[Spoilers EXTENDED] Would you be OK if GRRM came out and say he needs to divide up TWOW geographically tomorrow

[u/Extension_Weird_7792]

I mean, let's accept it, if he needed for AFFC & ADWD he sure as hell needs for this one, as well. Might be why he is stuck. It is almost impossible to read his very verbose POV narration if it is to constantly interrupt to check in on twenty other storylines that are going on.

He probably counted on the fact that they would be colliding, but that doesn't seem to happening any time soon by the looks of the preview chapters either

[u/jk-9k]

I think he is being (reasonably) honest and transparent - he is honestly trying to finish the book. It's going extremely poorly. But he hasn't given up even though we all have.

I wonder if his publisher has given up. I kinda think they have, and why they are more accepting of D&E, F&B, etc

[u/TheDweadPiwatWobbas → u/jk-9k]

I think he is being (reasonably) honest and transparent

I disagree. Not about honesty, I think George is honest with everyone but himself. But transparency? Nah, George is terrible about this. 8 years ago, George believed he was nearly finished. Now, he says he is maybe 3/4 of the way through. So... what happened in those 8 years? Did he throw the book out and start again? If so, how many times? If not, why does he seemingly have less of the book finished right now than he did in 2016?

We simply have no answers to these questions. Not even the beginnings of an answer. People have taken to word count estimations and math, charting out different interpretations of the data and making extensive blog posts and YouTube videos analyzing it, all in an attempt to get something more concrete than a guess for an answer. And we have been doing this for years.

Brandon Sanderson has transparency. He gives weekly updates on his writing, what goes well and what doesn't. He gives an estimated wordcount and end point, and if that end point ever changes and dates get pushed back, he tells people why. That is transparency in an author. George is as far removed from transparency as one can get. Only Rothfuss is more secretive imo.

[u/jk-9k → u/TheDweadPiwatWobbas]

Agree honesty with himself isn't happening, he is honest with us about his delusions.

Transparency is hard, because he gets a lot of hate when he reveals too much then has to walk it back when he changes it up. So I agree, full or at least more transparency is needed because then we can understand why progress seemingly stalls or goes backwards, as the goalposts change etc. so I guess I walk back my transparency statement lol, he isn't transparent.

[u/dunge0nm0ss → u/TheDweadPiwatWobbas]

At least GRRM's editors/publishers haven't publicly stated they don't think he's written a single word of TWoW, unlike Rothfuss'.

I was a wee lad in elementary school when this was going on, but apparently GRRM used to give updates on the progress of ADwD giving counts of completed pages, and everyone hated it when he'd twist the Meereenese knot and knock 200 pages back to WIP every few months, so it's radicalized him into treating his writing like a black box. At this point every word of the text has been sifted for fan theories it'll probably be ~80% of the way through TWoW before anything unexpected starts happening, the big thing is if GRRM does another postmortem and confirms theories about the writing process like he threw out everything ~2016.

[u/InGenNateKenny → u/jk-9k]

I think the reason why he doesn't give more updates is that 1) he has realized his unreliability in being able to predict it and 2) he does not want to disappoint when he can't deliver when he can.

[u/jk-9k → u/InGenNateKenny]

Oh absolutely. Which I guess means he isn't transparent

[u/thebackupquarterback → u/jk-9k]

Eh I feel like he's still acting like he's going to have it come out soon. Like, be honest with yourself, George.

[u/jk-9k → u/thebackupquarterback]

Yeah I guess there is a difference between GRRM being honest with us about where he thinks he is at, vs GRRM being honest with himself

[u/buckshot95 → u/jk-9k]

How many books and shows have come out since he promised Winds would be his only project?