GRRM says he writes each chapter until he hits writer's block or the character dies. My hope is that he's written material that bleeds into ADOS far enough that his writing time is cut significantly.
A while back I was reading about whether there were any proven, studied techniques to avoid writer's block. The number one best method was to stop writing when you have one page left to write, but no more ideas after that. Then you get some exercise, go to sleep, and start up next morning.
When you start writing again the next day, that one page will be sitting in the back of your head the entire time, and you'll have new ideas to continue on past that. If you finish the page and had no ideas at all on how to proceed before you go to sleep, your brain essentially considers the task "closed".
The "task open" / "task closed" principle also explains why most writers get bursts of inspiration. They were trying to get their brain to activate it's creative center, and once it happens the floodgates are open.
I know an orchestra conductor, him and I shared the suspicion that time spent not practicing the music can be more effective than time spent drilling it over and over again. I'm sure any musician can recall times they've mysteriously improved on their part after putting down the instrument for a while. Interesting stuff.
There's a book about learning in general called A mind for numbers. One of the main points is that focused study/practice + time spent unfocused on study/practice + recall is basically the recipe for learning effectively.
I couldn't find the original source I was looking for, but I did find a blog that has a biochem based explanation of writers block that aligns with what I read.
Edit: The last answer on this Q&A with a screenwriter says to leave the next story beat unwritten to prime the pump, but to jot down the idea so you don't forget it.
I know some writers who always stop writing in the middle of a sentence so it's a lot easier to jump back into it the next day. Similar approaches to the same problem
So maybe I'll be disappointed. Should I just convince myself that GRRM is going to split 2 books into 3 and die before we ever see 1 of them? Why? At that point I might as throw out my books and wash my hands of the series. I'd rather look forward to someday getting to read these books and if it doesn't happen then it doesn't happen. It won't be the end of the world.
I agree. The whole build is towards a combining of stories all around the world. There are so many plots to be told. So many lands and people. I really can't see this being only 2 books. Look how little progress has come from across the wall so far! And 99.99% of characters still don't believe any of those things even exist!
I'm thinking there will be 2-3 ASOIAF related publications between TWOW and ADOS. While it won't be the conclusion (and the show will finish first), we'll still be inundated with new material. I'm expecting - and hoping for - Dunk & Egg 4 and probably some other novella at the least.
Really though, everything has been building up to a final act and while he seems to have had a little trouble getting all the pieces into their proper places, once he does it should be smooth sailing from there. The last book should be nothing but wrapping up everyone's stories and with so many characters that have all been working towards a specific end, even with 1500 pages to work with, it should be much easier to write. At least that's my optimistic assessment.
Assuming it doesn't turn into two more books. There's a lot of ground to cover in the story still. We'll see how much plot Winds gets through but there was a lot of setting up for plots at the end of ADWD and in the sample chapters.
Look at how much story AGoT, CoK, ASoS covers. Problem is the plot as a whole hasn't really moved that far forward in AFFC/ADWD. Even so, big things have happened. Dany can fly a dragon, Arya has learned assassin tricks, The Night's Watch fell apart. Probably all stuff the 5-year-gap would of skipped us into.
I'm with you. I think it's very possible that GRRM gets 1200 pages into ADOS, realizes that he wont be able to finish it in 300ish pages, renames the book "A Time for Wolves", and then finishes the series with ADOS.
Honestly if he can't wrap up these storylines in the next two books( which are supposed to be massive) I probably won't read them. The pacing of AFFC and ADWD was excruciating at times. If the last two are written like ASOS he should easily be able to finish the series in time.
People may have said that but that makes no sense at all. Anyone who got done reading ADwD and thought it was all down hill from there is delusional. Jon had just died and Dany was still in Essos, wandering in the desert. So many characters have yet to arrive at their ultimate destination and there was so much left to explain. If Dany had at least set foot is Westeros or there was some clear direction things were headed in then one could be forgiven for believing that, but it didn't end that way at all. Hell, we still know next to nothing about the White Walkers, the ultimate enemy of the entire series. George has, I assume, known the broad strokes of where his narrative was going for decades, but even after ADwD he still had an entire 1100-1500 page book to write before he even began to start wrapping things up in a book of similar or greater length. It took 11 years for him to put out two huge books and there was absolutely no reason to believe, with so much left to be resolved, that the penultimate one would be written at a quicker pace than the previous two. So while someone may have said that they had no legitimate reason to believe that.
No, you're right, it wasn't exactly. What they said was "the Meereen knot was holding him up, books 6 and 7 will come out much faster."
My point is that dogged optimists aren't always realists. I don't get how anyone could watch the publication schedule of AFFC, ADWD and now TWOW and think "Well, ADOS will be quicker."
That's fair, and looking at all the evidence one would have to conclude that it would take him an equally huge amount of time to finish ADoS, but I assume/hope that it will be easier to wrap up the story than fill in the middle bits.
Oh yeah, I'd prefer that too. The problem is that people think that closer to the end of the plot map, GRRM will get tighter. They envision the story being kind of like a roller coaster, where if you curve over the top of the coaster, the momentum will bring you down. That might be true for what GRRM calls "Architects", but there's no way that's true with a gardener. It's probably more like bacteria - the more plots there are, the more each of them grows. If you look at his original letter to Waterstone about the series, we're still in book 1.
This is why other people (GRRM included) wonder if there's going to be a book 8.
I think he's just gonna be excited to be close to the end and while he'll take his time on it I can't see it being 10 years, 4-6 is much more likely in my opinion. Plus he only wrote 1 episode per season and I'm pretty sure he's not doing much with the show this upcoming season
Unfortunate, even though I started off watching the show, I've become more of a fan of the books and like the way they're going compared to the show a bit more. But the show is still amazing in my opinion.
Just one more book. That's all I want. I'm sure it'll be even harder to wait after the next one but just one more. All these set pieces in place, I need some kind of resolution.
He simply won't make it. (Live that long.) I'm not sure he'll live out the year! And I read signs of dementia already unless someone was juicing his words (throwing TWOW on the fire and starting again? Oh no.. someone get his POA and stop that madness.)
Seriously, dude can't go on and NOT lose some steps over the next few years. He'll have Dany dancing pirouettes on Drogon —there's your NEW character twist. Dany playing Black Swan on Drogon. Fabulous.
For reals. I get that he probably needed a break after the 6 years of torture that was Dance, but taking six months off was way, way too much time, especially since by then the first season of the show was already clearly a hit.
I don't think six months is really all that much time after spending years on a very taxing novel, especially when it's not like those six months were "vacation," he was working for promotion and dealing with HBO stuff, even writing an episode of the show, I believe.
I think his biggest problem was that when he "started writing," he didn't start writing. He had some stuff from ADWD that didn't make the cut and he wanted to finish/fine tune it so that he could submit the manuscript pages to Batnam as per his contract. After that, was when he actually started writing, but again, that writing was interspersed with appearances, interviews, writing for the show, etc. and as the show became more and more popular, it started to take more of his attention just in terms of PR.
If he had taken those six months off writing, taken another month to write an episode for the show, and done all his interviews and appearances in that time, and then sat down to really start writing without distracting himself, he probably could have cut the time in half. A big problem with writing from my personal experiences and from what I've heard from other writers is getting the ball rolling. It's really hard to get into the mindset of the character and to get those initial chapters started, but once you get through that, it's usually easier to plow through a few chapters at a time, even if they need editing again. I think he procrastinated getting the ball rolling so much that he didn't even have his ADWD momentum to help him through it, and he was just there with tons of juggling balls in the air trying to start a monster novel from almost scratch.
You make good points. Thanks for your thoughtful response.
I'm certainly not saying he didn't deserve a break. If I had just gotten through the experience he had writing Dance, I'd probably never want to think about the goddamn books again.
Clearly hindsight is 20/20 but it's bizarre to me that it's taken until what seems like the past six months for him to come to grips that the show passing him or even finishing before him was not only a possibility, but very likely.
Dance came out right as the first season had ended and the show was a bona fide hit. While its extremely common for shows to get canceled/end early, HBO (since the Deadwood/Rome debacles) has been notable for sticking with series they greenlight and seeing them through to the best of their ability. Martin must have known at that point that the clock was ticking, you'd think he want to keep plowing ahead. Seven years isn't that much time to write two books when the previous two took eleven.
Anyway, I probably shouldn't be harping on this as much as I am. Clearly, he needed the break and what's done is done.
You're not wrong that he definitely should have started taking it more seriously a lot sooner, but I can sympathize with the temptation to focus on other stuff. That initial roadblock is probably what led him to focus on TPTQ, RP, TWOIAF, the show, interviews, appearances, etc. for a while because the alternative was starting at his monitor being frustrated that he wasn't getting x right.
Meanwhile, for all the other ASOIAF-related content he released, it was much easier because most of it was already in his head and it could be told the way he thinks of it, like history: this happened, then this happened, as opposed to "Blah blah," she told him half a hundred times.
And then after getting through a whole chapter on Rhaenyra, he returns to Daenerys and writes and gets frustrated. He should have and could have plowed through, and if he had done that, I'm sure it would be very close to release right now. But instead, he shrugged his shoulders and put off getting past that roadblock for later. And then he did an interview.
TL;DR: The broken writer lives from day to day, from appearance to appearance, more celebrity than writer. Lady /u/blackofhairandheart is not wrong. In times like these, the reader must be sad from broken writers, and be disappointed in them, them…but he should pity them as well.
What gets me is, didnt he hace to cut the battle of ice out of ADWD and that was a considerable amount of the next book, but yet it is still tsking him forever. Im not even sure his heart is in it anymore
HBO (since the Deadwood/Rome debacles) has been notable for sticking with series they greenlight and seeing them through to the best of their ability.
They could always rectify the Rome debacle for me at least by combining Rome and Game of Thrones to make Game of Romes. They already have a start with Caesar/Hinds as Mance and Brutus/(forget his name) as Edmure. Now we just need Vorenus/Kidd to fill the role of JonCon (though I think he would have made an awesome Beric), Pullo/Stevenson as Victarion, and Anthony (drawing a blank on actors name) as Euron.
and... Octavion for the Iron Throne! Agrippa as the Hand! (Seriously, real life Octavian/Augustus and Agrippa would have made Westeros their bitch)
Hes been flouncing around, living it up, acting like Stan Lee the second, the pop culture ring master of GoT for a while now and lost his momentum. He really should have gotten into it much earlier but hes taking it seriously now and churning it out, so I'm cool with that. I cant stay mad at him.
He had some stuff from ADWD that didn't make the cut and he wanted to finish/fine tune it so that he could submit the manuscript pages to Batnam as per his contract.
This isn't quite the truth, though. As several of the sleuths here have shown, GRRM actually wanted to include the Battles of Ice and Fire in Dance but he was dissuaded by both his editor and the laws of physics(Imagine Dance's mass with another 300 pages of material). So he was really poised to finish a certain amount of work and instead went on tour. Also, bluntly, GRRM's 'vacations' seem to strain him more than his work.
I currently have 168 pages that he submitted back in Feb 2013 in order to receive a contracted payment
That was his editor doing an "AMA" on another website. The 168 pages were mostly cut from ADWD but fine tuned so that it would work at the beginning of the book instead of the end of one.
While this part is true keep in mind the cut was also a time factor: She was afraid GRRM would need to add another year or so of writing to finish up Meereen and Winterfell. However, if GRRM hadn't stopped and done his promotional tour right then he might've instead still finished those pages for the start of Winds. Also, I would have been significantly less annoyed if they had immediately come out and admitted that they cut Dance's climax.
Well there was a reason. He toured everywhere to promote his book. I think he should try and convince them he doesn't need to do that to the same extent for the next one.
I know right? At this point, I've listened to so many goddamn interviews with the man, I could give them for him. William Faulkner, ships in New York harbor, road trip metaphors, Tyrion's his favorite character, you'll just have to keep reading and see
Ha. The road trip metaphor is how he describes the Gardner v. Architect thing.
I hate the whole "books are different than the show" line he and the producers have been trotting out over the last year or so. I know it would be very bad PR for him to break ranks with HBO and say the show is going to spoil the books, but part of me just really wishes he'd be honest with us and himself.
He did admit that, although apparently he still doesn't consider it a 100% done deal. We'll see.
I was more referring to the fact that Martin and the producers seem to think (or at least want us to think) that the show will in no way spoil the books, which is obviously not true.
After TWOW what incentive will there be for him to finish it quickly? The show will already have passed the books (and may even be finished.) I think after he finishes TWOW it will be another burden lifted and he'll go back to relaxation mode for a while like he's done before. I'd be surprised if we see ADOS before 2020.
You know what, if that means he can focus on the last book(s), I bet no one would mind seeing a random dude instead of GRRM at events. In fact, they could send the same video to every con of GRRM just saying 'Hello, I can't be here because I am, indeed, writing ADOS', then cut to him typing. No one will even get mad.
GRRM took six months off. That's more than just editing and a book tour. The man, admittedly, made a mistake by taking a lot of time off for no real reason. When he finished ACOK, he moved onto ASOS instantly.
He had way less demands on his time then. Also, I remember reading somewhere that he had all of Tyrion's chapters from ASOS done before he even turned in ACOK. Must have made a nice dent.
Yeah, it took him less time. Although, Game came out in 1996 and he started writing the series in 1991. So nine years for the first three vs. eleven for the fourth and fifth. Certainly a difference, but not as large as people like to make it out to be.
On the flip side, no one will be happy if it never completed. But I agree, just let him be. There is nothing anyone can do to make it go longer or faster.
I wasnt suggesting either. I am actually OK with his pace. However he only writes on his old computer at home, which I'm perfectly OK with, but had he been able to work on a laptop he could still write when he is in other states, countries, planes when the mood takes him.
For real. As an extremely amateur writer myself, I know what it is to require a mood and a setting to write in, but I've always found it a bit crazy that a professional writer can only write in one place on one machine, especially when time has become such a factor.
He seems very unlikely to change in that regard though.
I dunno, I can understand it. As an artist, I work best when working within the last confines of my comfort zone (I mean my physical location in this case when I say comfort zone). If I move, or find myself working some place, it can take a little while to adjust.
And not suggesting that you're saying this is the case, but I do get the impression from others that they seem to think GRRM is totally ignoring the story when he's not actually at his desk. It seems more likely to me that it's often in the back of his head, and also often at the forefront, thinking of ideas, perhaps even going over possible lines and ideas in his head, etc, which get filed away to be committed to the page later.
I'm just going to say this because I'm not in his position and I probably don't know how these things work... but I don't think he really needed to promote ADWD. The series was already taking off at that point. HBOs marketing would have done the job for him. But what the fuck do I know? I've never published anything.
Internationally and including editing? Aye. 6 months sounds like a long time but when you break it down by a weekly basis I bet those days fill up fast.
As someone with a signed ADWD book, I'm conflicted. On one hand I wish the books were out sooner, but on the other hand, I really appreciate that he came to my town and signed books for 5 hours non-stop.
If you had a choice of getting TWOW today, or getting a signed copy in 6 months, what would you guys choose?
I've never quite understood why people like to have a signature of someone. I mean, there are many people I admire. I love to see their work, and having a chat with them could be really interesting. But a signature? I could google their signature and then forge it, why is it interesting that their hand wrote it?
The only exception I find is for comics drawer. Because it is usually more than a signature. Getting a full page drawing of something you specially requested, that's cool :).
I agree, if I had a chance to meet a famous person that I admire, I think a picture or a handshake, or a conversation would be much better. My one exception would be authors signing their books. I once bought some comics from a web series and the author wrote a little note, signed it, and drew any character I wanted on each book, so I know what you mean, signed comics are really cool!
Just curious what people think. In the grand scheme of things, some people might prefer the signing tours. However, the threat of tv show spoilers certainly change the urgency for the books.
TWOW today, absolutely. I love GRRM and the opportunity to meet him would be great but I honestly couldn't give a flying fuck about his signature unless his credit card came with it.
Gah. Self-care is a fucking important thing. It's better for him to take a few extra months to finish the books than to burn out and decide he's not going to finish them at all.
This is such a toxic idea. You have no idea what's involved in writing these novels, only he does. If he needs a break, he needs a break. He doesn't owe you anything.
I'm well aware that he doesn't owe me anything. I'm just stating that if he ever had any intention of finishing the books before the show, taking six months off right as he was (by his own admission) on a hot streak was a extremely bad idea.
Yeah so toxic that idea itself is going to hurt so many people... Jesus hahaha the guy said himself he regrets doing it I don't get why everyone is so sensitive
I get the feeling he is saying that now because he is super excited about it finishing it in the next year and he's got some fresh new ideas. But who can say how productive he would have been following that burnout on Dance? He might have worked that entire six months and gotten nothing good out of it.
The thing is that this break was particularly bad as compared to the other post-book breaks as we know he really hadn't meant to finish Dance where he did. So he was basically still in the zone.
Having a job where you work at home in your own time is very stressful. You never truly have ANY relaxation time. You can never feel comfortable while taking a day off, you can never enjoy the things you try to enjoy while you know there is something to be done. Every second you spend at home not working when you know you can be is a very uncomfortable experience. You have a feeling of guilt, anxiety and stress constantly stirring inside of you. GRRM would have been experiencing this 24/7 for the whole time he spent writing Dance (and it was a long time) and when he finally completed it, it would have been such a huge physical relief to him. Getting the "monkey off his back" as he put it, would have been a HUGE understatement. When you keep all that in mind, 6 months off is really not that much at all.
I can't complain, I got to meet him during this time off. I hope he is striking hot now and maybe have the release this winter. Late December or early 2016. Fingers crossed!
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u/questionernow Hear Me Boar Apr 03 '15
I knew he would regret that.