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Pat Rothfuss XVII: Games, Bets, and Minecraft


Ser Scot A Ellison
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7 hours ago, baxus said:

If you wouldn't mind, I'd appreciate it if you'd elaborate what you base that confidence on.

I mean, it's been 11 years since Dance with Dragons, not only do we not have a release date but we haven't had any updates in a while. Maybe I missed something  though, because I've kind of given up on getting Winds of Winter any time soon.

My thoughts exactly… but rather than “any time soon” I would say “ever.”

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I feel like for all the similarities in terms of long droughts on their main project there are much more important differences between Rothfuss and Martin. As much as I, too, have long since stopped putting any energy in to following and caring about updates or progress on aSoIaF Martin is someone with a long career as a professional writer who has produced a lot of work and who as far as I remember was pretty honest about the difficulties he'd run in to what with scrapping his originally planned timeskip and such. So I feel like there's more room to have faith that he's actually working on his series with the intent to see it finished.

Rothfuss on the other hand wrote one book with some really nice prose and then rocketed from nothing to being the next big thing which clearly that did some major damage to him because he seems to have spent the 15 years since Name of the Wind was published in what I would charitably describe as a total breakdown.

Edited by Poobah
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10 hours ago, baxus said:

If you wouldn't mind, I'd appreciate it if you'd elaborate what you base that confidence on.

I mean, it's been 11 years since Dance with Dragons, not only do we not have a release date but we haven't had any updates in a while. Maybe I missed something  though, because I've kind of given up on getting Winds of Winter any time soon.

Every few months he posts that he is still working on the book. Last mention of it was April 29th, a week and a half ago. 

Quote

THE WINDS OF WINTER is going to be a big book.   The way it is going, it could be bigger than A STORM OF SWORDS or A DANCE WITH DRAGONS, the longest books in the series to date.   I do usually cut and trim once I finish, but I need to finish first.

 

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14 hours ago, Jerol said:

Every few months he posts that he is still working on the book. Last mention of it was April 29th, a week and a half ago. 

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not bashing GRRM. Finish ASoIaF, start a new series, retire from writing, you name it, it is his choice and he's entitled to it. He's not my bitch or anyone else's. Still, 11 years (and counting) is a long time between books. Let's put it this way - GoT HBO series was announced, cast, shot, broadcast and finished since DwD came out and we're still not getting anything close to "I'm close to finishing WoW" from GRRM.

I hope you'll forgive that I'm not seeing "I'm working on it, trust me" as proof of anything.

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On 5/5/2022 at 4:54 PM, Kyll.Ing. said:

This baffles me too.

I mean, he must be aware of the implications here. After ten years without news, the credibility of the series, as it were, is worn rather thin. Promising to release a chapter - one draft of one chapter out of the whole book - and then not releasing it will NOT look good, no matter what the reason for it may be. If he really has something worth showing (even in draft form, fans would forgive that), not releasing it only serves to fuel the fears that the book will never come. If he really has nothing, why would he make the promise in the first place? That's a very high-stakes card to play, as it puts his remaining reputation on the line. Was it done on the assumption that he would have time to squeeze out something in due time, and then he still kept failing? Or is he holding back for any reasonable reason at all? I can't come up with any.

FWIW, The promise was not to just release a chapter, but to assemble an "epic crew" to read it. 

I suspect this includes the usual suspects of other authors and minor geek celebrities that he plays D&D with and collaborates on fundraisers. 

I think the bet/promise was made in December, and when pushed for a time he spit out February. Further, I think it's reasonable to assume that he made all of these promises without asking any of these people. It wouldn't surprise me if their schedules aren't helping things, and so February wasn't really a reasonable expectation to set. 

Of course, he did set it. And once you've rung that bell, I think there's a moral obligation to hit it, or at the very least keep people updated seeing as you asked them to give you money for this. 

Perhaps he's updating on Twitch - I don't watch his twitch streams so I can't be sure. My suspicion is that it's radio silence though - if there were meaningful updates they'd be showing up on Reddit among other places. 

 

  

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In my head I have a little conspiracy theory that GRRM, having been burnt by fans reactions to waiting between AFfC & ADwD, is wanting to have the entire series completed before even releasing TWoW. Totally no good reason for thinking this and probably plenty of reasons why it is a stupid idea. But it eases my waiting :P.

Rothfuss, however, cannot be afforded the same grace by me, because his series is supposedly meant to be concluded by the next book. (My suspicion is that is part of the problem though, since I don't think he can gracefully or even functionally conclude what he set up in one book).

My feelings on both series are basically that of some of the other board members (whom I might even call enlightened :P ). As soon as the forthcoming books come out (yes I am optimistic), I will want to buy them and read them, but I don't feel any emotional urgency on the matter until that point. I mean, come on, neither of them are Robin Hobb or K. J. Parker! :P

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  • 4 weeks later...

So, no news yet on the sample chapter but there is an announcement for a kickstarter for the first publication of Pat's own publishing imprint. 

He did have the good grace to acknowledge his difficulty in fulfilling obligations:

Quote

It’s seeing if people will show up after all these years of me not being able to finish my book, and trust me to at least give them a book.

 

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His writing, what there is of it, is so much better than Sanderson.  I just want him to finish TDoS.  This move by Rothfuss is incredibly tone deaf given his existing obligations and… does it suggest a falling out between him and his existing publisher?

Edited by Ser Scot A Ellison
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Ursula Vernon's comics work is excellent, from what I recall of it. And she's just a really nice person, from my experience (she also had a terrific acceptance speech at the Helsinki Worldcon in 2017). Not shocking that Digger went out of print, but nice that Rothfuss is trying to bring more attention to it as he gets it back in print.

 

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I don't think he's actually printing it himself inhouse, just publishing it which seems simple enough. Seems like he's already sourced for quotes and all that so all he needs to do is come up with the money and maybe mail out the physical copies himself.

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Grim Oak seem to be handling a lot of the donkey work, they're a very-well established small press with many years of putting out great work.

I think this is just a name/branding exercise.

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1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

His writing, what there is of it, is so much better than Sanderson.  

I mean he certainly writes much, much, prettier, more poetic, beautiful words than Sanderson but Sanderson's stories are structurally sound and actually go somewhere. The start of Name of the Wind is great but as soon as Kvothe arrives at magic school everything comes to a crashing halt. I recently re-read Earthsea and I realised that Rothfuss entire three book opus is basically the first half of Ged's arc in A Wizard of Earthsea, except I guess he's turning it in to a tragedy because where Ged is humbled, experiences character growth, and earns wisdom after his hubristic downfall, we already know that Kvothe is going to end up a broken man waiting to die. And where Le Guin tells the story of the young arrogant dick prodigy whose rivalry with an older student of a higher social class brings about great evil in two or three chapters Rothfuss has been flirting with that exact story for two books but instead of getting there has meandered around self-indulgently telling shaggy dog filler about how cool and talented and fuckable his protagonist is (again, yes, with pretty pretty words) for over a thousand pages at this point.

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3 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

His writing, what there is of it, is so much better than Sanderson.  I just want him to finish TDoS.  This move by Rothfuss is incredibly tone deaf given his existing obligations and… does it suggest a falling out between him and his existing publisher?

Falling out is probably too strong, but if memory serves there was a time half a dozen years ago or so where he was working on another novella (Laniel Young-Again) and his publisher put the brakes on it until book 3 was complete.  Perhaps the motivation here is to be less handcuffed by his publisher for smaller pieces of work.  

 

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10 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

His writing, what there is of it, is so much better than Sanderson.  I just want him to finish TDoS.

At this point, I'm fairly convinced he wrote himself into a corner already at the point of The Name of the Wind, and that he was unable to come up with a satisfying way to tie the past and the present of the story together. He had two awesome pieces of setup (young, past-Kvothe and broken present-Kvothe), a neat setting, ideas for some really well-crafted scenes at the University, and some great prose, so he was off to a good start. However, the issue was that the pieces just didn't fit together, and he couldn't make the bridge between the past and the present. The beginning was good enough to publish, but the roadmap going forward was unclear. So he wrote Wise Man's Fear, which mostly served to stall for time - it did nothing to change the status quo of Kvothe's story. But the pieces of the setup still don't fit together, the central conflict still remains unknown, and all the mythology that was added (the far past/Cthaeh/the fairy realm) didn't help matters at all. He didn't get any closer to bridging the time gap. Still hasn't. The good idea he had for this saga was the epic setup, but he can't create a payoff that works.

This meta-story is even spelled out in-universe, with the way Kvothe escapes from Felurian. He begins to sing her a beautifully crafted first verse of a song. It piques her interest, and she asks to hear more. The next verse starts out notably worse, and by the end it's worse than half-assed, with banal rhymes and language like a second-grader's rushed homework assignment. Felurian is angered, but Kvothe promises to finish the song, so that all of it will be as good as that beautiful first verse. If she kills Kvothe, she will never get to hear it. And so he's allowed to go free, so he can one day return to her with the finished version.

The little tale is basically all about using writer's block as an excuse. That you can start off with a good idea, but don't know how to keep it up or create a satisfactory final product. Forcing it doesn't help, it just creates mediocrity. But the seed of the story is planted, and the listener will be hungry for more. They will never get more if they stop listening to the writer. If they let him work at his own pace, they may get it one day. And that "maybe" is the best hope they've got, so the best they can do is to remain patient. If that wasn't a deliberate allegory for the state of the whole series, I'll eat my socks.

And so the conclusion is basically "You can't do anything about it". Rothfuss himself may be able to, or he may not, and he can't be forced to come up with something good. He can be forced to come up with something utterly mediocre, but people would like that even less than getting nothing at all. Hence the attitude of "just wait, don't nag about it". But people tend not to like being told to wait for a "maybe". And sadly, Rothfuss also seems unable to let it go, and admit that the story is stuck in that corner. That there literally is no good way for him to finish TDoS within the framework we've already seen, and maybe letting other writers have a crack at it. Or even backpedalling, maybe that could work too. Just declare WMF non-canon and start off from the end of NotW again. It'd be unpopular, but it's better to back down from a dead end than staying there and waiting for a way forward to appear.

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2 hours ago, Kyll.Ing. said:

Or even backpedalling, maybe that could work too. Just declare WMF non-canon and start off from the end of NotW again. It'd be unpopular, but it's better to back down from a dead end than staying there and waiting for a way forward to appear.

That would be a really interesting solution.  Sort of “Bobby steps out of the shower” and all of TWF was a weird fever dream?

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7 hours ago, Kyll.Ing. said:

At this point, I'm fairly convinced he wrote himself into a corner already at the point of The Name of the Wind, and that he was unable to come up with a satisfying way to tie the past and the present of the story together. He had two awesome pieces of setup (young, past-Kvothe and broken present-Kvothe), a neat setting, ideas for some really well-crafted scenes at the University, and some great prose, so he was off to a good start. However, the issue was that the pieces just didn't fit together, and he couldn't make the bridge between the past and the present. The beginning was good enough to publish, but the roadmap going forward was unclear. So he wrote Wise Man's Fear, which mostly served to stall for time - it did nothing to change the status quo of Kvothe's story. But the pieces of the setup still don't fit together, the central conflict still remains unknown, and all the mythology that was added (the far past/Cthaeh/the fairy realm) didn't help matters at all. He didn't get any closer to bridging the time gap. Still hasn't. The good idea he had for this saga was the epic setup, but he can't create a payoff that works.

This meta-story is even spelled out in-universe, with the way Kvothe escapes from Felurian. He begins to sing her a beautifully crafted first verse of a song. It piques her interest, and she asks to hear more. The next verse starts out notably worse, and by the end it's worse than half-assed, with banal rhymes and language like a second-grader's rushed homework assignment. Felurian is angered, but Kvothe promises to finish the song, so that all of it will be as good as that beautiful first verse. If she kills Kvothe, she will never get to hear it. And so he's allowed to go free, so he can one day return to her with the finished version.

The little tale is basically all about using writer's block as an excuse. That you can start off with a good idea, but don't know how to keep it up or create a satisfactory final product. Forcing it doesn't help, it just creates mediocrity. But the seed of the story is planted, and the listener will be hungry for more. They will never get more if they stop listening to the writer. If they let him work at his own pace, they may get it one day. And that "maybe" is the best hope they've got, so the best they can do is to remain patient. If that wasn't a deliberate allegory for the state of the whole series, I'll eat my socks.

And so the conclusion is basically "You can't do anything about it". Rothfuss himself may be able to, or he may not, and he can't be forced to come up with something good. He can be forced to come up with something utterly mediocre, but people would like that even less than getting nothing at all. Hence the attitude of "just wait, don't nag about it". But people tend not to like being told to wait for a "maybe". And sadly, Rothfuss also seems unable to let it go, and admit that the story is stuck in that corner. That there literally is no good way for him to finish TDoS within the framework we've already seen, and maybe letting other writers have a crack at it. Or even backpedalling, maybe that could work too. Just declare WMF non-canon and start off from the end of NotW again. It'd be unpopular, but it's better to back down from a dead end than staying there and waiting for a way forward to appear.

This was really well thought out. It’s been ages since I actually read the books but I find the allegory, described above, hilarious.

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I've always liked the theory that he had the whole thing planned out, but 40+ year old him hates the plan that 18 year old him put together. My guess is that there are major structural elements in book 3 he just doesn't want anymore. I think you can even see this in the earlier books, like

  • I suspect that prolonged training scene with sexually liberal female ninjas seemed way cooler to him when he was 18, and,
  • I bet he'd pay large sums of money to erase the ultra cringey 'not all men' scene. 
Edited by Ninefingers
spellin'
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