Rothfuss XII: The Doors of Twitch

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

2 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Whoa hey now, you saying 400 pages of ninja sex is too long?

To be fair, the true purpose of the ninja is to flip out and kill people.

[Ninefingers]

43 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Whoa hey now, you saying 400 pages of ninja sex is too long?

I laughed.

[Ninefingers]

52 minutes ago, Myshkin said:

And doing "things his way" has created the situation he now finds himself in. WMF was a significantly weaker book than NotW, precisely because he lacks either the will or ability to self edit. If his editors had pushed him harder not only would that book have been done sooner, it would in all likelihood have been a much stronger novel. Instead they let him do "things his way" and we all waited four years for a book that turned out to be grossly overwritten.

I actually don't follow your logic. He didn't have editors or anyone pushing him for book 1, he self edited it, and it was his strongest. 

Maybe we just need to re-calibrate our expectations for the guy. His entire career might end up being 4 or 5 books, or once every 10-12 years.

[Darth Richard II]

No he's stated several times that the publishers made him insert the drunk dragon bit, unless it turns out he was lying about that too.

[RedEyedGhost]

24 minutes ago, Ninefingers said:

I actually don't follow your logic. He didn't have editors or anyone pushing him for book 1, he self edited it, and it was his strongest. 

You think publisher put out a first time author's book without editing it?  No, nope, naha.  As soon as he signed a contract with Daw they started pushing him on TNotW.

[Lord of Rhinos]

5 hours ago, Ninefingers said:

I actually don't follow your logic. He didn't have editors or anyone pushing him for book 1, he self edited it, and it was his strongest. 

Maybe we just need to re-calibrate our expectations for the guy. His entire career might end up being 4 or 5 books, or once every 10-12 years.

From his interviews, it sounds like Rothfuss meant his agent Matt Bialer through Kevin J. Anderson so unlike many authors he ended up with an agent before landing a publisher. Rothfuss has talked about how the entire Draconis sequence was due to his agent asking for a climax to book one.  It has always sounded like his agent had him make a lot of changes to the first book before they even started shopping it to publishers.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

The "drunk dragon" bit was the worst part of NotW.

[The Marquis de Leech]

Wasn't it a stoned dragon?

[unJon]

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

The "drunk dragon" bit was the worst part of NotW.

Totally agree. 

[Myrddin]

Book 1 was probably mostly self-edited. But it probably tookmany many years to do before getting an agent. I seem to remember he worked on it through college and work shopped it quite a bit?

If that's the case, it explains why 3 is taking so long. He's trying to replicate the original 4-8(?) year process.

[Brendan Moody]

He mentioned in one of the blog posts linked upthread that he had a complete draft of the entire trilogy in 2000, so he's certainly been working on the project as a whole for a very long time.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

2 minutes ago, Triskan said:

And he did go to uni for like 8 years, neh?

One does not become nigh-invulnerable overnight. Just ask The Tick.

[RedEyedGhost]

7 hours ago, Triskan said:

And he did go to uni for like 8 years, neh?

Nine, Trisk, nine.

[Werthead]

On 23/03/2017 at 11:58 AM, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

No author should ever be "too big to edit" or marry their editor  

I'm really not sure this was a problem as much as has been suggested. In fact, Harriet being married to RJ probably gave her far more of an ability to exercise editorial judgement on him than a random yes man. It's also worth nothing that she was his editor on all of his books. I really don't know where this idea that she joined halfway through the series came from. The first book she edited of his was his very first novel, a decade before WoT. It's also worth noting she was an experienced editor with several major hit books for Tor (Ender's Game and the first few Black Company novels) long before WoT started.

More problematic was the level of success and the requests made of them by Tor Books, and Tom Doherty encouraging RJ to write more books and explore every single subplot idea he had, regardless of whether it was a good idea or not.

You can see growing author power with ASoIaF: Anne Groell told George to take out half of the "Words are wind" in ADWD and he pointblank refused. Even less popular authors can have that power: Steven Erikson avoided almost all of his editorial advice because Bantam had spent so much money on the series that they needed to publish the books regardless, which gave him immense power far beyond his initially very modest sales.

Ultimately, however, editors are more like consultants then directors or even producers. Once a publisher has bought a novel, they have to publish it or be in breach of contract. Editors refusing to publish a book is a legal minefield, even if the quality is inarguably poor. Random House tried to do this with a Joan Collins novel they regarded as too shit to be publishable and she absolutely took them to the cleaners in court, even saying that she agreed the book wasn't very good but that was irrelevant to the contract (!).

[Darth Richard II]

Can I still blame Harriet and company for that goddamn compendium thing?

[The Marquis de Leech]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

You can see growing author power with ASoIaF: Anne Groell told George to take out half of the "Words are wind" in ADWD and he pointblank refused.

The problem there isn't just Martin being Too Big, it's Groell herself:

Anne Groell: Personally? I think I was the first person in the world, besides George, to read A DANCE WITH DRAGONS…and how amazing is that? In addition to being his editor, I am also a huge fan, and the book totally knocked my socks off.

http://www.unboundworlds.com/2011/07/dance-interview-with-george-r-r-martin-editor-anne-groell/

No author should have a fan editing them.

[Gabriele]

7 hours ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

No author should have a fan editing them.

Exactly. And that's the problem with Harriet and Jordan, too. She was too close to the books, furthered by the fact that they were married and probably talked about the books at dinner. She may have been a good editor for him prior to WoT and even for the first 2 or 3 WoT books, but after that, the editing should have gone to someone else at TOR.

[Brendan Moody]

I think fans tend to have some interesting ideas about what the editor/writer relationship is typically or optimally like. Quite aside from the fact that Groell is obviously using exaggerated PR-speak in that interview, enjoying the work one edits is not really a professional failing. I think ADWD is a flawed end product and that Groell gave GRRM some bad advice that made the book worse, but not because she's fundamentally wrong for the job.

[Werthead]

13 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

Can I still blame Harriet and company for that goddamn compendium thing?

Yes. That was bollocks. When even the mild-mannered Sanderson was going, "Er, this wasn't what I thought it was going to be," they really needed to stop and rethink.

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No author should have a fan editing them.

 

No, you need your editor to be a fan, to be supportive, to be fighting battles for you with the publishers. But that relationship needs to be collaborative, the author needs to take on board editorial suggestions and they need to work together.

To be honest, editors are just as guilty (if not moreso) as authors are of resting on their laurels once success bites. But also every editorial relationship is different. Raynor Unwin was Tolkien's editor on LotR but he admitted he never did anything at all to the book (apart from a bit of back and forth on whether to include the epilogue or not, resulting in Tolkien chucking it). Goodkind, famously, said he he produdly refused to change one word in his entire series (allegedly this is crap and he did change a lot on WFR in response to editorial, but the second that book became a hit he stopped listening and Tor stopped pushing).

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She may have been a good editor for him prior to WoT and even for the first 2 or 3 WoT books, but after that, the editing should have gone to someone else at TOR. 

 

I actually think that the end result of that would have been far worse.

From Tor's perspective, they had the biggest-selling work of epic fantasy since Tolkien (although Martin may still overtake it), a series of books that sold 60 million copies + in North America alone and which subsidised hundreds of other authors and books getting off the ground. From that perspective, the collaboration was a massive success and they're upset they can't extend it further with more books.

[Gabriele]

You are right about the commercial point, of course. I edit academic non-fiction and keep forgetting that aspect, academic non-fiction doesn't usually make much money  and it's not an argument to use in an author/editor relationship. 

I agree that an editor should like the books and care about them; else editing would be a chore (the publishing aspect aside). But liking does not equal gushing over everything the author produces, as 'fan' implies to me. But maybe I'm too strict with the use of the word; I'd rarely apply it to my own relationship with books even when I really like them (like Malazan or ASoIaF). Tolkien might be the one case where I'd use the word. And for some opera composers, but that's a different medium.