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

[Lady Rhodes]

2 hours ago, Morte said:

Exactly! That's why I still do like the Brienne and Jaime chapters in AFFC, just as I like Sam on his journey to and from Bravos, they show how the characters "tick" and their inner growing (Just thinking about the scene Brienne has with the Elder brother, it breaks my heart every time I read it, and (in Spoilers because offtopic):

  Reveal hidden contents

I know that the chances are good for both of them to die, but if Jaime doesn't at least get his heroic entry in the White Book by the hand of Barristan and a vigil over his corpes, and/or Brienne doesn't get a white cloak I will scream "unfair!"

.

That's why I still think that the problem aren't the travelogues, but more the hold of everything else.

On the Show:
 

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Yes, you are 100% right. I don't follow the show anymore (not since the second season), but look up some scenes and plots people are talking about. Jon and Dany coming together was completely artificial, no chemistry and no natural growing together as we have seen it in the travels of Brienne and Jaime.

And it does show your point very well, because without the inner thought of all the travelling people their changes wouldn't feel natural, they would feel forced just like the relationship of Jon and Dany in the Show does.

 

 

Glad you agree! I enjoy the show and as far as adaptations go, it isn’t terrible. I get that things get changed and cut. I just accept them as two different mediums. Most of the changes I attribute to merging characters and storylines but I think season sevens problems (and thus the problems with Jon and Dany arc) was the needless desire to condense the season to seven from ten episodes

[kissdbyfire]

1 minute ago, Lady Rhodes said:

it isn’t terrible

To each their own, of course. But it is. So terrible... And has been for a very long time. And not because of merging storylines and characters, IMO. But this is not the place  to talk about that. 

Back on track... I don’t think the 5yr gap would work for most characters. And yes, I do think the ages of the main characters is a contributing factor in making it work moving forward. And fwiw, I love the travelogues. 

 

[Lady Rhodes]

2 hours ago, kissdbyfire said:

To each their own, of course. But it is. So terrible... And has been for a very long time. And not because of merging storylines and characters, IMO. But this is not the place  to talk about that. 

Back on track... I don’t think the 5yr gap would work for most characters. And yes, I do think the ages of the main characters is a contributing factor in making it work moving forward. And fwiw, I love the travelogues. 

 

That was taken very out of context but you are right, back to topic.  I think what some people view as extraneous or rather what appears extraneous at first is only revealed in retrospect to be vital and that was my point 

[sifth]

34 minutes ago, Lady Rhodes said:

That was taken very out of context but you are right, back to topic.  I think what some people view as extraneous or rather what appears extraneous at first is only revealed in retrospect to be vital and that was my point 

I'd like to learn how Tyrion and Jorah's two chapter boat ride will be important to the plot or how even half of Brienne's chapters from AFFC's will be important.

[Morte]

5 hours ago, sifth said:

I'd like to learn how Tyrion and Jorah's two chapter boat ride will be important to the plot or how even half of Brienne's chapters from AFFC's will be important. 

I'm quite sure that Tyrion's and Jorah's journey was one of the plots that would have been mentioned in retrospective with the gap, but even there we get some informations and insides we wouldn't have without the travel (even if they are very meager compared to other travelogues): the situation in Volantis and Tyrion's learning about f(?)Aegon. And we do get the beginning of character-development after Tyrions meets Penny. But yes, this things could have been nicely condensed in fewer chapters.

As for Brienne, the problem with her chapters "going nowhere" applies only for the first two or three, before she reaches Maidenpool, after that we get a lot of inside on the region and it's people, on Tarly, on the Quiet Isle and on Sandor. And we learn, just as we do with Davos in Whitehabor and Jaime's journey, that the western part of the Riverlands and it's coast is essentially "dragon's land", when the Dragons will move and/or land (finally, pretty please...) it will tear the Riverlands apart again

In fact, Brienne's journey is responsible for my private little crackpot, that Dany will not land on Dragonstone or any other normal port (because her armada will be much too big for any port to hold, and she will have too many people with her to poor into any town or city; but her Unsullied would be able to finally man the walls of Harrenhall for the first time in history), but in the Saltpens, with at least the longboats being pulled on land, which will work nicely in the watt and sandy coast there.

But yes, all journeys could have been trimmed a little, say two chapters each, and give room to move the other plots more forward. But this would be a typical editing error, as cutting away too much flesh is just as much the job of an editor as is removing repetitions etc. In fact, it's often the editor, who makes a good book great, and a great book brilliant.* Pity there are so little good editors left.

 

*That's because essentially "good or brilliant reading" is as much a gift as is writing, but not the same. The German author Arno Schmid wrote an essay about that phenomenon, coming to the defence of literature critics.

[sifth]

3 hours ago, Morte said:

 

But yes, all journeys could have been trimmed a little, say two chapters each, and give room to move the other plots more forward. But this would be a typical editing error, as cutting away too much flesh is just as much the job of an editor as is removing repetitions etc. In fact, it's often the editor, who makes a good book great, and a great book brilliant.* Pity there are so little good editors left.

 

*That's because essentially "good or brilliant reading" is as much a gift as is writing, but not the same. The German author Arno Schmid wrote an essay about that phenomenon, coming to the defence of literature critics.

Those two chapters with Tyrion and Jorah on the boat are just the worst. Two entire chapters on a boat, nothing happening at all, just so George can make a joke about why he hates the New England Patriots. I've honestly never seen something so insane before in this series.

[Lady Rhodes]

@sifth@Morte I think that we will only realize it in retrospect.  Like I have said previously, I hated the travelogues for the longest time.  I now consider them my favorites.

[Cas Stark]

1 hour ago, sifth said:

Those two chapters with Tyrion and Jorah on the boat are just the worst. Two entire chapters on a boat, nothing happening at all, just so George can make a joke about why he hates the New England Patriots. I've honestly never seen something so insane before in this series.

Most of Tyrion's chapters in Dance are pretty useless and could easily have been cut by half, those two are probably the worst, yes.  People who are expecting his traveling around Essos to have some future important meaning are fooling themselves.  This was the author letting his freak flag fly, and writing and writing and then never cutting anything.  We don't need 12 chapters of him going from drunk and I want to die, to okay, I want to live again.  As with everything, sure, there are some interesting things and some lovely writing, I loved seeing the ruins of Valyria, but still.

[Three-Fingered Pete]

On ‎12‎/‎28‎/‎2018 at 5:08 AM, sifth said:

Those two chapters with Tyrion and Jorah on the boat are just the worst. Two entire chapters on a boat, nothing happening at all, just so George can make a joke about why he hates the New England Patriots. I've honestly never seen something so insane before in this series.

 

They are the worst, but they have more impact on the structure than the narrative. There are two points in the (one giant) story where Tyrion's narrative time frame and/or the time between his chapters is incredibly long compared to all of the other POVs. Both times are when he is on extended traveling sequences because the real point of them is to get him from one place to another (far away) place fairly quickly narratively, but it still takes several chapters to do so. Thankfully for us (or maybe not), they are bunched together at the start of the present point in the tale and at the (physical) end of Feast.

This is because the beginning and ending of Feast are a flurry of activity compared to what is going on in Dance at the same time, but the story has no choice but to orbit around Tyrion at those points since it is he who is setting the pace. Beginning with Tyrion VIII, the characters from Feast start to come over regularly (Asha being the only early transfer). By this time, everything in Feast must be accomplished in order for those POVs that are jumping books to be able to continue their narratives. The three Tyrion travel chapters at that point (VII, VIII and IX) give the story a chance to catch up with itself.

It also gives Jon's chapters a chance to catch up to Tyrion's in the rotation since Jon has one more chapter than Tyrion to present and he is not controlling the POV rotations (and talk about passing time; those two Jon chapters do nothing that couldn't have been accomplished in one chapter). Having Tyrion take many days (or even weeks) to arrive at his destinations is just another tool to pass time. In those instances, the other POVs either get a lot done (AFFC) or they only get glimpses of their activity presented to the reader in the intervening time period (ADWD), and most of the time they aren't doing anything that we would consider significant.

I would really urge people to try one of the combined reading orders out there (I, of course, am partial to the one in my signature). They really do make the story make a lot more sense in places, if nothing else, and makes some of GRRM strong arm editorial choices seem less harsh.

[Cas Stark]

2 hours ago, Trefayne said:

 

They are the worst, but they have more impact on the structure than the narrative. There are two points in the (one giant) story where Tyrion's narrative time frame and/or the time between his chapters is incredibly long compared to all of the other POVs. Both times are when he is on extended traveling sequences because the real point of them is to get him from one place to another (far away) place fairly quickly narratively, but it still takes several chapters to do so. Thankfully for us (or maybe not), they are bunched together at the start of the present point in the tale and at the (physical) end of Feast.

This is because the beginning and ending of Feast are a flurry of activity compared to what is going on in Dance at the same time, but the story has no choice but to orbit around Tyrion at those points since it is he who is setting the pace. Beginning with Tyrion VIII, the characters from Feast start to come over regularly (Asha being the only early transfer). By this time, everything in Feast must be accomplished in order for those POVs that are jumping books to be able to continue their narratives. The three Tyrion travel chapters at that point (VII, VIII and IX) give the story a chance to catch up with itself.

It also gives Jon's chapters a chance to catch up to Tyrion's in the rotation since Jon has one more chapter than Tyrion to present and he is not controlling the POV rotations (and talk about passing time; those two Jon chapters do nothing that couldn't have been accomplished in one chapter). Having Tyrion take many days (or even weeks) to arrive at his destinations is just another tool to pass time. In those instances, the other POVs either get a lot done (AFFC) or they only get glimpses of their activity presented to the reader in the intervening time period (ADWD), and most of the time they aren't doing anything that we would consider significant.

I would really urge people to try one of the combined reading orders out there (I, of course, am partial to the one in my signature). They really do make the story make a lot more sense in places, if nothing else, and makes some of GRRM strong arm editorial choices seem less harsh.

Why is there no choice?  Why not a Tyrion chapter where he reflects on XX that happened over XX weeks or months, and that then puts him in a timeline that is in sync with whatever?  I honestly can't understand the mindset that Martin is somehow stuck writing all of this filler traveling doing nothing detail because of the timeline.  ALL he has to do is start a chapter at whatever time he wants, throw in a couple of lines or paragraphs to indicate whatever past events are needed for the story.  We saw this throughout the first books, the fact that the author felt it necessary to give a blow by blow, practically day by day account is, itself the problem, not the syncing of the timelines, which is easy.  IMO.

[Three-Fingered Pete]

21 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

Why is there no choice?  Why not a Tyrion chapter where he reflects on XX that happened over XX weeks or months, and that then puts him in a timeline that is in sync with whatever?  I honestly can't understand the mindset that Martin is somehow stuck writing all of this filler traveling doing nothing detail because of the timeline.  ALL he has to do is start a chapter at whatever time he wants, throw in a couple of lines or paragraphs to indicate whatever past events are needed for the story.  We saw this throughout the first books, the fact that the author felt it necessary to give a blow by blow, practically day by day account is, itself the problem, not the syncing of the timelines, which is easy.  IMO.

 

I didn't say the author didn't have a choice. I said that the story doesn't have a choice; because of the decisions that the author made. He could have made a lot of decisions, like sticking with the five year gap or doing yearly flashbacks with little real time vignettes for four or five POV rotations, but he didn't. He went with real time storytelling with stretched and contorted narrative time frames combined with a split narrative format that causes some continuity issues. This "solution" didn't solve any of his overall story arc timeline problems, but it gave him his format, and once committed, he was stuck with it.

The real problem (I think) people are seeing is that the first three books flowed so well, even with their far flung and disassociated POVs, that the editorial hand was almost invisible (as it should be). But, with the heavy handed publishing decision to split the next part of the story into two narratives, it gave rise to the heavy handed editorial decisions that plague the two books and mess up the easy flow the tale had up to that point. GRRM the editor had to step in and corral GRRM the writer and the writing suffered a little for it. If he had planned a little better from the middle of ASoS, we might not be here bitching about it today nearly two decades later.

[thor2006]

11 minutes ago, Trefayne said:

 

I didn't say the author didn't have a choice. I said that the story doesn't have a choice; because of the decisions that the author made. He could have made a lot of decisions, like sticking with the five year gap or doing yearly flashbacks with little real time vignettes for four or five POV rotations, but he didn't. He went with real time storytelling with stretched and contorted narrative time frames combined with a split narrative format that causes some continuity issues. This "solution" didn't solve any of his overall story arc timeline problems, but it gave him his format, and once committed, he was stuck with it.

The real problem (I think) people are seeing is that the first three books flowed so well, even with their far flung and disassociated POVs, that the editorial hand was almost invisible (as it should be). But, with the heavy handed publishing decision to split the next part of the story into two narratives, it gave rise to the heavy handed editorial decisions that plague the two books and mess up the easy flow the tale had up to that point. GRRM the editor had to step in and corral GRRM the writer and the writing suffered a little for it. If he had planned a little better from the middle of ASoS, we might not be here bitching about it today nearly two decades later.

If the pace we seen in the last two books continue in Winds and Dance , then Martin will never finish the series in 2 books. It is very likely he would never finish in 4 books.

The problem is that the new chapters and new POV are not good or worth it. The problem is that adds too much complexity and drives the pacing into the ground . This makes writing new volumes extremely hard and time consuming.

The problem is that all the new lines like Aegon and his plot, or like Euron story ark , etc are going to slow writing the books,and will delay the publishing of a new volume.

The problem is also the two books tell that Martin wants and can spring new major story arks, POV characters or factions, even if it is written great. Also the book series by adding new protagonists and factions Martin dilutes the care the fans will have for the old and new protagonists.

If he wants to finish the book series and do it in 2 volumes Martin need to stop adding new complexity in the series,increase the pacing and reduce overall superflu chapters for the overall plot of the series. 

Otherwise we will see in the next volume that Martin is overrun in weeds and there is no way to the finish and overall the next volume Winds of Winter didn't happen anything great. Followed by a long wait for the next volume and Martin announcement that he quits writing the A song of ice and fire series.

The book series is turning into a soap film(too many characters, too complex of a plot, too glacial pacing) , you only need to watch 1 episode every 50 episodes to keep with the overall plot. The only thing that is better in the Martin series will be writing and character development.

[Cas Stark]

48 minutes ago, Trefayne said:

 

I didn't say the author didn't have a choice. I said that the story doesn't have a choice; because of the decisions that the author made. He could have made a lot of decisions, like sticking with the five year gap or doing yearly flashbacks with little real time vignettes for four or five POV rotations, but he didn't. He went with real time storytelling with stretched and contorted narrative time frames combined with a split narrative format that causes some continuity issues. This "solution" didn't solve any of his overall story arc timeline problems, but it gave him his format, and once committed, he was stuck with it.

The real problem (I think) people are seeing is that the first three books flowed so well, even with their far flung and disassociated POVs, that the editorial hand was almost invisible (as it should be). But, with the heavy handed publishing decision to split the next part of the story into two narratives, it gave rise to the heavy handed editorial decisions that plague the two books and mess up the easy flow the tale had up to that point. GRRM the editor had to step in and corral GRRM the writer and the writing suffered a little for it. If he had planned a little better from the middle of ASoS, we might not be here bitching about it today nearly two decades later.

I have to disagree here, there is no editorial hand at all in The Feast of Dancing Dragon Crows.  If there had been, the book wouldn't have been split so stupidly, and there wouldn't be all this filler and we wouldn't still be arguing over the books or waiting for Winds of Winter.  I would say the opposite happened.  George the writer completely ignored all reasonable and rational editorial options.  A heavy handed editor would never have given a green light to dozens of chapters where nothing happens or to the geographic split.  And yes, I know his publisher's okayed the split, but that was only because George the author wouldn't take any editing, and so the thing became so out of control it couldn't be published as one book.  A heavy handed editor would have cut the useless POVS, cut down the travelogues, and thus, managed to squeeze in the endings of some of the arcs that got pushed out of both books.

[Three-Fingered Pete]

9 minutes ago, thor2006 said:

If the pace we seen in the last two books continue in Winds and Dance , then Martin will never finish the series in 2 books. It is very likely he would never finish in 4 books.

The problem is that the new chapters and new POV are not good or worth it. The problem is that adds too much complexity and drives the pacing into the ground . This makes writing new volumes extremely hard and time consuming.

The problem is that all the new lines like Aegon and his plot, or like Euron story ark , etc are going to slow writing the books,and will delay the publishing of a new volume.

The problem is also the two books tell that Martin wants and can spring new major story arks, POV characters or factions, even if it is written great. Also the book series by adding new protagonists and factions Martin dilutes the care the fans will have for the old and new protagonists.

If he wants to finish the book series and do it in 2 volumes Martin need to stop adding new complexity in the series,increase the pacing and reduce overall superflu chapters for the overall plot of the series. 

Otherwise we will see in the next volume that Martin is overrun in weeds and there is no way to the finish and overall the next volume Winds of Winter didn't happen anything great. Followed by a long wait for the next volume and Martin announcement that he quits writing the A song of ice and fire series.

The book series is turning into a soap film(too many characters, too complex of a plot, too glacial pacing) , you only need to watch 1 episode every 50 episodes to keep with the overall plot. The only thing that is better in the Martin series will be writing and character development.

 

All real possibilities, but such are the hazards in analyzing an unfinished work. Those elements may be important or they may be so much stuffing and fluff. Some of them just have to be or your assertion that it can't be finished as planned will come true. Either that or GRRM is more masterful than we give him credit and it will all come together.

This sort of reminds me of when I first read about Ned getting executed. I wasn't one of the people who threw the book across the room and swore never to read any more of the story because it just shattered all my expectations of a fantasy novel. I was shocked to be sure, but I was fascinated that the author had apparently destroyed his entire story and was compelled to find out how he saved it all. And boy did he! So, until GRRM officially throws in the towel, I'm on board and I will trust him to do right by us in the end. I'm just optimistic that way.

[Three-Fingered Pete]

5 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

I have to disagree here, there is no editorial hand at all in The Feast of Dancing Dragon Crows.  If there had been, the book wouldn't have been split so stupidly, and there wouldn't be all this filler and we wouldn't still be arguing over the books or waiting for Winds of Winter.  I would say the opposite happened.  George the writer completely ignored all reasonable and rational editorial options.  A heavy handed editor would never have given a green light to dozens of chapters where nothing happens or to the geographic split.  And yes, I know his publisher's okayed the split, but that was only because George the author wouldn't take any editing, and so the thing became so out of control it couldn't be published as one book.  A heavy handed editor would have cut the useless POVS, cut down the travelogues, and thus, managed to squeeze in the endings of some of the arcs that got pushed out of both books.

 

And solved what narratively? It is obvious that GRRM was going to have some sort of passage of time in the narrative. He wanted it to mature the kids a bit. Once the decision was made to go real time and drop the 5yr gap, the passage of the days and months had to be accomplished some way. I suppose GRRM thought that bouncing back and forth from long to short timeframes wouldn't flow well at all.

This is why I said that the planning for this should have started in the middle of ASoS. Then he might have been able to formulate a place to stop for all of the POVs and be able to do away with the split entirely. The heavy editorial hand was the demand GRRM put on himself to have a "satisfying ending" to publish. This initially caused him to split the books and gave him the ability to include a larger portion of the narrative, but it also shows in his padded chapters for Dany and Jon to hurry them along just to provide an ending for the combined narrative.

As far as ending some of those truncated arcs. Again, I think the editorial GRRM got in the way and decided that the information would better be set on the back burner for now, rather than write more padding. For what ever reason, good or ill, he felt that Jon and Dany and Brienne and Jaime and Tyrion and Cersei were enough padding for this portion of the tale. I agree. GRRM has admitted that with the gap some storylines would suffer, and it is obvious that some storylines suffered without it. I guess we're just going to have to accept that. And hope he gets back on track.

That's why, overall, I enjoy Theon's chapters the most in Dance. He has the right balance of chapter numbers and moving the ball down the field significantly. He really deserved a proper ending if anyone did in that book.

[Cas Stark]

I don't know what else to say beyond that having the story progress in 'real time' day after day was far beyond counter productive and a bad idea and veering into insane territory in terms of the narrative.  Even if the author changed his mind about needing the Stark kids to be at least mid teens, so he no longer intends to advance the story over 5/6 years.....what possible narrative benefit is there for reading about so and so had breakfast, then road out to blah blah, and then went to bed, the next day he had breakfast blah blah random person stopped by, and the next day, had lunch and took a meeting???????.  Not only is this unworkable when he allegedly still has almost 2/3 of his story to tell, but its boring.

Not having everyone move at a day to day pace would have literally solved almost everything narratively.  The story can again move forward.  We don't need to be treated to every tedious detail of what the POVs are doing all day, every day every week.  We can get highlights, memories...like we did in the earlier books.  

Theon's arc is exactly how everything should have been.  We didn't read about the slog back and forth from place to place.  He was at the Dreadfort, then he was at Moat Caillin, then back at Winterfell.  As it should be.

 

[Three-Fingered Pete]

9 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

I don't know what else to say beyond that having the story progress in 'real time' day after day was far beyond counter productive and a bad idea and veering into insane territory in terms of the narrative.  Even if the author changed his mind about needing the Stark kids to be at least mid teens, so he no longer intends to advance the story over 5/6 years.....what possible narrative benefit is there for reading about so and so had breakfast, then road out to blah blah, and then went to bed, the next day he had breakfast blah blah random person stopped by, and the next day, had lunch and took a meeting???????.  Not only is this unworkable when he allegedly still has almost 2/3 of his story to tell, but its boring.

Not having everyone move at a day to day pace would have literally solved almost everything narratively.  The story can again move forward.  We don't need to be treated to every tedious detail of what the POVs are doing all day, every day every week.  We can get highlights, memories...like we did in the earlier books.  

Theon's arc is exactly how everything should have been.  We didn't read about the slog back and forth from place to place.  He was at the Dreadfort, then he was at Moat Caillin, then back at Winterfell.  As it should be.

 

For what it's worth, for the most part I agree, but the title of the thread is "What do you think caused Martin to loose (sic) his grip on the material?", not "Woulda, coulda, shoulda." I'm just pointing out where I think that was, with a large emphasis on editorial, rather than narrative or thematic, reasons.

[Cas Stark]

1 minute ago, Trefayne said:

 

For what it's worth, for the most part I agree, but the title of the thread is "What do you think caused Martin to loose (sic) his grip on the material?", not "Woulda, coulda, shoulda." I'm just pointing out where I think that was, with a large emphasis on editorial, rather than narrative or thematic, reasons.

This decision is the exact reason he lost his grip on the material.  The abandonment of not only the 5 year gap but an almost abandonment of any significant time jumps at all.  If he was still moving the story forward at a reasonable pace then even the addition of the numerous secondary stories and POVs would have meshed much easier into the flow of the story.  Now, he's mired everything in super slow motion so going back to a faster pace now becomes jarring, and would make Feast and Dance stand out even more than they already do.

As to why, after, depending on how you choose to count it, 18 years, 13 years or 8 years, he still doesn't seem to have figured out how to tell the rest of the story, is anyone's guess.

[Three-Fingered Pete]

11 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

This decision is the exact reason he lost his grip on the material.  The abandonment of not only the 5 year gap but an almost abandonment of any significant time jumps at all.  If he was still moving the story forward at a reasonable pace then even the addition of the numerous secondary stories and POVs would have meshed much easier into the flow of the story.  Now, he's mired everything in super slow motion so going back to a faster pace now becomes jarring, and would make Feast and Dance stand out even more than they already do.

As to why, after, depending on how you choose to count it, 18 years, 13 years or 8 years, he still doesn't seem to have figured out how to tell the rest of the story, is anyone's guess.

 

I don't think it's all that bad. He did pick up the pace at the end to try and gather some momentum, but if it will be enough to satisfy is still in question. We all know that the released preview chapters don't seem to have any more momentum than the middle of Feast/Dance, but we don't know the final chapter order yet or whether those preview chapters will stay as is. There is always the chance (however small) that some things will be dropped or otherwise re-edited.

I've come to believe (probably because of my heavy editorial point of view on this topic) that GRRM is not very happy writing this portion of the tale and that, as well as the success, has/had made him less than enthusiastic about the prospect of the enormous slog it will be to come back to a point that he is enjoying it (the latest news is heartening). He likes to garden, but that approach has grown him into more than one corner at this point, and now he has to think about structure more and fun with characters less. It's almost the equivalent of writing on autopilot. You're there and you're doing it, but your heart isn't really in it for the long haul anymore. You're just trying to get your characters from point A to point B so you can get on with the good stuff that you do want to write about.

[Cas Stark]

9 minutes ago, Trefayne said:

 

I don't think it's all that bad. He did pick up the pace at the end to try and gather some momentum, but if it will be enough to satisfy is still in question. We all know that the released preview chapters don't seem to have any more momentum than the middle of Feast/Dance, but we don't know the final chapter order yet or whether those preview chapters will stay as is. There is always the chance (however small) that some things will be dropped or otherwise re-edited.

I've come to believe (probably because of my heavy editorial point of view on this topic) that GRRM is not very happy writing this portion of the tale and that, as well as the success, has/had made him less than enthusiastic about the prospect of the enormous slog it will be to come back to a point that he is enjoying it (the latest news is heartening). He likes to garden, but that approach has grown him into more than one corner at this point, and now he has to think about structure more and fun with characters less. It's almost the equivalent of writing on autopilot. You're there and you're doing it, but your heart isn't really in it for the long haul anymore. You're just trying to get your characters from point A to point B so you can get on with the good stuff that you do want to write about.

I don't believe he enjoys writing the series anymore, I'm not sure whether there is a point in the future where events will take a turn that he finds more enjoyable...but, again, the 'slog' is of his own creation, and any time he wants to get out of it, all he has to do is write in some time jumps, and voila.  Arya could be back in Westeros the next chapter after Mercy.  If we weren't doing a sojourn with the Dothraki, Dany's first chapter in Winds could be after the battle, and so on and so on.  He wrote himself into a corner, which is hard to understand what his thought process was there in doing the things he did, but he can also write himself back out instead of sticking with the super slow pace. Any time he wishes he can start at Point B. Or C or D.  which is part of what makes the decisions/loss of control so hard to understand.