Honestly, I can’t say I blame Martin, even if the result isn’t to my liking (not having a proper ending to a saga as good as ASOIAF).
If I were his age and had the same financial means, I probably wouldn’t want to spend my time writing about a saga I’ve perhaps lost enthusiasm for. I get it. Life is like that. Sometimes things lose their “magic” and the reason we were once passionate about them is no longer there.
The difference is that since he has a certain financial capacity that most people don’t, he can afford to let it go.
But seriously, I get it. And I also get his reluctance to say it clearly to the public, even if it seems dishonest or disingenuous to some.
Known_Week_158 on
He’d be getting far less criticism had he not constantly made promises, broke them, made new ones, and broke them.
The ASOIAF series are incredibly complex but a promise is a promise and he isn’t keeping his.
mutantraniE on
It’s not about how long you worked on it, it’s about not publishing until you’re done. The Hobbit is a complete work. The Lord of the Rings is a complete work. They were written and when they were finished they were published. The Lord of the Rings was split into three parts and published in July of 1954, November 1954 and October 1955. The Return of the King was slightly delayed because Tolkien was finishing the appendices, but that amounted to less time than the wait between the first two books in Martin’s series.
Actually being able to finish a longer work is a skill.
Key-Bet-2615 on
His interview with King said it all.
OrangeSpaceMan5 on
Even thought I personally think GOT is the superior work , gotta respect a man who finishes his work on time
Exnixon on
OP is an expert on writing popular, critically acclaimed, intricately-plotted, genre-defining fantasy epics, has done so many times, and doesn’t see what GRRM’s problem is.
N_dixon on
GRRM is too busy reviving defunct railroads at the moment. Seriously, he was one of the buyers of the Santa Fe Southern, which last ran in 2014, and has resumed operations as “Sky Railway” with big wolves (of course) painted on the equipment.
BeduinZPouste on
As much as I hate grum not writting ASOIAF, he is doing other stuff. Wrote for Elden rign, works on Wild Cards, works with HBO.Â
Daniel_Potter on
He also wrote it during ww2.
This is from the foreword to the second edition (1966).
> The delay was, of course, also increased by the outbreak of war in 1939, by the end of which year the tale had not yet reached the end of Book One. In spite of the darkness of the next five years I found that the story could not now be wholly abandoned, and I plodded on, mostly by night, till I stood by Balin’s tomb in Moria. There I halted for a long while. It was almost a year later when I went on and so came to Lothlórien and the Great River late in 1941. In the next year I wrote the first drafts of the matter that now stands as Book Three, and the beginnings of chapters I and III of Book Five
> It was during 1944 that, leaving the loose ends and perplexities of a war which it was my task to conduct, or at least to report, I forced myself to tackle the journey of Frodo to Mordor. These chapters, eventually to become Book Four, were written and sent out as a serial to my son, Christopher, then in South Africa with the RAF.
> The crucial chapter, “The Shadow of the Past’, is one of the oldest parts of the tale. It was written long before the foreshadow of 1939 had yet become a threat of inevitable disaster, and from that point the story would have developed along essentially the same lines, if that disaster had been averted. Its sources are things long before in mind, or in some cases already written, and little or nothing in the war that began in 1939 or its sequels modified it.
> The real war does not resemble the legendary war in its process or its conclusion. If it had inspired or directed the development of the legend, then certainly the Ring would have been seized and used against Sauron; he would not have been annihilated but enslaved, and Barad-dûr would not have been destroyed but occupied. Saruman, failing to get possession of the Ring, would in the confusion and treacheries of the time have found in Mordor the missing links in his own researches into Ring-lore, and before long he would have made a Great Ring of his own with which to challenge the self-styled Ruler of Middle-earth. In that conflict both sides would have held hobbits in hatred and contempt: they would not long have survived even as slaves.
Tap4Red on
Mean-spirited
ruin on
If he’d just admit “this project has really gotten away from me, its become so much bigger than i ever dreamed and I’m unfortunately just not going to be able to follow it through to it’s conclusion, I’m so sorry”, then people would get off his ass. At this stage people feel their intelligence is being insulted by this man who keeps making vague promises and putting out nothing while also taking on several other projects that are sizeable in scope.
elizabeththewicked on
He needs to just ask Joe Abercrombie to write them from here
12 Comments
Honestly, I can’t say I blame Martin, even if the result isn’t to my liking (not having a proper ending to a saga as good as ASOIAF).
If I were his age and had the same financial means, I probably wouldn’t want to spend my time writing about a saga I’ve perhaps lost enthusiasm for. I get it. Life is like that. Sometimes things lose their “magic” and the reason we were once passionate about them is no longer there.
The difference is that since he has a certain financial capacity that most people don’t, he can afford to let it go.
But seriously, I get it. And I also get his reluctance to say it clearly to the public, even if it seems dishonest or disingenuous to some.
He’d be getting far less criticism had he not constantly made promises, broke them, made new ones, and broke them.
The ASOIAF series are incredibly complex but a promise is a promise and he isn’t keeping his.
It’s not about how long you worked on it, it’s about not publishing until you’re done. The Hobbit is a complete work. The Lord of the Rings is a complete work. They were written and when they were finished they were published. The Lord of the Rings was split into three parts and published in July of 1954, November 1954 and October 1955. The Return of the King was slightly delayed because Tolkien was finishing the appendices, but that amounted to less time than the wait between the first two books in Martin’s series.
Actually being able to finish a longer work is a skill.
His interview with King said it all.
Even thought I personally think GOT is the superior work , gotta respect a man who finishes his work on time
OP is an expert on writing popular, critically acclaimed, intricately-plotted, genre-defining fantasy epics, has done so many times, and doesn’t see what GRRM’s problem is.
GRRM is too busy reviving defunct railroads at the moment. Seriously, he was one of the buyers of the Santa Fe Southern, which last ran in 2014, and has resumed operations as “Sky Railway” with big wolves (of course) painted on the equipment.
As much as I hate grum not writting ASOIAF, he is doing other stuff. Wrote for Elden rign, works on Wild Cards, works with HBO.Â
He also wrote it during ww2.
This is from the foreword to the second edition (1966).
> The delay was, of course, also increased by the outbreak of war in 1939, by the end of which year the tale had not yet reached the end of Book One. In spite of the darkness of the next five years I found that the story could not now be wholly abandoned, and I plodded on, mostly by night, till I stood by Balin’s tomb in Moria. There I halted for a long while. It was almost a year later when I went on and so came to Lothlórien and the Great River late in 1941. In the next year I wrote the first drafts of the matter that now stands as Book Three, and the beginnings of chapters I and III of Book Five
> It was during 1944 that, leaving the loose ends and perplexities of a war which it was my task to conduct, or at least to report, I forced myself to tackle the journey of Frodo to Mordor. These chapters, eventually to become Book Four, were written and sent out as a serial to my son, Christopher, then in South Africa with the RAF.
> The crucial chapter, “The Shadow of the Past’, is one of the oldest parts of the tale. It was written long before the foreshadow of 1939 had yet become a threat of inevitable disaster, and from that point the story would have developed along essentially the same lines, if that disaster had been averted. Its sources are things long before in mind, or in some cases already written, and little or nothing in the war that began in 1939 or its sequels modified it.
> The real war does not resemble the legendary war in its process or its conclusion. If it had inspired or directed the development of the legend, then certainly the Ring would have been seized and used against Sauron; he would not have been annihilated but enslaved, and Barad-dûr would not have been destroyed but occupied. Saruman, failing to get possession of the Ring, would in the confusion and treacheries of the time have found in Mordor the missing links in his own researches into Ring-lore, and before long he would have made a Great Ring of his own with which to challenge the self-styled Ruler of Middle-earth. In that conflict both sides would have held hobbits in hatred and contempt: they would not long have survived even as slaves.
Mean-spirited
If he’d just admit “this project has really gotten away from me, its become so much bigger than i ever dreamed and I’m unfortunately just not going to be able to follow it through to it’s conclusion, I’m so sorry”, then people would get off his ass. At this stage people feel their intelligence is being insulted by this man who keeps making vague promises and putting out nothing while also taking on several other projects that are sizeable in scope.
He needs to just ask Joe Abercrombie to write them from here