Why are your Winds of Winter release date predictions?

[Castellan]

12 hours ago, Curled Finger said:

Fun?  You think this is fun?  Let's see now...I believe I began reading the series in 2013.  I joined the forum in '14 or maybe '15.  Watched the show starting in season 5.  Somewhere around '16 or '17 I was certain Winds was coming and swore I was done with the entire franchise in '19.  

Yes, I get a little excited when Notablog gives an update and I no longer look for any clue anywhere else.  I have accepted GRRM will do as he pleases and can.  If Winds ever publishes I will be delighted if I am still alive, if not I hope the forum will hold a seance and read it to me.

Someone recommended the books to me in 2012 or 2013. I raced through them, outstripping my friend. She had neglected to tell me it was an unfinished series - because she didn't know.

Its the first time I have ever been caught up in a mass addiction/fandom.

Someone put a post on the forum about then, saying he had read the first one when it came out, and had waited for every one since then. He had done a calculation of the rate of increase in elapsed time between books, and decided it would be 27 years (or something like that) before the series was completed, and that he would not live to read it.

Maybe 27 years was optimistic. I am old now too, I have the more conservative aim of reading TWOW. I figure I'll know whats happened to some of my fave characters, and whether my plot predictions are correct, even if I don't know the whole story.

A seance is a good idea. There will be many restless souls to appease.

[Raven Princling]

An optimistic prediction would be 2024. But I am not holding my hopes up.

I began reading the series in 2011 right after the first season of the show came out. I had gotten excited about Winds potentially releasing before or even about Winds in general, so I do not really want to have any expectations at this point. I do not want to hype myself up or give myself false hope. It will be ready when it will be ready and there is nothing, I can do about it. It has been a bit harder lately with George confirming he is 75% done with the book, but I am trying my best. 

Still, funny to think that I started this series when I was 13 or 14 and now am in my mid 20's with so much happening in between. Sometimes I forget how long we have been waiting. Not even mentioning the fans who got introduced to the series in the 90's.

[kissdbyfire]

6 hours ago, BlackLightning said:

he has at least one more Dunk & Egg book left.

One that he said he was going to write immediately after TWoW, but his original plan for D&E was ~ 12 novellas, and we have 3 so far. 

[Lady Stonehearts Simp]

2 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

One that he said he was going to write immediately after TWoW, but his original plan for D&E was ~ 12 novellas, and we have 3 so far. 

He needs to finish Dream and then he can focus on the Dunk & Egg.

[Ring3r]

13 hours ago, Bendric Dayne said:

Given that like 3 months ago GRRM said he was missing like 400-500 pages I thought it would be fun for people to try to guess when it will come out so that when/if it does come out we can be like “hey I was close” or “I nailed it” or “I was nowhere near”. There’s obviously no way to give any sort of accurate prediction but I thought it would be fun either way to just throw a date out there and see what happens, like the lottery. I’m gonna give 4 dates based on the level of optimism/pessimism I have and I’ll explain why I think those dates can make some sort of sense. 
 

Really optimistic prediction- November 30th

So if I’m being really optimistic TWOW can come out this November. Three months ago GRRM had 400-500 pages left and if I’m being really optimistic those left are some of the easier plot lines. I think he was having trouble with a few of the more complicated characters and I’m hoping he’s done with them and has been writing for these past three months and will continue until he finishes. Hopefully he has written 100-200 pages in these last three months and continues at a similar rate. Again I’m hoping that what he’s missing is like a couple of Victorion chapters here, a few Brienne chapters there, maybe finishing up Sansa as well, nothing too complicated like Dany and Jon. Also if you look up the release date for TWOW online there’s a bogus date for November of this year, which if I’m being really optimistic, someone actually leaked that date and it isn’t so bogus at all. 
 

Optimistic prediction- February 2024 

If I’m gonna be optimistic I think he can finish writing by November of this year and we’ll see the book in February of next year. This can be the case if those 400-500 pages he had left three months ago were actually for some of those more complicated characters. Like maybe he has everything else written but he’s missing Dany, and Bran, and Jon(if he even gets any) or any of those characters giving him trouble. So it would take him more time to write those pages but he could still finish by November. Either that or he IS done with those characters, but is so exhausted that he’s taken a break and hasn’t written anything for the last few months. Either way I can see next February as a possible release date. Just for fun I’m gonna say February 17th to have an actual date. 
 

Pessimistic prediction- Late 2024 

It’s very possible that the 400-500 pages he’s missing are for some of those more complicated characters and that he has taken a break for the last few months. My optimistic predictions were based mostly on him getting on a roll recently so now he maybe sees the finish line and is motivated to keep writing (particularly if what he’s missing he views as less complicated as what he has written). If he’s done with all the simpler characters and is only missing the more difficult characters and chapters to write, then it’s possible that he’ll push off writing those chapters for a while and that when he gets to it it will take him some time, but once he gets to it he won’t stop until he’s done. So if that’s the case it can come out late next year. I’m gonna say October 21 to give a specific date. 
 

Very pessimistic prediction- 2025 or later

I know the easier answer is to just say it will never come out but then I can’t put a date which is the whole point of this. I see it coming out in 2025 or later simply because GRRM is capable of having most of the book done and still take a lot of time to finish. Like I can see him getting like 400 pages done between now and the end of 2024 and then having 100 pages to go that he just procrastinates on for no reason. Hopefully that’s not the case and like I said earlier he sees the finish line with this book now and feels motivated to get it done. But just to give a date I’ll say July 25th 2025. 
 

Which of these do you guys think is more likely? What are your own predictions? 

Based on the percentage of completion GRRM has recently estimated and how long it took him to achieve that since the release of ADoD, along with the an industry standard 9-12 month wait between completion and publishing, I can't imagine we'll be reading WoW before mid 2026.  I'd be shocked if it hit shelves in 2025 at all.

[kissdbyfire]

38 minutes ago, Prince Rhaegar Targareyen said:

He needs to finish Dream and then he can focus on the Dunk & Egg.

He needs to do whatever he wants to do. What I said is based on what Martin himself said when talking about his plans for all these projects:

“George did talk about his schedule in terms of the order of things he wants to publish things in. No dates were mentioned and the order sounded aspirational rather than set in stone”:

The Winds of Winter (natch)

Dunk & Egg IV (either The She-Wolves or The Village Hero)

A Dream of Spring

Dunk & Egg V (either The Village Hero or The She-Wolves)

Fire & Blood II

[Lady Stonehearts Simp]

3 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

He needs to do whatever he wants to do. What I said is based on what Martin himself said when talking about his plans for all these projects:

“George did talk about his schedule in terms of the order of things he wants to publish things in. No dates were mentioned and the order sounded aspirational rather than set in stone”:

The Winds of Winter (natch)

Dunk & Egg IV (either The She-Wolves or The Village Hero)

A Dream of Spring

Dunk & Egg V (either The Village Hero or The She-Wolves)

Fire & Blood II

So Fire & Blood II in line, 2034?

[kissdbyfire]

2 minutes ago, Prince Rhaegar Targareyen said:

So Fire & Blood II in line, 2034?

Maybe. Can’t say I really care, I’d much rather get all 9 or so D&E before F&B.

[James Arryn]

7 hours ago, BlackLightning said:

GRRM gave his 75% done and 500 pages left to go chat in December.

 

Which is good news as writing the ending (the climaxes and denouements) seems like it's going to be a quicker and easier process. The absolute earliest I can see it coming out is Black Friday 2023. But that means that GRRM needs to have the book completed and sent off for editing and publishing by the end of July.

It can be done but he has to really put in work.

But it is just as likely to come out this time next year: January-February 2024.

 

A Dream of Spring will take a minute for him to write though. I think he could finish Dream in about half of the time it took him to finish Winds (~6 years) but Fire & Blood vol. 2 and 3 still need to be written (if vol. 3 is ever going to be a thing, it probably will come out after A Dream of Spring because of how spoilery it would be) and he has at least one more Dunk & Egg book left.

Not, no, not gonna do it. Paragraphs that contain ASOIAF titles, publication dates and math altogether trigger my PTSD, bring it all back, the naive early days, renting out inappropriate but cheap office space above a mall, bright spartan spaces filled with like-minded young readers with degrees in quantum physics, actuarial science and diplomas from bartending school all striving towards the same goal: THE date. Daytime a whirl of debate, collaboration, Ice Caramel Machiattos and, let’s be honest, performance enhancing t-shirts.
 

Nighttime’s were the best, and the worst…endless hours staring into your soul, trying to get it to stare into George’s soul, rummaging through all the info about his sleeping habits, single-finger typing rates (back in the day Mlle Zabzie and sologdin did some good work on this) nominative determinism (Ormond and Bard of Banefort mostly) and whether individual characters’ sheer rightness and awesomeness would single-handedly force their way from the page and finish the books/cure cancer/etc. in GRRMs New Mexico writing pad, mostly E-Ro (‘Young Bobby B is god if god was a huge sexy unstoppable killer”), Queen Cersei 1 (“she’d have written the books by now had she not lived a life of toil and poverty due to her gender…and okay a little bit her mass murder of children”), Lord Varys (Targs can do this in their sleep, in fact that’s what dragon dreams are, GRRM 3-eyed-crowing Targ characters, especially Dany, to get them to realize their potential and become GazoRR AhaiM the Supreme Deadline Meeter, the Rider of Dragons and Comicon Panel Chairs, Breaker of Slave Chains, Meereenese Knots and Readers Hearts, and of course Craving Peaches (Renly is Write!..and also hot and unobtainable, the hottest combo.) 

I remember walls covered with algorithms, flow charts, Brandon Sanderson’s 340 page magic system suggestions, SanSan fan art and Final Notice correspondence from several creditors. I remember the taste of cold coffee, Ramen noodles and, eventually, defeat. I remember the smells, too; human sweat, patchouli, walrus sweat and Jaime L’s cologne, Eau de Morse. And of course the sights, heated arguments, broken doors, kicked over trash cans, rumpled clothes and crumpled prior date prediction theses. The sounds, pools of test subject monkeys meticulously one-finger typing Tolstoy novels overseen by a glowering Werthead, Matthew McConaughy impersonations of varying quality, the high-pitched scree of noses pressed relentlessly to grindstone, the muted refrains of Daft Punk and Mumford and Sons, the occasional sound of muffled weeping coming from the staff bathrooms. 
 

And then, finally, the breakdown or as some prefer, break-up. We’ll never find the Yellow King! We have failed. Overwhelming sense of failure and shame when the eye catches any of our 43, 1846 officially announced Publication Date Predictions, or clips of the press conferences we’d called to announce each one. Distrust and defeat did their work, Jaime L’s cologne didn’t help, and in the end we were pulling in too many directions, and even after a passionate plea from Ser Scot to do the right and legal thing, we pulled apart. Went our separate ways. Let the lease run out on the offices, stopped answering our phones because the collection companies had gotten involved, stopped looking each other in the eye, stopped dreaming of a better future, one that made sense. And then, of course, the violence and Rick Rolling.

So, sorry BlackLightning, but I can’t go back there. Not in my head. That’s where the demons, memories and Tik Tok recipes vie for dominance in an incessant painful whirl. I barely made it out alive, and we lost too many good posters along the way. 

[Craving Peaches]

11 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

Not, no, not gonna do it. Paragraphs that contain ASOIAF titles, publication dates and math altogether trigger my PTSD, bring it all back, the naive early days, renting out inappropriate but cheap office space above a mall, bright spartan spaces filled with like-minded young readers with degrees in quantum physics, actuarial science and diplomas from bartending school all striving towards the same goal: THE date. Daytime a whirl of debate, collaboration, Ice Caramel Machiattos and, let’s be honest, performance enhancing t-shirts.
 

Nighttime’s were the best, and the worst…endless hours staring into your soul, trying to get it to stare into George’s soul, rummaging through all the info about his sleeping habits, single-finger typing rates (back in the day Mlle Zabzie and sologdin did some good work on this) nominative determinism (Ormond and Bard of Banefort mostly) and whether individual characters’ sheer rightness and awesomeness would single-handedly force their way from the page and finish the books/cure cancer/etc. in GRRMs New Mexico writing pad, mostly E-Ro (‘Young Bobby B is god if god was a huge sexy unstoppable killer”), Queen Cersei 1 (“she’d have written the books by now had she not lived a life of toil and poverty due to her gender…and okay a little bit her mass murder of children”), Lord Varys (Targs can do this in their sleep, in fact that’s what dragon dreams are, GRRM 3-eyed-crowing Targ characters, especially Dany, to get them to realize their potential and become GazoRR AhaiM the Supreme Deadline Meeter, the Rider of Dragons and Comicon Panel Chairs, Breaker of Slave Chains, Meereenese Knots and Readers Hearts, and of course Craving Peaches (Renly is Write!..and also hot and unobtainable, the hottest combo.) 

I remember walls covered with algorithms, flow charts, Brandon Sanderson’s 340 page magic system suggestions, SanSan fan art and Final Notice correspondence from several creditors. I remember the taste of cold coffee, Ramen noodles and, eventually, defeat. I remember the smells, too; human sweat, patchouli, walrus sweat and Jaime L’s cologne, Eau de Morse. And of course the sights, heated arguments, broken doors, kicked over trash cans, rumpled clothes and crumpled prior date prediction theses. The sounds, pools of test subject monkeys meticulously one-finger typing Tolstoy novels overseen by a glowering Werthead, Matthew McConaughy impersonations of varying quality, the high-pitched scree of noses pressed relentlessly to grindstone, the muted refrains of Daft Punk and Mumford and Sons, the occasional sound of muffled weeping coming from the staff bathrooms. 
 

And then, finally, the breakdown or as some prefer, break-up. We’ll never find the Yellow King! We have failed. Overwhelming sense of failure and shame when the eye catches any of our 43, 1846 officially announced Publication Date Predictions, or clips of the press conferences we’d called to announce each one. Distrust and defeat did their work, Jaime L’s cologne didn’t help, and in the end we were pulling in too many directions, and even after a passionate plea from Ser Scot to do the right and legal thing, we pulled apart. Went our separate ways. Let the lease run out on the offices, stopped answering our phones because the collection companies had gotten involved, stopped looking each other in the eye, stopped dreaming of a better future, one that made sense. And then, of course, the violence and Rick Rolling.

So, sorry BlackLightning, but I can’t go back there. Not in my head. That’s where the demons, memories and Tik Tok recipes vie for dominance in an incessant painful whirl. I barely made it out alive, and we lost too many good posters along the way. 

James, maybe you should write The Winds of Winter...

[Craving Peaches]

12 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

degrees in quantum physics, actuarial science

I almost did that. Not sure whether I lucked out or not. Only time will tell...

[EggBlue]

3 hours ago, kissdbyfire said:

He needs to do whatever he wants to do. What I said is based on what Martin himself said when talking about his plans for all these projects:

“George did talk about his schedule in terms of the order of things he wants to publish things in. No dates were mentioned and the order sounded aspirational rather than set in stone”:

The Winds of Winter (natch)

Dunk & Egg IV (either The She-Wolves or The Village Hero)

A Dream of Spring

Dunk & Egg V (either The Village Hero or The She-Wolves)

Fire & Blood II

the guy really needs to sort out some realistic priorities for himself and let some of these projects go! it amazes me that he might think he can finish all three series... 

[kissdbyfire]

6 minutes ago, EggBlue said:

the guy really needs to sort out some realistic priorities for himself and let some of these projects go! it amazes me that he might think he can finish all three series... 

I think the list above detailing the order he was planning for these books doesn’t include any of the many TV projects that I’m sure keep him fairly busy as well. 

[Takiedevushkikakzvezdy]

8 minutes ago, EggBlue said:

the guy really needs to sort out some realistic priorities for himself and let some of these projects go! it amazes me that he might think he can finish all three series... 

Back in 2012 he talked about writing a sequel to Fevre Dream once he finishes ASOIAF. 

[Bendric Dayne]

4 hours ago, Ring3r said:

Based on the percentage of completion GRRM has recently estimated and how long it took him to achieve that since the release of ADoD, along with the an industry standard 9-12 month wait between completion and publishing, I can't imagine we'll be reading WoW before mid 2026.  I'd be shocked if it hit shelves in 2025 at all.

It might be the industry standard for it to take 9-12 months between completion and publishing but for Dance and Feast it was more like 3-4 months. Apparently GRRM has sent them some completed material already which shortens the amount of work the editors have to do since they have already edited that and GRRM does a lot of rewriting himself so the editors don’t have a lot to do. Back when he wanted to get the book out before season six of the show which aired in April 2016 he said the book would have to be out by March of that year in the latest. His editors gave him until December of 2015 to hand in the manuscript so they clearly feel capable of doing all the editing and publishing in just three months. It could still take years for GRRM to finish writing but I think once he’s done we could see the book 3-5 months later, instead of the industry standard of 9-12 months.

[sifth]

I’d love to learn the back story of winds, if it ever comes out. To be honest the back story for all the issues GRRM ran into during the writing of AFFC and ADWD is more interesting than the books themselves.

[Takiedevushkikakzvezdy]

17 minutes ago, Bendric Dayne said:

It might be the industry standard for it to take 9-12 months between completion and publishing but for Dance and Feast it was more like 3-4 months.

Yes, GRRM has said several times that it could be done in 3 months.

[EggBlue]

18 minutes ago, sifth said:

I’d love to learn the back story of winds, if it ever comes out. To be honest the back story for all the issues GRRM ran into during the writing of AFFC and ADWD is more interesting than the books themselves.

me too. but let's not give him ideas just yet. Otherwise, he'll start a back story book after winds and tour it for three years!

 

[Curled Finger]

9 hours ago, Castellan said:

Someone recommended the books to me in 2012 or 2013. I raced through them, outstripping my friend. She had neglected to tell me it was an unfinished series - because she didn't know.

Its the first time I have ever been caught up in a mass addiction/fandom.

Someone put a post on the forum about then, saying he had read the first one when it came out, and had waited for every one since then. He had done a calculation of the rate of increase in elapsed time between books, and decided it would be 27 years (or something like that) before the series was completed, and that he would not live to read it.

Maybe 27 years was optimistic. I am old now too, I have the more conservative aim of reading TWOW. I figure I'll know whats happened to some of my fave characters, and whether my plot predictions are correct, even if I don't know the whole story.

A seance is a good idea. There will be many restless souls to appease.

Your story mirrors mine my friend and I join you in both thanking and cursing those friends who recommended this series.  Only 2 days ago I had the opportunity to speak with my friend who grows very angry with GRRM.  She slow burns.  Once her mind is made up to abandon the series she will not return and I will miss the long conversations and her interesting insights.  She has, after all, been reading since AGOT was published.  It has been a very long wait for her.

Here's to good narration and a proper seance from the younger members who better damned well do a bang up job or we will haunt them!  

[Curled Finger]

3 hours ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

Yes, GRRM has said several times that it could be done in 3 months.

I DEMAND he take a lie detector test!