The monkeys growing?

[Takiedevushkikakzvezdy]

10 minutes ago, Knight of Onions said:

I think the pessimistic idea that the book very far from completion is far from the truth. In May 2015, he considered a deadline of October 2015 achievable. Now we know that he tends to massively overestimate his writing speed, but even the earlier books took two years each to write. That he considered it achievable to finish within half a year indicates that at that point he thought he was about three quarters done. That would also be consistent with his statement about "hundreds of pages, dozens of chapters" as well with his average writing speed since 2000.

We all can only guess, but I see no indication that he has "given up" or written no new material since 2012, as some overly pessimistic people claim.

He often thinks that he is close to the finish, but at the last second realizes that he isn`t. This happened numerous times during the writing of ADWD and it`s the same with TWoW. Given how disappointed he sounded in his New Years post I think he is far from done and don`t find any reasons for optimism.

[sifth]

18 minutes ago, Knight of Onions said:

I think the pessimistic idea that the book very far from completion is far from the truth. In May 2015, he considered a deadline of October 2015 achievable. Now we know that he tends to massively overestimate his writing speed, but even the earlier books took two years each to write. That he considered it achievable to finish within half a year indicates that at that point he thought he was about three quarters done. That would also be consistent with his statement about "hundreds of pages, dozens of chapters" as well with his average writing speed since 2000.

We all can only guess, but I see no indication that he has "given up" or written no new material since 2012, as some overly pessimistic people claim.

Well I think that's a bit far fetched. Surely the man has written some portion of book, that didn't exist in 2012, I mean for example he did talk about how he was currently writing a new twist, just last year. To be honest I wonder which section of the book is giving him a hard time this time around.

[SuperMario]

3 minutes ago, sifth said:

Well I think that's a bit far fetched. Surely the man has written some portion of book, that didn't exist in 2012, I mean for example he did talk about how he was currently writing a new twist, just last year. To be honest I wonder which section of the book is giving him a hard time this time around.

Obviously total speculation, but I think it is just the finer details. GRRM, for the most part, has made his world believable when it comes to travel times and size and people getting from here to there. When Sam travels to Oldtown, we understand the amount of time it takes. Same thing with Tyrion going to Slaver's Bay. Whereas the show doesn't care about that with their approach to time being non-existent.

But I would guess GRRM is having a hard time getting a lot of the characters to meet up, which I assume happens in this book, and have it make sense time-wise. Getting Arya back to Westeros or Davos or even Dany needs to line up with other characters already there. So I wouldn't be surprised if he is having a hard time fitting it in logically both time and plot wise.

At least I'm hoping that's what the problems are stemming from because those seem easier to resolve as opposed to him just branching out storylines even farther and now writing himself into corners he is having a hard time getting out of.

[Masha]

7 minutes ago, sifth said:

Well I think that's a bit far fetched. Surely the man has written some portion of book, that didn't exist in 2012, I mean for example he did talk about how he was currently writing a new twist, just last year. To be honest I wonder which section of the book is giving him a hard time this time around.

Most likely that "new twist". He fell in love with that idea and now has to rewrite most of previously completed chapters and they don't fall in line. Same thing that happened with AFFC/ADWD, had a 5 year gap plan, completed a lot of chapters, decided it doesn't work, spent another 3 mostly rewriting the same chapters to fit in. 

Maybe I am in minority, but I hate every time he mentions "the new twist" because it means a lot of rewrites and adding at least a year or two to completion. Every time!

[sifth]

20 minutes ago, SuperMario said:

Obviously total speculation, but I think it is just the finer details. GRRM, for the most part, has made his world believable when it comes to travel times and size and people getting from here to there. When Sam travels to Oldtown, we understand the amount of time it takes. Same thing with Tyrion going to Slaver's Bay. Whereas the show doesn't care about that with their approach to time being non-existent.

But I would guess GRRM is having a hard time getting a lot of the characters to meet up, which I assume happens in this book, and have it make sense time-wise. Getting Arya back to Westeros or Davos or even Dany needs to line up with other characters already there. So I wouldn't be surprised if he is having a hard time fitting it in logically both time and plot wise.

At least I'm hoping that's what the problems are stemming from because those seem easier to resolve as opposed to him just branching out storylines even farther and now writing himself into corners he is having a hard time getting out of.

I rather hate how characters seem to "teleport" from location to location on the show; Varys in the season 6 final being the worse case of this. That being said characters in GRRM's books have often traveled from one location to another in a rather fast amount of time. Ned and his girls for example reached KL in less than a hundred pages, Tyrion spends less than one chapter traveling to Pentos, like wise Arya spends less than one chapter getting to Bravos. To top them all off you have Stannis, who gets to the Wall from Dragon Stone, in around 50 pages; I know GRRM tried to cover his bases by saying Mel used some type of magic wind, but it still seems like a stretch.

If anything the slow down doesn't start until AFFC/ADWD, when it takes Sam nearly an entire book to get to Old Town and Tyrion and Jorah and entire book to get to Meereen. That being said, you have some cases of quick travel, like Jon C and Faegon getting to the Storm Lands rather fast.

So the travel thing is all over the places when it comes to the books, it's always been a case of 'how much world building does GRRM want to do" along the way.

[Entrisen]

8 hours ago, T and A said:

 A dream of Spring? :-). 

[Whitering]

5 hours ago, sifth said:

Well I think that's a bit far fetched. Surely the man has written some portion of book, that didn't exist in 2012, I mean for example he did talk about how he was currently writing a new twist, just last year. To be honest I wonder which section of the book is giving him a hard time this time around.

My belief based only on my opinion that we need more than two books, is that he is having a hard time wrapping things up and hitting all of the desired notes in the space allowed by two books, it's an artificial constraint that would lead to problems. No evidence for this, but look at the chapters we've received so far, what is that? 10ish? And it's all set up for yet more things, I mean, just in the Aeron chapter we've got prescience for Euron on the IT...how many pages is that? Heck that's a book in itself.

[Winter Blues]

Whatever his plans, whenever he decides to announce a finish, it ain't happening before Worldcon. Can you imagine how much of a fiasco that would cause? If he's near done, we won't know it until the end of his Con travels for the year. 

[Entrisen]

1 hour ago, Winter Blues said:

Whatever his plans, whenever he decides to announce a finish, it ain't happening before Worldcon. Can you imagine how much of a fiasco that would cause? If he's near done, we won't know it until the end of his Con travels for the year. 

Why would that cause a fiasco? People will ask him about the book at world con regardless 

[sifth]

37 minutes ago, Entrisen said:

Why would that cause a fiasco? People will ask him about the book at world con regardless 

And he'll say the same thing he always says. Nothing's going to change that.

[Entrisen]

1 hour ago, sifth said:

And he'll say the same thing he always says. Nothing's going to change that.

By the end of August he will atleast have some sort of update, small or big. But if my dream is true he'll actually announce the release date on July 17th

[Ser Biscuit]

On 7/3/2016 at 0:28 PM, Mayor of Winterfell said:

I didn't mean to say, introduce the 5 year now. I believe TWOW takes so long because he maybe wants to cover more time than in the other books, and that it is difficult to keep the plots synchronous and nevertheless finished with 1000 pages

I think Winds will cover the most time of any book to date as well. 1.5 years is my speculation. There's some major traveling that will done in this book.

If you just use Dany's story as a measuring stick, her traveling will cover at least 8 months to a year before she reaches Dragonstone which I assume is where she'll set up shop in Westeros, it surely won't be in any of the other Kingdoms.

-She's currently in the Dothraki sea and is about to be taken to Vaes Dothrak. It depends where in the sea she is, but I would guess that she's at least a month away. So that's a month of her traveling there on horseback.

- There's no telling how long she'll be in Vaes Dothrak, could be a few days to a month or more before Drogon shows up and gets worshiped as the STMTW. And more days for Dany to organize riders to go out and search for other Khals and schedule a meet up point with her.

- The actual travel by the Dothraki to Volantis is easily going to take many months. Best case scenerio - they all go to Meereen (about 4 months away from Vaes Dothrak) and then take ships to Volantis. That's an almost 5 month journey. Worst case? The Dothraki insist on riding all the way to Volantis - that's almost 6 months. Dany will beat the Dothraki to Volantis of course since she'll be on Drogon, but she'll still have to wait on them getting there.

- Let's say she decides to go to Pentos after going to Volantis. If the Dothraki take ships from Meereen to Volantis and also ships to Pentos that's a 6 month journey. But what if she tells the Dothraki to go straight to Pentos from Vaes Dothrak? That's a 7 month journey on horseback.

- None of this counts the time she'll take to conquer Volantis. There won't be any not-so secret sewage systems or horny turncloak sell swords to give her an easy victory there. It could take weeks to a several months to defeat it and for that she'll need her troops there to begin with. So she has to wait on them if they are riding there by horseback.

- And what if there are terrible storms along the way from Meereen to Volantis? What if Aurane Waters causes trouble for her in the narrow sea? What if shipbreaker bay does what shipbreaker bay always does? What if they meet heavy resistance from the Tyrells on Dragonstone? We could be talking a year before lands on Westeros.

By the time Dany lands in Dragonstone: Arya would be over 13 and possibly back in Westeros, Sansa will be almost a lady grown and much wiser, Bran 11 and able to see beyond the weirwoods by this point, Stannis would have his sell sword companies - probably the same ones that fought against Meereen, all towers of the NW will be garrisoned and occupied, the trip to Hardhome would have happened many months prior, Jaime would have become a good fighter with his left hand, the North would have the second largest fleet in Westeros, the Freys could no longer be Lords of the Crossing,  House Tyrell decimated and no longer at Highgarden, Doran would have received Quentin's bones and gotten the scoop on what happened to him and died soon himself after, Jon Conn would have died, the entire North would be armed with dragonglass daggers from Stannis' ships, Illyrio would be safe and secure in KL as Master of Coin, the entire North and possibly most of Westeros' major houses would have learned Jon's heritage, Cersei would have most definitely been cast down by the younger and more beautifui queen + all her kids would be dead + she herself could be dead, the dragons would have hit a puberty growth spurt and become much larger.

Westeros itself would be a very different place, split into at least three sections: Aegon would have become King of the South (Crownlands, Westernlands, Stormlands, Reach, Riverlands, and Vale of Arryn) and for at least 6 months would established peace and become extremely popular. To the West would be Euron - King of the now wealthy Iron Islands and most feared man in Westeros, husband to a sorceress bride, having almost his entire fleet back with him that went with Vic, having a dragon at his disposal, dragonbinder and probably the horn of Joramun too. Above them would be the entire North + Free Folks united behind the heir of Robb's will  - probably Jon Snow and his bride (probably Val), who swear allegiance to King Stannis. And a wildcard - what if Arianne declares herself Queen of Dorne after her father's death and after seeing that Aegon is false? Dorne succeeds and now you have four sections of Westeros.

All of this story would have taken place before Dany even docks on Dragonstone. It's a lot of story to toggle and organize for GRRM. She's only going to have around 5-7 chapters and they are going to be spread out a great deal to account for the massive passage of time, sorta like how it was done for her in AGOT.

[Lady Lyanna Mormont]

4 hours ago, Entrisen said:

By the end of August he will atleast have some sort of update, small or big. But if my dream is true he'll actually announce the release date on July 17th

I'm telling you, mister, I'll be back here on the 17th to poke you in the head!

[SuperMario]

12 hours ago, Entrisen said:

By the end of August he will atleast have some sort of update, small or big. But if my dream is true he'll actually announce the release date on July 17th

Unless he happens to announce it completed before the end of the year (which I highly doubt), we won't get another announcement about it (other than cryptic murmurings like "the monkey's growing") until his end of the year announcement at the end of December. And it will likely be another post about how he is frustrated with himself and how he thought he could have been done by about 5 different dates throughout 2016. Then 2017 will start and we'll be posting the same futile threads.

[mattnj81]

On 7/6/2016 at 7:55 AM, LS1Transam said:

and if the book never comes out or if tWoW ends up being the last book in the series, will you come back and admit you have no f*cking clue?  the truth is none of us have a f*cking clue, we're just looking at the same evidence and coming to different conclusions. No need to be a prick about it

My point about the progress updates is just to discredit the idea that he has very little done outside the cut DwD chapters, but I also said i understand why he wouldn't want to do that.  For me personally, I'm just looking for evidence that he hasn't mentally checked out of his song of ice and fire series

Gladly, though I'm not the one who's claiming to have inside knowledge of his thoughts and actions at this very moment. You are correct that none of us have a clue when the book will come out, but some seem to think they do and have directed their anger at GRRM. Again, this is the internet so not exactly shocking that people are acting like whiny entitled brats. It just aggravated me and I felt the need to call them on their bullshit.

[Yin & Yang]

On 07/07/2016 at 0:03 AM, Knight of Onions said:

I think the pessimistic idea that the book very far from completion is far from the truth. In May 2015, he considered a deadline of October 2015 achievable. Now we know that he tends to massively overestimate his writing speed, but even the earlier books took two years each to write. That he considered it achievable to finish within half a year indicates that at that point he thought he was about three quarters done. That would also be consistent with his statement about "hundreds of pages, dozens of chapters" as well with his average writing speed since 2000.

In 2005 GRRM believed he could have ADWD completed in 12 months. It ended up taking six years.

Now going by that logic, in May last year he believed he could have TWOW completed in six months. Therefore it will take him three years and TWOW will be out in May 2018

[Khal Rhaggat - Cart King]

20 hours ago, Lady Lyanna Mormont said:

I'm telling you, mister, I'll be back here on the 17th to poke you in the head!

I'm dense... what's so particular about the 17th. You mentioned that upthread as well.

[sifth]

6 minutes ago, Yin & Yang said:

In 2005 GRRM believed he could have ADWD completed in 12 months. It ended up taking six years.

Now going by that logic, in May last year he believed he could he could have TWOW completed in six months. Therefore it will take him three years and TWOW will be out in May 2018.

To be fair he's made other predictions as well. For example he once thought he could get AWDW finished by June of 2010, but instead got it finished April of the following year.

[Knight of Onions]

4 hours ago, Yin & Yang said:

In 2005 GRRM believed he could have ADWD completed in 12 months. It ended up taking six years.

Now going by that logic, in May last year he believed he could have TWOW completed in six months. Therefore it will take him three years and TWOW will be out in May 2018

I was making no predictions when the book will be complete. He admitted that he often rewrites passages of the books, so if he has decided to make a major change, it could be further from completion than he was last summer.

[Ser Kinslayer]

On 7/6/2016 at 10:45 PM, sifth said:

I rather hate how characters seem to "teleport" from location to location on the show; Varys in the season 6 final being the worse case of this. That being said characters in GRRM's books have often traveled from one location to another in a rather fast amount of time. Ned and his girls for example reached KL in less than a hundred pages, Tyrion spends less than one chapter traveling to Pentos, like wise Arya spends less than one chapter getting to Bravos. To top them all off you have Stannis, who gets to the Wall from Dragon Stone, in around 50 pages; I know GRRM tried to cover his bases by saying Mel used some type of magic wind, but it still seems like a stretch.

If anything the slow down doesn't start until AFFC/ADWD, when it takes Sam nearly an entire book to get to Old Town and Tyrion and Jorah and entire book to get to Meereen. That being said, you have some cases of quick travel, like Jon C and Faegon getting to the Storm Lands rather fast.

So the travel thing is all over the places when it comes to the books, it's always been a case of 'how much world building does GRRM want to do" along the way.

Well, the first part about Ned and the girls reaching KL in less than 100 pages made more sense in my mind because he didn't have many POV characters to focus on. Therefore, he had reason to balance the scale of time between multiple POVs and their variously placed locations. As far as Stannis is concerned, I don't think it happened in just 50 pages. In fact, if I remember correctly, they leave us with a cliffhanger when Davos shows Stannis the letter sent from the wall; but the audience is never alluded to the content of the letter for some time. Then, we all know when Stannis shows up at the wall and it's kind of a surprise moment for all of us (non-show audience). I think it just  comes off that way because there are no POV chapters in between. I may be wrong in this but this is the way I remembered it being portrayed. I do agree with the part about Samwell leaving Old Town at the beginning of AFfC and getting there at the very end. Well timed, George, well timed