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Do we think George passed 1500 manuscript pages?


Quaithe from Asshai

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On 2/12/2021 at 9:23 AM, SeanF said:

I can't see any way that Dany can plausibly be brought into the Battle of Meereen.  My impression is that the coup that overthrows Hizdahr and then, Barristan's attack take place only three to four weeks after Daznak's Pit.  That may be ahead of the end of her last chapter, but she has to reach Vaes Dothrak, take control of some part of the Dothraki and return.  She might get back in time to fight the Volantenes, but most likely to carry the fight to Yunkai and Volantis itself. 

I hear you.

I don't see any way for Jon to be brought into the Battle of Winterfell either. I don't think Jon will even make a full recovery until the last third.

As far as Dany is concerned, I keep forgetting that the Volantenes still haven't showed up yet. I don't know how the Dothraki are supposed to beat back an amphibious assault though. Her showing up after all the fighting has ended (no matter who wins) to restore order and to carry on the fight to the rest of Essos is the most plausible outcome.

On 2/12/2021 at 10:30 AM, goodkingstannis said:

GRRM really, really needs a co-author who can help him finish TWOW, get the writing style and complexity down (not to mention where the story is headed.) They can then assist with, and take over if necessary, ADOS, F&B part 2, the D&E stories, etc.

And maybe they can talk him into not throwing away hundreds of pages of material each time he has a new idea.

I don't think he could stomach another co-writer to hold his hand. His artistic integrity and pride won't allow it. However, I can't completely disagree: a co-author of some sort or a editor with a strong hand is what he needs.

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On 2/12/2021 at 1:50 PM, Daeron the Daring said:

George said he will not publish any more sample chapters. 

I'm aware of that. My point, although poorly worded, was that the whole phase of the pre-release period when we got new sample chapters to discuss, was all before the halfway mark between ADWD and today. Or put another way, unless the book somehow makes it to the shelves within a month from now, all of the sample characters will have been released closer to ADWD than to TWoW. Or yet another way: all we know for certain about TWoW, we learned inside a five-year period that itself ended nearly five years ago.

It's all different ways of saying how I keep being amazed by how drawn-out my anticipation for the book has become. It's been so long, yet I keep checking regularly for news, despite the fact that the period without news will soon have become longer than the period when there were news.

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9 hours ago, Kyll.Ing. said:

It's all different ways of saying how I keep being amazed by how drawn-out my anticipation for the book has become. It's been so long, yet I keep checking regularly for news, despite the fact that the period without news will soon have become longer than the period when there were news.

Comparatively, I find that this past year was very rich in terms of "news" (if that's what they can be called). He mentioned progress several times, we can accurately draw a listof the POVs he's been working on, and even a vague number of MPs written, which is more than anything we've gotten since 2015 and the end of that 5-year-period you're talking about. 

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11 hours ago, Kyll.Ing. said:

I'm aware of that. My point, although poorly worded, was that the whole phase of the pre-release period when we got new sample chapters to discuss, was all before the halfway mark between ADWD and today. Or put another way, unless the book somehow makes it to the shelves within a month from now, all of the sample characters will have been released closer to ADWD than to TWoW. Or yet another way: all we know for certain about TWoW, we learned inside a five-year period that itself ended nearly five years ago.

I’m completely with you on this. I would love a new sample chapter and I regularly go through phases where I expect him to release another (more optimistic hope than expectation before people jump on that with ‘George is not my bitch’).

I would love him to release Sam I for example. A chapter that we know he has written between ADWD release and TWOW as all the samples were chapters originally meant to be included in Dance.

2 hours ago, The Winged Griffin said:

Comparatively, I find that this past year was very rich in terms of "news" (if that's what they can be called). He mentioned progress several times, we can accurately draw a listof the POVs he's been working on, and even a vague number of MPs written, which is more than anything we've gotten since 2015 and the end of that 5-year-period you're talking about. 

I find this really interesting too - especially considering how light this year has been so far. George has only written one blog post in Feb.

I wonder if that means his writing on Winds is going so well that he doesn’t want to break momentum by blogging? 

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2 hours ago, Loras said:

I find this really interesting too - especially considering how light this year has been so far. George has only written one blog post in Feb.

I wonder if that means his writing on Winds is going so well that he doesn’t want to break momentum by blogging? 

Indeed, he's been very silent recently. In little more than two months, there have already been three 10+ days periods when he didn't blog (10-21st December 2020/22nd January-2nd February 2021/2nd February-now), and between the 22/01 and the 02/02 (23 days !), he has posted only once, for example. The question of wether this is progress-related or grief-related is very complicated. Remember, in november, he said this: 

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I was really on a roll back in June and July.   Progress has continued since then, but more slowly… I suffered a gut punch in early August that really had me down for a time, and another, for different reasons, in early September.   But I slogged on, and of late I am picking up steam again.

So he suffered "gut punches" that slowed his writing progress, but goes on to say that he is getting back on track and is "picking up steam again". However, only three days later, we learn through a post that Kay McCauley died a few days earlier. Then, in December, he posts about another death that has affected him. After that, a long period of silence follows, but then he breaks this long silence by posting this quote, which some have interpreted as him still being on that roll he talked about back in november. A week later, he goes on to say that he is working on Wild Cards. And then, in mid-January, he posts his farewell to Phyllis Eisenstein, who was another of his close friends. But three posts later, he goes completely silent, and 11 days later steps out of the shadows with what he intended as a New Year's Post, in which he says this: 

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I need to keep rolling, though.   I still have hundreds of more pages to write to bring the novel to a satisfactory conclusion.

 Meaning that he was currently rolling at the time this post was written. Was it the same "roll" as the one he talked about in November? Possibly! 

Only then, he goes back to complete silence for what has now been 12 consecutive days. He did say that he had a few other friends and loved ones who were in serious condition, and that more losses may be to come. Perhaps that's why he hasn't posted recently. Or perhaps he saw some of the extreme reactions that followed his last update, and it weighed him down, similarly to how the reaction to his performance as Hugo toastmaster back in August was suspected by many to have been one of the "gut punches" that slowed him down. 

So on one hand, seems that he's suffered grievous losses, more gut punches, and all happened in a very quick succession, which might explain his long silences. But on the other hand, there have been indications that he was still writing quite consistently over the past few months, despite all these blows. 

Are these long periods of no posts due to the fact that he lost relatives recently, or due to him being so deep in writing tht he no longer cares to post anything on NaB? I think both these factors may have played a role in this, but I would tend to favor the sadder, not-cool option, just so I'm not disappointed when we'll know for sure.

He said in his last update that he would post about everything he's been working on, including TWOW, and I cannot wait for this post ! Perhaps we'll even hear about these prequel shows from the man himself ? Or D&E news? 

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See, I appreciate that the previous post is well intentioned. But this is the sort of 'analysis' that leads to problems. Every word GRRM says publicly is pored over for hidden meaning, hidden meaning that almost certainly doesn't exist. If he goes a while without an update, if he says he's feeling good or feeling down, if his updates are long or short. It's all speculation, and we cannot know how any of this has affected his writing, so why pretend that we can? The previous post might as well be analysing the flight of swallows for clues. It would tell us just as much.

I don't mean to run anyone down but I've been a fan for decades, I've been on this board for 18 years now, and I'm more than familiar with these sorts of 'analyses' and how they related to actual subsequent developments in the progress of the last two books. And honestly, you can't place any weight on these things.

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I hear you @mormont but GRRM has still done more in the last few months in updating us for The Winds of Winter than he has arguably done in the last ten years since A Dance with Dragons came out.

On 2/14/2021 at 5:02 AM, The Winged Griffin said:

He mentioned progress several times, we can accurately draw a list of the POVs he's been working on, and even a vague number of MPs written, which is more than anything we've gotten since 2015 and the end of that 5-year-period you're talking about. 

Very true.

It makes many of us believe that he is on a roll and much closer to finishing The Winds of Winter.

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On 2/15/2021 at 9:41 AM, mormont said:

See, I appreciate that the previous post is well intentioned. But this is the sort of 'analysis' that leads to problems. Every word GRRM says publicly is pored over for hidden meaning, hidden meaning that almost certainly doesn't exist. If he goes a while without an update, if he says he's feeling good or feeling down, if his updates are long or short. It's all speculation, and we cannot know how any of this has affected his writing, so why pretend that we can? The previous post might as well be analysing the flight of swallows for clues. It would tell us just as much.

I don't mean to run anyone down but I've been a fan for decades, I've been on this board for 18 years now, and I'm more than familiar with these sorts of 'analyses' and how they related to actual subsequent developments in the progress of the last two books. And honestly, you can't place any weight on these things.

Indeed, we cannot know how any of this has affected his writing.

 It's all speculation, which in the end proves nothing. But it's never intended to prove anything, because it's ... well, speculation. It's about using what little information we have to establish a theory, an answer to an unanswered question. It ends up being right or it ends up being wrong, it's only an enunciation of a possibility. It's never meant to be definitive, or absolute. You choose to believe it, or you don't, you choose to agree with what I said, or you don't, it's entirely up to you. The choice is yours. 

And I agree that there are no hidden meaning, GRRM said so himself. But that doesn't mean that there is nothing to be deduced from what he says when he talks about TWOW. What number (however vague it might have been) did he have in mind when he said "a bunch of chapters" ? What PoV did he think of when he wrote "I worked on Braavos last week" ? 

 And above all, it's just for fun, never mind if it's utterly useless. I find that speculating about the writing process of TWOW is actually more interesting than speculating about its actual content. It's been almost ten years and there are only so many new theories we can come up with these days. I like speculating about the writing, and it has become even more interesting since he started giving these little updates. It's not meant to be taken seriously, and we should never take these things seriously, because it leads to problems if we do, as you said. But then again, wether you take it seriously or not is up to you. 

I am with you on most of what you said, but I think you might have misinterpreted my intentions (or I could just as easily have misinterpreted yours...). I don't mean to provide anything more than just a potential explanation to the situation, and I would happily join any discussion that provides a better clarification/description/justification/whatever you want to call it ! =)

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  • 2 weeks later...

George's blog reads like a collection of obituaries right now.

All this pain and loss has been undoubtedly hampering his focus, his energy and enthusiasm for the writing, which he says so on his latest post. To me, someone who is very sorry that will never see ADOS, and be able to read about dany's wars in westeros, the resistance against the others and winter, how she dies and seeing a real properly written ending come to life in his own words, any hope i have for his writing is simply to have the chance to understand winds' storylines and how they take the characters and how it all differs from the show. 

But he has now entered an age in his life, where loss is a constant, loss of family, friends, colleagues, where sudden illnesses and complications arise, where there can be a decline in mental and phiysical capacity, where one looks back on one's life and often meanders down memory lane too much, melancholy can step in... and with endless TV projects to produce/ co write/ co counsel and advise on, he's just announced another scifi project with HBO, short stories to plan and write, and other private and personal interests as well as all the public work which inevitably always comes his way, be it a convention, interviews, etc all the ingredients for a looong foray , if not inconclusive, into the writing of TWOW in the coming years, are present; making it even this attempt to deliver this book, seem ...unlikely. I hope i am wrong. 

 

 

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 6/11/2021 at 4:41 PM, SeanBeanedMeUp said:

A part of me thinks he's almost done. I believe that the reason it's taking him so long is that he's realizing that maybe this might not take seven books to finish and it's causing him some stress. 

Honestly, I don't even know why he clung to this "I must finish this series in 7 books" stuff. Why not just change plans and accept that the series will contain 8 or 9 books? Maybe if he got this state of mind earlier, he wouldn't have had to rewrite entire sections of TWOW and he would have released it in 2015 as it was planned.

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On 3/8/2021 at 6:40 PM, MelisandresBurningPanties said:

George's blog reads like a collection of obituaries right now.

All this pain and loss has been undoubtedly hampering his focus, his energy and enthusiasm for the writing, which he says so on his latest post. To me, someone who is very sorry that will never see ADOS, and be able to read about dany's wars in westeros, the resistance against the others and winter, how she dies and seeing a real properly written ending come to life in his own words, any hope i have for his writing is simply to have the chance to understand winds' storylines and how they take the characters and how it all differs from the show. 

But he has now entered an age in his life, where loss is a constant, loss of family, friends, colleagues, where sudden illnesses and complications arise, where there can be a decline in mental and phiysical capacity, where one looks back on one's life and often meanders down memory lane too much, melancholy can step in... and with endless TV projects to produce/ co write/ co counsel and advise on, he's just announced another scifi project with HBO, short stories to plan and write, and other private and personal interests as well as all the public work which inevitably always comes his way, be it a convention, interviews, etc all the ingredients for a looong foray , if not inconclusive, into the writing of TWOW in the coming years, are present; making it even this attempt to deliver this book, seem ...unlikely. I hope i am wrong. 

I think we'll get TWOW. It wasn't that far away from from being finished literally back in May 2015.

Can't disagree with anything else you say.

It what it is...

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On 7/4/2021 at 6:36 AM, Tukata12 said:

Honestly, I don't even know why he clung to this "I must finish this series in 7 books" stuff. Why not just change plans and accept that the series will contain 8 or 9 books? Maybe if he got this state of mind earlier, he wouldn't have had to rewrite entire sections of TWOW and he would have released it in 2015 as it was planned.

Is he rewriting entire sections? I just got the impression that he's struggling to find a satisfying ending.

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On 7/9/2021 at 1:41 AM, draft0 said:

I think we'll get TWOW. It wasn't that far away from from being finished literally back in May 2015.

May 2015 was less than four years after ADWD ... and currently more than six years ago. I hope we will be told one day about the state of the book at that point. GRRM thought he could finish in six months, yet he's had twelve times longer now and the book doesn't ever seem to come any closer.

At this point, I'm less curious about the reasons why GRRM didn't meet the deadline, than I am about why he thought he could make it in the first place. Why did the book seem like it was less than half a year from being finished? He thought the deadline extension from October 31 to December 31 would be sufficient ... in August that year. "I can't make it in three months, but five should be enough". Seventy months later, there are no indications it will be out any time soon.

How much had to be changed? How close had he gotten to a publishable result, before realizing he was approaching it on the wrong path? How far back did he have to go, and how close has he come to finishing before turning around again in the time since? I think a book titled The Cutting Room Floor of Ice and Fire would be a really interesting read.

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On 7/11/2021 at 10:46 AM, Kyll.Ing. said:

May 2015 was less than four years after ADWD ... and currently more than six years ago. I hope we will be told one day about the state of the book at that point. GRRM thought he could finish in six months, yet he's had twelve times longer now and the book doesn't ever seem to come any closer.

At this point, I'm less curious about the reasons why GRRM didn't meet the deadline, than I am about why he thought he could make it in the first place. Why did the book seem like it was less than half a year from being finished? He thought the deadline extension from October 31 to December 31 would be sufficient ... in August that year. "I can't make it in three months, but five should be enough". Seventy months later, there are no indications it will be out any time soon.

How much had to be changed? How close had he gotten to a publishable result, before realizing he was approaching it on the wrong path? How far back did he have to go, and how close has he come to finishing before turning around again in the time since? I think a book titled The Cutting Room Floor of Ice and Fire would be a really interesting read.

The simple answer is we don't know. Shortly before GRRM made the 2016 New Year's post, he noted that he hadn't done much rewriting on TWoW, which led to the theory that when he reviewed the material he had to hand he realised there was some major problem which necessitated a significant rewrite or restructure. There may also be one of the partial issues he had on ADWD, that his original estimates were thrown off by (among ten other things) the booking ending up being considerably longer than he originally planned. With the success of GoT and the corresponding book sales going nuclear, some of the constraints GRRM was under previously with things like book length are, if not eliminated, than somewhat eased (though I suspect for his own purposes of needing a goal, GRRM won't go insanely over the length of ADWD or ASoS).

This is all highly speculative, though, and pretty meaningless until he finishes and until he provides some insight on what happened with the book.

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On 7/11/2021 at 3:46 AM, Kyll.Ing. said:

I think a book titled The Cutting Room Floor of Ice and Fire would be a really interesting read.

indeed @Kyll.Ing. it would be freaking FASCINATING to read the parts that didn't make it into the novels. 

just for the record - i totally, fully believe in GRRM as a artist - he will be finishing this work.  
again, i have no proof of what i type but i will even bet cold hard cash on this as being true.

such wonderful fun :cheers:

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Just for the record, I think today marks the tenth anniversary of A Dance With Dragons. Well, Wikipedia and the ASoIaF Wiki disagree on whether it was published on the 12th or 17th of July, 2011. At any rate, we've been waiting for Winds for a full decade now, minus the time it took to read ADWD back in 2011. 

Anyway, I wonder if we'll get another update? It's been a while since the last one, and no indications of anything on the books, but the decennium of the release of the previous book seems as good an occasion as any to come with news. It's still early in the day at GRRM's place, so I'd wait a few more hours for it, at least.

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On 7/17/2021 at 2:36 PM, Kyll.Ing. said:

Just for the record, I think today marks the tenth anniversary of A Dance With Dragons. Well, Wikipedia and the ASoIaF Wiki disagree on whether it was published on the 12th or 17th of July, 2011. At any rate, we've been waiting for Winds for a full decade now, minus the time it took to read ADWD back in 2011. 

Anyway, I wonder if we'll get another update? It's been a while since the last one, and no indications of anything on the books, but the decennium of the release of the previous book seems as good an occasion as any to come with news. It's still early in the day at GRRM's place, so I'd wait a few more hours for it, at least.

"When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east. When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves.  Then you will get your book, and not before.”

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25 minutes ago, argonak said:

"When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east.

LOL!

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A Dance with Dragons - Tyrion VIII

Only the brightest stars were visible, all to the west. A dull red glow lit the sky to the northeast, the color of a blood bruise. Tyrion had never seen a bigger moon. Monstrous, swollen, it looked as if it had swallowed the sun and woken with a fever. Its twin, floating on the sea beyond the ship, shimmered red with every wave. "What hour is this?" he asked Moqorro. "That cannot be sunrise unless the east has moved. Why is the sky red?"

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The first total lunar eclipse or Blood Moon of this year will be on May 26, 2021. The lunar eclipse takes place when the Earth comes in between the moon and sun, blocking the sun rays from directly reaching the moon

So after this fall, next year some time? ;) 

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On 7/17/2021 at 2:36 PM, Kyll.Ing. said:

Just for the record, I think today marks the tenth anniversary of A Dance With Dragons. Well, Wikipedia and the ASoIaF Wiki disagree on whether it was published on the 12th or 17th of July, 2011. At any rate, we've been waiting for Winds for a full decade now, minus the time it took to read ADWD back in 2011. 

It was July 12.

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