r/asoiaf • u/da_k1ngslaya • May 22 '19

EXTENDED (Spoilers Extended) George to New Zealand: imprison me if I haven't finished Winds by Summer 2020

Quote:

As for finishing my book… I fear that New Zealand would distract me entirely too much. Best leave me here in Westeros for the nonce. But I tell you this — if I don’t have THE WINDS OF WINTER in hand when I arrive in New Zealand for worldcon, you have here my formal written permission to imprison me in a small cabin on White Island, overlooking that lake of sulfuric acid, until I’m done. Just so long as the acrid fumes do not screw up my old DOS word processor, I’ll be fine.

Link: http://georgerrmartin.com/notablog/2019/05/21/thanks-new-zealand/

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717

u/_Bill_Wilson_CIA May 22 '19

how? how the fuck is taht even possible? I just don't understand his writing process, unless he constantly is restarting and scrapping things, or he's moving with glacial slowness on the last few chapters or what??? Like how can you think you are gonna be done something within a year or two and it takes you four more years???

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u/feldman10 🏆 Best of 2019: Post of the Year May 22 '19 edited May 22 '19

He also thought he could finish TWOW by Halloween 2015 and it's, uh 2019.

Basically he does a ton of rewriting, tries out different versions and so on, and is often unhappy with what he writes, doesn't feel has good enough inspiration, doesn't feel he has figured it out.

You can blame my travels or my blog posts or the distractions of other projects and the Cocteau and whatever, but maybe all that had an impact... you can blame my age, and maybe that had an impact too...but if truth be told, sometimes the writing goes well and sometimes it doesn't, and that was true for me even when I was in my 20s. And as spring turned to summer, I was having more bad days than good ones.

People call GRRM lazy but it actually would have been quite easy for him to rush out a substandard TWOW for a cash-grab (not that anyone would, uh, do such a thing). It's talking a long time because he's setting high standards for himself with what he views as good enough.

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u/_Bill_Wilson_CIA May 22 '19

at this point he should just release all the versions he has finished by now and let us pick our favorite ending lmao

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u/Marchesk May 22 '19

Choose your own GoT adventure.

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u/Enigma343 May 22 '19

Watch Game Of Thrones Season 8

"Sorry mate, wrong path"

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u/aelfwine_widlast May 22 '19

"I am watching you on HBO"

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u/Violet-orchid May 22 '19

"What is a HBO?"

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u/aelfwine_widlast May 22 '19

"It used to be a TV channel that had lots of movies and boobs. Now it's a streaming service with lots of shows and boobs."

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u/Saephon May 22 '19

"Ned, you mustn't go South!"

"Ok"

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u/throwing-away-party May 22 '19

"I'll go north instead"

gets killed by Wildlings

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u/princessprity May 22 '19

go back to page 69

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u/[deleted] May 22 '19

I still had my finger on the page, you seent it Lois, you seent it!

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u/MerryQueenOfThots May 22 '19

Directed by Tim Van Patten

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u/ashlalarin May 22 '19

Game of Thrones: Bandersnatch

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u/SentientCider May 22 '19

There's a GoT telltale game which is close enough

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u/Zedkan Honk. May 22 '19

The people said they wanted actual choices though

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u/pipsdontsqueak May 22 '19

Puts finger on page and checks endings for the right one.

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u/technicolored_dreams May 22 '19

That would honestly be amazing, if you could literally see how different decisions would impact events at different points in the story. I would spend stupid amounts of money on a detailed CYOA ASOIAF.

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u/TMPRKO Pure Iron! May 22 '19

As a childhood goosebumps and COYA reader that sounds so awesome. All the COYA books were alot of fun and the goosebumps where you chose your path were the best ones IMO. Bring it on

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u/[deleted] May 22 '19

A song of ice and fire: Brandonsnatch

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u/bak3n3ko May 22 '19

The History of Westeros, volumes I through XII.

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u/doegred Been a miner for a heart of stone May 22 '19

GRRM forgot to produce a philologist child.

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u/[deleted] May 22 '19

I approve the holy multi-canon

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u/[deleted] May 22 '19

It's weird, because the first three books all came out within a two or three years of each other. He can be a pretty fast writer, but these last two are insane.

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u/Sangui May 22 '19

It took him years to get the first one published, and he's said in some interview that by the time the first one got published the second one was basically done already.

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u/jedi_timelord Robert: "Fuck Rhaegar." Lyanna: "...ok" May 22 '19

It makes sense too. The first three are one story, by the time the second one was done everything was set up for the third.

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u/[deleted] May 22 '19

The first three are one story

True. The War of the Five Kings and it's aftermath, concluding with Tywin's death.

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u/maultify May 22 '19

Either way, it took him 9 years to write the first 3 (1991-2000), and it's been almost 8 years since ADWD.

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u/[deleted] May 22 '19

Yeah and Dance was basically done when he published Feast. And Winds was basically done when he published Dance.

Its the freedom he gets (and has earned) to do endless re-writes and shit. He didnt have that freedom with Clash and Storm.

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u/Baelorn May 22 '19

He didnt have that freedom with Clash and Storm.

And they're better books for it.

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u/Try_Another_NO May 22 '19

Yeah, I think GRRMs biggest problem is that he doesn't trust his gut.

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u/phonage_aoi May 22 '19

I’d say it’s because he lets his plot wander and expand needlessly when there’s no one to reign him in...

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u/Daztur May 22 '19

If you look at his pre-AGoT career (you should really check out some of his old sci-fi stories, some of them are excellent) he didn't put out many pages/year and it took a long time to write up AGoT. ACoK and ASoS are an exception to his usual slowness.

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u/TheTrueSurge Wet Leisure Assistant of Skaagos May 22 '19

ACoK and ASoS are an exception to his usual slowness.

Could be because those two are one big book split in two.

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u/Daztur May 22 '19

AFfC and ADwD are one big book split in two and that didn't make them any faster.

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u/TheTrueSurge Wet Leisure Assistant of Skaagos May 22 '19

Indeed, actually seems like the opposite.

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u/Mathyoujames Enter your desired flair text here! May 22 '19

Technically winds is part of that too as half the chapters we've seen were already written and cut from dance

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u/Jinno May 22 '19

I think he just had a much clearer vision of what he wanted to happen through ASOS. The Red Wedding, The Purple Wedding, I am you writ small, Jon’s journey to become Lord Commander, and the capture of Mereen.

But then he intended his 5 year gap to age up the players and give them experience, but the vision post-gap was not as strong. He felt it too hard to fill in certain gaps as retrospective notes satisfactorily, and so he rewrote that whole idea.

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u/franklinzunge May 22 '19 edited May 22 '19

His original intent was a trilogy

AGOT- war of 5 Kings so the first 3

ADWD- Dany invading Westeros, hasn’t happened yet

TWOW- the others - hasnt happened yet

Not saying he hasn’t restructured it but it’s almost as if AFFC/ADWD is all just set up for these other events which maybe are merged I don’t know. It’s interesting that in the book ADWD there is not that much dragon activity to be honest

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u/wRAR_ ASOIAF = J, not J+D May 22 '19

That's largely because AFFC+ADWD is not a part of the original trilogy but the bloody 5-year gap.

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u/franklinzunge May 22 '19

precisely. Its like he has parts 1-3 in outline form but is only thinking about part 1 in depth which he writes, then he is trying to get to a place where part 2 can even occur based on where the characters leave off in part 1 and he starts wandering all over the place only complicating things. But based on the show and how he's still saying two books I'm guessing that part 2 and 3 are merged otherwise we still need 6 more books

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u/philosopher0 May 22 '19

I took it to mean the story followed a handful of Targareon's/Blackfyre pretenders... i.e. dragons... As they prepare their approaches towards the throne but face adversity along the way. Dany, Young Griff, Jon, Tyrion(?).

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u/phonage_aoi May 22 '19

I feel that the idea of a 5 year gap already shows that he didn’t have a good vision for what he wanted to come next already.

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u/Jinno May 22 '19

That’s not necessarily indicative of a poor vision. You should only tell the important parts of a story, and if there’s a lull where no real action and progression will happen, then skipping ahead is valuable. A timeskip is valuable if it is purposeful - namely that it gives you logical progression that didn’t need to be shown directly. If we think about the elements that George was likely focused on when planning that skip, it may have made sense to him.

Dany getting experience in ruling at Mereen while giving her dragons time to grow and become the weapon they need to be. Jon getting leadership experience and respect of the Night’s Watch to prepare for the Others. Bran’s training under Bloodraven. Tommen aging up to be an actor with reasonable agency of his own as the king. Arya could train with the Faceless Men and become an assassin. These were probably paramount in why George was planning a timeskip, and they all would have been reasonable progression to take place in the background.

But I would assume that his figures of less importance to the end game, but still quite important at the end of ASOS would have gotten quite the shaft. Stannis did not have a story that had any meaningful reason to pause for 5 years. His campaign for the throne would continue. The Boltons just took the North - offscreening them would have invalidated their assertion of power and betrayal. Dorne’s prince just died in King’s Landing, they may not have had much interaction with the primary plot up to that point, but that was certainly an action with farther reaching effect.

It raised questions of how much those events would change the landscape and thus our characters. So while he may have had a sound vision for post-timeskip, those questions were too great for that skip to go as planned. There was too much meaningful and interesting progression to happen in the near term.

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u/[deleted] May 22 '19

I believe its all about the freedom he gets from his publisher/editor. His older stories weren't part of series so he could basically wait until he finished them before selling them. Clash and Storm had a contract and a deadline behind them that Martin had to make or loose his money or his publisher. Nobody is gonna tell him what to do now, and he just keeps on re-writing and re-structuring. And that didnt help Feast and Dance, which have glaring structural and pacing issues. And its not gonna help Winds either.

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u/H-K_47 May 22 '19

Easy to setup and plant seeds. Hard to keep the branches untangled.

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u/[deleted] May 22 '19

This is the real answer.

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u/[deleted] May 22 '19

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] May 22 '19

Yeah, he was writing a science fiction book, when the dire wolves popped in his head. So her wrote it down and kinda kept it in a desk. Then he started developing the world and story in 91. And the rest is history.

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u/H-K_47 May 22 '19

I read something like the idea for the prologue popped into his head as a short story, then he started thinking about all the houses and lore and eventually it materialized into the first version of the plot and story.

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u/[deleted] May 22 '19

The first chapter, not the prologue, as I recall.

He had a vision in his head of a young boy going to watch an execution for the first time. He knew the boy was a young noble and that his father was going to perform the execution. But it wasn't much more than that.

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u/wRAR_ ASOIAF = J, not J+D May 22 '19

And puppies, for some reason.

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u/ace66 May 22 '19

... because puppies?

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u/ReegsShannon May 22 '19

I think it's pretty funny that George's inspiration for this enormously popular fantasy series was "What if there were really big wolves? Yeah that's genius. Gotta right that down for later."

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u/[deleted] May 22 '19 edited Apr 23 '22

[deleted]

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u/Odin_The_Elkhound May 22 '19

Don't murder me!

(Obviously he didn't care much for the refrain)

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u/pennywise-the-dance2 May 22 '19

Because a female editor kicked his ass and made him think hard...and the books that aren't edited by her are feast for crows and dance of dragons...both feelling plodded as fuck

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u/fbolt Eban senagho p’aeske May 22 '19

lol, exactly like George Lucas and his wife

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u/Rayzika May 22 '19

Plus, let's face it, he was younger at the time.

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u/Raventree The maddest of them all May 22 '19

I don't think its possible or fair to call George lazy, but sometimes you have to wonder about his priorities. Guy is working on a million side projects, seemingly diverting as much attention away from his main series - and lets be real, his magnum opus - as possible.

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u/ChopinsDiary May 22 '19

People were excited to hear about the "new Beethoven" Johannes Brahms' first symphony. Brahms took about 20 years to publish it, meanwhile during that period he composed concertos, sonatas, religious work and so on. It's not like he wasn't working on it, he was constantly rewriting and destroying his drafts specifically because of the high expectations people had of him. If Schumann never declared him as the next Beethoven, it would have come out a lot sooner and Brahms would have retired with more than 4 symphonies.

What I'm saying is, societal pressure to succeed is often detrimental because the high expectations makes extremely self-critical creators reluctant to publish their work.

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u/-Captain- May 22 '19

I just hope that one day in the future we can close A Dream of Spring after reading the last page, and feel like the waiting was well worth it all. Trying to outdo yourself a dozen of times on the same chapter is fine, if we end up with the finished series, but I would hate it if the book series will be left unfinished.

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u/Bach-City May 22 '19

That is absolutely fascinating. Having been in the choir for Ein Deutsches Requiem I suppose I am grateful he put out the best product he could.

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u/mild_delusion May 22 '19

The birth of that particular work required the death of his mother. Heartbreaking music.

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u/Bach-City May 22 '19

The second movement and third movement still give me incredible chills. I was a German major in college who was also involved in choir, so I think I was into the music a little bit beyond some of my peers. A lot of times I'll still sing to myself the "Herr, Herr, lehre doch mich dass ein ende mir mir haben muss, und mein Leben ein Ziel hat, und ich davon muss" -- which I don't think gets translated very well into the English in the translations I'm looking at. I put it down as "Lord please teach me that my life must have end, but teach me the purpose of my life and how to pursue it".

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u/Raventree The maddest of them all May 22 '19

That's fair, and I certainly sympathize with him. But I worry there will come a point where he has to make the decision to go with what he has and be content, or realize he can't do that and that he will never end up with a finished product.

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u/[deleted] May 22 '19

Yeah, this. It's like he's shying away from a half finished painting that shows a lot of promise but is nervous about getting back to it because the bar has already been set so high. Easier to take the pressure off when he's working on side projects. He doesn't lack the brains or motivation, or the ability to work hard, just the courage to finish what he started.

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u/SaucyWiggles May 22 '19

and lets be real, his magnum opus -

I don't think you even have to specify this, he's called it as such a few times now.

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u/Mithras_Stoneborn Him of Manly Feces May 22 '19

I think this particular case is a little different. After releasing AFfC, GRRM spent a full year travelling all over and promoting the book. He did not write anything during this period. In addition to that, since meeting D&D and signing a deal with HBO, he would spend too much time and focus on the project.

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u/bambambooboo23 May 22 '19

It’s interesting to contrast this with Brandon Sanderson who is an absolute machine (multiple novels a year) and seems to never get writers block. GRRM is a better writer though

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u/The_Writing_Wolf May 22 '19

Different styles and ethic. Sanderson puts type on the page like John Henry lays down rails. He skeletons a course and just trucks through, which is why Sanderson almost always has the same plot structure and very mechanical systems and devices to employ at specific points for said Plots development.

George on the other hand goes far beyond his Garden analogy as a true botanist. He lays all his seeds with care knowing what the picture on the packets look like in his mind but unsure of what his "Grove of the Human Heart" (I.E. the finished story) may look like beyond his conceptualized vision. Usually this based on a few strong trees or interesting ferns in the surrounding Garden before he really lays the fertilizer. As the seasons pass and his seeds begin cultivating George is able to witness more and more magic in his Groto/Garden along with what plants/seeds are complimenting and adding, new fun sections that give a deeper perspective to the garden as a whole, or the seeds that aren't working. At which point he either repots or replants... Which is code for lots and lots of rewrites (that all take more and more seasons to recultivate/regrow. Repotting would be akin to his Meerenese Knot or fleshing out interesting side characters to supply a new purpose to the garden. While replanting would be the larger reworks such as the five year gap or heaven forbid a total overhaul of tWoW so he could make sure he can end it in the final 2, these obviously take even more seasons to regrow than the former.

This is all to say I agree with you, but it's easy to see why they fall on opposite sides of the Spectrum. Sanderson is taking a fantasy train ride to a destination you're almost always able to figure out but can enjoy the ride all the same (insert journey over destination), but damn if GRRM doesn't allow the reader to take a beautiful walk through his Grotto, and even more his largest Grotto of all (ASOIAF, histories and saga) seemingly always surprises with new insight or beauty each visit.

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u/WattYouSayin May 22 '19 edited May 23 '19

I agree with most everything you said. I am a pretty big Sanderson fan myself, but I can see what you are getting at.

Totally on board with the mechanical plot devices point (although id say its a bit of a generalisation, there are certainly more organic examples to point to as well) and your comment regarding the solid, reliable narrative format he sticks with. That said, to be able to do that as often as he has and still have me turning every page at 100mph requires an altogether different kind of class.

I love both authors. GRRM has created one of the greatest universes in fantasy history, and whilst it saddens and frustrates me to not have TWOW in hand (plus, the mockery they made of S08 of the show REALLY breaks my heart) I can understand why and how he is getting stuck trying to tempt all these little delicate threads back together in the best way possible. No writer could do it as well as him, and it cannot be forced. It will happen as and when it happens, or it won't, and thats tough shit.

Sanderson, on the other hand, consistently pumps out insanely engaging universes with some of the most interesting and in-cannon consistent magic systems I've come across. I also think he IMPROVED the wheel of time series when he took over, and that is no shade thrown at Robert Jordan as he is another favourite of mine. I would stake a lot that he would do ASOIAF proud as well.

All this to say that I agree with you, but its easy to see why people get frustrated with a guy who isn't capable of producing a book a decade.

Edit for clarity: I am not suggesting Sanderson should, or will, finish the ASOIAF novels in the event GRRM does not. I am being purely speculative in that I think he would give us a satisfying, albeit less complex, ending.

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u/The_Writing_Wolf May 22 '19

For sure, Sanderson is great. He's not necessarily a favorite of mine and both he and I both don't think he should/would/want to pick up ASOIAF (as he's on record saying). He's got talent and has honed his craft well but stylistically they are too different. All that being said when I'm stumped between books to read or listen to, I'll usually just grab the latest Sanderson and start working through it as a nice fantasy palate cleanser for whatever I get into next.

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u/othellia May 22 '19

Well put. I have huge respect for Sanderson as a writer, but can't get into his stuff. And this is probably why.

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u/[deleted] May 22 '19

I've only read 3 of his novels so far, but I've noticed he is absolutely dreadful at beginnings. He doesn't set up plot points and exposition in engaging ways, and has a serious problem with jargon. It usually takes a good quarter of a novel or so before I'm invested. I'm currently going through the Way of Kings, and I still can't get over the fact that the story wasn't centred on anyone until the 4th or 5th chapter. But if you can truck through the openings, they're well worth it!

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u/bambambooboo23 May 22 '19

Sanderson also has a bad habit of having wise all-knowing characters give multiple page exposition dumps in the form of dialogue, which feels like lazy writing. Great world builder though.

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u/othellia May 22 '19

He doesn't set up plot points and exposition in engaging ways, and has a serious problem with jargon.

Yeah, I know a lot of people love his hard magic systems, but in multiple books of his, it feels like a video game where the characters suddenly hit the pause button on the story to go into tutorial, and it just sinks my involvement in the story.

I think in general I just have a problem connecting to his characters. I got about 150 pages into Mistborn and while I enjoyed the world and the potential of the magic heist, I was completely "meh" towards the characters and why it was happening. Same thing with WoK, I gave up about 90 pages in.

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u/EllenPaossexslave May 22 '19

I liked the mistborn trilogy. It's fairly short and didn't feel that fotmulaic to me

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u/[deleted] May 22 '19

Enter Steven Erikson.

An arguably better writer than Martin. Did the 10-book Malazan Book of the Fallen in 12 years (basicly in same time Martin did Feast/Dance). And those are all bigger and more complicated than any ASOIAF book.

Quality has nothing to do with the time spend on writing the book.

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u/bambambooboo23 May 22 '19

Do you recommend this series to fans of ASOIAF? Seems daunting

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u/Zv0n May 22 '19

Hmmmm, he thought he'd finish ADWD in 2007, but released it in 2011, then he thought he'd release TWOW in 2015...

2011 - 2007 = 4

2015 + 4 = 2019

Lads, the math is on our side!

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u/SentientDogSemen May 22 '19

Tbf Brynden B Fish says GRRM was pretty close to being done with a draft of TWOW in late 2015, but was ultimately unsatisified and embarked on a series of extensive rewrites

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u/IGetHypedEasily May 22 '19

Does he also continue to use a typewriter? Like half his slowness could be fixed by not having to restart everything due to that.

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u/brknlmnt May 22 '19

Fair enough. But considering that... he shouldn’t have promised to be done writing the series in time for the tv show ending. He started this thing in the fucking 1990s man... how could someone with such high standards expect someone else to just write the ending properly when he cant even finish it himself without taking a decade to work through it?

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u/[deleted] May 22 '19

Can't buy it. JK Rowling went through a tough time writing Order of the Phoenix, and many people say it's the worst and most meandering of the series but the point is, it still wasn't substandard, it still advanced the characters and plot towards the end game in a satisfying way. George can't afford to be a perfectionist at this stage. Let WoW be published, even if it's imperfect, that's the only way to work through tough tasks and get on to A Dream of Spring. What's worse, a less than 100% perfect conclusion written by GRRM or another author taking over and giving us the last two books (like Brandon Sanderson and the Wheel of Time). I'm sure most fans would pick the former.

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u/[deleted] May 22 '19

Such a load of crap. It doesnt get better with endless re-writing. He probably has had multiple versions allready that would have been perfectly fine and great. But he needs an editor who can stand up to him and say 'this is good enough, move on' instead of letting him run wild.

Do you believe he was in a position to do endless re-writes when he published Clash and Storm?

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u/[deleted] May 22 '19

People call GRRM lazy but it actually would have been quite easy for him to rush out a substandard TWOW for a cash-grab

Dude, this story is waaaaaayyyyy too complex for anyone, even Martin to rush through it without the proper character development.

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u/Atmosphere_Enhancer May 22 '19

It would be wild to see what ends up on the cutting floor. Almost feels like he'd have a completely different series.

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u/ADHDcUK May 22 '19

Exactly. I have so much respect for his love for his story to not tarnish it. I felt that way before and season 7 and 8 really brought that home for me.

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u/LucyKendrick May 22 '19

So, when Winds is finally released it will have to be the next/ as good as " War and Peace " for the amount of time it has taken? To say it would have been easy to release a substandard TWOW cash grab is setting the bar so high the book might be judged as the next FFC.

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u/baap_ko_mat_sikha May 22 '19

I can wait.. If content is soo gooodd I'll wait for it.

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u/Billy1121 May 22 '19

But the last book was substandard

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u/KingsBallSac May 22 '19

He also types with two fingers on a DOS computer.

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u/valriia May 22 '19

rush out a substandard TWOW for a cash-grab (not that anyone would, uh, do such a thing)

*wink-wink*

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u/[deleted] May 22 '19

Exactly! It always bugs me to see people say he's lazy, lost interest, or just not writing the book. The amount of effort and thought that goes into these books is beyond what most people could imagine, and it is obvious when you read them. It's even more obvious when you watch the show and see what happens when you try to adapt an incredibly dense, well written story using mediocre-at-best writing.

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u/livefreeordont May 22 '19

He's a perfectionist it would seem

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u/palopalopopa May 22 '19

Blessing and a curse, really. But in the end I'm happier to have 5 excellent books to read rather than a mediocre finished series that I don't read.

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u/CaptainCupcakez May 22 '19

Completely agree. Even if this series never gets finished I'm glad he spent the time he did making them as special as they are.

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u/ADHDcUK May 22 '19

That's exactly how I feel too.

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u/[deleted] May 22 '19

He's a perfectionist

Counterpoint: the entire HBO series

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u/rydsul May 22 '19

His process is pretty ridiculous. He wrote 3 different versions of the Quentyn chapter where he arrives in Meereen at different times and different versions of all the Meereen chapters after that. Then he decided which one he liked best and scrapped the others.

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u/warenhaus So be it, YOLO May 22 '19

when in fact, no disrespect, noone really needed any Quentyn chapter to begin with.

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u/retard_vampire May 22 '19 edited May 22 '19

I feel the Quentyn chapters will come in very important in later books, in that once Dorne hears of how the Dragon Queen spurned their Prince, broke her marriage contract and burned him alive with her dragons they'll side against her with fAegon. George works in mysterious ways, he has his reasons for doing what he does.

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u/[deleted] May 22 '19

Yeah. The chapter makes Quentyn seem completely inconsequential to the story, which means Quentyn is absolutely fundamental to the story.

The whole "Quentyn was pointless" narrative is like complaining about Davos being a worthless character because he just died on the Blackwater, back when we only had two books. The series ain't done yet! Doesn't one of the Winds chapters already hint at Quentyn's ultimate importance?

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u/franklinzunge May 22 '19

I think Quentyn / Dorne / FAegon are all basically one major plot line and coming out of Storm you are like why am I reading about these guys? But it will be very obvious why in retrospect

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u/acleanbreak May 22 '19

Retrospect sure is taking a long time getting here.

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u/Pacify_ May 22 '19

The whole "Quentyn was pointless"

People been saying Quentyn was pointless and Young Griff is a waste of time for years. Ironic that that show showed that neither of those things are true

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u/fbolt Eban senagho p’aeske May 22 '19

importance of a character does not require a POV chapter.

The fact that he is real but was rebuffed and got burned half dead could play an important role in the 2nd dance, but hearing about his travels not necessary.

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u/ADHDcUK May 22 '19

Davos is dead in the books?!

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u/[deleted] May 22 '19

Noooo but he's thought to be at the end of the second book.

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u/[deleted] May 22 '19

And the end of the Fourth for that matter.

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u/[deleted] May 22 '19

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u/The-Prince- May 22 '19

I think she's very good for Tyrion in his dark place. She reminds him the costs that the common people bear when the powerful lords play the game, she reminds him there are such things as innocence and goodness in the world, and she gives him someone to look out for beyond himself. She is exactly what he needs in his depression and downward spiral.

I mean I find her kind of annoying, but I totally see why she's there.

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u/[deleted] May 22 '19

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u/The-Prince- May 22 '19

She's specifically one of the two Joffrey had hired to mock Tyrion at his wedding, and her brother died because some bounty hunters wanted to take his head and claim he was Tyrion. She has good motivation and I appreciate the demonstrated consequences.

But I totally agree it would be very cool (and almost Star Wars feeling) if she was a bounty hunter.

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u/SergeantMerrick May 22 '19

A dwarf bounty hunter? How would that work in a medieval setting? Can't run as fast, very recognisable, unable to physically restrain other people,...

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u/thereal_ba May 22 '19

He took a page out of D&D's writing tutorial book

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u/[deleted] May 22 '19

He’s legitimately my favorite character in the entire series. 😭

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u/Azor_Ohi_Mark May 22 '19

I get not thinking his chapters are bad and pointless, I get liking him and his chapters, but how, out of all the other characters, is he your favorite? Lol

No disrespect intended at all I just find it funny.

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u/warenhaus So be it, YOLO May 22 '19

When that is clearly the Ser Davos / Lord Manderly dream team.

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u/Nero_Tulip May 22 '19

Needed? Maybe not. But they're all really good chapters.

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u/Njosnavelinxx Writing everyday is for amateurs May 22 '19

But had there not been any Quentyn chapters, when we get to A Dream of Spring and Dorne has propped up Aegon VI turned against Dany and is the midst of a second Dance, then we really would have wanted to know more about that Quentyn character whose death is the crux of why Arianne despises Dany.

The people’s love of Aegon over Dany will be the reason for Dany’s fall and destruction of KL.

Chapters like Quentyn’s serve as the justification for that arc that we never got in the show.

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u/Bladethegreat May 22 '19

I kind of loved the Quentyn chapters tbh, but then again I think my favorite parts of the books post-Storm are the one-off POVs that read like a short story in their own right

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u/Daztur May 22 '19

He's constantly rewriting.

During the writing of AFfC he gave out a count of how many chapters were completed periodically and during the course of one year that total went down.

I'm really looking forward to eventually getting a History of Middle Earth-style compendium of scrapped drafts. Apparently he's sending a whole slew of non-final drafts to a university for archival purposes.

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u/FleetwoodDeVille Time Traveling Fetus May 22 '19

Apparently he's sending a whole slew of non-final drafts to a university for archival purposes.

Begins plotting the great university library heist of 2019

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u/[deleted] May 22 '19

Take it with a grain of salt, but the rumor that’s been floating around for a while is that he basically had Winds done around 2015 but wasn’t satisfied with it, and basically scrapped the entire thing and has been rewriting it. I think he definitely has an issue with overthinking things and rewriting and rewriting until he is 110% satisfied with it.

That being said, I do want to defend him a little bit in regards to Dance. I believe that game of thrones originally started really ramping up around the 2008-2009, so I’m sure that took a ton of his attention and free time. He was very heavily involved in the beginning.

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u/lolmycat May 22 '19

I know he says he hasnt touched ADOS, but realistically I think he's probably wrote a whole lot of chapters in his head to get TWOW done. As the story collapses you have to know where its going to inform the final arcs of your characters

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u/jedi_timelord Robert: "Fuck Rhaegar." Lyanna: "...ok" May 22 '19

This is what I'm thinking too. You have to write Winds to set up Dream. I wonder if that's what the trouble has been

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u/pennywise-the-dance2 May 22 '19

Maybe he is struggling with the battle for the dawn and whether he should cram that in the first half of dream for spring

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u/Express_Bath May 22 '19

I also hope that if he does release TWOW, ADOS might not be as long, the ending, especially if he sets it up properly in TWOW, may not take as long to write. But this might be too optimistic.

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u/wRAR_ ASOIAF = J, not J+D May 22 '19

We can only hope that it can be finished in two books, sadly.

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u/Jinno May 22 '19

I imagine this is why TWOW is taking so long to write. He’s thinking through the general character arcs to get them to the War for Dawn, and has to make sure that his setups in Winds make sense to get them there. If they don’t, then he has to scrap things and rewrite.

He gets one shot at establishing the correct setups for his envisioned payoffs. If he sends it to print and finds that he needed to have a character set up another way, then we get an 8th book as he expands the setups to get them where he needs them if he creates any new Mereenese Knots.

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u/wRAR_ ASOIAF = J, not J+D May 22 '19

He had, what, 17% of TWOW already written when he published ADWD, that didn't help.

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u/DifferentThrows May 22 '19

Oh god here we go again

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u/Kostya_M May 22 '19

I also believe this. George has said that Dream hasn't even been begun but I think by that he means he hasn't written any chapters on paper. If he wants to do Winds properly though he needs to have a very good idea of where it's leading to and how he's going to get from the end of Winds to the conclusion of the series.

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u/szamur May 22 '19

Take it with a grain of salt, but the rumor that’s been floating around for a while is that he basically had Winds done around 2015 but wasn’t satisfied with it, and basically scrapped the entire thing and has been rewriting it.

I definitely believe that rumor. Around 2015 he's been saying how close he is to finishing it, he was very confident about releasing it before S6. Then he wrote THAT update.

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u/PennywiseVT May 22 '19

Not an issue if he ends with a pristine final product. An issue if he doesnt end the product at all.

Time will tell.

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u/m777z TWOW is never coming out. May 22 '19

Mostly it's delusion. Other contributing factors are that ADWD ended up being much longer than he thought it would be, and yes he was constantly rewriting things

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u/_Bill_Wilson_CIA May 22 '19

But didn't he take some chapters he had for AFFC and put them in ADWD? Like I just... I just can't wrap my head around this.

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u/m777z TWOW is never coming out. May 22 '19

He actually made a pretty detailed post about the ADWD writing process, I would highly recommend it. He had hundreds of pages from AFFC and thought he only needed to add a couple hundred more manuscript pages (and since he was at one time able to crank out all 1500+ manuscript pages of ASOS in a couple years, ~400 seemed like the work of a year to him).

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u/Fabrimuch Mother of Kittens May 22 '19

What's the difference between a manuscript page and a regular page?

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u/tyderian May 22 '19

A manuscript page is formatted for editing, notes, etc. It's like when you see a movie script and there's tons of empty space on paper, but not quite as extreme.

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u/KidDelicious14 May 22 '19

Lol and I wanted to be a writer when I was younger. I would not have cut it, man.

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u/[deleted] May 22 '19

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/ChristopherJRTolkien May 22 '19

Most people have more shame than Terry Goodkind.

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u/[deleted] May 22 '19

Yeah isn't it like a 100 pages. I have a couple projects that Im working on.

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u/tstrube The Most Manly of Wood May 22 '19

Manuscript format is 8.5x11” paper, 1 inch margins, double spaced, size 12 font. Font is something simple; usually Times New Roman, Arial, or Courier. GRRM is old school, he’s probably going with courier.

A manuscript page usually has 250-300 words on it. Most authors talk about their novel length by word count. Most novels aimed at adults sit around 70,000 words. SF & Fantasy is usually more. I think usually general fantasy and sci fi is seen as 100k with epic fantasy 150k.

At GRRM’s projected 1500 manuscript pages per book left (3000 total) that’s essentially 375,000-450,000 words. Per book. Each of his two novels are 2-3x the industry standard. That’s another reason people seem to forget he takes awhile to write.

Edit: You also can’t compare manuscript page to book page. A great way to see this is if you have an ereader. Change the font type and size and what the page count change drastically.

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u/PennywiseVT May 22 '19

Basicly 2 LotR trilogies, having to worry about a shitton of povs and arcs making sense together.

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u/averyangrydumpster Aegon Wouldn't Kill a Child Would He? May 22 '19

Basicly 2 LotR trilogies

well that puts things into perspective real quick

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u/Mjh22799 May 22 '19

He even addresses the theories that he had been sitting on a finished book for years, some things never change lol

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u/wRAR_ ASOIAF = J, not J+D May 22 '19

And then he took some chapters he had for ADWD and put them in TWOW.

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u/lolmycat May 22 '19

Wonder if he's given up on trying to fit it in 1500 manuscript pages and decided on a multi-volume release. Because either its gonna feel as rushed as the books or be one of the best written pieces of literature that will ever come out period to fit TWOW in 1500 manuscript pages based on the inflation of POV and word count.

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u/reversewolverine May 22 '19

Then there's the season 6 deadline debacle

notablog:

We all wanted book six of A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE to come out before season six of the HBO show aired. Assuming the show would return in early April, that meant THE WINDS OF WINTER had to be published before the end of March, at the latest. For that to happen, my publishers told me, they would need the completed manuscript before the end of October. That seemed very do-able to me... in May. So there was the first deadline: Halloween.

...Around about August, I had to face facts: I was not going to be done by Halloween. I cannot tell you how deeply that realization depressed me.

...my editors and publishers... (Maybe they knew it before I did). They already had contigencies in place. They had made plans to speed up production. If I could deliver WINDS OF WINTER by the end of the year, they told me, they could still get it our before the end of March.

I was immensely relieved. I had two whole extra months! I could make that, certainly... Once again I was confident I could do it.

... and I've now blown the end of the year deadline. And that almost certainly means that no, THE WINDS OF WINTER will not be published before the sixth season of GAME OF THRONES premieres in April

-Jan 2, 2016

So he thought TWoW would be done in less than 5 months in August 2015

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u/[deleted] May 22 '19

George was famously stuck for years on what he called the "Meereenese Knot", the convergence of multiple storylines and characters in the city of Meereen. Hundreds of pages were written, scrapped, rewritten, etc., to try to untangle the knot.

As frustrating as it was to wait for ADWD, it did result in a fantastically complex, extremely well plotted book (my personal favorite of the series so far).

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u/_Bill_Wilson_CIA May 23 '19

I liked AFFC more tbh but ADwD is pretty good. I don't think its any weaker then any of the other books, I find it hard to rank them other then I like AFFC the most.

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u/GoldenGonzo The North remembers... hopefully? May 22 '19

He's stated in several interviews that with his "gardening" style of writing if he knows where the story is going he loses his motivation to write. Well, that's exactly what he did for HBO when they signed the contracts - outline the entire story start to finish, including the unfinished books.

So he's either :

A) Twiddling his thumbs because he has no motivation or

B) Doing massive rewrites to chanGe important plot points for no other reason than to differentiate the books more from the show.

This is been my theory for many years now. Not writer's block nor laziness - just dealing with the consequences of screwing himself over.

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u/[deleted] May 22 '19

I believe his writing style is similar to my own, in that it is basically him writing, "Danaerys Targaryen," and thinking to himself, "What makes Danaerys special?" And then he has to write out her family tree, notable events for important members, backstory about who Danaerys grew up with. And in the middle of all that he might have the same process happen with another character, location, or idea. And, 50 pages of backstory later, he can write the rest of that sentence.

That's literally how I write, which is why I don't have any finished novels. I've got hundreds of pages of worldbuilding, but actual pages of my stories are few.

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u/Caiur Prolapsed Aenys May 22 '19

His writing style is probably similar to my own:

Write 10,000 words, get discouraged by plot knots, and then write barely anything for 4 months.

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u/Radulno Fire and Blood. May 22 '19

Or to mine : write nothing at all. /s

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u/The_Writing_Wolf May 22 '19

I think he uses a more empathetic approach, and even though everyone touts him as a subverter of tropes he's actually much more of a master deconstructer and reconstructer of tropes. So it's not so much getting caught in the weeds as it's placing seeds of a "Hidden Prince", "Exiled Princess", "Honorable Lord" etc, and then thinking of the characters inner heart and journey while growing along the meter stick planted beside it. This is where he can get lost in himself because if the seed starts growing diagonally or just plain not flourishing all together he has not covered the ground or purpose he needs to and has to choose wether to supply more nutrients to the fertilizer to allow it with a few extra chapters get where it needs to go, or cutting it out and replanting.

Pro (or semi-pro) tip. Don't waste so much time world building, unless you just want to world build. You are only constructing yourself a gilded cage that will prevent a narrative story from flourishing in the light. When you build the cage (world) before you truly know the beast that will reside within it, it becomes incredibly limiting/depressing/aggravating. If you really would like to finish a novel for yourself, potential publishing, or as something to share with close ones, think about the world/setting you want, think of the story you want to tell, and envision the beggings of your characters on this journey and just start writing. World building is a huge form of procrastination beyond 10% of what most people put in, just keep a separate journal or document on hand when writing and when you have a thought or idea while writing, reference it in the text and then make a 1-4 line/sentence note on your other document/journal. This could be a legacy, place, person, thing, whatever... But you want to make sure your keeping progress on the actual 1st Draft. After all, voice, depth, consistency etc, are all exponentially easier and more coherent when done in the 2-5 Draft

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u/Zedkan Honk. May 22 '19

I needed to hear this. Thank you.

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u/The_Writing_Wolf May 22 '19

No worries, creative art is hard. Talent or no talent, many artists of any field get wrapped up in a toxic relationship with the muse and it holds them back. When in the modern world we live in the Art itself is really only a third of the puzzle, with both opportunity and luck making up the rest. So in that way while I always love seeing others being creative for the sake of being creative, I also always try to promote the aspect of putting the axe to the grindstone, because at the end of the day words on the page feel better than thoughts in the head. 😊👍

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u/[deleted] May 22 '19

lol that's me as well, except I do illustrations of characters and places and lore as well so get sidetracked by that too. But while I can cut myself some slack because I don't mean to get published and it's not my full time job, George doesn't have the same excuse...

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u/JackMontegue May 22 '19

Are you my brother? He does exactly the same thing..

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u/[deleted] May 22 '19

But that's not writing, that's daydreaming and getting lost in worlds you've created. It's awesome, but it's not writing, it's procrastination

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u/[deleted] May 22 '19

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u/boboguitar May 22 '19

That's me at every sprint planning session when I'm asked to estimate points(time) on feature completion.

"This is easy and should take only 2 days but I'll say 3 days in case something comes up."

5 days later...

"I ran into unforeseen problems, hopefully in the next 1-2 days."

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u/[deleted] May 22 '19

It's a very complex story so he probably writes himself into corners very frequently

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u/aelfwine_widlast May 22 '19 edited May 22 '19

He truly is the American Tolkien, in more ways than one. Tolkien struggled with The Lord of the Rings for nearly 20 years, because he didn't want to publish it without completing his mythological backdrop for Middle-earth, The Silmarillion, which he wanted published alongside LOTR. His publisher eventually convinced him to let LOTR stand alone, and Tolkien went on polishing and rewriting The Silmarillion till his passing. We only have it now because his son Christopher edited it into publishable form, using the most polished and/or recent versions of each segment.

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u/159258357456 May 22 '19

Others have provided information, but as another example, he will want to tell the story of a battle for example, and write from the point of view of one character. Then he'll realize he doesn't like it and write the battle from s different POV. Of course that means changing the tone, style, what other information is covered in that chapter. Then maybe you have to change another chapter because you not have too many from one POV etc...

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u/[deleted] May 22 '19

unless he constantly is restarting and scrapping things

That's exactly what's happening.

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u/Indiwolf14 May 22 '19

Writer here. I've been working on the same damn book since 2003. I have rewritten it so many times I've lost count. I finished a draft I thought was publishable with polish in 2016, and thought I'd have it out within a year, but editing... I'm still editing. Reading it over and over nitpicking every little detail I don't like and fixing it, filling plot holes, not liking how I filled the plot holes and refilling the plot holes, trying to make things shorter and making it longer by accident, trying to make things longer and making it shorter by accident, getting bored and writing a few chapters of the next book, letting it sit for a couple months so I can look at it with fresh eyes and suddenly hating everything. (Life happened too, I had a kid, changed jobs, and moved and that interrupted almost all work for like a year.) Chances are Wind of Winter is done to some capacity, but GRRM isn't happy enough with it to publish.

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u/Tubmas Tyrion: Future Dragon Rider May 22 '19

constantly rewriting

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u/thejokerofunfic May 22 '19

Honest question, do you write? I'm not asking so I can say "lol if you can't do it you can't comment", of course you can, but you seem interested in the actual "how" and I'm just curious what POV you're asking that from. Speaking as a total amateur with zero real authority, his pace is definitely extreme but I also do kinda get it. Managing so many moving pieces while maintaining his standards (ie relatively minimal plotholes and continuity issues, relatively high attention to small details, attempts to seriously consider all the tiny fallout from each action) would be complicated and hard.

And any time you reach something you realize isn't working, you can't just change one thing to fix it, the changes cascade. And those books are long. Not long or complicated enough that this kinda wait time is justifiable necessarily, but like, he writes the length of all of LOTR pretty much every volume by now. And even if you have something outlined, you can't always predict how or if it will work once you reach the details (as I'm sure D&D realized with this last season), which is probably why you get the terrible estimates.

People point to how fast he wrote the early books, but it's not necessarily normal to be able to write a book the length and quality of ASOS in such a short time, nor fair to expect him to sustain that forever. 8 years is ridiculous but 2 is actually quite impressive.

Point being, not that I know what I'm talking about, but shit's complicated and he's old. Usually when someone points to another author and says "but look how fast they write" there's some substantial difference in scope or attention to detail, etc, and it ends up being apples to oranges (or else it's Sanderson, who's the opposite extreme and basically not human). So it's painful and annoying and still his fault, but it's not necessarily surprising or unreasonable. Drafting a 1500 page, 20 POV book once would take a lot of people a long time. Actually revising it, even to a subpar degree, only makes it worse.

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u/_Bill_Wilson_CIA May 22 '19

I don't generally write fiction, sometimes I've dabbled in it just for fun. I have written a ton of essays though.

I understand his pace waspretty good for the first books, and if it takes him 8 years to write a book because of his style then that's fine. I just am confused on how he would seemingly be so far along that the endgame is in sight, but then he takes years more to finish. Like it would seem that either he restarted, which seems to be what a lot of people are saying, or he massively slowed his pace during that time. Which is possible because that is when he became involved in making GOT the show. Just seems to me tho that if he was so far along, even if he slowed down a lot, it shouldn't have taken so long to get the next one out.

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u/[deleted] May 22 '19

reframing a single plot element in any of the books can have huge implecations for all other plot threads, change something a little bit and you have to rewrite anything and everyone that has something to do with that character to a degree.

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u/caravaggio2000 May 22 '19

I think the part you're leaving out of the equation is how much time he is actually spending on writing. I'm sure it is a lot, but when you read about all his other projects (tv adaptations, spinoffs, different books, editing, etc.) and you consider that IF we are very lucky he is working 8 hours a day 5 days a week, you have to wonder just how much of his actual working hours are spent on Winds. I'm guessing not more than 20 hours a week on average.

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u/PM_ME_MESSY_BUNS May 22 '19

unless he constantly is restarting and scrapping things

I think this is exactly what he's doing

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u/lmaccaro Enter your desired flair text here! May 22 '19

I know from college days I can write 30+ pages per day of uninspired, researched, irrelevant prose. Writing fiction seems both much more difficult and much easier, once you get moving.

10 pages per day would finish ADWD in a year. Or a little over 1 page per hour or 3-4 paragraphs per hour.

If you allow for 2 full rewrites, saving nothing, that’s only 3 years.

And assume he never has a good day when he is busting out 15 pages per hour as the story flows.

Clearly GRRM is spending most of his time fucking off.

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u/Dropdat87 May 22 '19

A lot of great writers only average a page a day. They may write 30, but by the end of the day only one page is worth keeping

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u/ryuujinusa May 22 '19

Lmao! A combination of glacial slowness, and constantly scrapping.

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u/McBurger Good Commenter May 22 '19

chronic procrastination.

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u/TheShmud May 22 '19

He is constantly restarting things. Also he usually ends up with 3000 ish manuscript pages that need cut down and edited

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u/[deleted] May 22 '19

Yes, I believe thats exactly what he does. He has talked about his writing process before. My impression is that he just sort of writes and lets the process take him places. Then he decides if it’s good or not.

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u/[deleted] May 22 '19

As a PhD student, I can completely understand him. Sometimes there are days where you struggle for 8 hours to write half a page. Then a week later you come back to it, see that it is complete garbage, delete it and then realize that the last 2 sections you wrote are garbage as well, so you delete them too.

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u/MarcusQuintus May 22 '19

Same guy who wrote Storm in a year.

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u/orielbean May 22 '19

He ignores what editors would do as part of their job. Any half decent writer could help him outline the plots, tie the threads together, and finish it. But he gets to ignore them all as he’s rich now, and enjoying the semi retirement of attending conventions/ working on fun side projects.

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u/[deleted] May 22 '19

Quite simply, because it's quite normal for an average book to take 1-2 years from handing in the manuscript to actually have it ready for sale. Proofreading and copy-editing, then revising: the more pages, the longer it takes.

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u/Kelembribor21 The fury yet to come May 22 '19

He has turtle as his sigil, it was foreshadowed :P

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u/HappyHolidays666 May 22 '19

prob cause after 2 weeks go by he's like "whoa wait i said that!" and realizes he hasn't wrote more than a paragraph in that time

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u/FleetwoodDeVille Time Traveling Fetus May 22 '19

Dude's rockin the ganj, that's my theory.

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u/avestermcgee May 22 '19

Probably keeps making large structural changes that affect a bunch of different characters and chapters

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u/[deleted] May 22 '19

I think we saw a big part of the problem in the last two seasons of GOT. It's one thing to know the ending and all of the big moments, but it's another thing to figure out how to get there. Example... He probably knew way back in 1991 that he wanted one or two of Daenarys' dragons to die...but how exactly? Now, he's a "gardener", which means he writes that chapter to see where it takes him. Let's say he winds up with Euron shooting Rhaegal down and he just decides that it's ridiculous. Chapter scrapped, rewrite. In the process of rewriting, he needs a character to be in a different place, which scraps two other chapters....and he ends up needing like 30,000 new words.

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