Winter is coming

Columbob wrote: Sales of the series (books) was around 9 million copies when the tv series started to air. Now it's up to 58 millions copies. There's still money to be made with the books.

The way Martin lives suggests he does not give much of a fuck about money. IIRC, he lives in Santa Fe in a relatively small house (2 across the street from one another) and supposedly is just sort of a normal dude around town.

Plus, before the series, Martin was just another obscure (albeit successful) fantasy writer. Now, he's a celebrity with all that entails. He has a lot more and different demands on his time than he did pre-HBO. I don't fault him too much for the slow down, even though I personally hate it.

Joebot wrote:

Columbob wrote: I think he just lost the heart for it. When ADWD was released a few months after the show started, he was saying in interviews that it revitalized his intent to complete it; also a good chunk was already there, as ADWD was getting too large and had to be split (seems like there's a pattern happening with that). Here we are 4 years on and TWOW nowhere in sight.

Martin had a quote in Entertainment Weekly last week about how he was all fired up to write "Winds of Winter" right after "Dance with Dragons" was published. Then he took six months off, and as he put it, "the iron cooled off." I suppose that makes sense, but it makes you wonder why he took freaking SIX MONTHS off. That seems like quite a long vacation.

That was probably 6 months off the series. He does a lot of other stuff with his time: overseeing the HBO series, writing an episode every season, plus any number of other editing jobs and side projects, convention appearances, etc. There was a companion book to the series released late last year that apparently had a lot of his input. Plus he's writing some short stories (i.e. Dunk & Egg). Not to mention any of his other nerdy interests and hobbies.

Gary Sax wrote:

Columbob wrote: Sales of the series (books) was around 9 million copies when the tv series started to air. Now it's up to 58 millions copies. There's still money to be made with the books.

The way Martin lives suggests he does not give much of a fuck about money. IIRC, he lives in Santa Fe in a relatively small house (2 across the street from one another) and supposedly is just sort of a normal dude around town.

Maybe not him, but his publisher probably does.

Shellhead wrote: If you thought that you were likely to die in a few years, would you work obsessively to catch up at work and finish a big project? Or would you try to relax and enjoy your time left?

Come on, he's only 66. The average life expectancy for a white male in the US is about 76. Who's to say he won't live another 30 years? I find all the discussion online about his weight / age / health to be kind of tacky.

Your question is an interesting one though, and really hard to answer. If it were ME and MY work (tech writer for a marketing services company) ... fuck no, I wouldn't give two shits about anything work-related. But if I were a hugely successful author trying to wrap up my beloved magnum opus ... man, I dunno. I think I would want to see that through to completion.

Joebot wrote: Your question is an interesting one though, and really hard to answer. If it were ME and MY work (tech writer for a marketing services company) ... fuck no, I wouldn't give two shits about anything work-related. But if I were a hugely successful author trying to wrap up my beloved magnum opus ... man, I dunno. I think I would want to see that through to completion.

Agreed, in his case it's about leaving a definitive and lasting mark upon popular culture. He's also adamant that if ever he does die before he finishes it, that's it, his work won't be Wheel of Timed as with Jordan's.

Since he likes the show so much maybe he wants it to get ahead. Then he can more or less just novelize the show for an easy paycheck. Of course on the flip side he could not like the show's ending and end the books differently than he planned.

Joebot, what's tacky? Actuarial math? There's a reason you never see fat old people walking around. That physique is never going to make it to 76. I predict he has two years left. (I don't want him to die or anything, may the nines grant him life forever*)

*i have no idea if this fantasy reference is from AGOT or Elder Scrolls.

Black Barney wrote: Joebot, what's tacky? Actuarial math? There's a reason you never see fat old people walking around. That physique is never going to make it to 76. I predict he has two years left. (I don't want him to die or anything, may the nines grant him life forever*)

I live in the Us, so I see "fat old people" walking around everywhere I go.

Gregarius is right, though, in that he has a ton of other work that he's been doing in addition to writing the series itself. There's a lot of other writing and editing (he's overseen no less than 7 short story collections in the past decade and contributed to all of them, plus the Wild Cards stuff, plus the screenplays, plus a couple cooperative projects with other authors, plus the ancillary ASoIaF stuff like the history book released a couple months ago, plus...) He's also restored and old theater in Santa Fe and any number of other things. The guy has a life. He has to live it. As I noted in my response to Shellhead, he's basically shelved everything else in order to focus on WoW, but he just wrote several thousands words on his Not a Blog about the Hugo fiasco. You go where the urge drives you...

Best case scenario: Martin finishes The Winds of Winter in early 2016. Then he gets fired up about finished the series and plunges directly into writing A Dream of Spring, working at the same pace as when he wrote the first three books. So maybe the final book by 2019. Unlike the last two books where he was wrestling with certain plot elements, Martin already knows how he is ending the stories for all the main characters. So we need him to survive at least until age 70, which I think is iffy. I would love to see Martin finish the series and live for many, happy years afterwards.

I predict Martin will die on a hunting trip after drinking too much

Shellhead wrote: Best case scenario: Martin finishes The Winds of Winter in early 2016. Then he gets fired up about finished the series and plunges directly into writing A Dream of Spring, working at the same pace as when he wrote the first three books. So maybe the final book by 2019. Unlike the last two books where he was wrestling with certain plot elements, Martin already knows how he is ending the stories for all the main characters. So we need him to survive at least until age 70, which I think is iffy. I would love to see Martin finish the series and live for many, happy years afterwards.

I do think the big problem with 4 and 5 was really just not knowing how to move the middle along. It's manifest on the pages themselves, but the history of the problems with 4/5 are well documented. It seems reasonable that the last two(?) could be done more quickly, but he was never on any better than a one-every-two-years pace, and 2019 seems not unreasonable.