A Timeframe of Ice and Fire: Two Books, Too Many Upcoming Conflicts Left To Go

[Ser Gareth]

21 hours ago, The Egg said:

Yeah, but I don't believe he can make it in 12 months. He says that if he's very lucky he'll publish it in 2018. And this is the same man who told his own publisher he'd finish it in six months at the beginning of 2015!
If he published a chapter a month he might very well get to the point where he finished the chapters he can publish before he published the whole book.

When he says "I'm still months away" I understand "I don't know when I'll finish". He has decades of experience with writing and he can't put an extremely broad timescale to the writing of his book, what can that mean if not "I have no clue when it'll be finished?". We kept deluding ourselves thinking how much we still have to wait, but the fact is that any guess is a wild one and he probably doesn't even know how long the book will be himself. He told us so much times and times again, after all, when he said "it's finished when it's finished".

What really makes me sad, though, is that this last announcement says much more. He'd said that Fire and Blood wouldn't come out before ADOS because it contained stories that might spoil parts of ASOIAF. Now he said, well, let's publish it after all. And this tells me he's done with ASOIAF, either he doesn't care or he's not sure he can finish it, so at least he writes something.

GRRM wants the acclaim but he is now in a position where the show has completely stolen his thunder.

For GRRM to stay relevant he knows it is no longer about ASOIAF.  His focus has shifted towards the potential prequels.  But with that comes another dilemma for him.  What if the prequels finish before he has a chance to put the lore in book form?  So Fire & Blood now takes priority for him.

[WinterPool Stark]

7 minutes ago, Ser Gareth said:

GRRM wants the acclaim but he is now in a position where the show has completely stolen his thunder.

For GRRM to stay relevant he knows it is no longer about ASOIAF.  His focus has shifted towards the potential prequels.  But with that comes another dilemma for him.  What if the prequels finish before he has a chance to put the lore in book form?  So Fire & Blood now takes priority for him.

I didn't think of this and i think you're right, it's this!

[Ser Gareth]

19 hours ago, WinterPool Stark said:

I guess he won't release part 2 of Fire and Blood until ASOIAF is finished. Only God knows when that'll be though...

one thing, he said part 1 F&B isn't quite finished and it may be released before Winds...? What happened to not writing anything else until Winds is finished...

I stopped taking GRRM's word seriously well over a decade ago (ADWD was going to come out a year later than AFFC remember).  I don't think GRRM intentionally lies but it's clear he has no sense of realism.  It's that lack of realism that probably triggered him being able to make such a rich and colourful world.

His gardening approach clearly doesn't work and yet he is unable to adapt.  It's clear to me that it all went wrong when he abandoned the five year gap (which was an ill thought out idea to begin with).  Had he structured himself better he'd have realised that before finishing AGOT.

[The Egg]

1 hour ago, Ser Gareth said:

I stopped taking GRRM's word seriously well over a decade ago (ADWD was going to come out a year later than AFFC remember).  I don't think GRRM intentionally lies but it's clear he has no sense of realism.  It's that lack of realism that probably triggered him being able to make such a rich and colourful world.

His gardening approach clearly doesn't work and yet he is unable to adapt.  It's clear to me that it all went wrong when he abandoned the five year gap (which was an ill thought out idea to begin with).  Had he structured himself better he'd have realised that before finishing AGOT.

The five year gap could have been a good idea, if he wasn't the kind of author who feels the urge to tell you EVERYTHING that happened. Had those 5 years been uneventful, and had he thought in advance of a way of telling you the story without too many flashbacks, it would've worked.

But again, if he'd been the kind of writer who sticks to the plan, we'd have never had characters such as Jaime, and the whole story would've been just another fantasy trilogy I'll never bother to read, so I can't say I don't appreciate his "let's see how this evolves" approach.

Problem is, he's stuck and doesn't know how to get out of it now. So he tries to think of other projects hoping the solution will come from the Heavens. But hell, the only solution that can come from the heavens is the fucking Red Comet killing everyone.