Why is The Winds Of Winter taking so long?

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[emilrobyn]

A wise man once commented: "King writes like it's his job. George writes like it's a hobby that took off in a way he wasn't prepared for and now that there's so much pressure it's not so fun anymore."

[NoViewReviews]

I got my grandmother into ASOIAF after the first season of GoT came on. She re-reads all the books regularly. She is now 92 years old and increasingly frustrated at the prospect that she will never get to read the ending...

[icecoldnut]

George is just breaking the trope of finishing a story, it's the ultimate cliff hanger

[marceljones]

One thing I find interesting is that (according to wikipedia, sourcing his blog) he considered an October 2015 deadline achievable in May 2015. And a year-end deadline achievable in September 2015. So about 8-9 years ago he thought he was almost there. This tells me that he must have thrown out pretty much everything he had written and started over in late 2015 or early 2016. And may have done the same several times since then.

[jpa]

I still have hope for Winds. It's the Dream of Spring I'm really worried about.

[fengusburnt]

All these issues will just be compounded with the finale book, I find it extremely unlikely he finishes the series.

[elpsykongroo]

Imo The problem with Grrm is that while he is a gardener, he is bad at pruning unnecessary branches. He gets too carried away by minor plots, characters and elaborate descriptions. It's like a hydra, every time he concludes a plot or character he creates several more in its aftermath. Best example is the red wedding and how that created even more spread out plot in riverlands.

[fyngolnoldor]

I think you make a great point about the type of writer George is. Being a "gardener" type of writer is great in the first few novels where George is happily planting seeds and expanding the world, taking his characters on separate journeys and so on. However, at some point, these threads that have spun in different directions need to come back together in a cohesive story and then an ending.

It's clear to me that George does NOT want to do that in his very heart of hearts. You can tell that from the way he introduces key characters with a lot of power to affect the world even in A Dance With Dragons and how he often avoids intersecting characters despite it being the logical thing to do (e.g. Arya Stark who is waylaid trying to go North then the Hound tries to take her to her mother and they arrive just slightly too late for the Red Wedding and then the same thing happens when the Hound tries to take her to Lysa).

I honestly hope he does manage to finish ASOIAF. Regardless of what else he writes in that universe, ASOIAF will remain his magnum opus and it being unfinished would cast a stain on his legacy.

[Ben.Pickett]

I love that more has probably been written about why winds is taking so long than in the actual book😂

[erindoyle]

I get the impression that what Martin always truly wanted was to work in television. And now, with the success of his novels, he has the opportunity to work on multiple popular, critically acclaimed tv shows for HBO. This is his dream, and this is what is getting his attention. I don't blame him, but I also don't think the series will ever be finished.

[bulrawg_bot]

The most meta practical joke of all time. “the winds of winter” is literally “the dream of spring”

[elpollojuan]

I think that the TV show ending was definitively similar to George's original idea, at least in terms of outline. But the poor reception of it created a huge problem for him to write his final books.

[theintrnationlst]

Being married to a writer, and hanging around the members of the HWA, I think I can recognize when a writer has lost the fire for a certain project and I'm afraid I see that in GRRM. I am certain he is being completely sincere when he says he intends to finish Winds and Dream, I am also certain he never will. Everyone, for any project, has to have that inner NEED to continue to make it to the finish line. Once that's gone, it's extraordinarily hard to get it back. Think about any project of your own that you never finished.

[kongwaguk]

George has changed as a person and writer over the 30 years that have passed since he started ASOIAF, and I wonder if he is hesitating about where the story is going. Having watched every interview and read every blog post, there are multiple instances where he has referenced this. Last year he conveyed this best when he said "Things are growing… and changing, as does happen with us gardeners. Things twist, things change, new ideas come to me, old ideas prove unworkable, I write, I rewrite, I restructure, I rip everything apart and rewrite again, I go through doors that lead nowhere, and doors that open on marvels". He goes on to talk about how the ending will be drastically different in the books and it is continuing to become more and more dissimilar. It's my own personal belief that George has even less of an outline than he lets on and that he is most likely struggling with and changing the character development and endings of Jon, Tyrion, Daenerys, and Bran.

[hezekiaB]

I’m not a George hater by any means, but I think he misunderstands his legacy. If Tolkien had never finished Return of the King no one today would be saying “but at least he gave us the Silmarrillion”. The main story has got to be wrapped up as he intends it or all the rest will fall by the wayside a few years after his death.

[nickkrasny]

A Dance With Dragons came out summer of 2011. I graduated high school a month before that. In this gap of time I graduated college, got married, had a kid (he’s almost FIVE) bought a house and The Winds of Winter still has no date in sight. He published A Game of Thrones back in ‘96 when I was a toddler. I’m hoping that we will see the day where this sixth novel comes out… it’s very likely going to be sometime in this decade, right? But A Dream of Spring is a novel I doubt I’ll ever see in my lifetime 😢

[stevenguevara]

Cormac McCarthy said “An Author should spend there time writing instead of talking about writing” George immediately came to mind

[juliem]

In my opinion, the most important and most difficult challenge of telling a complicated story is wrapping it up cleanly. The Lord of the Rings, The Dark Tower, and Harry Potter did phenomenal jobs of wrapping things up nicely by cleverly addressing numerous plot points and providing some surprises along the way. On the other hand there are (JJ Abrams?) that are good at raising interesting ideas, but are absolutely incapable of completing the thoughts. Perhaps due to some misguided notion of subverting expectations, laziness, or simply a lack of sufficient talent. I say this as an observation not a criticism. I hope I am wrong, but I am starting to think that GRRM has bitten off too much to chew. He is a magnificent author and has created a wonderful universe. But I do worry that he simply doesn't have the ability to untangle the hugely complicated story he has written thus far. The last book seemed to me to want to simplify things, but he introduced even more characters and plot lines. At some point the story needs to converge and not continue to spiral into new directions.

[Waliant]

Let’s not joke ourselves, the only reason George haven’t finished the Winds of Winter is that he doesn’t know how to end it. He have an idea how to wrap up certain plots in the story but on other plots, he is stuck and can’t wrap it up. The book has become too complicated for it’s own good. That’s why we can see him taking up other projects instead of completing the series.

[Rex]

Seems insane to work on spinoff projects over finishing the core work.