by Illuyankas: 26 June 2009 - 10:01 PM

[Werthead]

I don't think he's talking about Brienne as he referred the sword falling on a character's head (

Spoiler

Brienne was hung

), with someone raising the sword in one book and us finding out what happened in the next book. That's Catelyn raising the sword over Jaime's head in ACoK and them dropping it in ASoS (and cutting his bonds instead of his throat, which I admit is one of the cornier things GRRM has done in the series).

The Brienne cliffhanger is the daftest thing in ASoIaF because it's completely undramatic anyway:

Spoiler

we can guess she yelled out Jaime's name, Catelyn let her down and set her off to kill him as she offered two pages earlier.

As for the MBF stuff, the fate of Silverfox and the T'lan Imass who were a pretty huge part of Memories of Ice is a minor and tangential plot thread that is irrelevant to the series narrative? You mean like Karsa's storyline, which seems to have suffered the same fate, or the Tyrant of Darujhistan storyline? All other elements dropped by Erikson to be picked up on in some book he or someone else might write years down the line.

Plus whilst Erikson hasn't had a direct cliffhanger (yet) Esslemont has, with the ending to RotCG.

[Illuyankas]

Maybe it's a sword of Damocles reference, maybe he misremembered it, I don't know, but the rest of his quote is clearly referring to ADWD.

EDIT: It was a plot thread that was effectively tied off for the current series.

This post has been edited by Illuyankas: 27 June 2009 - 01:54 AM

[HoosierDaddy]

But they aren't "cliff-hangers." We pretty much know what is going to happen with the Silverfox and Imass plot... they are going to go to Assail. It just hasn't been written yet. I have yet to see an actual classic cliff-hanger in this series.

Just because it is a narrative that is set-aside for someone else to write about it later does not make it a cliff-hanger. Maybe we just have different definitions of cliff-hangers. To me, they are endings that are purposefully mysterious for the sole reason as to create suspense as to what has happened. I don't see any of that in MBotF.