Has Martin stopped writing ASoIaF?

[JoanDrake]

I think he's bored with it and he knows that HBO will keep it going until the ratings drop and then finish on their own anyway so he's going to just let them. He still makes buckets of money and can do other stuff

It's not like I see that as a bad thing, really. I've noticed lots of authors do that with tv or movies. An author should know when he's done, and not keep on writing uninspired stuff.

 

[Ursa major]

Do you really mean ASoIaF, or are you referring to the TV show, Game of Thrones?

 

[JoanDrake]

ASoIaF. I know he only writes one of the episodes for GoT each season. I've been told it's already diverging from the books and I think he's done all that he's going to do. Once HBO finishes the series he'll let the video authors do book adaptations of the parts he didn't write to finish it. He keeps the cachet of his story being unfinished going as long as he can and he does nothing but collect checks. The writing life can be good.

 

[Ursa major]

A Song of Ice and Fire is the title of the book series and has nothing at all to do with HBO's Game of Thrones, in terms of production.

Unless you can link to a serious source of information saying that GRRM has stopped writing the books, I think I'm going to continue to believe that GRRM has reduced his involvement with the HBO series -- i.e. no longer scripting an episode per season -- in order to concentrate on writing the next book due, The Winds of Winter.

 

[JoanDrake]

Sorry, just idle speculation. I apologize if we're not supposed to do that. Just occurred to me that I would certainly do that in his place and I do so love to fantasize.

Could a mod be prevailed upon to change my thread title to a question of "Has Martin stopped ASoIaF?" I am sorry for doing that and really don't mean to upset anyone.

 

[Anushka Mokosh]

He didn't stop it though. Last information from his blog suggests that he is actively working on it. He had quitted writing episode per season and he had decided to not attend some events he planned on attending so that he could focus more on writing. Furthermore, the show already heavily diverged from the books so the two are more separate than ever. The show will not tell the same story Martin plans on telling.

 

[HareBrain]

Could a mod be prevailed upon to change my thread title to a question of "Has Martin stopped ASoIaF?"

I've changed it -- I clicked on it expecting a horrifying official announcement!

 

[Narkalui]

Srylanna' s right, he hasn't stopped. And if I were him I'd be just as frustrated as the fans at the amount of time it's taking for me to finish. And also if I were him, my response to the idea of letting someone else finish my baby would be 'over my dead body. Maybe not even then...'

If, hypothetically, I were an author trying to grind out a very long, complicated story, I'd be horrified if my publisher said 'why don't we hire a ghost writer to finish?'

 

[Koopa]

He kinda agreed to the latter, when he sold asioaf to hbo. i mean he still gets to finish the books, and they will differ from the tv show. But in a way he did allow others to mess with his baby before it was finished.

 

[JoanDrake]

Yes, there is that, but that's one of the things I like and admire about Martin. He is both an uncompromising artist and a completely commercial and overwhelmingly successful writer. I think he'd have little trouble with such a suggestion if he felt he had lost enthusiasm for a project.

But looking more carefully I see that what he's done is to give himself TWO wildly successful stories in different mediums. The man is even smarter than I had thought

 

[Anushka Mokosh]

He kinda agreed to the latter, when he sold asioaf to hbo. i mean he still gets to finish the books, and they will differ from the tv show. But in a way he did allow others to mess with his baby before it was finished.

I wouldn't really agree with that. Martin had stressed numerous times that the books and the show are separate and will always be so. Nobody is messing with his baby. XD

 

[Narkalui]

What she said

 

[MWagner]

ASoIaF. I know he only writes one of the episodes for GoT each season. I've been told it's already diverging from the books and I think he's done all that he's going to do. Once HBO finishes the series he'll let the video authors do book adaptations of the parts he didn't write to finish it. He keeps the cachet of his story being unfinished going as long as he can and he does nothing but collect checks. The writing life can be good.

If it was all about money, Martin would be cranking the books out as fast as he could. After all, he gets paid per book, and any ASOIAF book he writes at this point is going to be a massive bestseller.

 

[Narkalui]

Midnight queues at Waterstones...

 

[Koopa]

Well, my guess is once WoW is finished it will be easier from there on out. The middle part seems hardest to write in a story it seems to me.

Plus he'll have solved the meereen knot and stuff by then. By the end of aDwD it seemed almost untangled.

 

[Overread]

Don't forget he was going to put an 8 year or so time jump into the series and had written a large chunk of it before he scrapped the idea. So in effect he had to go back and re-write a huge segment of his story to make it work whilst keeping a lot of the up and rising characters younger.

In addition, from what I recall, he's not just writing one book outright; but also bits of the ones to come after. This likely makes it easier for him as it means with a firmly set future story its easier to ensure that the current doesn't end up with plot holes or him writing himself into a corner. IT might also mean that he can then publish the next few books with a quicker turn around.

He's no Robin Hobb with writing speed, but this is clearly a major work for him and I'd be very surprised if he gave up. Takes his time yes, but in the end we all agree we want quality. If we just want some ghost written quick fix well - there's legions of fan-fiction out there in the world one can read

 

[Narkalui]

I read one those once by a Margeary Tyrell Robb Stark shipper. It wasn't bad just a bit too 'nice' with a pre-emotive 'Happily Ever After'.

 

[Christopher Lee]

I really don't believe an author such as Martin would begin such an epic tale, get five books into it, and then say, "I quit." Nothing about that makes a bit of sense to me. The T.V. show is loosely based off of the books and his involvement with them has fallen drastically. They'll finish the show however they want to, while the author finishes his series of novels they way he planned to.

I don't even like the books, but this was just was just hanging wide open.

 

[Judderman]

I would think the show would finish in a similar way to the books, as so far the main differences are just reducing the number of characters by amalgamating their important actions onto existing characters, or just skipping less important sub-plots. But if not then the books really have more shocks to offer!

 

[Pedro Del Mar]

Think it's odd (and disappointing if I'm honest) that season 7 has ended and GRRM hasn't commented on his blog about the show or the story in any way apart from to say there are potentially 5 off-spring shows in the pipeline.