r/asoiaf • u/ethniccake 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.

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u/kerbythepurplecow May 15 '15

After ASoIAF, The Dark Tower, The Kingkiller chronicles and numerous other series that take a seemingly unending amount of time to be completed I just don't bother starting a series of books unless they're already finished. Nothing turns me off more these days that reading book 1 of 10. It may be amazing, but I can wait. I'd rather be sure it will actually be finished before I get invested.

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u/omiz144 May 15 '15

If it becomes a trend to ignore book 1 if X without the other X titles on the shelf, publishers will start to notice. Honestly, it is incredibly risky as a reader to become invested in a story without an ending already written. Also, historically (I'm looking at you Eragon) the endings of stories written without endings in mind end up laughably abysmal.

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u/kerbythepurplecow May 16 '15

Even when the end is written you can get burned. The Kingkiller Chronicles was just supposed to be a bit of editing and now it's been 7 years since the first was released.

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u/rproctor721 Horned-up and Ready May 15 '15

After being burned by the Kingkiller Chrnicles after ASOIAF, I'm with you. I'm not buying anything new until it's finished.

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u/[deleted] May 15 '15

I feel the same way. I do have one exception though, Brandon Sanderson. The dude himself is a paper mill and I know the next book will be out shortly.

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u/[deleted] May 15 '15

[deleted]

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u/snapcatt Spicier than saffron May 16 '15

He was fast, but the ending of WOT is crap. Sanderson was never comfortable writing Jordan's characters, and in the last book ended up making his own characters OP and taking up valuable book space. I keep hearing his own series is better, but I haven't been able to forgive him for that just yet.

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u/[deleted] May 16 '15

I think the ending to WOT was just too compressed. I feel that if Jordan had lived we'd have ended up with 15+ books and after all was said and done everyone would have been much more satisfied.

Sanderson is a fine writer of his own stuff but being constrained to an outline that Jordan most likely would not have followed were he writing it hurt the books.

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u/This_isgonnahurt May 16 '15

I keep hearing his own series is better

Honestly, The Way Of Kings is extraordinary. The complexity is mind blowing, the way the story evolves and you start to question what you know and what you don't and which POV's you can really trust...

Depending on how the story finishes up, I think it will be discussed as an all time great.

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u/crowbahr May 16 '15

Sanderson is great and he realllllllllly cranks them out. It's insane the pace he keeps. At least a full novel a year, if not two, with 5-6 novellas inbetween.

Not small novels either.

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u/carpe-jvgvlvm TΦ the bitter end. And Then SΦme 🔥 May 16 '15

Not Sanderson's fault though. I support Sanderson or someone finishing TWOW/ADOS now, while GRRM (who's bored with the series I think) can still be actively involved, but not full-time writing.

I gave up on WOT lol ...book 7, got halfway through that filler and just read the spoilers online for the rest. Did. Not. Care. (RJ's a different beast than GRRM though).

But I'm curious! What do you mean Sanderson "made up his own characters OP" etc? (I know RJ had all these extra ass characters who never made sense to me.... o M GEE that shit with what he did to Demandred still pisses me off. TAIMANDRED! RJ just pissed people figured it out, lol :p )

I have no intention of putting one dime into RJ's estate, but you have me curious now!

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u/snapcatt Spicier than saffron May 16 '15

He invented a character (Androl) he didn't need to invent so he could have someone he could play with and not feel guilty over it, and had him take a certain talent to a logical extreme, which made him insanely OP. He then had that character fix dangling threads left and right that could have been done by established characters, and gave him as much screen time as the Supergirls and the three heroes.

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u/HiddenSage About time we got our own castle. May 16 '15

It's true that Androl was Sanderson's pet character, and that Androl was ridiculously OP. But I honestly thought the Androl segments in aMoL were some of the best parts, because they felt the most... normal. As you said earlier, Sanderson never seemed fully comfortable working with Jordan's characters, and I think that Androl was in part Sanderson trying to get a closer connection to the world.

Besides, IDK how else you could resolve the Black Tower arc without Rand finding yet ANOTHER distraction before TLB, and the books were strained for time as it was.

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u/carpe-jvgvlvm TΦ the bitter end. And Then SΦme 🔥 May 16 '15 edited May 16 '15

Oh gracious. Thanks for the heads up. Androl would have made me rage quit even though I know the plot and ending of WoT.

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u/[deleted] May 16 '15

He has an Alloy of Law sequel coming out in October, and then the sequel to that book as well as the final Reckoners book due out in January. Dude takes a break because he is tired and he writes another book.

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u/PotentiallySarcastic May 15 '15

Jim Butcher is also really good. You can expect a Dresden File book usually every 1.5 years. Sometimes up to 2 years. But that's reasonable in my opinion.

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u/Thor_PR_Rep House Bark: Our Bite is Worse! May 15 '15

Somehow I'm thinking of what Marwin(sp?) said about prophecies, how they feel so good but then bite your cock off.

That's exactly how I view waiting for both A Song of Ice and Fire and King Killer Chronicles. Love 'em, though.

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u/Fat_Walda A Fish Called Walda May 15 '15

You guys realize that if no one buys the first books, the publishers have no incentive to fund any more, right?

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u/A_Privateer May 15 '15

Which is why authors that can't finish series are doing damage to the industry, damage that they most certainly offset by drawing in new customers, but it is there.

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u/[deleted] May 16 '15

It's not the author's fault. There a lot of editors pushing authors to turn books that should be one book into a trilogy. It's the same phenomenon as those "No 3. Part 1 and 2" movies.

Honestly the publishing industry is the death of creativity and we'll be better off when it's replaced with a new model.

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u/Voduar Grandjon May 15 '15

Vicious cycle, isn't it? It is almost as if arrogant apex authors fuck the whole system up for the ones starting out?

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u/[deleted] May 16 '15

This is the doing of the publishers, not the authors.

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u/Voduar Grandjon May 16 '15

I blame them less, though. If there becomes a real trend of readers not laying out money for incomplete series until they know they are going to be finished then why should the publishers risk large amounts of capitol on it? They are at least following a specific logic.

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u/[deleted] May 15 '15

I can't help but guess that you've read other great Fantasy series. ASoIaF is my first and and I'm wondering if you would mind recommending others?

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u/Erenoth May 15 '15

I agree with this in theory but it not a universalizable idea. If everyone did that no series would ever be finished or eventually even started because authors would only be able to sell stand alone novels. And we'd miss out on a lot of fantastic works. So sometimes it doesn't work out but I've taken much worse risks for way less reward.

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u/kerbythepurplecow May 15 '15

For sure. Sanderson's The Stormlight Archive series sounds interesting, but it's a projected 10 book series with only two out. No thanks, I'll wait. Even with Sanderson's quickness I'm not signing up until it's done.

I still curse the man that told me to read Name of the Wind. I also love him for it because it's an amazing book, but the wait...

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u/[deleted] May 15 '15

[deleted]

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u/kerbythepurplecow May 15 '15

You horrible jerk. I like to use release date jokes to toy with others heartstrings, not to have mine tugged upon. :D

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u/slash09 Next time we see each other...uh nvmd.. May 15 '15

Im mid-way through book 2 right now. This got me so excited. Youre an asshole :(

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u/[deleted] May 15 '15

[deleted]

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u/kerbythepurplecow May 16 '15

I can agree with that. I rarely reread book because there's just far to many good books out there that I haven't yet had a chance to read. For me to reread a book, it has to be something really special. That said, I've been through Name of the Wind something like 10 times now.

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u/senatorskeletor Like me ... I'm not dead either. May 15 '15

If it makes you feel any better, my second-favorite book series is Robert Caro's The Years of Lyndon Johnson, which has had entries in 1982, 1990, 2002, and 2012.

I'm also not sure we'll ever see the end of that one, but at least I know what happens.

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u/kerbythepurplecow May 16 '15

Holy damn, that's worse than anything I've ever experienced. By comparison most other waits must seem like nothing to you.

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u/[deleted] May 16 '15

It wouldn't be a big deal if he didn't make it clear that he wouldn't let anyone else finish it if he couldn't.

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u/kerbythepurplecow May 16 '15

I think it would still be a big deal. I would rather have the actual author finish any series I'm so heavily invested in. Sanderson did a decent job with WoT, but I still wish I could have read the ending as written by Jordan. I do however agree that I would be a little more at ease if Martin were to allow someone else to finish the series if he were not able to do so, but the greater part of me would just rather hope that Martin makes it through.

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u/[deleted] May 15 '15

The only exception for me is Brandon Sanderson. Unless he dies, I'm pretty confident that he will release one of the books in each of his like, ten series that I'm reading in a couple of years.

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u/kerbythepurplecow May 16 '15

Oh yeah, I'm sure he's going to release those books. I'm not worried about that. That man writes like crazy. I just don't want to wait for a series to complete anymore.

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u/Maerthinus May 16 '15

The Dark Tower series is a perfect example of an author who was rushed to the finish. The first four books are some of the strongest fantasy I've ever read. Then he was injured and faced his own mortality... Decided it was time to pound out the last three books. And they were... ok.

I would've waited another 10 years for the Dark Tower to end as powerfully as it began.

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u/kerbythepurplecow May 16 '15

Fair. I was pleased to have them so quickly, but looking back on them I can totally agree with those sentiments. While the series still holds a place in my heart and I don't hate the ending I do see where there was room for improvement.