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Rothfuss XIII: Fan Angst Live Stream


Myrddin

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Patrick Rothfuss Is About to Be Fantasy’s Next Superstar

As for the unavoidable question of when, if ever, the third book will come out, that too remains unanswerable. Rothfuss, of course, is far from the first scribe of an epic fantasy series to take longer than fans would like to finish. When I asked him if there was something about the genre itself that made the story difficult to conclude, Rothfuss shook his head. “It’s me. It’s my process. It’s my life.” “He is very hard on himself,” Bialer told me later. “He is always deconstructing and putting his books back together.”

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On 30/10/2017 at 10:26 PM, Jussi said:

“They don’t realize this is so wearying,” he said with a sigh when we spoke a few weeks ago. “It’s like asking, ‘When are you going to get married? When are you going to go to law school?’

It’s like, just fuck off. Just die. I don’t need any more of that in my life.”

I can understand that being badgered incessantly can be aggravating, but I'm still surprised to see an author referring to his fans in this way.

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That's...an extraordinary thing for an author to say. Martin once told a journalist asking about his health to fuck off and gave him the finger, but I think that's understandable. Rolling all of your readers (the entitled nutjobs and perfectly respectful and curious ones) into one category and talking to them like this is really unwise.

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1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

What is strange to me is that the times I have interacted with Rothfuss in person he has been friendly and quite gracious.

 

Rothfuss is a jerk. I don't often say that about people I don't know personally, but it's obvious in everything this guy does. He likes having praise heaped upon him, and I'm sure you were friendly and said he was great and his books were great or whatever.

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2 minutes ago, sperry said:

 

 

Rothfuss is a jerk. I don't often say that about people I don't know personally, but it's obvious in everything this guy does. He likes having praise heaped upon him, and I'm sure you were friendly and said he was great and his books were great or whatever.

No.  He was standing by himself and I asked him if he wanted to come hang out with a group of BWB people in Montreal.  He politely declined (he was getting ready for a reading) but got together with a bunch of people at an absinthe bar across the street after his reading.

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My impression is that Rothfuss loves being an author (or at least some form of celebrity), but hates actually having to write - and hates anyone who reminds him that the job of an author is to write. It isn't a "when are you getting married?" question at all, though it probably feeds into his own self-criticism.

I have wondered if he would be better off announcing a hiatus for Doors of Stone, while he works on another project. 

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From a recent Scott Lynch interview:

http://www.helsinkitimes.fi/culture/14975-worldcon-75-interview-with-author-scott-lynch.html

George R.R. Martin and Patrick Rothfuss get a whole lot of crap from people about being late with their novels...

[sighs] They do, yes, it’s kind of ridiculous sometimes. Pat gets a tremendous amount of vituperation, online in particular. I mean, George gets it, but George is also kind of above it. George doesn’t really give a shit; George is big enough to not give a shit, and Pat is still, relatively speaking, a little bit closer to his readers and does not quite have a Scrooge McDuck money-bin to dive into just yet. I mean, he doesn’t do badly for himself, but Pat gets, I think, the most vicious of all the online comments, and I just don’t understand it. We are human beings, we are human artists, we produce at the rate we produce, and telling us that you really want our work, but that you fucking hate us and that we should nail ourselves to our desks and produce until it’s finished… it doesn’t make any sense. You can’t have both. "You’re a lazy bastard! Now give me that thing that I really want that’s beautiful, that only you do!"

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7 hours ago, Werthead said:

That's...an extraordinary thing for an author to say. Martin once told a journalist asking about his health to fuck off and gave him the finger, but I think that's understandable. Rolling all of your readers (the entitled nutjobs and perfectly respectful and curious ones) into one category and talking to them like this is really unwise.

For an author who seems to obsess over the prose in his books Rothfuss sometimes doesn't seem to think much about how his comments in real life might be perceived.

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2 hours ago, Jussi said:

From what I have seen, people criticising Lynch for delays are few and far between, precisely because he was upfront about what was going on (depression is a horrible thing). In Rothfuss' case, the fan derision is a reaction to bait-and-switch marketing, and authorial behaviour that borders on trolling (the infamous poll on whether to play a video game). If I met Rothfuss, I'd never ask him about book progress precisely because I realise he's struggling with it and doesn't want to talk about it, but the online vitriol isn't simply a product of entitlement.

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1 hour ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

From what I have seen, people criticising Lynch for delays are few and far between, precisely because he was upfront about what was going on (depression is a horrible thing). In Rothfuss' case, the fan derision is a reaction to bait-and-switch marketing, and authorial behaviour that borders on trolling (the infamous poll on whether to play a video game). If I met Rothfuss, I'd never ask him about book progress precisely because I realise he's struggling with it and doesn't want to talk about it, but the online vitriol isn't simply a product of entitlement.

He does seem a tad tone deaf in any public pronouncements about the third book. 

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My issue is that, as a very casual reader who often defends Rothfuss (and others) saying that they can take as much time as they want...this kind of thing is just insulting. I've defended them...but then I get lumped in with all the others who would like any kind of an update but have never demanded one. He's free to take the time he wants...but it's perfectly natural for people to wonder when another book is coming. It is NOT okay to harass, to get upset, to troll, etc. I don't like being lumped in the the crazies. But he wants to do it... Sigh.

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2 hours ago, banjax451 said:

My issue is that, as a very casual reader who often defends Rothfuss (and others) saying that they can take as much time as they want...this kind of thing is just insulting. I've defended them...but then I get lumped in with all the others who would like any kind of an update but have never demanded one. He's free to take the time he wants...but it's perfectly natural for people to wonder when another book is coming. It is NOT okay to harass, to get upset, to troll, etc. I don't like being lumped in the the crazies. But he wants to do it... Sigh.

I’d say even for those who pester him with such questions telling them to fuck off and die is a bit extreme...

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1 hour ago, HelenaExMachina said:

I’d say even for those who pester him with such questions telling them to fuck off and die is a bit extreme...

It really, really is.  The internet has broken him.  He really just needs to disconnect completely for 6-12 months, and if he decides to write at all in that time he should do it with pen and paper.

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I agree. I think all this exposure has embittered him so much that readers like myself have lost a lot of interest, simply due to his foul attitude. I think he should announce a full hiatus from the third novel, to concentrate on different projects, etc. People would bitch and moan, but a whole lot of us would say "Hey man, cool. So a TV show, eh? No worries on the book, Pat. We're in your corner."

That, or as you said, sit in a cabin and pull back heavily on your online brand. Which I highly doubt is an option, as the guy is by many accounts a pretty fun guy in person. Other than being an absolute prick about the novel.

Official semi-long-term hiatus, Patrick! Your soul needs it.

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2 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

I'm with ReG, the guy needs to just not be on the internet for a while.

I seem to remember Scott Lynch saying he went away from the Internet for a while to avoid the stress it was causing, maybe Rothfuss would benefit from following his example.

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