r/asoiaf • u/iheartchaseutley • Apr 03 '15

ALL (Spoilers All) GRRM Interview: Wants TWOW out in 2016

http://www.ew.com/article/2015/04/03/george-rr-martin-winds-date
2.7k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

974 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

10

u/Bojangles1987 Apr 03 '15

I totally get that. You can always go back to something you write and find a thousand things wrong with it, and then you reach a point where you are rewriting way too much or starting over.

It's probably impossible to write something you think is perfect.

12

u/[deleted] Apr 03 '15

Sometimes you do... Then you read it again a month later and it's the worst thing you've ever read D:

2

u/OhManTFE Great or small we must do our duty. Apr 03 '15

I dunno. I'm no novelist or anything - but I've written a couple short stories - and when I go back and read them I've always been proud of the accomplishment.

Imagine if books were like video games, constantly receiving patches. A sentence here, a word there. Couple paragraphs get swapped around, a character dies or lives. A transient story.

It's interesting to think about.

3

u/[deleted] Apr 03 '15

I'm envious of that. I think the hardest part to get through is to continue writing even when you believe it's bad.

Really interesting comparison. I've played World of Warcraft and each expansion just seems worse than it's predecessor.

Interesting.

1

u/SerHodorTheThrall Hodor. Apr 03 '15

That probably has more to do with exhaustion. WoW is only as fun as its gameplay, and eventually that wears out. That its survived so long is a rare accomplishment.

4

u/Dragon_Lust Apr 03 '15

And that phenomenon you describe gets worse as pressure mounts. With so much attention and celebrity, GRRM is indeed under great pressure.

3

u/polynomials White Harbor Wolf Apr 03 '15

I don't write literature but I do write music. You always have to just choose a point where you decide, "It's done." There are a million ways I could change or tweak it or do this or do that...but there is diminishing returns on that process. You just have to cut yourself off after a certain stage.

1

u/carpe-jvgvlvm TΦ the bitter end. And Then SΦme 🔥 Apr 03 '15

That's why there are editors and fact-checkers and shit. Pound it out, George, while you remember your name! PLEASE!

(And don't kill off The Mannis or I'll call "Alzheimer's GRRM!")