I’m not a mega-fan, but once every couple of months or so I go to George RR Martin’s blog to see if he’s making any progress, not really been hopeful for a few years, though.
Realised I hadn’t done so since before the 'rona hit and folks, that man is not writing those books. Forget about it. Like I thought I was resigned before, but it’s over over OVAH at this stage. Locked down in his grotto or whatever for months, last six weeks just not even a mention of progress. The theory that he was doing too many events and whatnot, lolno. He’s just not doing it.
I think it’s probably a combination of things, he started writing them like thirty years ago. On the one hand, that’s obviously his life’s work and you’d think that alone would motivate him. On the other hand, maybe he’s just entirely sick of them. It’s also possible (I saw this speculated about on some blog or twitter, not my idea) that just seeing the ending done elsewhere, however unsatisfyingly, has sapped the urgency. Maybe GoT just scratched the ASoIaF itch for him, even if it didn’t for the fans.
But like I say, the theory that fame has got to him and he’s distracted by too many events and being the world’s most beloved fat little nerdlinger, nah, it’s not that. Lockdown proves it.
He likes creation and world-building, he doesn’t like tying threads together. That’s why he’s retreated into writing stuff like The World of Ice and Fire or the two volumes of Fire and Blood because then he gets to create and world-build, endlessly, back into the past. When you go from the future into the past you get to expand things, not contract them. While he has a general idea of how the ending goes, the devil is very much in the details.
There are way too many plotlines in the air at once, which is why the show unceremoniously put an axe through a whole bunch of them (and the show only had about… half of the book plots happening?). His excuse for taking 6 years to deliver A Dance With Dragons, which was supposed to be nearly finished when the previous book was released, was something called the “Meereenese Knot” where he had to contrive to get a bunch of plotlines to all collide in Meereen at once. One of these plotlines was the Quentyn plot, which involves new characters, 3 of which are POV characters, taking up like 100 pages, the effect of which on the main plot can be summarized in a sentence. The answer was to cut this subplot, but he won’t do it, and the too-many-plotlines situation is worse now than it was then.
His writing style, which he refers to as “gardening”, exacerbates the too-many-plotlines issue. He writes without an outline and frequently rewrites whole chapters when he’s not happy with them. You can imagine how writing and rewriting plotlines has knock-on effects when they collide with other plotlines.
I agree we’re never getting the books, btw. We might get The Winds of Winter, but as for the supposed final volume, A Dream of Spring, 1) the series cannot be finished in only two more books (or rather, it could, but he’d have to dump plotlines and he won’t do that) and 2) lol nope.
Yeah, I agree that it doesn’t look good. It pisses me off though. And as I mentioned in a different post recently, I firmly believe that GRRM actually is my bitch and should just write the damn books already.
Yeah the fans who are like “he doesn’t owe us anything!” annoy me. If you sell starting books in a series, unless you fall seriously ill or something like that, you’re in an implicit contract to finish the fucking story.
Sort of. Jon kills Dany and is banished to the wall by King Bran, probably for whom Tyrion serves as Hand, even though I kind of hate that bit. Arya and Sansa’s endings are probably similar. Other than that things are generally up for grabs. The White Walkers will go totally differently in the books, we have no idea what that will look like. Euron’s entire plotline and character were erased. Aegon/Young Griff doesn’t even exist in the show. Cersei’s story will look nothing like the show. There’s a lot we have no idea about.
Edited for spoiler since apparently I still need to do that lol
Okay, this is going to make me seem not very “sensible” but it’s 1:30 am and I can’t sleep, so eff it…
I was a huge huge fan of the books long before the show came out. Even back then the extremely slow release cadence of the books was well known and discussed.
When the show came out, I resolved to not watch it until the books were finished. And I haven’t watched a single episode or clip, and religiously avoided all spoilers, including the ending, to this day.
That probably sounds a little nuts, and I don’t disagree. I have my reasons though. They’re a little idiosyncratic but good enough for me.
Edit: LOL Chris, I saw that, averted my eyes though. Thanks for the quick edit.
I’ve a friend who also decided to not read any more books until they were all done after hearing AFFC was only half the characters. Like you she has boycotted the show and she’s standing firm to this day. Thankfully I stopped hoping and then caring years ago now, though technically I’ve spent more than half my life waiting for that motherfucker to write the books
Yeah, I may eventually give in and do that. My buddy (who turned me on to the series way back in the day) has been a good sport and played along with my thing, but he has told me many times how good the show is/was and dropped a few hints about stuff he thought was particularly good. Not really spoiling things, more along the lines of “the guy they have playing Tyrion is really good.”
But anyway, one of the reasons I don’t want to watch the show is that I feel like it will, in a way, pollute my mind and displace my own internal vision of who the characters are, what things look like, etc.
I had that experience with Lord of the Rings and thought I could avoid it with the “other RR’s” books. My plan was to hold out until the books were done, read them through, then watch the show. Thought it wouldn’t take more than maybe five years? LOL at me in hindsight…
But yeah, if Martin dies before finishing them (and they don’t pull a Wheel of Time and bring in another writer to wrap it up) I’ll likely end up watching the show at some point.
P.S. If you guys want to have a spoiler-laden discussion of the books, I don’t mind, I’ll just check out of the thread for a while. I’m not one of those no-spoiler nazis (I figure I’m responsible for my own little deal).
I’m pretty sure he’s said he wants to make like Kafka and have his papers burned (ie. WordStar files deleted) if he dies before finishing it. Might not happen, but apparently that’s the plan.
What it boils down to is that GRRM is a GOAT-level storyteller but is much less accomplished as an author. You can easily imagine him as the beloved elder of a Neolithic band, where everyone gathers around the fire at night to hear him spin tales of heroes and gods. Or as a minstrel or a bard roaming from town to town telling tales in the pub. There is a brilliant world, and within that world there are brilliant stories, but he’s much weaker at taking those stories and disciplining them into a single coherent work.
I would (and often do) highly recommend reading Joe Abercrombie, the greatest active fantasy author, as an illustrative contrast. His work is heavily influenced by GRRM, but he’s also much more disciplined about working the entire arc of his stories into a coherent whole. A big part of the difference is economic. Abercrombie (who is also a good follow because he’s very transparent about his writing process) fully writes out each trilogy he does before releasing anything, which is obviously annoying as an eager fan, but allows him to Ctrl-Z out of plot holes/Meereense Knots that look fine in outline, but then show weakness when written. However, that’s not really practical for a lot of authors, especially new authors, since publishers want books they can publish once they start paying you. On this front, another good author to read for comparison is James Islington, who recently finished his stunningly great debut trilogy, which has an amazingly intricate and beautifully crafted plot, but also has this glaring flaw where one of the B-plots that was introduced in the first couple books became unruly and was basically dropped from the finale. I’m sure it was the right decision, and the finished product is still outstanding, but it underscores the impossible position authors get put in when they are forced to commit chunks of their project to permanently immutable form before they finish the whole thing. (As a software engineer, think about how impossible your life would be if every line of code that went into production could never be changed or deprecated).
More generally, speculative fiction is an enormous commercial success, but the business pressures seem to mostly run counter to producing the best art. However annoying you find GRRM’s writing pattern, it’s much preferable to JJ Abrams’ cynical mystery-boxing. Basically the industry has a better time manufacturing ~engagement~ and revenue from stories that appear to tell a layered narrative with deep connections between different parts of the plot. But writing a story actually is like that is a really hard, really time-intensive creative endeavor, so mostly you see cheap facsimiles and/or commercial incentives that frustrate the creation of the genuine article by compelling authors to publish their work-in-process to put food on the table.