I think the mistake GRRM made was to open his writing process, as well as his life, up to his fans. Given the nature of his many projects, and the incessant pervasiveness of today's social media, doing so may have been inevitable and impossible NOT to have done so, but as far as I know, there are other authors that quietly write their books and release them when they're done.
The problem arose though, that in an attempt to keep his fans up to date and informed, he created the feeling in some people that he had been disingenuous in his initial estimates of when Dance would be finished.. I think that those early estimates, coupled with GRRM blogging about his normal (for a writer of his caliber) life has pissed a lot of people off, but that may be more symptomatic of the times than anything else.
Everyone is a critic today, and everyone not only knows the answer to everything, but they also willing to share it with everyone else, and sometimes take the extreme action of clubbing someone over the head, metaphorically of course, if that person doesn't conform to what they believe reality should be. I've said before that GRRM owes me a completed series, I just happen to believe that he's worked as hard as he could have to produce it.
The truth for me is fairly simple. People who don't know the difference between you and you're, their and there, or past and passed are criticizing someone who is perhaps the best writer of their lifetime. If it's so easy to crank out about 1600 manuscript pages and have them all fit together like a 400,000 word jigsaw puzzle that just happens to be a piece of art painted with words after it's done, then THEY should write their own epic fantasy series and stop whining.
Sorry to be standing on a soap box so early in the morning. My wife is a college professor and also a performing artist (dance), so over the years i've come to understand how little critics of all types, ranging from the semi-literate internet critics who just like to complain, to the professional ones who get to destroy work that they could never produce and have very little understand of how it was even created, just how cruel and wrong these so-called experts can be. My apologies btw for that horribly constructed sentence. I blame lack of coffee and food. Anyway, thank goodness my wife performs as part of teaching and doesn't have to deal with these idiots, but i know many of her firends who do. The critics invariably have no clue as to what they're talking about.
OK, I'll quit while I'm behind. move along folks, nothing to see here. I'll go find a lawn sign to yell at.
