[MTS]

Where have people gotten the idea that sometime in the past few years GRRM suddenly went 'fuck it, this writing gig is totally ghey', and just decided to drink beers and laugh at those stupid chumps who are waiting for his next book? I seriously doubt that's the case. I'm more of the opinion that he's just not been happy with what he produced and so it's a slow process to perfect it. I have nothing to base that on, but I doubt he's gotten sick of writing.

[Paran]

History mostly. History of his publishing, blogging, etc. For example, 1995-2000 (years he's working on the first 3 books) 0 Wildcards books, 0 anthologies, 0 Collections, 1 Novella. 2000-present (AFFC, ADWD?) 4 Wildcards (with more coming end of this year), 3 Anthologies, 4 Collections, 3 Novellas as well as extra merchandising in calenders, figurines, soggy RPG's, replica swords, HBO negotiations and scripts, etc.

Further to that is the history of his blog, to which I refer you to SilentMajority and his work on the subject:
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009

I think this is something everyone needs to keep in mind with these multi-book series - 15 years is a long time to be working on the same project. To maintain momentum on the work throughout must be insanely difficult. I know if I'm on the same project for over a year and it hasn't shifted phases I get a bit bored and distracted. It's a massive credit to Steven Erikson for being able to complete it, but as his recent posts have shown, the weight of this scale of project is huge, and the person you were when it was conceived is a different person to the person you are when you finish - a decade's a long time in a life. SE is one of the few people to finish a multi book series though. Kate Elliott is the only other I can recall. Robin Hobb did three linked trilogies, Zelazny did two separate 5 book series, and Donaldson is working through his third and final Thomas Covenant trilogy. Robert Jordan, the man who started this whole thing off was similar to Martin in that he experienced a slow down and drop in quality after 6 books (admittedly only one book is a sample for Martin, but RH was still putting out a book every other year, compared to every 5?). I don't know if this type of series will be very popular after what the publishing industry has seen over the last two decades.

This post has been edited by Paran: 04 August 2010 - 10:17 AM

[ansible]

 MTS, on 04 August 2010 - 06:03 AM, said:

Where have people gotten the idea that sometime in the past few years GRRM suddenly went 'fuck it, this writing gig is totally ghey', and just decided to drink beers and laugh at those stupid chumps who are waiting for his next book? I seriously doubt that's the case. I'm more of the opinion that he's just not been happy with what he produced and so it's a slow process to perfect it. I have nothing to base that on, but I doubt he's gotten sick of writing.

I mostly agree with you. However, do you think he is writing ADWD as often and consistently as he wrote the previous books, i.e., multiple hours per day, and is just not coming up with what he wants? That doesn't seem very likely to me. I would have to imagine that if the process is slower and he's rewriting chapters so often, he probably isn't working on it as much. That may simply be because he's not sure where to go, or whatever. But he can't be working on it five or six hours a day...right?

This post has been edited by ansible: 04 August 2010 - 01:59 PM

[Werthead]

 pat5150, on 03 August 2010 - 06:59 PM, said:

Believe me,

If Bantam think they can get away with doing just that, they will. But I figure that ADwD will be released ASAP after they get the finished manuscript. Anne Groell will likely work overtime to edit the book, and I wouldn't be surprised to see the novel hit the shelves within 6 months of the manuscript being turned in.

As for the HBO series, Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse books (which were already bestsellers) saw an increase in sales of 2000% to 3000% due to the popularity of the TV show. Look for the first 4 ASOIAF volumes to be reissued with TV covers, perhaps in trade paperback format, and they'll go like hot cakes...

Bantam have already got new tradeback and mass-market paperback editions of A GAME OF THRONES coming out on 22 February 2011, ahead of the TV show airdate. Some HBO bods dropped by the Bantam booth at Comic-Con, presumably to discuss cross-marketing, the new cover designs and perhaps the logo for the TV show as well which will appear on the books.

Curiously, only THRONES is listed so far. They may be being cautious and doing one book at a time, or they may be re-releasing each book alongside each season, so we'll only see the new KINGS edition jus before Season 2 airs.

As for the editing of DRAGONS, I know that it's been done as GRRM has submitted each chunk of the manuscript. All the bits that Bantam now have (most if not all of the current 1400 MS pages) are typeset, edited and formatted, whilst they have already completed the new maps and the new appendices. The idea appears to be that by doing this they just need to put in the last few dozen pages GRRM is working on now, edit them (which shouldn't take very long) and the book is set to go to the printers. I know that both Voyager and Bantam are right now ready to go overtime on getting the book out in 2010, but we are coming down to the last few weeks or so in which this will be possible. Apparently Bantam have a very loose and informal deadline of late August. If the MS isn't in by then, publication drops back to Spring 2011. I imagine Voyager will be the same.

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History mostly. History of his publishing, blogging, etc. For example, 1995-2000 (years he's working on the first 3 books) 0 Wildcards books, 0 anthologies, 0 Collections, 1 Novella. 2000-present (AFFC, ADWD?) 4 Wildcards (with more coming end of this year), 3 Anthologies, 4 Collections, 3 Novellas as well as extra merchandising in calenders, figurines, soggy RPG's, replica swords, HBO negotiations and scripts, etc.

Why do you use 1995 as a starting point? Work on AGoT began in 1991, and between 1991 and 2000 GRRM edited no less than eight WILD CARDS books and worked on the DOORWAYS TV project.

As has been said many times before, GRRM has always worked on secondary projects whilst working on ASoIaF. It was that up until 2000 he didn't even have a website, let alone a blog, so he didn't go on about them.

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I mostly agree with you. However, do you think he is writing ADWD as often and consistently as he wrote the previous books, i.e., multiple hours per day, and is just not coming up with what he wants? That doesn't seem very likely to me. I would have to imagine that if the process is slower and he's rewriting chapters so often, he probably isn't working on it as much. That may simply be because he's not sure where to go, or whatever. But he can't be working on it five or six hours a day...right?

It varies, but if I had to give a rough estimate of GRRM's daily work on ADWD based on info, it'd probably come out at around four hours per day (about the same as Erikson). The difference is that GRRM does indeed take a few weeks off per year here and there to attend other functions. Also, notably unlike Erikson, GRRM rewrites, possibly over-obsessively. Shawn from Suvudu asked GRRM what percentage of ADWD had survived from the infamous 500 MS pages he had when AFFC was completed and he said about 2% (I'm guessing that wasn an off-the-cuff guess rather than a mathmatically-precise estimate). Everything else has been rewritten, in some cases many times over.

An interesting estimate to get from GRRM would be an estimate of how many words have actually been poured into the writing of ADWD. The novel itself, based on MS page count, sounds like it's coming in somewhere around 350,000-390,000 words, but the number of words put into the project could easily be three times that, if not more. Which is indeed insane and possibly unprecedented (Lord of the Rings is the only book that I can think of that was rewritten by the author on anything like the same scale during the writing process).

[Job]

 Werthead, on 05 August 2010 - 11:11 AM, said:

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History mostly. History of his publishing, blogging, etc. For example, 1995-2000 (years he's working on the first 3 books) 0 Wildcards books, 0 anthologies, 0 Collections, 1 Novella. 2000-present (AFFC, ADWD?) 4 Wildcards (with more coming end of this year), 3 Anthologies, 4 Collections, 3 Novellas as well as extra merchandising in calenders, figurines, soggy RPG's, replica swords, HBO negotiations and scripts, etc.

Why do you use 1995 as a starting point? Work on AGoT began in 1991, and between 1991 and 2000 GRRM edited no less than eight WILD CARDS books and worked on the DOORWAYS TV project.

As has been said many times before, GRRM has always worked on secondary projects whilst working on ASoIaF. It was that up until 2000 he didn't even have a website, let alone a blog, so he didn't go on about them.

GRRM didn't really start writing ASOIF until early 1994 (when he got the contract). He did get the idea of a epic fantasy in the summer of 91, but he only wrote a few pages. He left it in the drawer to work full time on DOORWAYS (and Wild Cards it seems). ASOIF was picked up again at the end of 93. Not a word was written on ASOIF in this period. This is described in detail by GRRM in the Meisha Merlin version of AGOT.

Back to Wild Cards. Here is the publish dates.

o Wild Cards VIII: One-Eyed Jacks, Bantam Books, 1991
o Wild Cards IX: Jokertown Shuffle, Bantam Books, 1991
o Wild Cards X: Double Solitaire, a novel by Melinda M. Snodgrass, Bantam Books, 1992
o Wild Cards XI: Dealer's Choice, Bantam Books, 1992
o Wild Cards XII: Turn of the Cards, a novel by Victor Milan, Bantam Books, 1993
o Card Sharks (Wild Cards 13), Baen Books, 1993
o Marked Cards (Wild Cards 14), Baen Books, 1994
o Black Trump (Wild Cards 15), Baen Books, 1995
o Wild Cards XVI: Deuces Down, ibooks, 2002

At most he edited two Wild Cards very early in the ASOIF project. There are none between 1995 and 2000. Maybe he was to busy to work on ACOC and ASOS ?

"As has been said many times before, GRRM has always worked on secondary projects whilst working on ASoIaF. It was that up until 2000 he didn't even have a website, let alone a blog, so he didn't go on about them."

I'm really interested to learn more about these projects GRRM worked on between 1994 and 2000. Maybe you can give us a short list?

[Werthead]

 Job, on 05 August 2010 - 12:58 PM, said:

GRRM didn't really start writing ASOIF until early 1994 (when he got the contract). He did get the idea of a epic fantasy in the summer of 91, but he only wrote a few pages. He left it in the drawer to work full time on DOORWAYS (and Wild Cards it seems). ASOIF was picked up again at the end of 93. Not a word was written on ASOIF in this period. This is described in detail by GRRM in the Meisha Merlin version of AGOT.

Not a word of fiction was written during that period. However, additional work was indeed done on ASoIaF at this time. GRRM planned out Tyrion's story arc whilst travelling to auditions in France to audition the female lead in DOORWAYS, for example. How much of that was written down and how much he kept in his head is unknown. He also wrote over 100 manuscript pages (more than 'a few', actually about 10% of the book) for A GAME OF THRONES before suspending direct writing to work on DOORWAYS for an eighteen-month period before returning to direct writing in late 93/early 94.

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At most he edited two Wild Cards very early in the ASOIF project. There are none between 1995 and 2000. Maybe he was to busy to work on ACOC and ASOS?

After the failure of the Baen Books line, GRRM spent some considerable time trying to resurrect WILD CARDS with a new publisher, eventually succeeding with iBooks (who very quickly went bust).

Given that editing a Wild Cards book takes a short period of time, the progress made on ASoIaF during this time period, which was indeed more rapid than during the ADWD period, can be put down to GRRM's pre-planning (contrary to what he's occasionally said elsewhere, he did have a very rough outline for the first three books which he penned during the writing of GoT) and the fact that AGoT-ACoK-ASoS were conceived and partially written (although obviously not published) as one book. AFFC and especially ADWD have suffered from a lack of such planning, very rough as it was, and indeed the reversal of what planning he had done (the loss of the infamous five-year gap).

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I'm really interested to learn more about these projects GRRM worked on between 1994 and 2000. Maybe you can give us a short list?

Specifically at that time? In addition to the aforementioned two WILD CARDS books edited, he collaborated with Melinda Snodgrass on several script projects, namely the Outer Limits adaptation of Sandkings, an adaptation of A Princess of Mars for film and a Wild Cards movie script for Disney. He also wrote and developed a second TV series, Starport in 1994-95 which did not reach the pilot stage. Depending on your criteria for what constitutes other projects, you can also include The Hedge Knight short story and his time as chairman of the SFWA and Nebula Awards which also occurred during this period (when he had a dust-up with J. Michael Straczynski of Babylon 5 fame).

This post has been edited by Werthead: 05 August 2010 - 03:19 PM

[acesn8s]

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. . . and his time as chairman of the SFWA and Nebula Awards which also occurred during this period (when he had a dust-up with J. Michael Straczynski of Babylon 5 fame).

Oooo, more dirt please?

[Werthead]

 acesn8s, on 05 August 2010 - 07:49 PM, said:

Oooo, more dirt please?

During GRRM's tenure the Nebulas eliminated the TV category (it came back later), effectively depriving B5 of another bunch of awards to win (at the same time it was romping home the Hugos two years in a row). JMS resigned from the SFWA in a huff over it. He and GRRM were and, AFAIK, are now again friends, but they were on opposite sides of that debate.

[Job]

Quote

Not a word of fiction was written during that period. However, additional work was indeed done on ASoIaF at this time. GRRM planned out Tyrion's story arc whilst travelling to auditions in France to audition the female lead in DOORWAYS, for example. How much of that was written down and how much he kept in his head is unknown. He also wrote over 100 manuscript pages (more than 'a few', actually about 10% of the book) for A GAME OF THRONES before suspending direct writing to work on DOORWAYS for an eighteen-month period before returning to direct writing in late 93/early 94.

So musing about Tyrion equals full time writing ? GRRM did spend 2 years away from ASOIF (not 18 months), and not a single word was written. As he told us himself when he picked up the manuscript again in late 93 "I was surprised how fresh the story still felt after all this years". Not the words of somebody who have spent every spare moment musing about ASOIF, is it?

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Specifically at that time? In addition to the aforementioned two WILD CARDS books edited, he collaborated with Melinda Snodgrass on several script projects, namely the Outer Limits adaptation of Sandkings, an adaptation of A Princess of Mars for film and a Wild Cards movie script for Disney. He also wrote and developed a second TV series, Starport in 1994-95 which did not reach the pilot stage. Depending on your criteria for what constitutes other projects, you can also include The Hedge Knight short story and his time as chairman of the SFWA and Nebula Awards which also occurred during this period (when he had a dust-up with J. Michael Straczynski of Babylon 5 fame).

But these projects are all, just as the 2 Wild Card books, from very early in the lifetime of ASOIF. It seems quite clear that GRRM just got these projects of the plate, before going on to deliver 3 excellent books at a high writing pace. Average writing time for the first 3 books are 2 years 4 months.
"Starport"—Two-hour pilot for a Fox network television series, Columbia Pictures Television, 1994, not produced
Wild Cards—Feature screenplay, written in collaboration with Melinda M. Snodgrass, based on the Wild Cards anthologies and mosaic novels, Hollywood Pictures/ Disney Studio, 1993-1995
A Princess of Mars—Feature screenplay, written in collaboration with Melinda M. Snodgrass, based on the novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Hollywood Pictures/ Disney Studio, 1993-94
"Sandkings"—Two-hour TV movie for The Outer Limits, Showtime, 1995, teleplay by Melinda M. Snodgrass

All evidence points to the fact that when ASOIF really got going, GRRM consentrated heavily on the books. I can't find any evidence that new projects were picked up until after 2000.

His workload for the last five years is just mindblowing:
Wild Card: 5 books
Novella collections : 4 books
Calendars
Replica swords
Miniatures
RPG
HBO
Blogging
Selling old stuff out of his basement
Did I mention blogging ?

The statement that GRRM have always had lots of side-projects is clearly not correct. I have no idea how much time GRRM spends on this stuff, but there is a clear connection between sideprojects and writing speed.

[Werthead]

 Job, on 06 August 2010 - 09:59 AM, said:

So musing about Tyrion equals full time writing ?

No, but it does constitute creative work on the series. If GRRM's TV series had not come along in 1992-93, it is likely that AGoT would have turned out very differently (as it was after this period that Phyllis Eisenstein convinced GRRM to make ASoIaF a fantasy and put in dragons and supernatural creatures, whilst before it had no such elements). So this period was important to working on the series.

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Average writing time for the first 3 books are 2 years 4 months.

This is a dubious conclusion at best. As said earlier, the first three books were written as one extremely long narrative with GRRM breaking off at various points to publish what he had and move on. For example, between 1/3 and 1/2 of A Clash of Kings was completed before A Game of Thrones was submitted for publication. When the publishers balked at the book approaching 2,000 MS pages GRRM realised the thing was too unwieldy and chose the King in the North/dragon birth section to round off the first book. He then added Davos and Theon to ACoK as new POV characters to keep things fresh and added the new prologue to ACoK before completing the remainder of the book.

Based on that, A CLASH OF KINGS was begun presumably some time in 1995 and completed in late 1998, 3-3.5 years, well ahead of your questionable average writing time (in fact, it's entirely possible, given GRRM's non-chronological order of writing, some parts of ACoK may have been written substantially earlier). Then Martin had several substantial chunks of A STORM OF SWORDS, including all of Tyrion's chapters for the book, completed well before A CLASH OF KINGS was submitted. As such, the overlapping between books making reaching a concrete writing time for each one difficult at best.

Quote

His workload for the last five years is just mindblowing:
Wild Card: 5 books
Novella collections : 4 books
Calendars
Replica swords
Miniatures
RPG
HBO
Blogging
Selling old stuff out of his basement
Did I mention blogging ?

Your definition of 'mindblowing' must be somewhat different to that of most people. Of the projects listed four are handled by other companies and people with zero creative involvement from GRRM. Editing books is not monstrously time-consuming and, more importantly, does not consume creative energy. The three short stories would have been a better point to raise, except they only took a couple of weeks each. The HBO script took about a fortnight and was then done. I know that the audition tape-watching was done in GRRM's down-time that he'd normally spend watching TV or chilling with his girlfriend, as is the blogging. Most people out there who blog (including those who do so far more often than GRRM) have full-time jobs and it does not impair on their work time.

Quote

The statement that GRRM have always had lots of side-projects is clearly not correct.

I never said he had 'lots' of side-projects, only that to say that the earlier books were written in a bubble of isolation when nothing else was going on is incorrect.

Quote

I have no idea how much time GRRM spends on this stuff, but there is a clear connection between sideprojects and writing speed.

This conclusion is simplistic and obvious, and thus should be treated with suspicion. We have been told, repeatedly, the real reasons for the delays, which for reasons that remain unclear, a lot of people refuse to engage with. The narrative, structrual and timeline complexities that have plagued the series since some bad calls were made during the latter writing of A STORM OF SWORDS are why we are where we are now, not to mention GRRM's growing perfectionist streak and the (relatively) newfound financial independence needed to indulge such perfectionism. If you want to find out why the last two books have taken so long to appear, exploring this angle will be more fruitful.

This post has been edited by Werthead: 06 August 2010 - 12:35 PM

[Job]

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No, but it does constitute creative work on the series. If GRRM's TV series had not come along in 1992-93, it is likely that AGoT would have turned out very differently (as it was after this period that Phyllis Eisenstein convinced GRRM to make ASoIaF a fantasy and put in dragons and supernatural creatures, whilst before it had no such elements). So this period was important to working on the series.

This is your interpretion of the 2 year hiatus. This is fair enough, even if I happen to disagree. People can make up their own minds.

Quote

This is a dubious conclusion at best. As said earlier, the first three books were written as one extremely long narrative with GRRM breaking off at various points to publish what he had and move on. For example, between 1/3 and 1/2 of A Clash of Kings was completed before A Game of Thrones was submitted for publication. When the publishers balked at the book approaching 2,000 MS pages GRRM realised the thing was too unwieldy and chose the King in the North/dragon birth section to round off the first book. He then added Davos and Theon to ACoK as new POV characters to keep things fresh and added the new prologue to ACoK before completing the remainder of the book.
Based on that, A CLASH OF KINGS was begun presumably some time in 1995 and completed in late 1998, 3-3.5 years, well ahead of your questionable average writing time (in fact, it's entirely possible, given GRRM's non-chronological order of writing, some parts of ACoK may have been written substantially earlier). Then Martin had several substantial chunks of A STORM OF SWORDS, including all of Tyrion's chapters for the book, completed well before A CLASH OF KINGS was submitted. As such, the overlapping between books making reaching a concrete writing time for each one difficult at best.

Did you miss the word average at the start of the sentence? I happen to more or less agree with you that ACOK took the longest to write, but we don't have enough info to give exact time on each book. My statement on average writing time still stands as 2 years 4 months

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Your definition of 'mindblowing' must be somewhat different to that of most people. Of the projects listed four are handled by other companies and people with zero creative involvement from GRRM. Editing books is not monstrously time-consuming and, more importantly, does not consume creative energy. The three short stories would have been a better point to raise, except they only took a couple of weeks each. The HBO script took about a fortnight and was then done. I know that the audition tape-watching was done in GRRM's down-time that he'd normally spend watching TV or chilling with his girlfriend, as is the blogging. Most people out there who blog (including those who do so far more often than GRRM) have full-time jobs and it does not impair on their work time.?

I happens to disagree. All these projects take time, and it also consume creative energy (If such a creature exist). We know from his blog that his e-mail is overflowing when he leaves it for a couple of days. Good writing periods have been interupted because of problem with licenses etc. etc.

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I never said he had 'lots' of side-projects, only that to say that the earlier books were written in a bubble of isolation when nothing else was going on is incorrect..

Compared to today, 1995-2000 were a bubble of isolation.

Quote

This conclusion is simplistic and obvious, and thus should be treated with suspicion. We have been told, repeatedly, the real reasons for the delays, which for reasons that remain unclear, a lot of people refuse to engage with. The narrative, structrual and timeline complexities that have plagued the series since some bad calls were made during the latter writing of A STORM OF SWORDS are why we are where we are now, not to mention GRRM's growing perfectionist streak and the (relatively) newfound financial independence needed to indulge such perfectionism. If you want to find out why the last two books have taken so long to appear, exploring this angle will be more fruitful.

I never made the claim that GRRM's slowdown is only due to the high increase in side-projects. I have just pointed at two facts:
1. GRRM wrote the 3 first book at a average speed of 2 years 4 months. Between 1995-2000 he had close to zero sideprojects.
2. Current average time for the last two books is well above 5 years, where ADWD have taken the longest. His number of sideprojects is very high.

[Paran]

Job, completely in agreeance here.

Werthead, I don't think there's any proof that he started writing GoT in 1991. I think the contract was from 1994. GoT was released in 1996. He uses 94/95 to clear up commitments, and from there on out for the decade his writing is all about ASOIAF. During this time (6.5 years) he releases 3 books. After SoS the side projects recommence, and have been growing. During this period he has released 1/2 a book (split of ADwD called AFfC). Not saying side projects is the only reason (personally believe that the major issues is his financial success has led to less desperation/urgency to write, as well as a less strict contract), but it sticks out.

[Job]

 Paran, on 09 August 2010 - 06:53 AM, said:

Job, completely in agreeance here.

Werthead, I don't think there's any proof that he started writing GoT in 1991. I think the contract was from 1994. GoT was released in 1996. He uses 94/95 to clear up commitments, and from there on out for the decade his writing is all about ASOIAF. During this time (6.5 years) he releases 3 books. After SoS the side projects recommence, and have been growing. During this period he has released 1/2 a book (split of ADwD called AFfC). Not saying side projects is the only reason (personally believe that the major issues is his financial success has led to less desperation/urgency to write, as well as a less strict contract), but it sticks out.

GRRM did indeed write a few chapters on what was to become ASOIF back in the summer of 91. (Most notably the chapter were the Stark kids find the wolves). As I understand Martin, this was more like a brainstorm over a very short period. Anyway, he soon left for Hollywood, not writing a single word until he picked it up again in late 93. He started writing full time after the contract was signed in 94.
It is important for Werthead to show that GRRM's writing time haven't slowed down much, so this 2 year hiatus is included in the writing time for AGOT. This really becomes dishonest when later on Marin ditches 18 months of work on ADWD/AFFC. Werthead quickly removes this time whem computing the writing time of AFFC.
Anyway it's quite clear that GRRM isn't working as hard or as much on ADWD as he did on the first 3 books. Nothing to be done about that, as GRRM can do whatever he wants with his time and legacy. As Gaiman, and countless GRRM fans have told us, GRRM is not our bitch. His dishonesty regarding release dates is another matter. How is it possible to keep on missing all this self-imposed deadlines ? He have done this at least 10 times. ADWD must have the world record in ALMOST DONE. Come on, George: Give us a reliable date, and stick to it.
There will not be a IT'S DONE in 2010. It is known.

[Roland_85]

I am beginning to truly hate this argument, but I want to just point out, as someone working within the sphere of art, that yes, no matter how little time side projects take up objectively, they are a huge drain on creative energy and tend to really undermine whatever your main work is at the moment.

[spiral]

Fair enough point but I don't see it as much of an arguement for Mr Martins tardiness in relation to ADWD. It would appear to me that Mr Martin is doing little more than feeding his ego with all the attention he is getting from this seemingly endless debate. I would like to read the end of the story and admittedly I got caught up in all of this, but I have so much more to read. There are authors far better than George rr Martin who can stick to dead lines with relative ease. At this stage if I get the book GREAT if I don't, I couldn't care less. Its been 10 years since we've heard about the characters ADWD will tell us about and to be honest George rr Martin is not that much of an artist...............after all we got Ulysees in 'just' 7 years and something tells me the world won't be talking about ADWD in quite the same manner. Its a well written fantasy story that follows the same formula as most fantasy....... its just that the author has lost his way and a little interest.

[Sinisdar Toste]

i just powered through the first four volumes of aSoIaF last month, and already this debate is grating on my nerves more than the fact that ADWD has no set release

[Salt-Man Z]

I have the first four books sitting on the shelf waiting to be read, and this debate has already been grating for a year or two.

[stone monkey]

He'll get around to writing it or he won't. It's a pain to have to wait for it so long, but not every writer can churn them out at the, probably ruinous to their sanity, rate of one a year. If that were possible, they'd all be doing it; although the finished articles might not turn out to be the best, in all cases, if they did. What takes us a few days, or weeks in some cases, to read is the end point of at least a year of hard work, drafting and redrafting, editing and reediting and sometimes, for whatever reason, it's just not possible for a writer to do that.

If I were GRRM I imagine I'd be heartily sick of both the project and the continuous clamourings from certain sections of the populous for more. Which would disincentivise me even more from actually getting the thing done. Were I him I'd just want to be left alone at this juncture to try, and possibly fail, to get on with it. A lot depends on the mind of the writer, and sometimes your mind just won't let you do certain things.

As for complaints about him indulging in his various hobbies and interests; the popularity of his writing has given him the financial wherewithal to actually do that, would that we were all so fortunate, so I can't really blame him for that either as, given the opportunity, I'd do that too. He's not a machine for producing text, he's a human being, and we've all got other things going on in our lives than just our jobs.

I'd obviously much prefer for him to finish it sooner rather than later, but there are plenty of other things to be reading and doing whilst I'm waiting.

[Roland_85]

I'm just hoping he finds a shortcut to end the series earlier than book 7. If I were him, I'd be completely out of love with this project by now.

[Werthead]

 Job, on 09 August 2010 - 09:09 AM, said:

GRRM did indeed write a few chapters on what was to become ASOIF back in the summer of 91. (Most notably the chapter were the Stark kids find the wolves). As I understand Martin, this was more like a brainstorm over a very short period. Anyway, he soon left for Hollywood, not writing a single word until he picked it up again in late 93. He started writing full time after the contract was signed in 94.

It was over 100 MS pages, or just over 10% of the novel. This section is what he showed to several publishers in late 93/early 94, triggering the bidding war that netted him a large advance for A Game of Thrones. He was writing full-time at that point, however, as GoT had taken over as his primary novel project after he'd lost interest in his previous one, Avalon.

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It is important for Werthead to show that GRRM's writing time haven't slowed down much, so this 2 year hiatus is included in the writing time for AGOT. This really becomes dishonest when later on Marin ditches 18 months of work on ADWD/AFFC. Werthead quickly removes this time whem computing the writing time of AFFC.

Except that I usually note the reason for this: the material GRRM wrote for GoT in 1991 ended up in the book (the kids-finding-the-direwolves chapter is pretty much unchanged in current editions of GoT from what he wrote in 1991, as I understand it). None of the material written in 2000-01, not one single word, ended up in AFFC-ADWD. It was a different book written from a different perspective and set in a different time. That material was abandoned in its totality and AFFC, as we know it, was begun in August 2001. However, this point is only worth mentioning with regard to the writing time of the book. When it comes to publication/waiting time, that remains inarguably locked at 5 years and 2 months.

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His dishonesty regarding release dates is another matter. How is it possible to keep on missing all this self-imposed deadlines ? He have done this at least 10 times. ADWD must have the world record in ALMOST DONE. Come on, George: Give us a reliable date, and stick to it.

That's what he did for over a year in 2008. People then bitched incessantly at him, demanding a projected release date even if he had to pull it out of his ass and so he gave them such a date. And then they complained that he didn't hit it.

If people don't want any dates to be mooted (which there haven't been for some considerable time now), they should consider not asking for them in the first place.

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There will not be a IT'S DONE in 2010. It is known.

The book will now almost certainly not be out in 2010 (literally, he has about 5 days to finish it to manage that). Saying it won't be done in 2010 when he only has either 3 or 4 POV characters to finish off and less than 100 MS pages to hand in is an altogether riskier prospect. It's possible he'll find some excuse to suddenly rewrite 400 MS pages, of course, but at this stage highly unlikely.

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I have the first four books sitting on the shelf waiting to be read, and this debate has already been grating for a year or two.

A year or two? I'm at four and counting so far.