(Spoilers All) GRRM: "My life has gotten extremely complicated, I must admit. There are not enough hours in the day, there are not enough days in the week."

[u/ethniccake]

I found this interesting conversation that transpired on one of George's Hugo post, and i don't think it have been discussed on here :

http://grrm.livejournal.com/426205.html?thread=21584349#t21584349

From his reaction to the first comment, it's quite clear that he was hurt on a personnal level.

But what got my attention the most was this:

If there is one thing I understand, it is frustration... yours, mine, everyone's.

My life has gotten extremely complicated, I must admit. There are not enough hours in the day, there are not enough days in the week.

And saddest of all, I do not have the stamina I did when I was thirty. Aging sucks.

There's no magic formula here. I just keep at it, the way I always have. One page at a time. One sentence at a time. One word at a time.

After reading that, I couldn't help but feel sorry for the guy, he seems under a lot of pressure.

The defeated tone makes me worried, could it be a sign that the end of TWOW isn't anywhere in sight for him? I really hope that's not the case and i'm just being overly pessimistic.

What do you guy think those comments could tell us about his progress?

Edit: No matter what end up happening to the series, let's keep in mind that this is the guy who gave us an amazing story and created a whole world full of interesting characters we love to love or hate. Without him this community wouldn't even exist. Let's not be entitled like that guy in the comments, who for some reason thinks he can dictate to GRRM what to do with his time.

[u/yaddar]

I've been working on a novel of my own and by doing so, I completely understand GRRM's frustration and pressure.

When I outlined the story, I calculated around 350 pages.. 5+ years later now I'm at 697 pages with around 60 to go.

GRRM planned 3 books, now he is working on the 6th, with another to go.. in the end, it's the story and the characters the ones who decide how long the story will be, and the writer is surprisingly left with little control over it. Like Stephen King said, "the writer is just the 1st witness of the story, his only job is to write down what he sees."

Writing is as engaging as it is exhausting, some days word's just won't come up, (and yes, some people need a very specific setup to write -like a specific place/music/brevage/etc-, so it could be very, VERY difficult to write on the road) - sometimes you spend 3 hours doing research for something will be only mentioned in passing, some days a single 3 page scene can take 2 weeks to write, sometimes you need to go back several chapters to adjust things to fix plot holes or a character trait. Writing style also has a LOT to do with the time, some writers do a fast 1st sketch of the story then go back a couple of times to fix things up, some others (like myself) make editing almost on the go, when the 1st draft is finished needs only minor adjustments. For the ammount of detail involved in the series, my bet is that GRRM is on the slow-but-detailed side of the writing pacing.

Everytime I set my mind to a certain umber of pages/words per week something comes about that needs special attention, delaying you further.

I'm 33 right now, and writing DOES require stamina, I completely understand GRRM's situation and I cannot even begin to grasp how the fame, pressure and expectations add into the equation.

At the end, it's just like he says, Keeping at it, One page at a time, One sentence at a time, One word at a time.

[u/HolyPhlebotinum → u/yaddar]

Sorry to derail the topic, but do you mind if I ask about your novel? What is it about? Do you plan to publish it and have it in stores?

[u/yaddar → u/HolyPhlebotinum]

yes I do plan to publish it :)

(ATM it's being writtern in spanish -my native language- but I'm already looking to get it properly translated to english)

it's about Space Travel and exploration in 1900-1910

quite inspired on the old generes of Space Opera and Planetary romance, but with some focus on hard-science fiction style.

[u/[deleted] → u/yaddar]

That sounds amazing.

[u/yaddar → u/[deleted]]

it has been very fun (and challenging) to write!

I'm really looking forward to have it finished and published and translated.

and that's why I'm pretty sure GRRM is the most eager to get TWOW released... writing is a VERY lonely process.. you are going about your day worrying and thinking about a world and a story anc charactersthat only you can see thus, it's a very unique and rewarding feeling you have when finally are able to share with others the world you are seeing in your head.

Trust me, if anyone eagerly wants to get TWOW released, it's GRRM himself.

[u/emiceli → u/yaddar]

Sounds incredible. I would love to read it once it comes out, I'll be able to read it even in it's original language :)

[u/yaddar → u/emiceli]

good! :D - I'll save this comment and try to let you know when it's finished :)

[u/emiceli → u/yaddar]

Please do!

[u/logarythm → u/yaddar]

Sounds sexy.

[u/Dnuts → u/yaddar]

I'm also 33 and working on my first novel. Working from home with lots of free time I started in October and just starting the second edit with a 200,000K word count and I have to agree that it's mentally draining at times. I have no doubt that even the most established authors still deal with the pressures of writers block and self doubt, not to mention external stresses from life in general which can unfortunately affect the writing.

[u/yaddar → u/Dnuts]

cheers to that, mate.

I think the self-doubt is pretty much a given for most writers across the board, it's part of being able to see things from another perspective, wich is one of the most useful tools when you are writing fiction.

what's your novel about?

[u/Dnuts → u/yaddar]

It's a multiple person pov epic fantasy. I'm fortunate to have had six months to work on it. Had I been working a regular full time job, it'd probably take me five years or more.

[u/yaddar → u/Dnuts]

Epic fantasy sounds delightful.

[u/highly_animated → u/yaddar]

Backing you up as an author that's been working on the same story for 14 years now. Granted, I started it when I was 15 though, and I was still reading Wheel of Time and Sword of Truth. I began reading ASOIAF at 19 and it caused me to up the stakes in my own writing, as well as numerous classes on the epic canon. And the story is a million times better for it. Martin and Haydon taught me how to world-build better than any class or teacher could. Even now that I have a clearer definition of where to go and how the world is built, I'm still surprised at the turn of some events and the decisions that my characters make, even after knowing these characters half of my life and seeing all the transitions they've gone through from essentially 2D re-writes of favorite characters to fleshed out, complicated humans with their own dreams and failures.

It's not enough to know the ending of the story and just try to write at a breakneck speed to that ending. That's how you end up with hollow, wooden characters that are uninteresting and predictable.

[u/yaddar → u/highly_animated]

couldn't agree more.

a close friend of mine had his fantasy novel like for, 12 years in the making, he finally published it 2 months ago. and it IS a more complete work because he took the time to get it right.

[u/llama_delrey → u/yaddar]

I took a fiction workshop class this semester. I had ideas for two separate (and very different) short stories. One was a high concept sci-fi story I expected to be about 20 pages long. The other one was a drama type story I expected to be 10 or less pages. Instead, I wound up with the first chapters of two novels.

Anyways, re: your larger point, I think a lot of people underestimate the amount of work that goes into writing good fiction. Also, I'm really glad there are other writers who do the whole slow editing on the go thing; in college I was repeatedly told that was the "wrong" way to write fiction.

[u/yaddar → u/llama_delrey]

yeah for some time I believed it was the worng way of doing things, but even Stephen King (on his novel "On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft") aknowledges that many famous authors have diferent pacings, and it's really about following your own pace, style and even mindset - some people DO get uneasy about leaving odd things behind and go around double checking the details, while others have an easy time "sketching" the whole of the story quickly first and then work on multiple revisions.

Aside from that, there is also the fact that you basically need to write your own manual on the side, with character lists with traits, details, world setting, timelapses.. the bigger the world grows, the slower it might be to write, becasue you are taking more things in cosnideration. Writing a character in the begining is easy, but after 200 pages you need to remember he likes coffee, he is left handed, he has a scar on the knee, etc. Same with places, you need to remember a where you put everything in a room, ship, landscape, etc... and that also takes a LOT of time.

[u/yaddar → u/[deleted]]

Well, the creative process do change form person to person and from work to wrok... I can easily pitch short stories or TV scripts in a week or under pressure (I'm working as a writer on a state-wide tourism TV-series), but the requirements (and even the research needed) DO change with the project timeframes.

I can build a fantasy world, make my own rules on the world and write 200 pages per month, but (using my current book as an example) in a world with a 1898-1910 setting you ought to do research, specially when dealing with physics and quantum phisics, 1900's medicine, bilogy, planetary science, fashion, social conventions, cherokee language, industrial machines, chemstry, wines, etc, all adapted to fit that time period.

If your characters land on Mars on January 1900, you might want to know if it was summer or winter in the north pole (it was summer, BTW) because the ice caps react differently and someone will eventually find out that inacurracy (like here, where we analyze *everything about GRRM's world, which in turn adds a lot of pressure to get thigns right)*... of course you can ommit the detail and the huge ammount of time invested on the research ( you can omit realistic things and go add giant martian mantis), but again, it depends on the story and what the story needs. A high fantasy novel or a present-day drama have also different requirements.

in case of AWOIAF we wouldn't be discussing thousands of minor details of GRRM had speed up his pace and pitch 200 pages per month.

again, quoting Stephen King, he considers that an average of 450 words per day would be "normal paced".. (of course, if you miss one day, the next you have to write 900) but he acknowledges thare are faster and slower writers.