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What do you think caused Martin to loose his grip on the material?


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7 hours ago, Kyll.Ing. said:

If so, his editors would probably just make a book out of the chapters and get it released as quickly as possible. If they had the luxury of enough material to fill a book and a half, they probably wouldn't wait for Martin to write another half book and then sort it into two neat piles. Just as long as some storylines could end on cliffhangers, it wouldn't matter much if others are cut mid-stride. It happened in ADwD, it could be tolerated again.

And by the way, as this thread nears the end of its twentieth page and thus its lifespan (which is a highly disagreeable forum rule, it has to be said), I have to say this to the moderators: It is clear that a TWoW writing progress thread is in demand at any time. It can exist without descending into chaos. Of all the things that could be talked about concerning the upcoming sixth book in the series, its very existence is a topic worthy of discussing. We all have our thoughts and concerns about TWoW's progress, and would both like to share them and to hear what others have to say. Please allow another thread to be created to discuss this issue (or let this one continue, there's really no reason to stop after 20 pages, I've never seen another forum do that nor an adequate explanation for why it's done here). It is, to be blunt, the only discussion that keeps this subforum active.

Agreed,man this is the only discussion that keeps this subforum from being a ghost town.

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3 hours ago, RhaegoTheUnborn said:

Who said all that? I believe people have justifiable reasoning for thinking the book will never be finished. His own words , identifying the struggle he's going through with TWOW, is just one thing that adds credence to that theory.

I’m not talking about him finishing, I’m talking about the conspiracies that constantly get floated here; that he’s got some master plan to quit, that he secretly hates it now and works more on other stuff, that he’s intentionally milking the show money and holding off release. There’s really no reason to think anything other than what he says. He’s struggling, he’s a slow writer, but it’s still his main focus. I actually found his comment about still getting lost in the world quite encouraging, he’s never said he doesnt enjoy writing it. GRRM wants to finish this series more than everyone in this thread combined.

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6 hours ago, DaveSumm said:

I’m not talking about him finishing, I’m talking about the conspiracies that constantly get floated here; that he’s got some master plan to quit, that he secretly hates it now and works more on other stuff, that he’s intentionally milking the show money and holding off release. There’s really no reason to think anything other than what he says. He’s struggling, he’s a slow writer, but it’s still his main focus. I actually found his comment about still getting lost in the world quite encouraging, he’s never said he doesnt enjoy writing it. GRRM wants to finish this series more than everyone in this thread combined.

I'm not sure it's a conspiracy that he works more on other stuff, he has just said he spent years on Fire and Blood, and recently he almost always lists several of his other projects that he's excited about, and puts Winds last, as if its a chore.  He also said he may work on other projects before he starts Dream of Spring, so it seems legitimate to take from this that Winds is not his main focus and that he rarely enjoys working on it.  And, he has not historically been that slow of a writer, we're looking at 8 years as the absolute earliest release for Winds from a guy who has just said it's like a dozen different novels and is very, very challenging.  I'm sorry, this isn't anything to be hopeful about, it doesn't even sound like he's more finished than not at this point, it sounds to me anyway, like Winds is so complex and challenging that he often puts it aside for other, easier, more fun projects and that he is far away from getting to the point in the novel where stories, POVss and characters converge again.

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1 hour ago, Cas Stark said:

I'm not sure it's a conspiracy that he works more on other stuff, he has just said he spent years on Fire and Blood

He never said he worked more on F&B.

1 hour ago, Cas Stark said:

and recently he almost always lists several of his other projects that he's excited about, and puts Winds last, as if its a chore.

Don’t follow the logic there, he lists it last therefore it’s a chore?

1 hour ago, Cas Stark said:

He also said he may work on other projects before he starts Dream of Spring, so it seems legitimate to take from this that Winds is not his main focus and that he rarely enjoys working on it. 

No it doesn’t. That doesn’t follow at all.

1 hour ago, Cas Stark said:

I'm sorry, this isn't anything to be hopeful about, it doesn't even sound like he's more finished than not at this point,

Based on what?

1 hour ago, Cas Stark said:

it sounds to me anyway, like Winds is so complex and challenging that he often puts it aside for other, easier, more fun projects

Based on what?

1 hour ago, Cas Stark said:

and that he is far away from getting to the point in the novel where stories, POVss and characters converge again.

Based on what?

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There is a difference between saying you "want to finish" and actual action that means you "want to finish".

When I was in college almost everyone wanted to get good grades, or said they did, but most tried to find any reason to distract themselves from studying, and then there were the few who was always in the library studying.

The people who were always studying truly wanted it because they were willing to do what it takes to get it. The others only wanted it if it was handed over to them..

 I don't see from GRRM's action that he actually "wants" to finish, sure, he would like it to be finished, but he isn't doing what it takes for that to happen. He's finding every reason and excuse to work on other stuff and distract himself from this task.  

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On 11/12/2018 at 8:00 PM, Cas Stark said:

I agree, I'm surprised that interview isn't getting more comments, I thought it was pretty newsworthy in terms of where he is/isn't with Winds; but yeah, there is a good chance he never even gets Winds out, and based on his own comments about 'a dozen different novels' contained in Winds, it doesn't sound like he's doing the pruning that is needed to regain control, momentum and even have a chance of finishing the story in seven books total.  

 

As you say, this simply doesn't sound good. This sounds more negative than whatever small comments he's given on Winds the last few years.

Above all, this does not sound like a man who is close to finishing Winds of Winter. That vibe isn't there at all in that quote.

The best you can say is that hey, at least he's still working on it. The fact that he's even considering writing another big project before he moves on to the next and final novel is also telling.

I get his point though. It's an enormous novel and there is so much that he needs to get done in this book. Winds is basically a book in and of itself but it also needs to cover so much plot we thought would be in Dance with Dragons.

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17 hours ago, Calibandar said:

As you say, this simply doesn't sound good. This sounds more negative than whatever small comments he's given on Winds the last few years.

Above all, this does not sound like a man who is close to finishing Winds of Winter. That vibe isn't there at all in that quote.

The best you can say is that hey, at least he's still working on it. The fact that he's even considering writing another big project before he moves on to the next and final novel is also telling.

I get his point though. It's an enormous novel and there is so much that he needs to get done in this book. Winds is basically a book in and of itself but it also needs to cover so much plot we thought would be in Dance with Dragons.

It really sounds to me like he needs to reexamine his writing style. This whole "writing without an outline" is not working at the endgame of the series. I know it's how he enjoys writing, but if he is actually serious about completion, he needs to think about changing things up. Find a person or two he trusts, hole up in his house for a week or so, and discuss what he's got done, where the story needs to go overall, what he's thinking about doing with the dozens of various plot threads and themes, what's working, what's not, etc. A week should be sufficient time to come up with "here's what this book needs to do, and here's what needs to happen in each chapter to do it".

Otherwise, if he keeps wanting to write from a spontaneous perspective and never set up an outline, the series will never be finished.

 

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On 11/14/2018 at 12:21 PM, DaveSumm said:

He never said he worked more on F&B.

 

 

He definitely implies that he put WoW on the back burner for Fire & Blood, he says specifically, "Fire And Blood in contrast was very simple. Not that its easy, it still took me years to put together, but it is easier". He then says, The Winds Of Winter is next", as in his next priority.

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Well, the Guardian interview makes it sound like he is still bogged down in all the complications he created with the Dance of the Feasting Dragon Crows, all those povs, which he now likens to a dozen novels, and that he hasn't either found a way or gotten to the point of where the stories are converging again and begin to simplify, which really, is not good news for Winds getting finished any time soon.  He didn't sound like he's polishing, putting the finishing touches on it, or anything that connotes that he is more finished than not or that he has overcome the struggles and challenges related to the story.

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Has this been posted?

Quote

George R.R. Martin is in hiding. He’s talking to me from a remote mountain hideaway whose location he refuses to disclose. It’s a cabin he visits when he wants to hunker down to finish a book—and he’s hard at work on “The Winds of Winter,” the long-awaited sixth installment in “A Song of Ice and Fire,” the fantasy series that spawned HBO’s hugely popular “Game of Thrones.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-game-of-thrones-author-george-r-r-martin-assures-fans-writing-is-coming-1542390476?mod=hp_lead_pos10

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18 minutes ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

 

It was in the General Forum. That and the last season of the show being announced to premiere in April give strength to my hope that the book will be announced to be released sometime just after the show ends. Fingers crossed.

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On 11/10/2018 at 7:32 PM, Cas Stark said:

It doesn't sound  like he's doing any of that streamlining that conventional wisdom says is necessary to regain forward momentum, and regain control of the material, he also says he spent YEARS on Fire and Blood, so maybe we can finally put to bed the idea that Fire and Blood hasn't taken up significant time.

He has spent years on it. He wrote the bulk of the material in a few months in 2012, he revisited it for edits when The Rogue Prince and Sons of the Dragon were published, and he had to revisit it for the book version, expanding the Jaehaerys section (which was apparently pretty bare-bones) and the Regency (which was more complete, but had to be adjusted to work as the end of the book). So the timeframe between starting the book (albeit without realising it) and publishing it will have been around 6 years.

He didn't, however, spend six years solid working on the book instead of TWoW, which is what you are disingenuously hinting at here.

 

Quote

 

I´ve said it in the past and I´ll say it again. George Martin has became crazy (and fallen) athor akin to George Lucas. And I don´t mean it in any disrespect when I´ll say that nowadays Fantasy subculture shows it´s weakness of connection with "soft" mental problems. Evident not just with Martin but also with Lynch and Rothfuss.

 

What does this even mean?

Martin's never expressed any mental health issues or concerns at all, ever. Lynch has, and those are well-documented. Rothfuss has somewhat recently started talking about them, but notably only after his father died in 2017. The issues with his writing speed before then seem unrelated.

 

Quote

 

If so, his editors would probably just make a book out of the chapters and get it released as quickly as possible. If they had the luxury of enough material to fill a book and a half, they probably wouldn't wait for Martin to write another half book and then sort it into two neat piles. Just as long as some storylines could end on cliffhangers, it wouldn't matter much if others are cut mid-stride. It happened in ADwD, it could be tolerated again.

 

Martin's writing process does not permit this. He doesn't write the books in a linear fashion. The Red Wedding chapter, for example, was the last chapter written for ASoS. The prologue for ADWD wasn't written until he was almost halfway through the writing process. So at present Martin might have, say, Chapters 1, 4, 6 and 9 completed for TWoW, Chapters 2 and 7 only in a rough draft and Chapter 3 not even started.

If, as you say, the publishers could cobble together a book out of Martin's current material, I'm sure they would, and probably those conversations Martin mentioned about cutting the book in two which he is resisting are in that vein (and those suggest that Martin now has more than enough pages and chapters to release a decent-sized novel). But the number of chapters is less important than the specific chapters he has finished.

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On ‎11‎/‎15‎/‎2018 at 10:36 AM, Lluewhyn said:

It really sounds to me like he needs to reexamine his writing style. This whole "writing without an outline" is not working at the endgame of the series. I know it's how he enjoys writing, but if he is actually serious about completion, he needs to think about changing things up. Find a person or two he trusts, hole up in his house for a week or so, and discuss what he's got done, where the story needs to go overall, what he's thinking about doing with the dozens of various plot threads and themes, what's working, what's not, etc. A week should be sufficient time to come up with "here's what this book needs to do, and here's what needs to happen in each chapter to do it".

Otherwise, if he keeps wanting to write from a spontaneous perspective and never set up an outline, the series will never be finished.

I agree. I think he needs collaborative help from outside sources. Maybe, he needs a ghostwriter to write a few demo chapters for him that will get him moving in the right direction.

On ‎11‎/‎8‎/‎2018 at 7:07 PM, Nevets said:

Stannis is a huge problem, as it's abundantly clear that he is not going to sit still for 5 years, or anywhere close to it.  You can spend time in Essos raising funds and sellswords,, but that probably wouldn't use up 5 years.

The Wall and Kings Landing are also problems.  Jon and Cersei are going to be doing quite a bit in their respective ruling spots, and doing flashbacks becomes complicated.  As I recall, the excessive number of flashbacks needed was the reason Martin gave for abandoning the idea.

In any event, I don't think chucking the 5 year gap is the problem.  The biggest problem that it created is the youth and lack of development of the younger characters, and I think he can probably find a way to write around that problem, essentially by speeding things up.  Creating a gap or gaps amounting to about 2 years or so would help, as well.

The main problem is the multiplicity of story lines.  The story was already complex enough in Swords, and then he goes and makes it even more complicated, what with the Ironborn, Dorne, Aegon, the Faceless Men, and the like.  He has 20 (!) POV characters, and if you think you can fit 20 POVs into 80 or so chapters, think again.  I've tried, and it isn't pretty.  He probably has 100 or so chapters of story to tell, and only 80 chapters to put it in, so something has got to give.  As he seems to be unwilling to throw any of his children stories overboard, what has given way is completion.  He needs to do some serious pruning of his garden, and decide what is important and what isn't, and act accordingly.

No; the main problem is not the multiplicity of the storylines. The main problem is the timeline discrepancy within the multiplicity of storylines. The stories in Dance were climaxing in a bunch of different places rather than at the same place at the end of the novel...and that's if they were climaxing at all.

Why?

Because the timelines were all over the place. Why would you go to the trouble to divide the story and the characters in half with A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons when you only end up wasting/spending pages within Dance by featuring a handful of chapters that don't move the stories in Dance forward. Weren't they supposed to be happening at the same time? Like, what reason is there for why Cersei's last two chapters or Jaime's sole chapter could not have been included in Feast

On ‎11‎/‎11‎/‎2018 at 5:26 AM, Rhodan said:

I´ve said it in the past and I´ll say it again. George Martin has became crazy (and fallen) athor akin to George Lucas. And I don´t mean it in any disrespect when I´ll say that nowadays Fantasy subculture shows it´s weakness of connection with "soft" mental problems. Evident not just with Martin but also with Lynch and Rothfuss.

Soft mental problems?

Please explain. I'm not being sarcastic; I really am interested.

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1 hour ago, Werthead said:

He has spent years on it. He wrote the bulk of the material in a few months in 2012, he revisited it for edits when The Rogue Prince and Sons of the Dragon were published, and he had to revisit it for the book version, expanding the Jaehaerys section (which was apparently pretty bare-bones) and the Regency (which was more complete, but had to be adjusted to work as the end of the book). So the timeframe between starting the book (albeit without realising it) and publishing it will have been around 6 years.

He didn't, however, spend six years solid working on the book instead of TWoW, which is what you are disingenuously hinting at here.

 

What does this even mean?

Martin's never expressed any mental health issues or concerns at all, ever. Lynch has, and those are well-documented. Rothfuss has somewhat recently started talking about them, but notably only after his father died in 2017. The issues with his writing speed before then seem unrelated.

 

Martin's writing process does not permit this. He doesn't write the books in a linear fashion. The Red Wedding chapter, for example, was the last chapter written for ASoS. The prologue for ADWD wasn't written until he was almost halfway through the writing process. So at present Martin might have, say, Chapters 1, 4, 6 and 9 completed for TWoW, Chapters 2 and 7 only in a rough draft and Chapter 3 not even started.

If, as you say, the publishers could cobble together a book out of Martin's current material, I'm sure they would, and probably those conversations Martin mentioned about cutting the book in two which he is resisting are in that vein (and those suggest that Martin now has more than enough pages and chapters to release a decent-sized novel). But the number of chapters is less important than the specific chapters he has finished.

No, what I am 'hinting' at, is that he hasn't done any work on Winds of Winter since 2015, and that he has spent the last two years working on Fire and Blood and his other projects, but if he also worked on it in 2012, then maybe he spent 3 years instead of the 2 I had envisioned. 

If he has again written enough material for 2 books, but somehow, isn't finished, then this to me is another sign that the narrative is still out of control.  So, again, a bad sign in my opinion.  A sign that instead of contracting the story, it's either still expanding, still meandering, and at best, is in neutral.

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5 hours ago, Jabar of House Titan said:

No; the main problem is not the multiplicity of the storylines. The main problem is the timeline discrepancy within the multiplicity of storylines. The stories in Dance were climaxing in a bunch of different places rather than at the same place at the end of the novel...and that's if they were climaxing at all.

Why?

Because the timelines were all over the place. Why would you go to the trouble to divide the story and the characters in half with A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons when you only end up wasting/spending pages within Dance by featuring a handful of chapters that don't move the stories in Dance forward. Weren't they supposed to be happening at the same time? Like, what reason is there for why Cersei's last two chapters or Jaime's sole chapter could not have been included in Feast

Maybe he hadn't finished them yet; or he felt that they connected better with the ADWD story.  I seem to recall that Daenerys's activities in Slavers Bay are mentioned in one of the Cersei chapters.  Plus they lead nicely into the epilogue.

I still maintain that he has too much story and not enough room to fit it in, and that's causing him problems.

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4 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

No, what I am 'hinting' at, is that he hasn't done any work on Winds of Winter since 2015,

This is a farcically ludicrous assertion, unsupported by any evidence. If George was going to just stop work on the series altogether and give up, he would clearly and distinctly say so rather than lying about working on it for three years straight. There would also be highly significant legal andcost penalties he would have to pay to his publishers.

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33 minutes ago, Werthead said:

This is a farcically ludicrous assertion, unsupported by any evidence. If George was going to just stop work on the series altogether and give up, he would clearly and distinctly say so rather than lying about working on it for three years straight. There would also be highly significant legal andcost penalties he would have to pay to his publishers.

Oh I don't believe he will ever be so direct as to announce he has stopped working on it, or ever admit he won't finish the series, to himself or anyone else. He has become the guy who has been tinkering with the 1969 Mustang in the garage for 20 years.  Everyone around him knows he will never get it to run, but he continues to 'work' on it and dream of the day it runs.  It's painfully obvious that all of the reasons and issues that came up around the 5 year gap and Feast and Dance are not resolved, if they were, Winds would be out, the author would speak positively about the book instead of calling it a struggle and very, very challenging.  I don't want to get the thread closed, so I'll end here.

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