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

[Quaithe from Asshai]

2 hours ago, Ran said:

I know for a fact that he was working on it in April, so if he "stopped working" on the book, it would have to be after that time.

Would you care to elaborate? 

Do you mean new content or rewrite? 

[Three-Fingered Pete]

8 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

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.

 

 

[Ran]

6 hours ago, Quaithe from Asshai said:

Do you mean new content or rewrite? 

That I could not say. I just know he was working on the novel.

[T and A]

11 hours ago, Ran said:

I know for a fact that he was working on it in April, so if he "stopped working" on the book, it would have to be after that time.

I don't think that anyone seriously doubts that he isn't working on the novel at all. Most of us just doubt that he is working on it consistently, like an author who seriously atents to finish it in the next five years. 

[sifth]

1 hour ago, T and A said:

I don't think that anyone seriously doubts that he isn't working on the novel at all. Most of us just doubt that he is working on it consistently, like an author who seriously atents to finish it in the next five years. 

I love GRRM, he actually comes from an area where I use to live and he seems like such a friendly guy in all the interviews I've seen with him. I even like his hats, odd as that might sound. All that being said, something just seems strange about his writing style. It almost feels like he over works on something and then only realizes in hindsight, that's he's done too much and there's no possible way a good chunk of his material will fit on page.

I remember GRRM posting about the editing process for ADWD on his Not Blog back in 2011. I believe he called it "rimming the fat", which to be fair is a proper term to use; however having read that book 3 or 4 times now, I notice more and more each time that the book is filled with fat that could have been trimmed. There were two entire chapters of Tyrion stuck on a boat with Jorah and Penny, where nothing really seems to happen, until the very end and often think both chapters could have properly been edited into one, since the majority of them were just the characters self reflecting. I know about the silly Giants joke, that GRRM made during one of the chapters, seeing as he's a huge fan of the football team, but two chapters of Tyrion and Jorah doing next to nothing on a boat just felt like a little too much for me. I felt this way about a few Dany and Jon chapters as well, that I felt could either be combined with other chapters or removed entirely. I also believe Quentyn Martell could have been removed as a POV entirely, despite really liking the character; this is assuming he's really dead, which I honestly believe he is. I think his story could have been told through Dany and Ser. Barristan's POV's, and to a lesser extent the other Dorne character. He really doesn't do anything until he reaches Meereen anyway.

 

Long story short, I don't think GRRM is lazy, I think he comes up with too many ideas and isn't that great when it comes to editing and pacing at times. It's sort of like watching the extended cut of Aliens, which is one of my favorite films. Sure it's nice to see more scenes with these interesting and fun characters, but a lot of the new material at the end of day just feels like fat that should be trimmed for the sake of pacing. A close friend who worked in the business once told me, even though great writers play a very important role in story telling, the real magic comes from the editing process and to this day this is honestly something I believe.

[Takiedevushkikakzvezdy]

13 hours ago, Ran said:

That I could not say. I just know he was working on the novel.

Let me guess: You asked him how TWoW is going, and he replied "Working on it". No? 

[Ran]

3 minutes ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

Let me guess: You asked him how TWoW is going, and he replied "Working on it". No? 

Nope.

[L’Age d’or]

Hopefully the isolation will help him focus; god knows how overwhelming it is to be a worldwide target of demand and expectancy in today's age. 

[Three-Fingered Pete]

1 hour ago, L’Age d’or said:

Hopefully the isolation will help him focus; god knows how overwhelming it is to be a worldwide target of demand and expectancy in today's age. 

 

I'm hoping that this means he finally has enough material to collate into a finished product and he needs the isolation to focus and think for editing purposes. Fingers crossed.

[Lluewhyn]

On 11/18/2018 at 7:10 AM, sifth said:

It's sort of like watching the extended cut of Aliens, which is one of my favorite films. Sure it's nice to see more scenes with these interesting and fun characters, but a lot of the new material at the end of day just feels like fat that should be trimmed for the sake of pacing.

I think there's more than the pacing, although that's certainly affected. The earlier scene with Newt's family gives too much away about what happened at the colony IMO, when part of the tension is wondering what happened when the marines arrive (yeah, you kind of know because it's a movie about aliens, but the scene makes it clearer). Plus, I think it gives away the plot point that they were sent out deliberately to go find the spaceship, which gives away part of the subplot about someone using Ripley's information to find an alien (don't remember if Burke was mentioned or not?).

The scenes where they talk about the sentry guns and their otherwise meager amount of ammo runs into some consistency problems. If you figure there's only a max of about 140 aliens or so from all of the colonists, you see way too many aliens killed onscreen between the sentry guns and later fights. Plus, I think Hicks states that they only have about 50 rounds apiece for their rifles, and you'll see that they fire a heck of a lot more than that.

The part where Ripley learns about her daughter is interesting, but it's also another scene in the beginning that's delaying the first bit of action, and the explicit portrayal of Newt as a surrogate daughter isn't needed, it's fine in the subtext, or even just leaving Ripley being a caring person regardless of a mother/daughter aspect.

[Cas Stark]

2 hours ago, Trefayne said:

 

I'm hoping that this means he finally has enough material to collate into a finished product and he needs the isolation to focus and think for editing purposes. Fingers crossed.

Wouldn't the final editing job be easier and not demand seclusion?  If he is really secreted away in a cabin, it is a bit of a good sign since it means he has given up the idea he can only write at his house in NM.  I just don't think he speaks about Winds as if it's almost done, he is still calling it complex and very very challenging as of a week ago.

[Three-Fingered Pete]

21 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

Wouldn't the final editing job be easier and not demand seclusion?  If he is really secreted away in a cabin, it is a bit of a good sign since it means he has given up the idea he can only write at his house in NM.  I just don't think he speaks about Winds as if it's almost done, he is still calling it complex and very very challenging as of a week ago.

 

It depends on his writing process. He may indeed have most of the chapters written for each POV he has decided make the cut, but going back and making sure timelines and foreshadowing events don't fall over each other and that the narrative flow is good can be a very long and laborious process. He has stated that he does a lot of rewriting at times. I would assume that means he may sacrifice certain plot lines that he thought were good and fit at the time in favor of altered or even new plotlines that line up better with what another POV (who is more central to the main plot) ended up doing. I would imagine that the "gardening approach" yields this sort of predicament quite often.

[L’Age d’or]

4 hours ago, Trefayne said:

 

I'm hoping that this means he finally has enough material to collate into a finished product and he needs the isolation to focus and think for editing purposes. Fingers crossed.

I don't think he ever ran out of material as much as he did of drive. 

[SuperMario]

1 hour ago, Cas Stark said:

Wouldn't the final editing job be easier and not demand seclusion?  If he is really secreted away in a cabin, it is a bit of a good sign since it means he has given up the idea he can only write at his house in NM.  I just don't think he speaks about Winds as if it's almost done, he is still calling it complex and very very challenging as of a week ago.

I agree. I may be wrong, but I don't recall him ever stating he has needed to shut himself away in a cabin to finish a book. But hey, if it worked for JK Rowling, maybe it will work for GRRM.

However, I don't think he is that close to finishing if he feels it necessary to lock himself away to work on it.

[T and A]

2 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

Wouldn't the final editing job be easier and not demand seclusion?  If he is really secreted away in a cabin, it is a bit of a good sign since it means he has given up the idea he can only write at his house in NM.  I just don't think he speaks about Winds as if it's almost done, he is still calling it complex and very very challenging as of a week ago.

Do we know that the "cabin" is literally a place somewhere outside of his house? When I read the particular line, I read it as a metaphor for him closing himself from the outside to work uninterrupted.

[Ran]

14 minutes ago, T and A said:

Do we know that the "cabin" is literally a place somewhere outside of his house? When I read the particular line, I read it as a metaphor for him closing himself from the outside to work uninterrupted.

It is a literal cabin in the mountains.

[Three-Fingered Pete]

13 minutes ago, Ran said:

It is a literal cabin in the mountains.

 

Why did I just get an image of George sitting with a giant bowl of popcorn watching the entire run of Evil Dead movies?

[Lady Fevre Dream]

Well, he can't be at that literal cabin right NOW in NM, or I doubt it, anyway, since he's supposed to be back in the home Swamps of Jersey for a book thingy tonight, right?  I can say Swamps of Jersey, being a Jersey Girl and all. 

[Takiedevushkikakzvezdy]

5 hours ago, Trefayne said:

 

I'm hoping that this means he finally has enough material to collate into a finished product and he needs the isolation to focus and think for editing purposes. Fingers crossed.

On the other hand, it could mean that he'll be forced to split TWoW in two books, which his publishers have urged him to do. Which is not a good sign.

[Three-Fingered Pete]

3 minutes ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

On the other hand, it could mean that he'll be forced to split TWoW in two books, which his publishers have urged him to do. Which is not a good sign.

 

Ugh, not again! I don't want to be compelled to shuffle edit another two bricks together.