To quote Neil Gaiman, "George R.R. Martin is not your bitch."
He gets the book done when he gets the book done. It's that simple.
George R R Martin and his next book...
- Thread starter Tombfyre
- Start date
He gets the book done when he gets the book done. It's that simple.
Eh, I'd prefer more Haviland Tuf stories.
Me too! I really enjoyed his short story anthologies.
haha wow... fanboy defenders, ACTIVATE!
I'm sorry but....
A Game of Thrones (1996)
A Clash of Kings (1998)
A Storm of Swords (2000)
A Feast for Crows (2005)
So after almost a decade and a half hes still writing a series of 7 books.... theres slow writing and theres.... SLOW writing.
Common.. the publishers have even been giving release dates.. EVERY year and he keeps missing the mark.
I'm sorry but....
A Game of Thrones (1996)
A Clash of Kings (1998)
A Storm of Swords (2000)
A Feast for Crows (2005)
So after almost a decade and a half hes still writing a series of 7 books.... theres slow writing and theres.... SLOW writing.
Common.. the publishers have even been giving release dates.. EVERY year and he keeps missing the mark.
He started writing A Game Of Thrones in 1991, so it took him 5 years too to write it.
As long as the next books turn out to be as awesome as those already released, I don't care much about waiting.
No more than your starting this thread was an example of "fanboy bashers ACTIVATE!" Wouldn't it be nice if we didn't label people who don't agree with us?
And I don't see anyone denying that this is, in fact, SLOW writing. We're just saying that that's not because he's being lazy, but because writing something like this is difficult. There's a reason many writers of fantasy series have problems like these (though of course many don't as well).
Which some might take as a sign that those release dates are meaningless and you shouldn't pay attention to them.
Well, what can you do? Whining about it isn't going to make him write faster. And regardless of how long it takes, we are all going to read the book when it's done eventually anyway, so he doesn't really have anything to lose.
Anyway, I think there's reason to be optimistic that the last two books won't take as long as Dance with Dragons, since this one probably was/is especially difficult because of all the changes he made/had to make.
I was thinking the same thing. Martin will get done with HIS work when he's done with it.
it's impossible to abandon this series after the events in the end of ASOS and AFFC.
When A Feast for Crows took so long to come out, some readers claimed that the delay would make the series lose readers. Instead it was the first book in the series to become a #1 New York Times bestseller. I don't doubt that some people do lose interest in the series, but it's more likely to be casual readers who do so than those of us who talk about it on message boards, and there are new readers coming in all the time.
I love GRRM and his ASOS is my favorite novel (well, tied with Duma Key) and I can barely wait for his next one. But, I want it to be good. Therefore, I'm willing to wait as long as I need to. George wants it to be his best work and I think we should let him make it so.
GRRM enjoys the attention of being an author. Have you every looked at his website and see just how many appearances the guy makes? He loves being fawned over. He doesn't sit down and really crank out page after page.
The thing that upsets me most about this delay is that as he was writing the last book he realized it was becoming 'too large'. So he then split the book into two. He then took out of it all the stuff taking place outside of Westeros and in the East. Like Dany's plotlines, Arya in Braavos, the Prince of Dorne travelling to the east and his plotline, etc...
So I don't understand how after taking a lot of already written material out of a book you deemed too big and then splitting it into two books. That the 'second half' of that book is taking as long to come out as the 'first half' did after the 3rd book was completed.
Shouldn't it have taken less time? A lot of the stuff was already written...
The thing that upsets me most about this delay is that as he was writing the last book he realized it was becoming 'too large'. So he then split the book into two. He then took out of it all the stuff taking place outside of Westeros and in the East. Like Dany's plotlines, Arya in Braavos, the Prince of Dorne travelling to the east and his plotline, etc...
So I don't understand how after taking a lot of already written material out of a book you deemed too big and then splitting it into two books. That the 'second half' of that book is taking as long to come out as the 'first half' did after the 3rd book was completed.
Shouldn't it have taken less time? A lot of the stuff was already written...
Even if he does, so what?
Or, as a long-time member of fandom, he loves being part of the scene and knows that some of his fans enjoy interacting with him as he enjoys interacting with them. Where's the harm?
And the convention and other appearances (all of which are promotional work that's part of being a successful author, even if he enjoys it too) typically add up to three or four weeks a year. That's not an uncommon amount of touring for a popular writer to do. A little more generous than an average worker's vacation package, maybe, but not exactly an orgy of time off either. And in 2007 he canceled his trip to Worldcon and associated Japanese appearances... because it would mean too much time away from his writing.
Are there only two ways of looking at this? Does he have to be chained to his desk, producing pages, eight hours a day, five days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, for people not to raise questions about how devoted he is? I hate to be the guy who says this, but: it's only a book. He doesn't have to become a hermit for our reading pleasure.
Since then, he's reworked chapters that were "finished" because he wasn't actually happy with them, added characters to better tell the story, and reorganized things so the book works better on his own. Basically, he was way too optimistic about how close to finished he was, like he's been since he started the series. That's the one thing I don't like about he deals with fan curiosity: he backs off his promise not to give estimates about when he'll be done, and then the estimates are wrong again, and tears and recriminations follow.
I think its reasonable that if you start a series you are expected to work on it and finish it within the living memory of your fans!
No, I don't think anyone would expect someone to become a writing hermit. But I'm not a hermit and I work 7.5 hours a day 5 days a week. I think a solid work ethic would mean you would dedicate yourself to your task. And 20 years to write 4-5 books is a touch long.
And yes, its just a book. But could say that entertainment keeps our civilization running!
More like you are expected to ensure the highest possible quality of your writing. So far Martin meets the expectations. Again, if I have to choose between reading great books which are released every 4-5 years or mediocre which are released every year, I'd choose the former.
I'm not a writer, but I think that writing and engineering (for example) are very different kinds of works ...
IMO, the most interesting characters are still alive - Dany, Tyrion, Jon. Don't know why, I never particularly cared about the Starks ...
If GRRM kills Arya too, I'll just stop reading and literally burn the fucking books; but unless that happens, I don't really care who he kills.
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