The thing is though I thought he said he had the Dance finished when A Feast for Crows was published and he had to seperate them because the book would have been too big??? So if he had most of the story done already, whats he doing to it now?
The 'pre-split AFFC' (containing all the characters from the published AFFC and ADWD) was not complete by the time GRRM chose to split it. He estimated it still had a fair amount of work to do on it, but was already far too big (bigger than ASoS) to publish in one volume. When the splitting process was complete the material he had left over for ADWD seems to have equated just over 30% of what will be in the final book. George has frequently said 'half' in interviews, probably because it's easier to say, but his earlier statement that he had roughly 500 manuscript pages for a 1400 MS-page book (which will be about 800-850 pages in hardback, not counting appendices) reveals that this was an understandable exaggeration.
So, to start off with GRRM had to write 70% of a new novel from scratch. Then during the writing process he chose to go back and redraft some of the completed chapters. He said on his Notablog that he'd rewritten all of Jon's chapters, and comparisons between the early versions of the first few Dany chapters read out at conventions years ago and the version currently on his website reveal some differences, indicating he's rewritten them as well. More recently he spoke of 'structural changes' to the book to strengthen both the novel and the overall series, although what exactly this involves is unknown. However, in the same blog entry he also indicated that work on the novel is going much more smoothly than before.
If we accept that the UK release alone of ADWD will need a similar editing turn-around time to ASoS (4 months) or AFFC (5 months), the chances of it coming out before the end of 2007 are now quite slim, unless he finishes within the next few weeks. Publishers usually don't release books in December or January because they tend to get lost in the Christmas and New Year sales rushes, meaning that spring 2008 is now the earliest, most likely release date for the book at the moment.
Compared to the wall of silence GRRM presented fans with regarding AFFC until the final year of writing, I think the problems associated with the wait for ADWD (only just now crossing the 20-month line) have been due to GRRM's extremely positive optimism regarding the book, and his plan to release the book 12 months after AFFC, which in retrospect seems extremely ambitious. Perhaps aware of this, GRRM has now resolved not to make any further comment on the book save in the most general terms until it is completed.
If it is any consolation, after
A Dance with Dragons is released we should get the new
ASoIaF RPG and
The World of Ice and Fire within 12-18 months of that, and the
ASoIaF TV series and
The Winds of Winter* hopefully a further 12-18 months after that.
*Although this is pure guesswork, I think a 3-year turnaround apiece for the two novels to come after ADWD is fairly realistic.
