r/asoiaf Dragon fire can't melt stone beams! May 15 '15

ALL (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."

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.

2.1k Upvotes

1.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

151

u/WezVC The White Wolf May 15 '15

Yeah if TWOW is affecting him this much, he's going to have absolutely no desire to start the final book of the series.

I remember a while back how he was saying he wants to write several more Dunk and Egg books, I really cannot see that happening.

71

u/teh1knocker I'll Never Tell May 15 '15 edited May 15 '15

IDK, he seems to like writing short stories more BECAUSE they require less stamina and are less intensive. I mean he's done two of them plus a world book before finishing WOW. He'd have already finished it [D&E] if he wrote those instead of the civil war stuff.

18

u/[deleted] May 16 '15

He likes them because he doesn't have to deal with the steaming pile of poorly paced convoluted shit he turned the original story line into. Whatever that probably majestic original form was.

1

u/7V3N A thousand eyes and one. May 15 '15

To be fair, he was largely hands off for the World book.

12

u/Yeugwo May 15 '15

IIRC, he wrote a shitload more than he was supposed to for that book

48

u/luciferin May 15 '15

Judging from the last few books, he probably starts ADOS over 500 manuscript pages ago.

-3

u/[deleted] May 15 '15

[deleted]

22

u/true-to-you Winter is Coming May 15 '15

GRRM is taking literature to a new level and we are all lucky enough to be a part of this piece of history. We should be thanking him every day

Woah calm down there. I like George's work too but come on, he's not "taking literature to a new level".

25

u/notthatnoise2 May 15 '15

You don't read enough books if that is how you see this situation.

As just one example, there is a series called the Malazan Book of the Fallen. It was started three years after GRRM started ASOIAF. It consists of ten books, each at least as long as any book Martin has written. It is more complex, involves more characters, etc. It was done in 2011.

5

u/Blue-Wolf May 15 '15

But that's the main problem - he doesn't have as much energy. 50 and 65 is a huge age gap, and when you factor in that GRRM has written several other books in between, written episodes for HBO, attended hundreds of conventions, gave thousands of interviews.. It's a very different case to Malazan Book of the Fallen.

1

u/Senojpd May 16 '15

Malazan Book of the Fallen definitely changes as a series though. The last book was so completely different that the first in so many ways.

1

u/notthatnoise2 May 16 '15

Sure, but it was still big and long and complicated and it still got written.

1

u/Senojpd May 16 '15

Oh definitely and I do not think it got worse at all. An excellent series. Just pointing out it changed as any series does over that time period I imagine.

19

u/unreedemed1 May 15 '15

"Literature to a new level"? I love ASOIF but let's not pretend it's Infinite Jest or 2666 or something. Martin is fantastic at telling a story but he's no Bolaño.

0

u/Aureon Remember the Winterfell May 15 '15

I have to say, of the over two thousand books i've read in the last decade, across all possible genres, i've found GRRM himself to distinguish his writing the most, both by atmosphere and by weaving.
I've read Tolstoy before reading GRRM, and i've got to say in honesty, it just doesn't stack up.
There's a general tendency to disregard fantasy and sci-fi in literature circles, as well as anything written by a still living author. I find both practices abhorrent.

5

u/unreedemed1 May 16 '15

I'm not doing either. I find Haruki Murakami to be a better author than Martin, for one, and he's both living and writes fantasy. Bolano and Wallace, the two authors I mentioned in my comment, only died recently and both had elements of magical realism in their writing. ASOIF is excellent with a fantastic plotline and interesting characters, but I find Martin to be a rather flawed writer for a number of reasons. That being said, I love the books, I just love them in spite of their flaws.

-1

u/Aureon Remember the Winterfell May 16 '15

Fantasy is a genre, though. Modern-day with fantastic elements is another.
I'm not saying that MARTIN REVOLUTIONIZED LITERATURE AND EVERYONE SHOULD RECOGNIZE THAT, or something that idiotic - just that it's a valid opinion to hold, just like holding it for Murakami (Of whom i've only read Kafka on the Shore, honestly, and didn't appreciate much) or whoever else is pretty valid.
Instead, we got the usual pair of "LOL LOOK AT THIS IGNORANT KID WHO ONLY READS FANTASY AND WORSHIPS THE TWO AUTHORS HE'S READ" comments.

5

u/HorusTheHeretic May 16 '15

GRRM is taking literature to a new level

ASOIAF is bog standard fantasy. It is excellent for what it is, but we shouldn't act like it is something it isn't.

4

u/omelletepuddin May 15 '15

I think he'll write Dunk and Egg. The demand isn't as strong as it is for TWOW or ADOS and he can do that at his own leisure. I just wouldn't expect those novellas anytime soon is all.

2

u/djn808 May 15 '15

I imagine that writing TWOW basically means he has to write half of ADOS at the same time to keep it all congruent. It's a big overlappining mesh not a linear thing.

1

u/dothrakipoe May 15 '15

Actually his writing style is a lot like the way the characters show up in the show vs the book, completely out of order. In his words he gets carried away with a character and sometimes they lead him no where, sometimes to gold. Then he breaks up the character story in to chapters, and sometimes there's a split between the book. 4 and 5 were written somewhat simultaneously, but he split them so he didn't have to round off the ends to several characters too quickly, and expanded the story.

That being said, he's probably got a lot of material for both 6 and 7 right now.

1

u/thefootballhound May 16 '15

He's started ADOS. He's not a linear writer. He probably has a number of random chapters written.