The Winds of Winter: The Latest Info (updated 10 July 2022)

[Takiedevushkikakzvezdy]

12 hours ago, Jussi said:

I'm referring to this part: "He’s done writing the full stories for some of the point-of-view characters".

I guess one of them is Tyrion, since GRRM indicated that he was close to wrapping up his arc a few months ago.

[Werthead]

15 hours ago, Jussi said:

New(?) information from the Late Show with Stephen Colbert:

https://winteriscoming.net/2022/10/27/george-rr-martin-why-sci-fi-fantasy-less-optimistic-these-days/

 

I'm referring to this part: "He’s done writing the full stories for some of the point-of-view characters".

Yes, that likely means he's completed Tyrion and one other POV character, and possibly one more is close to being done (since he said a couple of months ago that Tyrion and several other POVs were nearly done).

If that's 3 POVs done/almost done, that's 12/13 remaining to be completed (including the Prologue, which GRRM doesn't usually count and we know the prologue exists in draft, so it might be 11/12). The +1 uncertainty factor is because we don't know if Jon will have POV material.

He has said there are POV arcs much less close to completion, but for all we know those might be POVs with only 3 chapters.

On 10/28/2022 at 4:17 AM, Farerb said:

Do you think The Winds of Winter will be published before the 20th Anniversary Edition of A Feast for Crows?

It is possible. Being 3/4 done would mean around 2-2.5 years to completion, but GRRM tends to speed up on the home straight for each book, so completing it in mid-2024 for a late 24 release I think is achievable. Late 2024 seems to have been the favoured guesstimate for now, although I suspect early 2025 estimates will become more popular from hereon out.

[Lessingham]

My goal isn’t to ruin peoples moods here or anything, but don’t you think that in, well, let’s say 30 years from now, Martin will be judged as an overall extremely incompetent writer because of how ludicrously long he takes to write things? I mean we’re all in the mood here so to speak, but when I see very calm and stating-the-fact claims that Well we’re perhaps 2.5 years from the book now in the light of the fact that it’s over a decade now... Trying for a second to abstract myself from all this I think I see how ridiculous it looks like from the outside.

[Roughspun]

35 minutes ago, Lessingham said:

Martin will be judged as an overall extremely incompetent writer

Yes, it’s quite possible that the future will continue the capitalist world-view and confound productivity with artistic merit.

[BlackLightning]

On 10/27/2022 at 10:17 PM, Farerb said:

Do you think The Winds of Winter will be published before the 20th Anniversary Edition of A Feast for Crows?

Yes, I do actually

On 10/30/2022 at 6:55 PM, Jussi said:

New(?) information from the Late Show with Stephen Colbert:

https://winteriscoming.net/2022/10/27/george-rr-martin-why-sci-fi-fantasy-less-optimistic-these-days/

 

I'm referring to this part: "He’s done writing the full stories for some of the point-of-view characters".

That is new.

If he is about 75% done and has finished writing the stories for some POVs, how many POVs do you think he has finished.

It's definitely more than two POVs that are finished.

 

[Werthead]

15 hours ago, Lessingham said:

My goal isn’t to ruin peoples moods here or anything, but don’t you think that in, well, let’s say 30 years from now, Martin will be judged as an overall extremely incompetent writer because of how ludicrously long he takes to write things? I mean we’re all in the mood here so to speak, but when I see very calm and stating-the-fact claims that Well we’re perhaps 2.5 years from the book now in the light of the fact that it’s over a decade now... Trying for a second to abstract myself from all this I think I see how ridiculous it looks like from the outside.

Is Tolkien judged an overall extremely incompetent writer for taking 61 years to produce The Silmarillion, 17 years to produce The Lord of the Rings and 6 years to produce The Hobbit, a barely-300-pages-long children's book?

I'm going to go with no.

I do think the legacy will be impacted - obviously whether mainline ASoIaF is completed or not (since with Tolks most people regard LotR as the main deal and the incomplete Silmarillion as ancillary, although Tolkien felt the reverse), but overall I think the series will remain well-respected. Unless he produces more books and they really are awful.

[HTN02]

On 11/1/2022 at 8:48 PM, Lessingham said:

My goal isn’t to ruin peoples moods here or anything, but don’t you think that in, well, let’s say 30 years from now, Martin will be judged as an overall extremely incompetent writer because of how ludicrously long he takes to write things? I mean we’re all in the mood here so to speak, but when I see very calm and stating-the-fact claims that Well we’re perhaps 2.5 years from the book now in the light of the fact that it’s over a decade now... Trying for a second to abstract myself from all this I think I see how ridiculous it looks like from the outside.

Depends if he finishes it, and finishes it well.

 

if he does, no. If he abandons it, or do a d&d on the ending: yes.

[Gilbert Green]

On 11/1/2022 at 7:11 PM, BlackLightning said:

If he is about 75% done and has finished writing the stories for some POVs, how many POVs do you think he has finished.

It's definitely more than two POVs that are finished.

I think he has 2 PoVs completed, because that's what he said.  "A couple" meant "two" and "some" is at least consistent with that.

3 months earlier, he said on his NAB that he hoped to wrap up a POV that week; or "maybe two".  Now, we have confirmation that he achieved that ambition.

Why would it have to be more than two?

[Gilbert Green]

On 10/26/2022 at 6:15 PM, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

I mean, I don't really like Preston either, but I do understand why he and many others may have come to that conclusion. Judging by GRRM's comments over the years, he did work a lot on Winds early on, had a big slump circa 2015-2019, and then picked up steam again in 2020. 

Why do so many feel the need to virtue-signal their dislike of Preston?   Nobody is asking you to attend his birthday party, or vote for him into office.  Surely all of that is a bit off topic.  What he says in his video may be right or wrong, and that may be discussed without getting personal.  Indeed, one could discuss his points without mentioning his name or linking his video at all.

JUNE:  Preston gives a "pessimistic" assessment of GRRM's progress, where he guesses GRRM has written about 1000 pages and is roughly 2/3 done.  He supports this with some flawed but, I think, honest analysis.

AUGUST:  GRRM says in his NAB that he is close to finishing 2 POVs.  This is the first time he has ever hinted at finishing POVs.

OCTOBER:  GRRM confirms that he has 2, or at least 2, POVs finished.  He also says that he is "maybe" about 75% done.  Making allowance for a certain level of progress since June, GRRM seems to confirm that, at least in its broad strokes, Preston's "pessimistic" assessment was roughly accurate.  Unless, of course, both Preston and GRRM are guilty of equal levels of excessive optimism.

NOVEMBER:  Werthead lashes out at Preston, accusing him of saying things he never said, as well as the vile crime of wanting viewers for his channel.  Is it a case of "blame the messenger"?   It's not Preston's fault the book is not done yet.

Edited November 18, 2022 by Gilbert Green

[Gilbert Green]

On 10/31/2022 at 8:27 AM, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

I guess one of them is Tyrion, since GRRM indicated that he was close to wrapping up his arc a few months ago.

I think you are conflating bits of evidence.  Circa June, IRRC, he said he was working on a Tyrion chapter.  Two months later, in August, he said he was close to finishing 2 POVs.  In October, he confirmed that he had completed "a couple" of POVs.  But he never said he was close to finishing Tyrion's arc, unless I missed something.

Not to say that it isn't tempting to connect the dots..

[BlackLightning]

1 hour ago, Gilbert Green said:

I think he has 2 PoVs completed, because that's what he said.  "A couple" meant "two" and "some" is at least consistent with that.

3 months earlier, he said on his NAB that he hoped to wrap up a POV that week; or "maybe two".  Now, we have confirmation that he achieved that ambition.

Why would it have to be more than two?

That's the gag though...your forecast doesn't quite align with his words.

If only 2 PoVs are completed and he kept reiterating that he's about 75% done, then those 2 PoVs would essentially have to be somewhere in between 40%-60% of the book...and that's being conservative. And given that the book is already slated to be bigger than both Dance and Storm, then we are looking at almost 90 chapters. Between those 2 PoVs, that's a range of 36-50 chapters. Or about 18-27 chapters per POV.

That's insane.

 

Just because GRRM says that he is close to finishing 2 PoVs doesn't mean that he has finished only 2 PoVs. It is ludicrous to suggest that.

What's more likely is that GRRM has finished close to 10 PoVs with these past 2 being the latest.

[Gilbert Green]

1 hour ago, BlackLightning said:

That's the gag though...your forecast doesn't quite align with his words.

If only 2 PoVs are completed and he kept reiterating that he's about 75% done, then those 2 PoVs would essentially have to be somewhere in between 40%-60% of the book...and that's being conservative. And given that the book is already slated to be bigger than both Dance and Storm, then we are looking at almost 90 chapters. Between those 2 PoVs, that's a range of 36-50 chapters. Or about 18-27 chapters per POV.

That's insane.

Just because GRRM says that he is close to finishing 2 PoVs doesn't mean that he has finished only 2 PoVs. It is ludicrous to suggest that.

What's more likely is that GRRM has finished close to 10 PoVs with these past 2 being the latest.

In the Colbert interview, he says he finished "a couple" of POVs (which means two, at least to my ears).  Nothing in the context confined that remark to recent events.  I'm not ruling out his finishing a third last night, and a fourth tomorrow morning.  I'm just talking about what he said in late October. 

I'm not even ruling out that he was speaking loosely and failed to consider a third or fourth minor POV already completed.  My objection is to the idea that it HAS TO BE more than two.  It doesn't.

I don't see any logic behind the numbers you are throwing out.

Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that the two completed PoVs were major PoVs, amounting to 10% of a projected 1600 page book (could be more).  Now imagine that he has completed a prologue and an epilogue of 20 pages each (could be more) but does not count them as POVS as per his past practice.  Now lets say he has a total of 1200 (75%) already written.  Subtract 200 for the 2 completed POVs and the prologue and the epilogue (could be more) and he's got 1000 out of a projected 1400 for the remaining POVs.  So the remaining POVs could be, on average, 71% done, and, as long as none of them were actually finished, his statement would be accurate.

That's just an example, of course.  I could come up with other hypothetical illustrations I'm sure.

Edited November 18, 2022 by Gilbert Green

[MissM]

In one of the House of the Dragon interviews, GRRM said something interesting on the timespan the current series will cover. 

 

26:00 time mark.

A Song of Ice & Fire the main series that am writing, I still have 2 more books to write and the series is only covering a handful of years - to cover 250 years I would have to write 20 novels (covering 12-13 years each). 

Which makes me think ASOIAF series should cover at most 10 years or so. What do you think?

 

[Gilbert Green]

12 hours ago, MissM said:

Which makes me think ASOIAF series should cover at most 10 years or so. What do you think?

Less than 10 years is a pretty safe bet, I think.  The first five volumes barely covered more than 2 years.  The 5-year gap idea has long since been discarded.  Winter has already begun.  And the title of the last volume "A Dream of Spring", implies the story will end during winter.

[MissM]

5 hours ago, Gilbert Green said:

Less than 10 years is a pretty safe bet, I think.  The first five volumes barely covered more than 2 years.  The 5-year gap idea has long since been discarded.  Winter has already begun.  And the title of the last volume "A Dream of Spring", implies the story will end during winter.

In one of his video interviews GRRM said "The [TV] series started with all the characters older than they were in the books and they are growing even faster. Arya grew about 3 years in five books."

I think the next few books will cover more timespan. He's done this before with an Arya chapter that covers 6 months in AFFC for example. 

 

Edited November 20, 2022 by MissM

[BlackLightning]

3 minutes ago, Gilbert Green said:

In the Colbert interview, he says he finished "a couple" of POVs (which means two, at least to my ears).

A couple is not necessarily two.

I don't know where you are from, but Americans use the terms "a couple" and "a few" interchangeably. In fact, "a couple" is suggestive of more than just "a few" for some people. Basically, for GRRM to say that he has finished "a couple" of POVs in the same breath of saying that he is about 75% done with the book, it communicates not much but more than just two.

So, either he has more than 2 (probably 6) POVs done or he has 2 POVs done and a buttload of other POV chapters done.

[Gilbert Green]

3 hours ago, BlackLightning said:

A couple is not necessarily two.

I don't know where you are from, but Americans use the terms "a couple" and "a few" interchangeably. In fact, "a couple" is suggestive of more than just "a few" for some people. Basically, for GRRM to say that he has finished "a couple" of POVs in the same breath of saying that he is about 75% done with the book, it communicates not much but more than just two.

So, either he has more than 2 (probably 6) POVs done or he has 2 POVs done and a buttload of other POV chapters done.

Educated people - yes, even in the US - tend to know that "couple" correctly means "two".  That's seems to how GRRM uses the word in his fiction.  He uses "a couple of children" for Bran & Rickon; "a couple" of black brothers, out of a score in the Hall, refers to Fornio and Ser Byam.  There are of course numerous other occasions where one cannot verify what is meant by "couple", but I think in those occasions "two" is meant as well; for instance, "a couple of pennies" probably means two pennies.

My philosophy with GRRM, when it comes to the progress of WINDS, is to read his his ambiguous statements narrowly.  So I think "a couple" means "two" and not "more than two".  If wishful thinking were a better guide to GRRM's ambiguous statements, we would have seen WINDS years ago.  But if you prefer to imagine it really means six, that is fine.  You asked for the opinion of others, and I gave mine. 

I am not denying the possibility that "couple" could theoretically means "a few".  But you said it HAD TO mean that.  And I asked you why.  Your last sentence seems to concede that a "couple" could indeed mean only two.  And yes, of course he also has many chapters done for incomplete POVs.

Edited November 21, 2022 by Gilbert Green

[Elizaveta]

I saw some fans speculate on whether the conflict between the Others and Westeros be resolved diplomatically. Idk if it's more like GRRM to have a big battle or have a twist like this.

[Takiedevushkikakzvezdy]

On 12/1/2022 at 10:54 AM, Elizaveta said:

I saw some fans speculate on whether the conflict between the Others and Westeros be resolved diplomatically. Idk if it's more like GRRM to have a big battle or have a twist like this.

Personally, I don't think so. GRRM has said several times that the ending of ASOIAF will capture the feeling of The Scouring of the Shire, where the big evil is defeated but other problems remain and life won't be the same again. 

On the other hand, we don't know what changes GRRM has made during his latest gardening process. Maybe he has changed his mind on that as well.

Edited December 5, 2022 by Takiedevushkikakzvezdy

[sifth]

1 hour ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

Personally, I don't think so. GRRM has said several times that the ending of ASOIAF will capture the feeling of The Scouring of the Shire, where the big evil is defeated but other problems remain and life won't be the same again. 

On the other hand, we don't know what changes GRRM has made during his latest gardening process. Maybe he has changed his mind on that as well.

The problem is, has any place in Westeros, not been effected by war yet? The Scouring of the Shire works, because it shows us the effects of war on a place we viewed as safe from it. The closest GRRM can come to replicating it, would be having one of his major villains like Euron sit out all of the fighting against the Others and suddenly after they are defeated have him attack a major city.