The Winds of Winter publishing date guesses?

I'm happy for everything that he produces because I know that the world would be a little grayer place if he hadn't given us what he has.

I don't know how he could have a 'responsibility' to produce a work of art, any more than you or I do. I mean, why haven't I created an international best-selling fantasy fiction series that captures the imagination of millions of readers? Am I failing in my responsibilities?

All that being said, I do feel disappointed when I see him working on other projects instead of what I want to read. Not disappointed in him like he has made a moral failure with his choice, but disappointed like I am when the weather doesn't cooperate with my weekend plans.
 
I'd put him on bread and water, in chains behind a wooden desk with his old writing machine on top of it, whilst a macho guy in woman's leather clothes whips him whenever a slacks off, and a few times even when he's working properly. he's get a bath by a hose once every 2 weeks, and i promise to leave his assistent alone as long as the qualiy of the tale is high-standard enough! That will show him!

PS: Nothing of the above is to be taken seriously, and i take no responsibilty whatsoever should a lunatic read this and put this to action.
 
Tywin said:
I don't know how he could have a 'responsibility' to produce a work of art, any more than you or I do. I mean, why haven't I created an international best-selling fantasy fiction series that captures the imagination of millions of readers? Am I failing in my responsibilities?
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Is that your job? If it is, then, yes, you should be actively producing content since that's what you're paid to do. And you should be doing it in a reasonable time frame or you may find yourself without a job. Or in the case of someone like GRRM, with less fans and therefore less income. There are people in *this thread* on this very friendly site who have stated that they've moved on from the series because they got tired of waiting. If you're an artist of any kind (actor, painter, musician, etc) then you really should be worried when you start losing fans because of your inability to produce satisfactory content because having fans is how you make your money. And one dissatisfied fan can quickly turn into two, two into four, four into eight, and so on. That said, it appears GRRM is big enough that he can absorb the blow of losing some fans due to his slow writing. I'm sure the HBO series and the royalties (or whatever) he receives from that help soften the blow as well. But that doesn't change the overall consequences.

Nowhere did I say it was his responsibility to produce an international best-selling fantasy series. That's really up to his fans whether or not it becomes a best-selling series. It's his responsibility to produce content though. To finish what he started. To get it done in a reasonable amount of time. His wait times between books are absurd and, as I've already pointed out, could probably be cut down if he allowed an editor to cut down on some of the bloat. But he doesn't allow that so I guess this situation won't change and that's that. I'll watch the ending on HBO and be happy with it.
 
Boaz said:
Internet tweets include...

"George R. R. Martin has no soul"

"Really want to slap the hell out of George R.R. Martin"

"YOU RUINED MY LIFE GEORGE R R MARTIN + IF YOU DIDN'T LOOK LIKE SANTA I'D PUNCH YOU IN YOUR STUPID OLD MAN FACE".
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I think most of these severe criticisms are from viewers of the TV series who have not read the books. There is a lot of other unacceptable criticism to other writers such as those of the Dexter finale. It was still a great series.

Boaz said:
Some claim the last two books are bloated... and I admit he has not trimmed the story of extra detail. I agree the pace is slower, but I feel that's natural with the introduction of so many new POVs, plots, and locations.
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That is really the problem with the last two books, there is simply too many additional POVs that so far seem somewhat disconnected or of minor importance to the main story at Kings Landing/Mereen/The Wall. Hopefully they will be interwoven well though I am a little worried by the lukewarm reaction to chapters that have been previewed so far.

As GRRM says, he is a slow writer. He doesn't crank out long novels in his epic tale at the same speed as his contemporaries like Robert Jordan (was) and Steven Erikson. The thing is, he is a rich man who is in his 60s and could easily have retired!
But this should be his life's main work. He surely wants to finish it. I just worry if he gets negative comments from the next book whether his enthusiasm and writing speed will dwindle further. And also I hope he doesn't have the arrogance of Stephen King to include a critical text before his final chapter (or even include himself!). These things could happen when someone gets old and grumpy. That is presuming (I hope) he has good health.
 
Sleepless said:
As i stumbled across this thread thought I would go and see what was out there on the web and came across two snippets that have probably been previously mentioned but anyway -

and
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He's not written more than a thousand pages. I sent that quote to him and he got quite irritated by it. What he said was that he expects both TWoW and ADoS to be more than a thousand manuscript pages long each, not that that's what he's already written.

Is it because he is busy with the show or do you think he has lost the plot (literally) in the main story?
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GRRM's involvement with the show is fairly minimal. He reviews the odd casting tape, he writes one episode per season (each one of his four episodes to date has taken 2 weeks or less to write), does a few interviews, records a commentary for the DVD (one per season, from his home I believe) and that's really it. He's not involved in the show on a day-to-day level because the show films in Northern Ireland, 5,000 miles away from where he lives in Santa Fe.

The reason AFFC took so long is that he spent 2 years trying to write a completely different Book 4 (the one with the infamous five-year gap), junked the whole thing and started again from scratch. The AFFC that was published took about three years to write, or about the same (once you smooth out the discontinuities between writing them and publishing time) as each of the first three books. ADWD was primarily delayed by substantial timeline problems, most notably the Meereenese Knot.

The process on TWoW has been a lot vaguer, but it appears that the primary issue is GRRM agreeing to take on a large number of side-projects once ADWD was done and all of them taking a lot longer than expected. That includes Lands of Ice and Fire and The World of Ice and Fire (which he ended up writing 250,000 words for rather than the originally-planned 20,000). About a year ago he firmly put a bar on any further side-projects, completed the ones he could, cancelled the others he couldn't and re-focused all his writing energies on TWoW. At the time he had about a quarter of the book done.

I can't see him saying, "No comment," every time he gets asked this on the press junket, so I suspect we'll get another update on TWoW soon (ish) and can maybe make some extrapolated guesses from there.
 
He's got 2 books to go to try and wrap up 5 books worth of material in a way that doesn't leave people scratching heads or in absolute rage mode. As long as I get to read/see the ending the way he intended it I will be happy. I am a patient person so if I have to wait 4 to 6 years to finally get to the end that is fine by me.
 
Reivax26 said:
He's got 2 books to go to try and wrap up 5 books worth of material in a way that doesn't leave people scratching heads or in absolute rage mode. As long as I get to read/see the ending the way he intended it I will be happy. I am a patient person so if I have to wait 4 to 6 years to finally get to the end that is fine by me.
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I think that's fair, but what's concerning people more is that HBO will almost certainly reach the ending before him (in 4 years or less) and will leave people in a quandary whether to watch the TV show or wait for the books.
 
I will watch it. It has been reported that he has told the guys at HBO how its supposed to end in the event that something were to happen to him before he finishes the books.


I would much rather read it but at this point I will take what I can get.
 
Reivax26 said:
He's got 2 books to go to try and wrap up 5 books worth of material in a way that doesn't leave people scratching heads or in absolute rage mode. As long as I get to read/see the ending the way he intended it I will be happy. I am a patient person so if I have to wait 4 to 6 years to finally get to the end that is fine by me.
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I hope that what comes out does leave people "in absolute rage mode." That's what has always been fun about the series.

I also hope that he writes what he wants to write, not what we as fans want to read. This is his art, and his child. We get to hopefully be entertained by it, but it is his.
 
I agree Tywin, it is his to finish how he sees fit. I just hope I don't have to wait 10 years to do it. I have reread the series several times and have ran out of things to read that I actually enjoy.
 
Koopa should read the Kushiel series by Jaqueline Carey.

Otherwise, I'm just going to take the SofIandF as it comes, HBO or book. I'm glad that we are going to get some answers one way or another, unless HBO cancels the series. It will be a very different process than we are used to if they flip flop in delivery.
 
I hope he stays in good health so that he can finish writing the series. As long as he finishes the series, I have nothing to complain. I am just worried that he will be like Robert Jordan, dying before he can finish the series. In Robert's case, Sanderson does a good job of finishing the series. But who can replace Martin if something bad happens to him?
 
I wouldn't know how to categorize the Kushiel series (laugh). But the (alternative Earth)SFF world is definitely more sophisticated and fully fleshed than usual. Koopa brought up whips. And yes there can be a little titillation in SFF--especially the covers.

Narnia, well, it's a wonderful children's series, but isn't it a little disappointing that Susan is evil just when (and maybe because?) she starts liking boys? What message is that? Or in Tolkien, everyone seems eerily chaste, but what can you do?.

Actually I like that GRRM tackles some of the variations in sex, (some are horrifying though) and the TV series has some soft porn elements that are a little funny sometimes with the infohumps. Overall, if that is what is needed to continue programming, than so be it.

















Na
 
Tolkien was a devout Catholic and responsible for Lewis's conversion from atheism to Christianity. So it's not that surprising they might have been rather repressive when it comes to sex. I do think GRRM's attitude to sex is more realistic - at least he acknowledges it exists!

Someone asked further back who could finish the series if GRRM 'does a Jordan'. I'd vote for Joe Abercrombie.
 
So it's not that surprising they might have been rather repressive when it comes to sex.
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I don't think they were. Clearly Lewis wasn't going to be putting sex in a children's series and the same was true for Tolkien up to a point. But even Tolkien had an incestuous relationship (if unwitting in that case) in The Silmarillion.
 
Interesting comment by GRRM on his blog: so far TWoW has not required anything even approaching the amount of rewriting needed on AFFC and ADWD. So when GRRM works on TWoW, that means he's getting the plot forwards and writing new material, not endlessly revising old stuff.

Encouraging. Although he still doesn't make any comments on how far along he is :)
 
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