[Abyss]

Minttunator, on 19 February 2015 - 07:44 AM, said:

... recent statements, though, such as:

• GRRM decided not to do a cameo for HBO's Game of Thrones Season 4 in order to finish writing The Winds of Winter
• GRRM even went so far as to decline writing an episode for S05 of HBO's Game of Thrones to finish The Winds of Winter

Sounds good, right? ...

[Gabriele]

I think he doesn't want to write episodes for a show that deviated so far from the books that it would be more like writing an episode to any other TV series and not his very own darling, but of course he's too polite to say alound that D&D started to screw up (the only critical remark he ever made so far was about that Jaime raping Cersei scene; and the rather vague warning about the ripples Mago's death would cause in future episodes) and since they know the end, sort of, he needs to keep working with them. So the writing is a perfect excuse.

[amphibian]

That makes zero sense, Gabriele.

[Werthead]

George not writing an episode of S5 so he can finish TWoW might sound good, but we should recall how he also skipped Worldcon 2007 so he could finish ADWD and, er, it came out four years later.

Not that it should be quite so bad this time around. More telling is if he writes a script for S6, as I believe they're going to be writing them earlier than normal (as Season 6 is already commissioned, so they don't need to worry about getting the greenlight and can get rolling on it sooner).

[Tsundoku]

So, Wert ...

Quote

GRRM’s friend, Adam Whitehead, was originally going to have a role in TWOW. Unsure if he will now (Miscellaneous TWOW Info)

From https://bryndenbfish...inter-resource/ 5/2/15 update (not the retarded way Yanks write dates )

This post has been edited by Sombra: 23 February 2015 - 01:09 AM

[Traveller]

I still think it may have gone down like this... at the time GoT took off on tv, George had an end target, but was at a loss as to how to reach it.

After meeting with B+w, he outlined his 'plan', but not the details - enough to let them progress with the tv version. Then George waits. He knows that they'll catch up; and when they do, they'll have their own ideas of how to progress and finish it - ideas which George then uses to kick-start his own ending. He basically gets a team of writers to help him out of his writers block, but still gets to write his own version in his own time.

He always said his writing was organic, admitted he had no clue of how to resolve the Starks separation, and that he had several parallel timelines that had become confused. I think his last two books will suddenly become much easier to write once the show has gone beyond what has already been published. We'll see.

[amphibian]

He has a team of writers already helping him.

James Corey (Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck) met while that was happening. Abraham is one of the alpha readers for Martin and the others are also varying levels of published writers.

[Abyss]

Maybe he'll just issue a public statement that he in not our bitch and stop pretending to care.
He's not getting any younger... 66 and counting. He could just retire and enjoy his dollars. Crank out one or two scripts or Dunk n Egg shorts every year or two just to keep him name in and fund a new car.
Farm the whole thing out to some other author... set up a cheesy reality show where contestants have to compete and fans vote for who the next
writer will be and the further i go down this path the more valid and realistic it sounds, the more i hate the universe....

[acesn8s]

The story got away from him (ala Jordan, Williams, etc). Deciding not to fast forward 5 years compounded the issue. Hopefully, he'll bump off a few more viewpoint characters and the last book will be in the first person.

[Werthead]

Sombra, on 23 February 2015 - 01:07 AM, said:

So, Wert ...

Quote

GRRM’s friend, Adam Whitehead, was originally going to have a role in TWOW. Unsure if he will now (Miscellaneous TWOW Info)

From https://bryndenbfish...inter-resource/ 5/2/15 update (not the retarded way Yanks write dates )

Ha. I wouldn't presume to call GRRM a friend, more of a strong professional acquaintence. We've met a few times, got on well, got quite drunk once and had a fascinating ASoIaF conversation interrupted by someone wanting to talk about American football (so it was like a live dramatisation of one of his blog posts ) and swapped the odd email, but that's about it.

And yes, at one point there was going to be a character named after me in TWoW. I have no idea if that's still the plan or not.

Quote

I still think it may have gone down like this... at the time GoT took off on tv, George had an end target, but was at a loss as to how to reach it.

This is 100% not the case. If anything, these last two (or three) books have the advantage of having been planned by GRRM years ahead of time. The problem with AFFC/ADWD was that they were partially created on the fly and partially drew in on elements he had planned but in a completely different context. That made making coherent novels out of them complex. As of the end of both AFFC/ADWD, the story has moved firmly into the material he had planned for the end of the series and in terms of plot resolution it *should* be (touch wood) easier going. Certainly he's said there's far less rewriting this time around then on the last two, which is a hopeful sign.

Quote

Abraham is one of the alpha readers for Martin and the others are also varying levels of published writers.

Abraham is actually the guy who came up with the idea for the AFFC/ADWD split. Depending on your mileage, this was either a bad move (leading to the lack in focus and too-large-a-cast some have criticised the last two books for) or a really good one (as it's entirely possible we'd still be waiting for ADWD without it).

Quote

Deciding not to fast forward 5 years compounded the issue.

The 5-year-gap was definitely the biggest misstep in the series. It actually wasn't in the original plan (he came up with it after AGoT was published but while he was still working on ASoS) an introduced solely because not as much time was passing as he'd hoped. Then he lost over a year trying to make the gap work and then lost a lot of time in the writing of ADWD in trying to reconcile the ending of ASoS (which was based of the idea of gap) with now not having a gap, and his original plan for the series (revealed recently) required - gap or not - the characters to be a lot older than they are now.

Even writing that paragraph gave me a headache. I still have zero idea how GRRM managed to reconcile all of those outlines, ideas and plans and make them work (or if he has, as the last two books will determine how successful that has been).

[Ceda Cicero]

I'm just gonna interrupt and leave this right here:

This post has been edited by Ceda Cicero: 24 February 2015 - 04:53 PM

[acesn8s]

I thought ADWD was a lot like Jordan's A Knife of Dreams. It was a good novel which also served to "set the ducks up in a row." I anticipate that the next book will re-affirm our faith that Martin has the story well-in-hand.

[Maark Abbott]

Wert - if there is a character named after you, they'll die.

[Andorion]

Saw this in the Facebook Empire page. Has anybody else seen this?

Winds of Winter

[Andorion]

And then the person who shared the link added Malazan to the graph

Graph with Malazan

[Werthead]

Maark, on 25 February 2015 - 06:05 PM, said:

Wert - if there is a character named after you, they'll die.

As it should be

[Tsundoku]

Well, that could explain why he's taking so damn long ...

http://www.news.com....f-1227251189226

This post has been edited by Sombra: 06 March 2015 - 01:36 PM

[worry]

Haha nerdy as hell but not a bad impression of him.

[Ceda Cicero]

So I'm sure this is far from news for most of you, but I'm sharing it out since (as ever) I tend to value the perspectives here over just about anywhere else. And there are a lot of perspectives on this:

http://grrm.livejour...com/415405.html

Full context, GRRM cancelled some appearances at cons to work on WINDS, and (probably misguidedly) stated that he reserved the option to keep these dates should he happen to deliver WINDS before. Since the dates in question range from early summer to early fall 2015, it sparked a lot of speculation (mostly on sites without much credibility) that GRRM would be done with tWoW by early fall.

It also, apparently, had a bunch of other GRRM fans freaking out over whether or not he intended to cancel every single appearance indefinitely, hence the above linked blog post.


It's hard, even for this devotee, to maintain respect for the guy. The series is about to surpass the books. This is a fucking problem for devotees of the series. He's been 100% silent on the matter except for one interview where he made a really stale and flimsy analogy ("I don't know why book readers would be worried about spoilers; I know how the Battle of Gettysburg ends and I still enjoy reading about it.")


The man had a 20+ year head-start on HBO and now his fans are in a predicament. He may not be my bitch, but I've concluded GRRM is definitely a bitch. All this to say, I'm one of those rare folks who's capable of holding multiple opposing ideas and viewpoints in their mind without losing their shit, so I will still be first in line to read whatever the mean produces so long as he's producing.

[polishgenius]

It has been pointed out, by John Scalzi and others since, that GRRM doesn't actually write that slowly compared to many other authors. He just writes bigger books.

I was annoyed when Dance came out and was unfinished, but that just means I'd rather he took longer over this one and made sure it is finished.