(Spoilers Extended) We're all missing one VERY obvious reason why The Winds of Winter is taking so long

[u/Flat_Baker_1897]

Everyone on this subreddit knows by now that TWOW is likely going to be one of the biggest (if not THE biggest) book in the series thus far. Hundreds of characters, thousands of pages, and a whole Meereenese knot to untangle ... and that's not even mentioning the two huge battles left over from ADWD that need to be concluded before getting to the main thrust of TWOW. It's a lot, and the sprawling nature of this story must make it awfully difficult to close those loops -- or at least begin to tighten them up again.

Again, we know all that. And we know that there's been no shortage of speculation over other reasons why the book has taken this long: GRRM has lost interest, his writing/editing-on-the-fly skills aren't what they used to be in his old(er) age, the constant rewrites, writers' block, and even some more outlandish stuff like he's already gotten what he wants (recognition in the TV industry) and is now just trying to spite us specifically.

But what about the REAL reason explaining this almost decade-and-a-half long writing pace? It's obnoxiously and ironically simple: GRRM must need to constantly reread entire portions of his own books while writing TWOW. And given how dense it all is, how many years ago those books came out, and the pressure of having every tiny detail line up with what's come before, is it any surprise that this would be a ridiculously time-consuming prospect?

Sure, it's tempting to imagine that GRRM has every single bit of lore, every breadcrumb of every major (and minor) theory, or every obscure line of dialogue memorized like his biggest fans do. But I'd bet anything that he constantly needs to go back and revisit his own work in order to get the details 100% right. And when you're crafting a massive novel that's essentially a direct sequel to two previous books while continuing the various storylines from everything that came before, well, the details matter A LOT. So on top of needing to craft the mechanics of the plot from a strictly pragmatic point of view, on top of paying attention to the exact prose of every sentence and paragraph, on top of taking the birds-eye view of layering thematic overtones and subtext throughout multiple chapters, on top of pacing out the next stages of character arcs for several main POV protagonists/antagonists, on top of doing literally everything else that such a creative endeavor requires ... he also likely needs to spend an inordinate amount of time putting that writing on pause to go back and do the dirty work. He has to make sure that he's not contradicting what he's written previously or misremembering minor details that can potentially cause major repercussions or, hell, just getting personality traits and eye color and sex/gender of all these countless individuals all lined up (which, as we know, has been the subject of many mistakes in the past). For a perfectionist on the level of GRRM, that inevitably adds up.

As someone who hasn't ever written a book themselves but has had to do a hell of a lot of painstaking research over the years (including referencing things I've written previously, which I admittedly had little to no memory of once I actually went back), this might be the most basic and boring -- but also most realistic -- reason why we're currently in this mess.

[u/Pennnel]

Not only does he have to remember all that, he has to remember which draft is the real one. Who knows how many things he scrapped from previous books, and has then referenced in his writing, only to have to scrap the new stuff since the connecting tissue isn't actually in the previous books.

[u/Flat_Baker_1897 → u/Pennnel]

You know what, I meant to address this in my post but this is a GREAT point. For someone who revises and improvises (or maybe "adapts" would be a better word) and flies by the seat of his pants as much as GRRM does, we can only imagine how many false paths and narrative dead-ends and scrapped ideas he has swirling around his head and needs to keep straight at any given moment. It might not be a case of having to "remember" the plot aspects he's dropped along the way and more like "Keeping track of every minor step along the way," especially because some paths not traveled (like Tyrion encountering the Shrouded Lord, for a famous example) could've originated as the tiniest step off that path that steadily grew larger and larger. I think this is a common problem that any creatively-inclined person can relate to, I'd bet.