George R R Martin and his next book...
- Thread starter Tombfyre
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As long as it takes.
I'm as eager as the next nerd for ADWD, but I'd rather he put his all into it and release something as good as the other 4 than just rush it to be done. This is his 'magnum opus' and if it takes to the day he dies then that is his right as an author and an artist. Apparently he got a little burned out the at some point a few years back and needed some time away from the series, he has been very hopeful of a late fall release and he has been dropping hints of how close he is in his blog lately.
Just chill out, re-read them and start looking forward to the HBO retelling.
I'm as eager as the next nerd for ADWD, but I'd rather he put his all into it and release something as good as the other 4 than just rush it to be done. This is his 'magnum opus' and if it takes to the day he dies then that is his right as an author and an artist. Apparently he got a little burned out the at some point a few years back and needed some time away from the series, he has been very hopeful of a late fall release and he has been dropping hints of how close he is in his blog lately.
Just chill out, re-read them and start looking forward to the HBO retelling.
Yeah, I'm just afraid that "the day he dies" might come before that. Gods forbid of course, but the longer the series gets, and the more time it takes to finish it, the more I worry about him.
This autumn will be 4 years.
Mind you this and the last book were basically shoved into the place of a planned 5-year gap between books 2 and 3 in the original plan of a trilogy that became a 5-book series that has how become a 7-book series. His original outlines didn't detail the events of this 5-year gap other than what was completely necessary and translating that into 2 books and compressing the passage of time while not screwing up any of the story threads or character stories is an intimidating prospect. I expect the next book will come much faster once this one leaves him at the point which he had planned to lead him into the climax of the story(especially since he says he has written chapters for it already).
Mind you this and the last book were basically shoved into the place of a planned 5-year gap between books 2 and 3 in the original plan of a trilogy that became a 5-book series that has how become a 7-book series. His original outlines didn't detail the events of this 5-year gap other than what was completely necessary and translating that into 2 books and compressing the passage of time while not screwing up any of the story threads or character stories is an intimidating prospect. I expect the next book will come much faster once this one leaves him at the point which he had planned to lead him into the climax of the story(especially since he says he has written chapters for it already).
I'm hopeful that he gets the book done sometime this year.
And even more optimistically: maybe the last two books won't take as long to write because he already knows what he's doing and doesn't need to rewrite everything mutiple times.
And even more optimistically: maybe the last two books won't take as long to write because he already knows what he's doing and doesn't need to rewrite everything mutiple times.
From what I've read and understood about the situation with the fifth book, he planned 5 year gap between third and fourth because he finds it very hard to write kids' chapters, then understood that the gap will also leave huge plot-holes and will make little sense, so he scrapped this idea and started writing ADWD. Then the book grew too big and he decided to split it in two. Then he rewrote almost everything that was left unpublished.
Hopefully, this book will be released on late fall/early winter. Until then, I started re-reading the series. It's even better second time around ...
Fall 2010 maybe, it's already too late for a winter 2009 release I think.
Glad to see others feel the same!
I think that GRRM is setting himself up to be a legend in the fantasy genre. Hes already one of the best in my optinion.
But he has to finish! What if HBOs series takes off and is a hit.... at the rate hes been going... they will catch up to him very quickly.
Has anyone ever read the "Dream of Eagles" series by Jack Whyte. It was a good series, not the best or most complex writing. But its the best retelling of the King Arthur legend i've ever read (imho). They started coming out in 1992... and came out within 1-2 years of each other.
I think 2 years is a fair wait between books when you are writing a series... I'm not a writer so i'm sort of talking from my armchair here, but in 2 years... 8 hours a day.... that comes up to 4160 hours? Isn't that enough time to write a book?
Just my two cents!
I think that GRRM is setting himself up to be a legend in the fantasy genre. Hes already one of the best in my optinion.
But he has to finish! What if HBOs series takes off and is a hit.... at the rate hes been going... they will catch up to him very quickly.
Has anyone ever read the "Dream of Eagles" series by Jack Whyte. It was a good series, not the best or most complex writing. But its the best retelling of the King Arthur legend i've ever read (imho). They started coming out in 1992... and came out within 1-2 years of each other.
I think 2 years is a fair wait between books when you are writing a series... I'm not a writer so i'm sort of talking from my armchair here, but in 2 years... 8 hours a day.... that comes up to 4160 hours? Isn't that enough time to write a book?
Just my two cents!
From what I've read, the reason he got rid of the 5-year gap was because he found himself doing constant flashbacks to explain what happened during them anyways and figured he may as well write a whole new book detailing it if half of what was originally book 4 was going to be flashbacks anyways. That one book detailing the important parts of the 5-year gap expanded into 2 books (due to publishers complaining that he couldn't release a 2000-page novel, and pressure to just release anything after 5 years without a release in the series) with a much shorter time-line.
The turnaround on a big release like this would be 3-4 months. There is still a little hope for a fall/winter release if he turned it in sometime in July.
The turnaround on a big release like this would be 3-4 months. There is still a little hope for a fall/winter release if he turned it in sometime in July.
Few months ago he wrote in his LJ blog that if he can finish the book by the end of June, it can be released on the fall. But obviously this is not the case (unless he works real hard and finishes it in next few days
), so it will probably be later ... But I'm still hopeful for the late 2009/early 2010 release, I'm just an optimistic person ...
If his publishers really wanted to rush it (and they very well might), I think he could finish the book as late as the beginning of September and still have it on the shelves for the Christmas season. Beyond that, though, and you're definitely looking at Spring 2010. (The absolute minimum turnaround, if they didn't edit the manuscript except to proofread it, would be like six weeks, believe it or not, but I don't see GRRM going that route.)
Martin updated his blog recently with a post saying that he's made real progress on the book in the past six weeks. I don't get the sense that the end is anything like imminent, but it's a sign of hope.
Writing's not like most jobs: you can't pin it to a timetable. Some writers work faster than others, some books are easier to write than others. If you haven't figured out where the story needs to go next or how to describe a particular moment, you can work hard for eight hours without getting anywhere. And sitting down and writing A Dance with Dragons isn't the only thing on GRRM's plate on the moment; heresy though it seems to some fans, he has other ongoing projects, plus the business and logistics of being a successful writer to deal with.
Brendan Moody said:
Ya, i'm aware of this, i was just saying this to just put 2 years into perspective when looking at it from the average work day.
Its just I keep seeing all of these books hes helped edit, or assisted with appearing on shelves and I start to wonder... is there such thing as Writers ADD. Finish it, get it done and move on. I think its fair to say Song of Ice and Fire is his money maker.
Well, you say you're aware of it, but then you say this:
Which, whether you mean it that way or not, makes it sound like you think he's like a kid who's not applying himself to his math homework. He's not. He's been a professional writer for over thirty years. He knows how he can best do his job, and he wants very much, and in a more direct way than any fan can understand, for A Dance with Dragons to be finished. The fact that he, like many writers, works on multiple projects at once is not a sign that he's avoiding Dance, on which he works daily.Its just I keep seeing all of these books hes helped edit, or assisted with appearing on shelves and I start to wonder... is there such thing as Writers ADD. Finish it, get it done and move on. I think its fair to say Song of Ice and Fire is his money maker.
For another writer's blunt commentary on this issue, go here.
Well, I think it's pretty clear, that GRRM didn't work very effectively on some of the Song of Ice and Fire books, making mistakes, scratching story-lines, starting all over again, etc.
Is it presumptuous to criticise that? Maybe. Does whining about it change anything? Of course not. But we're on a message board here that GRRM will never read anyway, so who cares...
Is it presumptuous to criticise that? Maybe. Does whining about it change anything? Of course not. But we're on a message board here that GRRM will never read anyway, so who cares...
That's something all writers do. It just doesn't usually happen at a stage where the public cares about the work in question. The problem for writers of long series like this is that there's no ideal publishing model for them. They can't possible finish writing the series in full before publication begins; that's too much work over too much time without any money. But writing a story in pieces and publishing them also has its flaws, like when you get halfway through and realize that the section you're writing, which looked great as an outline and in early drafts, doesn't work as full prose. When you have a moment like that in the middle of your 300 page novel that you're not discussing publicly yet, you fix it and no one ever knows. When you have the moment while writing book four of six (or seven... or...), everybody knows. It's not really a question of working effectively or not.
That's true, but I guess that kind of attention is just one of the drawbacks you have to accept in return for success.
Like a Hollywood actress who sees a photograph of her topless on the beach published in some rag.
Like a Hollywood actress who sees a photograph of her topless on the beach published in some rag.
Sure. I don't care about this because GRRM needs our pity; I think this blog entry makes it clear that he can handle criticism for himself. I just think it offers some interesting insight into the problems that come with being a writer, even a lucky, successful one.
Eh, I'd prefer more Haviland Tuf stories.
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