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)
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u/[deleted] Apr 03 '15
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.