"Only 500 pages to go" for Winds of Winter

[Luca]

3 hours ago, Phileonidas said:

Well, looking only at the A Song of Ice and Fire series, George does look a bit unproductive. But taking all his works into account, he doesn't look that bad, since he did write and publish Fire & Blood, The World of Ice and Fire and that new Targaryen book. So I could imagine (and hope) that it won't take him that long to complete Winds when there's "only" up to 500 pages or 25% left to write.

Those three are basically the same book tho

[EggBlue]

5 hours ago, Phileonidas said:

Well, looking only at the A Song of Ice and Fire series, George does look a bit unproductive. But taking all his works into account, he doesn't look that bad, since he did write and publish Fire & Blood, The World of Ice and Fire and that new Targaryen book. So I could imagine (and hope) that it won't take him that long to complete Winds when there's "only" up to 500 pages or 25% left to write.

sorry to disappoint but Fire and Blood is just an expansion of a part of World Book + Princess and the Queen and the Rogue Prince ... so, not that many new materials there. and of course, this last Targ book is just a summary of fire and blood with pretty pictures. I'd say all the credit for that one should go to the artists rather than GRRM!

[Craving Peaches]

I don't really think this means much because there is no consistent speed or pace of writing. It seems to come and go in bursts. So we can't say something like 'George wrote x pages over a year' therefore we ultimately can't determine how long 500 pages will take.

Edited February 24, 2023 by Craving Peaches

[sifth]

14 hours ago, Craving Peaches said:

I don't really think this means much because there is no consistent speed or pace of writing. It seems to come and go in bursts. So we can't say something like 'George wrote x pages over a year' therefore we ultimately can't determine how long 500 pages will take.

Plus GRRM might decide he needs 600 more pages on a dime and then 700 a week later. The original drafts for AFFC/ADWD show us that he’s constantly changing his mind.

[Takiedevushkikakzvezdy]

On 2/25/2023 at 1:45 PM, sifth said:

The original drafts for AFFC/ADWD show us that he’s constantly changing his mind.

But again, he has to settle for something sooner or later.

[sifth]

54 minutes ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

But again, he has to settle for something sooner or later.

You would think, but it seems like GRRM has been constantly changing his mind about stuff WoW related, for nearly 12 years now.

[Cas Stark]

1 hour ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

But again, he has to settle for something sooner or later.

Only if he finishes the book.  Otherwise, all paths remain open forever and ever.

[kav2001c]

He had a jump start on Winds (hundreds of pages leftover from Dance that were cut for length)

He had 2+ years of covid lockdowns

And now comes back with 1100ish completed pages (so 800ish new pages) after all these years and still 500ish to write?

Even assuming I ever read Winds the odds of my seeing Spring in next decade are looking grim...

 

[Cas Stark]

9 hours ago, kav2001c said:

He had a jump start on Winds (hundreds of pages leftover from Dance that were cut for length)

He had 2+ years of covid lockdowns

And now comes back with 1100ish completed pages (so 800ish new pages) after all these years and still 500ish to write?

Even assuming I ever read Winds the odds of my seeing Spring in next decade are looking grim...

 

You can live to 100 and you will not see Spring.

[Craving Peaches]

5 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

You can live to 100 and you will not see Spring.

It will be a literal Dream of Spring. We can dream about the ending of the books. Once I had a dream that it was released...then I woke up.

[BlackLightning]

On 3/8/2023 at 11:09 AM, kav2001c said:

He had a jump start on Winds (hundreds of pages leftover from Dance that were cut for length)

He had 2+ years of covid lockdowns

And now comes back with 1100ish completed pages (so 800ish new pages) after all these years and still 500ish to write?

Even assuming I ever read Winds the odds of my seeing Spring in next decade are looking grim...

What you're not understanding is that that those hundreds of pages left over from Dance (~250 pages max) had not been edited and were not ready for release. These weren't clean-cut leftovers. He still writing those pages when the editors forced him to release Dance as is. Why? Not because that they had a deadline to meet but because those new pages just wouldn't have fit within the book and the book-binding standards in 2011 were very different than the ones of present-day 2023.

You're also assuming that he started working on Winds immediately after Dance came out and that's not true. What's more likely is that he took a lot of time off and - as his attention was super divided at the time - was writing very slowly.

He's clearly suffered from writer's block (another Meereenese Knot perhaps?) and he has rewritten a bunch of material. Winds was supposed to come out in 2016 but something really big happened (we'll find out about it soon I'm sure) and he ended up completely retooling the story. I don't think he started really taking things really seriously until the show finished. He stopped giving updates for years -- and he had gotten pretty pissy about it whenever someone asked him about it -- only to start giving updates now. He's given us more updates in the last year than we had in the previous seven years.

So in a way, he's written more than 800ish pages in the 12 years since Dance came out. Just a lot of those were scrapped or revised. In fact, he is comfortable enough to tell us that...

• a little over two-thirds of the book is finished
• he is trying to figure out whether or not Casterly Rock is going to appear at the end of The Winds of Winter or if we are going to have to wait until A Dream of Spring

That's huge. Especially considering that he stopped giving active updates for years.

And just because it hypothetically took him to 10 years to write 900 pages, doesn't meant that it will take him 5 years to write 500. The pace will vary. For example, GRRM said that the very first Bran chapter wrote itself in his own head but that it took him close to a year to write that one chapter where Quentyn finally meets Dany.

So cheer up! We're going to get The Winds of Winter.

[Rubicante]

A Dream of Spring will never happen.  The Winds of Winter will be a small miracle.  I would actually be more interested in reading an auto-biography from George explaining what exactly happened after releasing A Dance with Dragons that prevented him from completing The Winds of Winter.

[Northern Sword]

On 3/14/2023 at 8:31 PM, BlackLightning said:

What you're not understanding is that that those hundreds of pages left over from Dance (~250 pages max) had not been edited and were not ready for release. These weren't clean-cut leftovers. He still writing those pages when the editors forced him to release Dance as is. Why? Not because that they had a deadline to meet but because those new pages just wouldn't have fit within the book and the book-binding standards in 2011 were very different than the ones of present-day 2023.

You're also assuming that he started working on Winds immediately after Dance came out and that's not true. What's more likely is that he took a lot of time off and - as his attention was super divided at the time - was writing very slowly.

He's clearly suffered from writer's block (another Meereenese Knot perhaps?) and he has rewritten a bunch of material. Winds was supposed to come out in 2016 but something really big happened (we'll find out about it soon I'm sure) and he ended up completely retooling the story. I don't think he started really taking things really seriously until the show finished. He stopped giving updates for years -- and he had gotten pretty pissy about it whenever someone asked him about it -- only to start giving updates now. He's given us more updates in the last year than we had in the previous seven years.

So in a way, he's written more than 800ish pages in the 12 years since Dance came out. Just a lot of those were scrapped or revised. In fact, he is comfortable enough to tell us that...

• a little over two-thirds of the book is finished
• he is trying to figure out whether or not Casterly Rock is going to appear at the end of The Winds of Winter or if we are going to have to wait until A Dream of Spring

That's huge. Especially considering that he stopped giving active updates for years.

And just because it hypothetically took him to 10 years to write 900 pages, doesn't meant that it will take him 5 years to write 500. The pace will vary. For example, GRRM said that the very first Bran chapter wrote itself in his own head but that it took him close to a year to write that one chapter where Quentyn finally meets Dany.

So cheer up! We're going to get The Winds of Winter.

I like your optimism. 

[Frey family reunion]

On 3/19/2023 at 9:49 PM, Rubicante said:

A Dream of Spring will never happen.  The Winds of Winter will be a small miracle.  I would actually be more interested in reading an auto-biography from George explaining what exactly happened after releasing A Dance with Dragons that prevented him from completing The Winds of Winter.

I think you can sum it with five words: that sweet, sweet, HBO money

[Cas Stark]

The GRRM who found his first inspiration in the Bran chapter was a very different person than the GRRM who was writing Dance, almost 15 years later, and struggled to finish it.  He is yet another person and writer today, almost 15 more years later and no Winds and continuing to struggle.

I don't find his updates to be very useful, he has been proven to be mistaken on his timing too many times for too many years.  If Winds comes out, great, if not, I'm fine with that as well. 

[Takiedevushkikakzvezdy]

1 hour ago, Cas Stark said:

The GRRM who found his first inspiration in the Bran chapter was a very different person than the GRRM who was writing Dance, almost 15 years later, and struggled to finish it.  He is yet another person and writer today, almost 15 more years later and no Winds and continuing to struggle.

Aside from all of his distractions, I think he has also become more and more of a perfectionist over the years and rewrites material that he would have left as is in the past. 

[Cas Stark]

35 minutes ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

Aside from all of his distractions, I think he has also become more and more of a perfectionist over the years and rewrites material that he would have left as is in the past. 

Maybe the perfectionism is a result of various roadblocks, struggles and knots, if that makes sense.  When the words were flowing like wine and he was in the zone most of the time, not such a need for rewriting.  When he hasn't been 'feeling it' or the work is a labor, or the various plot points have become too complex, possibly more of an issue of second guessing or not being happy with outcome.

[Casso, King of the Seals]

I think that he might be polishing the material at sentence and word-level. If you re-read the first three books, and especially AGOT, there are things there that probably would have been re-written now, like Tyrion doing cartwheels, etc. His prose also seems to have gotten more attention as he progressed.

Still, 11+ years is a lot. But it's important to remember that now he does have around 20 different POVs, some primary, some secondary, all over Westeros and Essos, with big plot arcs opened during AFFC/ADWD. In the first book there were 8 POVs (plus a prologue), the second book added Davos and Theon, and the third book added Jaime and Sam (taking out Theon). It's also a place in the story to start wrapping things up and this is likely harder than throwing the balls into the air. He needs to make sure to finish this book in a way that he can finish the whole story in ADOS if he wants to keep to 7 books.

Plus he is aging, has multiple projects on the side (developing TV shows, editing Wild Cards, owning a book store, cinema and part of a railway line) and sometimes travels. All of this combined is probably why it is taking so long, and why the book will be the longest in the series so far once completed.

I'm fairly confident that TWOW will be published in the next few years, maybe late next year or in 2025. Less optimistic about ADOS, especially if the writing-time of a book continues in the same trend as it's been since AFFC.

[Rubicante]

There really is no need to be a perfectionist when it comes to finishing this series.  In my opinion, he just needs to be better than the tv show…which isn’t much of a standard considering how bad the show sucked seasons 2-8.

[BlackLightning]

16 hours ago, Casso, King of the Seals said:

His prose also seems to have gotten more attention as he progressed.

It has.

He's become a much better writer. A Dance with Dragons is a much better novel than A Storm of Swords in terms of prose and literary skill.

12 hours ago, Rubicante said:

There really is no need to be a perfectionist when it comes to finishing this series.  In my opinion, he just needs to be better than the tv show…which isn’t much of a standard considering how bad the show sucked seasons 2-8.

Right but, from his point of view, he is a writer first. Secondly, he wants who wants people to continue reading his material long after both he and all of us are dead and gone. To that end, it needs to be masterfully done.

The show was so bad and it set such a low bar. So simply doing better than the show is hardly an achievement.

I do think that he is doing too much overthinking and overediting, but I understand his desire to make sure he produces the best possible work.