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TWOW in July 2020 seems ever more likely


Alyn Oakenfist

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26 minutes ago, Jekse said:

It's not a difficult concept.

Here’s another concept that is easy to understand as well. @Cas Stark and I have interacted for many years here. There’s loads and loads of stuff we completely agree on, and other stuff we don’t see eye to eye on. And that’s cool and just as it should be; different people have different opinions on things, even when they agree on other things. 

A possible pub date for TWoW is one of those things we don’t agree on. So I feel that if Cas needed or wanted further clarification on what I said, they would have asked for it. 

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25 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

Its almost a moot point.  It is April 2.  The now virtual Worldcon starts in 4 months.  The odds that GRRM has a book out, assuming it wouldn't be printed anyway due to COV19, but it could be released electronically, are about 10/1.  

I also believe he must have rewritten huge amounts of Winds since 2015, but that bodes ill to me, since the longer he works on a book, the more, if past books are to be used as a guide, the book loses focus.  

From the day it was posted, this thread has been my favourite on the site. What happened throughout the course of 2015 concerning tWoW and his strange optimism followed by years of silence is something that's puzzled me and I hope we'll find out after Winds releases sometime in the next two years. It confuses me how he is sure to make an October 2015 deadline in May 2015, and when he realizes he can't make that, he thinks another two months is sufficient.  Did he find a disastrous plothole? Did he not like where the story was going and had to make changes?  

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17 hours ago, Jekse said:

It confuses me how he is sure to make an October 2015 deadline in May 2015, and when he realizes he can't make that, he thinks another two months is sufficient.  Did he find a disastrous plothole? Did he not like where the story was going and had to make changes?  

This indeed and so many times over.

May 2015 is almost 5 years ago. At that point, it had been a little over four years since he finished ADWD (given a couple months of publishing time). In other words, since he committed to that deadline, more time has elapsed than the time he had already worked on TWoW by then. If TWoW was finished tomorrow, that 2015 bout of optimism would still be less than halfway through the writing process. Give it a couple months, and his New Year's blogpost of 2016 will be before the halfway point too. How come he could see himself that close to the finish line, yet still be less than halfway there? What did the 2015 manuscript look like? Why did it have to change so? Was all of it so bad it needed revision? In the time that has passed since early 2016, he has theoretically had the time to work more or less from scratch back up to where he was in May 2015.

 

EDIT: See also my signature. When I made it back then, I thought it was an accurate summary of the current sentiment on these forums. As time has passed, it has more and more turned into a statement about how long we've been waiting for this book.

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On 4/1/2020 at 1:24 AM, The Bard of Banefort said:

I'm actually a little puzzled as to what took AFFC so long. George said that it took about a year to ditch the five year gap, and then a little bit longer to split the book in half. But after that, the story is very straightforward. None of the magical characters that George says he finds the most challenging to write--Jon, Dany, Bran--are in AFFC, and I think that if George had been a less established writer, his editor probably would have made him condense the Sam and Brienne chapters quite a bit. So the only reason I can figure that it took so many years was probably due to his own perfectionism.

Not sure.

I didn't know that George finds the Jon POV difficult to write. Bran makes sense though.

I had a bigger problem with the Tyrion chapters in A Dance with Dragons than I did with the Sam or the Brienne chapters in A Feast for Crows.

On 4/2/2020 at 10:56 AM, Cas Stark said:

Its almost a moot point.  It is April 2.  The now virtual Worldcon starts in 4 months.  The odds that GRRM has a book out, assuming it wouldn't be printed anyway due to COV19, but it could be released electronically, are about 10/1.  

I also believe he must have rewritten huge amounts of Winds since 2015, but that bodes ill to me, since the longer he works on a book, the more, if past books are to be used as a guide, the book loses focus.  

You really think A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons lose focus? The "new" plot-lines in King's Landing, the Vale, Dorne, the Iron Islands and the Free Cities were all foreshadowed and or even pointedly emphasized in the previous books. And they've already been connected back to the main plot.

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On 4/2/2020 at 11:22 AM, Jekse said:

From the day it was posted, this thread has been my favourite on the site. What happened throughout the course of 2015 concerning tWoW and his strange optimism followed by years of silence is something that's puzzled me and I hope we'll find out after Winds releases sometime in the next two years. It confuses me how he is sure to make an October 2015 deadline in May 2015, and when he realizes he can't make that, he thinks another two months is sufficient.  Did he find a disastrous plothole? Did he not like where the story was going and had to make changes?  

Yeah I like to think that the book was finished but that he had made a BIG mistake that either ruined Winds or ruined any chances of him being successful in writing Dream.

We do know that he killed off a character that he realized that he shouldn't have killed off, we do know that there was a major twist that was supposed to occur and we do know that Sansa will have an even greater, more serious lapse in memory than the Unkiss. That seems sufficient enough; if he messed up in any of those areas, it would explain why a big rewrite was necessary.

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On 3/19/2020 at 12:10 PM, Jekse said:

Also what's going on with the Umbers, it's pretty clear to me that Hother and Mors are up to something which they're keeping quiet from Stannis. 

Please elaborate, it’s been a while since I read dance 

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18 minutes ago, BlackLightning said:

Yeah I like to think that the book was finished but that he had made a BIG mistake that either ruined Winds or ruined any chances of him being successful in writing Dream.

We do know that he killed off a character that he realized that he shouldn't have killed off, we do know that there was a major twist that was supposed to occur and we do know that Sansa will have an even greater, more serious lapse in memory than the Unkiss. That seems sufficient enough; if he messed up in any of those areas, it would explain why a big rewrite was necessary.

Where's that?

I wonder if she really does poison Sweetrobin, while denying it to herself.

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On 4/1/2020 at 1:24 AM, The Bard of Banefort said:

I'm actually a little puzzled as to what took AFFC so long. George said that it took about a year to ditch the five year gap, and then a little bit longer to split the book in half. But after that, the story is very straightforward. None of the magical characters that George says he finds the most challenging to write--Jon, Dany, Bran--are in AFFC, and I think that if George had been a less established writer, his editor probably would have made him condense the Sam and Brienne chapters quite a bit. So the only reason I can figure that it took so many years was probably due to his own perfectionism.

I think it was still the Meerenese knot. Since Dance and Feast were supposed to be one book originally, who knows how long he dealt with Meereen before he said to hell with it

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1 minute ago, Lady Rhodes said:

Please elaborate, it’s been a while since I read dance 

Well, I've been thinking of writing a longer post about this, but I'll try to sum it up. 
1. The Umbers have split their troops based on age. The old men are within the walls of Winterfell, with Hother. The young ones are with Mors Umber, in Stannis' camp. This makes me think that they're working together. 
2. There's a hidden Umber army out there. In the Theon chapters of a Clash of Kings. Theon hears reports of an Umber force gathering. He's later surprised when they don't show up. Mors Umber hasn't told Stannis of this. 
3. The Umbers know Rickon is alive but haven't informed Stannis. In Theon I, tWoW. Theon remembers fArya being questioned on two subjects in Winterfell, he asks about the cook, Gage. And he asks about the blacksmith, Mikken. He's also wrong about what the cook Gage served last time he was ''within those walls,'' so it's clear to me that he was trying to find out if fArya is fake or not. What's more noteworthy is that the two questions he asks, directly involve Rickon and Osha. He aks about the cook, Gage, who Osha was having sex with. Then he asks about Mikken, Rickon brought a sword with the engraving of Mikken with him when he left Winterfell. 

 

 

25 minutes ago, BlackLightning said:

We do know that he killed off a character that he realized that he shouldn't have killed off,

Could you send the source? 

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5 minutes ago, Jekse said:

Well, I've been thinking of writing a longer post about this, but I'll try to sum it up. 
1. The Umbers have split their troops based on age. The old men are within the walls of Winterfell, with Hother. The young ones are with Mors Umber, in Stannis' camp. This makes me think that they're working together. 
2. There's a hidden Umber army out there. In the Theon chapters of a Clash of Kings. Theon hears reports of an Umber force gathering. He's later surprised when they don't show up. Mors Umber hasn't told Stannis of this. 
3. The Umbers know Rickon is alive but haven't informed Stannis. In Theon I, tWoW. Theon remembers fArya being questioned on two subjects in Winterfell, he asks about the cook, Gage. And he asks about the blacksmith, Mikken. He's also wrong about what the cook Gage served last time he was ''within those walls,'' so it's clear to me that he was trying to find out if fArya is fake or not. What's more noteworthy is that the two questions he asks, directly involve Rickon and Osha. He aks about the cook, Gage, who Osha was having sex with. Then he asks about Mikken, Rickon brought a sword with the engraving of Mikken with him when he left Winterfell. 

 

 

Could you send the source? 

I remember hearing about him regretting killing someone. It was in an interview with Diana Gabladon (I know I butchered the spelling of the last name but it is the Outlander author)

 

I thought Hother and Mors didn’t like one another. Are you saying they are working together for another purpose? 

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3 hours ago, SeanF said:

Where's that?

I wonder if she really does poison Sweetrobin, while denying it to herself.

3 hours ago, Lady Rhodes said:

What is this??

The Lion's Paw / Lion's Tooth business, on the other hand, is intentional. A small touch of the unreliable narrator. I was trying to establish that the memories of my viewpoint characters are not infallible. Sansa is simply remembering it wrong. A very minor thing (you are the only one to catch it to date), but it was meant to set the stage for a much more important lapse in memory. You will see, in A STORM OF SWORDS and later volumes, that Sansa remembers the Hound kissing her the night he came to her bedroom... but if you look at the scene, he never does. That will eventually mean something, but just now it's a subtle touch, something most of the readers may not even pick up on.

--George R.R. Martin (https://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Entry/SF_Targaryens_Valyria_Sansa_Martells_and_More/)

3 hours ago, Jekse said:

Could you send the source? 

https://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/books/976330/Winds-of-Winter-Game-of-Thrones-book-George-RR-Martin-regret-character-death

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3 hours ago, Elegant Woes said:

Sansa's bigger memory lapse could involve the Mountain tribes attacking at the tourney. She has a near death experience and in order to cope with that Sansa rewrites it. 

I do think the mountain tribes are a shoe that is waiting to drop.

Maybe I misread the Martin quote, but I took it to mean that her misremembering the Hound kiss is the big thing that has meaning somewhere. Not that there is something bigger and the unkiss is an example of unreliable narrator

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15 hours ago, BlackLightning said:

The Lion's Paw / Lion's Tooth business, on the other hand, is intentional. A small touch of the unreliable narrator. I was trying to establish that the memories of my viewpoint characters are not infallible. Sansa is simply remembering it wrong. A very minor thing (you are the only one to catch it to date), but it was meant to set the stage for a much more important lapse in memory. You will see, in A STORM OF SWORDS and later volumes, that Sansa remembers the Hound kissing her the night he came to her bedroom... but if you look at the scene, he never does. That will eventually mean something, but just now it's a subtle touch, something most of the readers may not even pick up on.

--George R.R. Martin (https://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Entry/SF_Targaryens_Valyria_Sansa_Martells_and_More/)

https://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/books/976330/Winds-of-Winter-Game-of-Thrones-book-George-RR-Martin-regret-character-death

I think you are confusing something here. The Unkiss was the "much more important lapse in memory" the lion's paw/lion's tooth business set the stage for. And I think it was actually Arya, who misremembered the sword names.

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In 2015 GRRM was under the pressure to release TWOW before season 6. It was probably pushing him to write a story he was not fully satisfied with. The deadline missed, the pressure gone, I suppose he discarded most of his work. Probably better TWOW will not be this stuff. We don't know where he is now. Last year he was believing he could finish this year. Not the first time we hear that. But maybe the virus is a better incentive than anything else. Better than a joke threat of imprisonment in NZ. But for how long?

With his habit of constantly reworking what he has already written (like Tolkien it seems), I don't understand how he can publish a book. And then work on the next. My feeling why TWOW is taking so long is because he is also working on ADOS and constantly reworking TWOW while ADOS is taking shape. He said he had not started ADOS. But maybe he has a draft or detailed plan of what it will be. Anyway, he seems confident he will finish both.

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