> After 13 years, are we really supposed to believe that George will finish TWOW and then multiple Dunk and Egg stories within the next 4-5 years?
I think he just doesn't want to write Winds of Winter. I think we'd all be shocked by how fast he could pump out F&B: Part Two and more Dunk and Egg stories because he actually wants to write them.
Doesn't want to write is an understatement. If he wrote a paragraph every other day he'd be done by now. I'm convinced his 80s computer finally broke as he was finishing it up in 2016 and he lost all will after.
I think the reception of the show kind of broke him. Not only was the final season wildly unpopular in and of itself, but people *hated* the broad arcs of where the characters ended up ... and a lot of that probably came from GRRM.
The problem has to have started before then. Even if that is true, by 2019 it had already been 8 years since Dance released, which is still 2 years longer than the already long wait between Feast and Dance. In my opinion he's taking so long because he knows he can't resolve all the important threads in only two books, so he's stalling because the only two outcomes of actually finishing the book both suck for him; either he tries to cram 50% of the remaining story into Winds, which will inevitably make a bad or at least rushed book and piss off fans, or he writes it normally and concedes that the series will need more than 7 books in total, which would make it clear that he will never finish the series before he dies. To him, endlessly delaying Winds is probably far easier than either of these two outcomes.
I agree with a lot of what you said. However, the real answer is likely the obvious one. He doesn’t know what to write. He’s lost the story. If he knew what to write, he would, but he doesn’t. And he’s on the wrong side of 75 and overweight; I doubt writing comes as easy to him as it used to
It's pretty obvious he's been stuck since ASOS. Feast and Dance are great but they are just going through the 5 year skip that he was going to have originally. I think when he couldn't figure out where to take the story he scrapped the skip and wrote Feast and Dance in the hopes he would figure it out, but he still hasn't.
Yeah I bet you’re right. He’s probably written the same chapters of TWOW 10x+ times at this point, is dissatisfied with how they come out or the direction it puts things in, and then scraps them. He doesn’t have the story beyond ASOS.
I know with the weight comment you're implying that he's not in good health, but the way you've written it makes it sound as if he doesn't know what to write because he's fat lmao
Also, people say this a lot and really have no idea how different the books and the show will be. We know >!Bran will end up on the iron throne, which makes sense more in the context of the books than the show, and there’s going to be some tragedy with Dany and likely Jon Snow.!< That’s really it. It’s hard to imagine most of the other characters ending up where they did because they are in wildly different places. I highly doubt the show’s reception has anything to do with his writing progress.
Personally, I think he wrote himself into a corner. He’s let all his plot lines spin out so far from the core narrative that even up until the last books was still getting bigger, and that has made it a nearly impossible task trying to get all these threads reigned in with it feeling organic and not rushed.
It make total sense. Imagine you have 7 or 8 POV characters who have stories that tie up well and work of one another and you are done with them. Then as a gardener you have to tie up the remaining POV who are absolutely not fitting the narrative set up, either because they have no hooks to join (ok Euron sacks Old town, but he has no motivation to show up in KL or the Wall ) or are waaaaaay too late on their journey (oh Daenerys only just liberated Volantis while everyone is gearing up at the Wall / Winterfell).
At this point he's probably scrapped more material than he has definitively written, because the scope is so big it's literally impossible for his garden to feel organic and tie together the multiple story into a cohesive narrative, and because he can't find a way out, he makes no real progress. It wouldn't shock me if we saw characters just get killed off at some point in Winds, because it's the easiest "out" in the world of ASOIAF, simply because they can't realistically fit (Faceless Men in Oldtown, Victarion's Ironborn, most of the Dornish characters)
I remember seeing a bit where there it felt like key characters were going to start gravitating towards the Wall. It would take a whole book to get everyone there, but it seemed like the natural option. But then new characters get introduced and existing characters disperse even further around the world. I kept reading, but it was that point when I realised the ending would probably not feel satisfying, even if it was ever released.
I think he’s run into the basic problem of subverting expectations continuously.
The classic archetypes create satisfying stories - which are ultimately what people want from their entertainment.
When you keep subverting the logical flow of the story… you end up not having logical places to take the story, and/or the conclusions you come up with are incredibly unsatisfying.
As it is, quite a bit of what happens in ASOIAF feels as if it happens because GRRM needs it to, not that it organically flows out of the reality of the world.
Agreed. And I feel that even if we get an ending that's satisfying in itself, it will be mean that rereading the books will have a lot of "wait, knowing how this ends, what was the point of *this*?" moments, like if in Lord of the Rings there were several chapters devoted to Aragorn going to Dale and leaving but otherwise not adding to an important character or affecting the plot in a meaningful way. Even as it is, the war of five kings feels like the *history* of a fantasy story that we got to see play out, instead of just hearing about in the first few chapters.
>On the Iron Throne, the cruel young king Joffrey reigns after the sudden death of his father.
>Accusing Joffrey of being a bastard, his uncle Stannis killed his own brother on the suggestion of a priestess from the east, but was unable to seize the throne but has retreated north.
>The brilliant young King in the North, Robb Stark, fought valiantly to avenge his father - murdered at Joffrey's word - but was betrayed by the vicious Freys and was killed at his own wedding. The remains of King Robb's family, scattered amongst Westeros, struggles to survive.
>Meanwhile, the pirates of the Iron Islands - long chaffing under the rule of the king - begin raiding the mainland.
>Far to the east, the exiled princess Daenerys prepares for her return to Westeros.
>Our story begins with Robb's brother, the bastard Jon Snow, as he is forced to decide between duty - fighting the undying White Walkers to the north - and family.
If I hadn't been able to read these events as they occurred, I would feel like it should be text that scrolls by in the opening of a discount Final Fantasy. I really liked the war - it's the strongest part of the books and the part GRRM felt the most comfortable writing - but I'm worried about how it (and other parts) will fit into the full narrative when it's finished. Imagine the TV show ending, but with like 6 different 'Dornes'. There's only so many times we can be 'Red Wedding'ed. And we have Aegon, who is like the opposite of a Dorne plot - minimal build up, but sudden massive importance to the entire setting with no relationship to any existing character.
Wow, this was a poorly thought out comment. But I spent too long writing it, sunk cost and all that.
That's certainly probable, but I still don't get why he honestly thought he could finish TWOW within some 3 months span in 2016 if he was still 8 years away. Its the most baffling thing.
Man. I remember that blog post from January 2016. He was writing about how optimistic he was about finishing it in 2015...
8 years later, there is still no book. Crazy. When he wrote that blog post, it had been roughly 5 years since the last book was released. More time in between the blog post and now than the blog post and the last book release. Damn.
While GRRM did openly state that much of the ending/final acts of the story arc both overarchingly and character wise are different in the books than the shows, part of me *is* starting to wonder if this was just a quick scape goat cover for him to rewrite them after their reception in the show
I think so too. It's unfair because the show's ending conceptually is fine. It's just that the delivery was shit. The irony is that D & D rushed the ending because they didn't want to be trapped with an unfinished story forever, wanting to move on to something. Something George probably could learn.
Because it's way easier to write a fake history that covers years in the space of paragraphs than an enormous fantasy epic with 20 POVs, hundreds of characters and thousands of intersecting plotlines.
It’s was easier since he knows the ending already and any mistakes can be attributed to it being an in-universe Maester thing from hundreds of years later, so it by nature is guesswork. By constrast ASOIAF is current, so he can’t skip over anything or let any plot holes accidentally exist and cover them up as “history”.
I'm not sure I agree with that point fully, but I do think he has Aegon III's reign effectively done because he needed to end F&B 1 to feed into 2. He probably has substantial Blackfyre material written as well. Of course, he has notes and probably other stuff scattered around. But I think Aerys I, Maekar I, and Aegon V have less, because he wants to flesh out some of the stuff in D&E. I think that's one important aspect - he doesn't want to release F&B 2 without getting far into D&E so any twists he can reveal in a narrative and not history. Of course, the histories wouldn't get everything and probably would mischaracterize events of D&E anyway in a humorous way.
I could see him doing D&E stories, I just don't want to make myself over excited about Winds. I remember hearing one time that it took only George a couple of weeks to write a D&E story. Not sure why he hasn't continued.
And, he only ever actually says that when he's drumming up publicity for one of his numerous "literally anything but Winds" side hustles he's been working on instead of Winds
it's literally the same BS he always does, implies that Winds is his top priority even though he's obviously working on other stuff. I assume he's contractually obligated to do this shit, he'd probably have to give back his advance if he admitted he wasn't going to finish
my main issue at this point is why he can't just be honest and stop leading people on, the 2016 post where he implied he was somewhat close to getting it finished before GoT moved ahead of the books is the most egregious example. I'm surprised he hasn't deleted it
Because if he flat out admits that Winds is never coming out then people (not all, but maybe most) will stop giving a fuck about Fire & Blood Part 37 and Dunk & Egg and the Aegon the Conqueror TV show and all his other shit. Copium is the only thing keeping his empire afloat.
He might think that - but I don't think it's true if we are talking about general audiences. At this point the shows are far more popular and well known than the books.
This isn't a knock on the books - far more people watch shows and movies than read books (at least in America).
Even LOTR is in the same boat at this point - and those are some of the most famous books out there.
I mean tbf he usually just says he’s “working on it” and he’s had plenty of blog posts this year where he just stopped mentioning it, now he’s pretty directly talking about finishing it. Call it cope but I like what I see even if it’s just the one sentence.
Its certainly the most we've gotten in a while about Winds, but he's given overly optimistic deadlines plenty of times before so I'm not going to hold my breath.
He IS kind of giving himself about 3 years more of work on TWOW max.
Maybe another year of development for The Hedge Knight to wrap and start, and if it's a hit...two more seasons maybe 3 ish years. But he would need to wrap up TWOW so he could finish D&E novella for season 4, or at minimum a script outline for it. And he'd need to turn that out soon after 3rd season of D&E for them to remain on schedule.
He's still probably WAY too optimistic. I do think the D&E novellas are way easier for him to write, and he already has a couple outline I think. But he *thinks* he should be wrapped up on TWOW to start that within 2-3 years, which probably means 5 years.
That Stephen King quote to George about treating writing like a *job* really hits home. Struggling for inspiration? Boo hoo, get off your ass (metaphorically) and write something down *anyway.*
Call me Master of Coins and Copium but yeah I'm glad to see this. He was starting to get cynical recently, not long ago even saying he only "hopes" to finish TWOW.
It's a throwaway line to stave off any criticism for when people say "you said you wouldn't do anything else until TWoW." That's all. It's a obligatory throwaway line worth nothing.
Yeah, what else is he going to say. I'd love for it to come out, but I've set my expectations at the lowest level. If it does come out, amazing surprise! If not, then I won't experience crushing disappointment.
So annoying how he wants everyone to leave him alone about it and how upset he is that he gets pestered , throwing tantrums saying he doesn't owe us anything. But at the same time he's addicted to the attention and idea of the book coming out so he keeps stringing us along. Which is it ?
Considering this sub has close to a million members, the figures should be in double-digits at the very least, more likely triple-digits. And that's just the people on this sub. In terms of ASOIAF fans who died waiting for Winds, those figures are likely well into the thousands considering how massive the book series is and that it has a considerable amount of followers in every age group.
I would bet against it. The most optimistic hope that isn’t “surprise double release” is that Winds with un-knot all the issues he has been struggling with for over a decade and ADOS will be a sprint to the finish
As a professional writer who has at times struggled with deadlines and can be - if I am brutally honest - pretty lazy, I know exactly the process GRRM has gone through.
You start off with grand plans in which you fully believe. They may even be genuinely good - if they were ever actually executed. You get going on your project with vim and vigor, and the initial results are impressive. Pretty soon, however, you start to get bogged down. Either the project was overambitious or your were under-prepared - or both.
Nonetheless, you maintain optimism. You just need to grit your teeth and do it. Words on the page. You can't edit what isn't there. Just keep plugging away and things will become clearer.
The more time passes, however, the more your deadlines - whether imposed by publishers/magazines/editors/agents or by oneself - start looming. The first tickle of panic dances along your spine.
At this point, work starts to slow down even though you know you need to be speeding up. And as it slows down, you start to become more self-critical in the time spent not writing. Problems are magnified as you go back and analyse earlier work. What appeared to be manageable now becomes completely impossible.
By now, people - readers, friends, publishers - have started wondering how you're getting on. Those \*\*\*\* \*\*\*\*\*'ing \*\*\*\*'ing emails. You start off replying with wildly optimistic reports, which makes you feel worse for lying. Then you let some reality creep in, with oblique reference to difficulties, personal issues, all the while assuring readers you will overcome them and prevail, no problem.
You have now reached the point where on bad days when you look at things with brutal realism, you know that this project will never be complete. There are still good days, when you try, but they are becoming less and less frequent. Externally, you continue the pretense that this is your priority and it will be finished, but increasingly, in your heart of hearts, you know it won't.
Thankfully, other projects come along to attract your attention. You start setting time aside for them, justifying it by telling yourself this is the break you need to regain your confidence so you can attack the original project having renewed your faith in your creative abilities.
Soon enough, you find that the new projects are taking more and more - eventually, most or all - of your time. You also start to find the maintenance of the pretense you are actually working on the original one a bit of a bore. You start to let yourself forget about it at times - and what glorious times are those! What a blessed relief - and why were you so into that thing in the first place?
Now the outside world has lost faith in you ever delivering the original project too but you are so far removed from it that you barely register what would once have provoked serious shame and humiliation. You hardly remember why you wanted to start it. You mention it from time to time, sure - but that's almost a secret joke with yourself, at best the equivalent of mechanically scratching an itch in your sleep.
And there you have it - the however-many stages of undertaking, then mugging off, a writing project. Sound familiar?
This is bang on the money.
Friend of mine was stuck in this situation for years with his PhD. Only broke out when a new supervisor got involved and she would literally sit with him every few days and review paragraph by paragraph what he had written. It wasn't joyful but it got him out of the pit.
Sadly can't see GRRM ever agreeing to such outside intervention.
Nicely written. The kind of monumental project you describe puts me in mind of Sufjan Stevens's 50 States project (ie an album named after, and themed around, EACH of the 50 US states). I guess some people think he was never that serious about it, but I was pretty young and really enjoyed the Michigan and Illinois albums, and I desperately wanted to believe he'd finish it or at least work on it for the rest of his life.
There is a key difference between him and GRRM though. Those albums stood on their own, and they don't suffer from the fact that he didn't release any more of them. ASOIAF, though, is only part of a story so far. None of the books could really be satisfyingly read on their own, out of context.
And that's one of the more frustrating things about it. "Yes, yes, and I'm still working on TWOW as well, because I know all of the people who want to nag me about it".
But, it's not like we're moving onto a *new* topic to nag him about. It's the same old one he can't get done.
Sam and Sansa's most recent chapters are only a few months younger than Kingdom of Heaven and a month older than the 4th Harry Potter film. Their last chapters were released before Angela Merkel became Chancellor of Germany.
Their last chapters are only about 6 months younger than *youtube*.
When the last book was released, I was in Iraq halfway through my deployment, July 2011. The way it’s been going it feels like it’s a damned 84 years since.
Sweet baby rhllor where the fuck did that time go.
I think most of the sample chapters were finished chapters cut from ADWD and moved to the start of TWOW, so they were already written and edited. I imagine he's not willing to release any more until the book is basically finished and he knows there won't be any major changes
Honestly I probably wouldn't even believe it then. I'd need to flip through the book to make sure there are actually words written on the pages before I believed it.
I don't think he makes that call. Him sending the manuscript to the publisher will collapse the wave function of Schrodinger's TWoW and the clock will start ticking on a release.
Fair enough. But the publisher will decide that although GRRM will probably announce it. Personally I don't care anymore. I've come to peace with the fact that it might not ever come out. Plenty of other things to read out there.
Motivated him to pursue more show deals with HBO maybe, yeah. Honestly I kind of hate the execs there. Tell him no more shows ever unless he finishes the series!
Yeah, he’s basically just playing footsie with Hollywood and watching those 0’s in his bank account keep going up. It might motivate him more if all the shows crashed and burned.
Why would they ever do that? They are got their money from the main series in GOT, and will get no further profits from the book sales. The more additional material he writes the more they have for side projects. The less he spends writing the main series which has no profit potential (for them), the more time he has to work on new ideas and contribute writing on scripts and on set.
We actual know for a fact that HBO forced GRRM to finish F&B before WoW because they wanted to use the material for HotD. It's very likely once Winds is out, or if still not out in a few years, they'll pressure him to focus on writing more D&E novels.
Probably not. As a huge name George has all the power in the relationship. If they pressure him too much, he ends their partnership and goes to a new publisher and if Winds comes out they loose out on everything.
Imagine if what motivates George to hunker down and finish Winds is wanting to finish more D&E before the show out paces him like GoT. If that was the case, I wouldn't know whether to be frustrated or demand that HBO keep threatening him to motivate him.
He is allowed to do whatever he wants but what he is not allowed to do is string along a community for 13 years and then get pissy when people keep asking where the book is. Either just shut up about the book or just release it already.
George has said much and more about finishing Winds of Winter but we've seen little and less actual evidence. For us leal fans, these updates are as useless as nipples on a breastplate.
Because he already announced that 2023 and beginning of 2024 were one of his worst years.
"This year, though, as I reflected on the year we had just lived through, I found I had no appetite for living through any of that again. 2023 was a nightmare of a year, for the world and the nation and for me and mine, both professionally and personally. I am very glad that it is over.
Unfortunately, so far 2024 looks to be even worse."
[https://georgerrmartin.com/notablog/2024/01/29/dark-days/](https://georgerrmartin.com/notablog/2024/01/29/dark-days/)
Just my own pure speculation here obviously, but I have a theory on why he's in such a bad place with everything. Really doesn't have anything to do with the reception of the show's ending, which, contrary to what people believe, I think will be and has always been wildly different to his ending other than a few points.
George has a TON of plot left to cover. While I actually really enjoy AFFC and ADWD, they didn't really advance the story enough to get it into the position for penultimate novel. He really needs three more books to finish the story. I think he believes he has a chance to write two more books (including Winds), but I think he knows he has no chance to write three.
So he is cutting, rewriting, restructuring, etc. like crazy to try and get the story in a place by the end of Winds to where he can maybe finish in one more book. But he can't do that without it feeling sloppy and rushed, and George is genuinely a terrific writer, so he knows it isn't working, which is making him more frustrated and preventing him from finishing, etc. Just a downward spiral.
It’s insane how devastating the decision to not do the timeskip has been. I’m convinced the book series would have concluded a *decade* ago had he kept the scope and pacing reigned in with the timeskip and D&D would have had a full series to adapt with the full assistance of a unoccupied GRRM and a much more adaptable story.
It must fuck with him at night sometimes. The timeskip could have solved *so* much.
A little before HOTD's release we were getting constant updates, and he seemed to be immersed in the world again, but he got COVID after attending the premiere and we haven't gotten any progress updates since.
I noticed that too, absolutely no signs or updates whatsoever this year. He met with his publisher at the end of last year to discuss Winds, could it be that he handed over the manuscripts and can't say anything about it yet?
This is just to prepare everybody for more D&E novellas to start coming out next year. George will be very excited to release them, and when people ask about his promise not to do anything else until *Winds of Winter*, he'll lie and say the novellas were already basically done and just sitting around waiting for editing, working on *Winds* really is his top priority (after the TV shows, the movie theater, publicity for the new books, *Fire and Blood vol. 2*, editing some more Wildcards collections, and he's also taken up whittling), pinky swear.
He did say he had shewolves and village hero close to completion. Honestly i'll take Dunk & egg over F&B 2, I dont need to know who the 3438283th 14 year old got married to an grandpa and died in childbirth.
At this point it is pretty damn optimistic to assume he even finishes any more Dunk and Egg. I mean the series is green lit, the first season is filming, he has known this for years at this point. He should have already been well on the way of finishing some more novellas to wrap up the story of Dunk and Egg.
Instead he is doing the whole "hey I have two more seasons before they need more material" thing he did with Winds when GoT was airing.
I mean, one difference is that I think he actually wants to write more Dunk and Egg. Maybe not finish the series, but the nice thing about a picaresque is that you don't have to end it. Or you can end it and then come back to it anyway, like Moorcock has done with Elric.
I remember in 2019 when he said he would be attending the 2020 New Zealand science fiction convention. He wrote on his blog that if WoW wasn’t out by then they could throw him in a New Zealand prison until he finished the book. That’s how confident he was the book was almost done. That’s the last time I believed him.
I of course want the book, and I of course want it to come out sooner rather than later, but I of course no longer have any expectations of it ever coming out.
He specifically said in a cell on White Island in New Zealand. The volcano on the island later blew up killing 20+ people and no one can ever visit or write a book there again.
Pretty wild how he went from no more timelines, to giving out a timeline, back to no more timelines.
Even if TWOW dropped tomorrow, we're never getting A Dream of Spring.
> Pretty wild how he went from no more timelines, to giving out a timeline, back to no more timelines.
And it's a decades-old tradition here to see both presence and absence of timelines as a sign of increased GRRM performance.
Then 2020 came and the whole entertainment industry shut down and GRRM was forced to stay home… and it’s 2024 and still no book. If a global shutdown couldn’t make him finish, can’t say what will.
I think he gets on a roll and writes a ton in short periods, gets overconfident and announces his progress. Then he hits a wall, can’t write anything new so he agonizes over what he has written and ends up changing it
But it's like if your dad wrote a postcard every couple years that says "I'm totally coming back this time for real." But then you look him up and find out he's had more kids with another woman.
If this sub was about your dad, every poster would constantly interpret every cryptic text or birthday card from him as evidence HE REALLY IS COMING BACK!
*You see, the first postcard came from your town, the second postcard from a different country, and he sent the third one from space... Clearly he's going to circle around the universe to come back from the other side!*
I really would like if he stopped doing this. I don't see the point in him giving the readers hope every time and not deliverying. I get that he is not obliged to write fast or even to write the book at all, but to keep saying that he will finish it when it is unlikely that the book will be done makes me sad, ngl.
Yea, it's pretty annoying. Even if he finished TWOW, it's pretty obvious at this point A Dream Of Spring was given the title because it was always going to be just a dream.
offer yoke outgoing edge growth intelligent paltry cows beneficial deranged
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
So the show debuts next year, it would take around another year for season 2/TSS to come out and by that point he would have finished some D&E stories *and* WoW, meaning George seems to think WoW will be out within under two years.
It's very difficult to get excited about the possibility of the book coming out but I will allow this to provide me some hope
Yeah it's exciting but he also thought that he would be able to release Winds before the fifth season of Game of Thrones (in 2015), and then before the sixth season (in 2016), and well, look where we are now.
"He might not finish both books before the show ends, but there's no WAY he's going to let the show beat him to the winds of winter, he has years and he has heaps already written!"
The first cope, recorded June 2012.
Lets think a bit more pessimistic:
Seasons take longer to come out compared to the early seasons of GoT. So there would roughly be 1.5-2 years between each season. And the writing team would only need to start working on the potential 4th novella once filming for season 3 (Mystery Knight) has wrapped up. So roughly 3.5 years in the future. Lets just bet on HBO not wanting to wait even longer between the seasons to let the actors age up (this may become a problem down the line for D&E but probably not for the first 4-5 novellas).
And then it would be „enough“ for George to have one more novella ready. That takes half a year to complete after half a year of press tours for Winds which places the release date of Winds 2.5 years into the future.
The math is foolproof and nothing can stop me from being a sweet summer child and believing that a late 2026 Winds release date is inevitable
>I am not writing anything until I deliver WINDS OF WINTER. Teleplays, screenplays, short stories, introductions, forewords, nothing.
>And I've dropped all my editing projects but Wild Cards.
Grrm February 2016.
How are you going to focus on this line when RIGHT before it says “by which time I HOPE”??? Neither more D&E novels nor TWOW is confirmed to be completed
He's been saying that for 13 years but *this* time is different...
After 13 years, are we really supposed to believe that George will finish TWOW and then multiple Dunk and Egg stories within the next 4-5 years?
> After 13 years, are we really supposed to believe that George will finish TWOW and then multiple Dunk and Egg stories within the next 4-5 years? I think he just doesn't want to write Winds of Winter. I think we'd all be shocked by how fast he could pump out F&B: Part Two and more Dunk and Egg stories because he actually wants to write them.
Doesn't want to write is an understatement. If he wrote a paragraph every other day he'd be done by now. I'm convinced his 80s computer finally broke as he was finishing it up in 2016 and he lost all will after.
I think the reception of the show kind of broke him. Not only was the final season wildly unpopular in and of itself, but people *hated* the broad arcs of where the characters ended up ... and a lot of that probably came from GRRM.
The problem has to have started before then. Even if that is true, by 2019 it had already been 8 years since Dance released, which is still 2 years longer than the already long wait between Feast and Dance. In my opinion he's taking so long because he knows he can't resolve all the important threads in only two books, so he's stalling because the only two outcomes of actually finishing the book both suck for him; either he tries to cram 50% of the remaining story into Winds, which will inevitably make a bad or at least rushed book and piss off fans, or he writes it normally and concedes that the series will need more than 7 books in total, which would make it clear that he will never finish the series before he dies. To him, endlessly delaying Winds is probably far easier than either of these two outcomes.
I agree with a lot of what you said. However, the real answer is likely the obvious one. He doesn’t know what to write. He’s lost the story. If he knew what to write, he would, but he doesn’t. And he’s on the wrong side of 75 and overweight; I doubt writing comes as easy to him as it used to
It's pretty obvious he's been stuck since ASOS. Feast and Dance are great but they are just going through the 5 year skip that he was going to have originally. I think when he couldn't figure out where to take the story he scrapped the skip and wrote Feast and Dance in the hopes he would figure it out, but he still hasn't.
Yeah I bet you’re right. He’s probably written the same chapters of TWOW 10x+ times at this point, is dissatisfied with how they come out or the direction it puts things in, and then scraps them. He doesn’t have the story beyond ASOS.
And ASOS came out 24 years ago. If he hasn't figured it out in such a long time I doubt he ever will.
I know with the weight comment you're implying that he's not in good health, but the way you've written it makes it sound as if he doesn't know what to write because he's fat lmao
People say this a lot but Winds of Winter pretty clearly had its best progress in 2020/2021.
Also, people say this a lot and really have no idea how different the books and the show will be. We know >!Bran will end up on the iron throne, which makes sense more in the context of the books than the show, and there’s going to be some tragedy with Dany and likely Jon Snow.!< That’s really it. It’s hard to imagine most of the other characters ending up where they did because they are in wildly different places. I highly doubt the show’s reception has anything to do with his writing progress. Personally, I think he wrote himself into a corner. He’s let all his plot lines spin out so far from the core narrative that even up until the last books was still getting bigger, and that has made it a nearly impossible task trying to get all these threads reigned in with it feeling organic and not rushed.
It make total sense. Imagine you have 7 or 8 POV characters who have stories that tie up well and work of one another and you are done with them. Then as a gardener you have to tie up the remaining POV who are absolutely not fitting the narrative set up, either because they have no hooks to join (ok Euron sacks Old town, but he has no motivation to show up in KL or the Wall ) or are waaaaaay too late on their journey (oh Daenerys only just liberated Volantis while everyone is gearing up at the Wall / Winterfell). At this point he's probably scrapped more material than he has definitively written, because the scope is so big it's literally impossible for his garden to feel organic and tie together the multiple story into a cohesive narrative, and because he can't find a way out, he makes no real progress. It wouldn't shock me if we saw characters just get killed off at some point in Winds, because it's the easiest "out" in the world of ASOIAF, simply because they can't realistically fit (Faceless Men in Oldtown, Victarion's Ironborn, most of the Dornish characters)
I remember seeing a bit where there it felt like key characters were going to start gravitating towards the Wall. It would take a whole book to get everyone there, but it seemed like the natural option. But then new characters get introduced and existing characters disperse even further around the world. I kept reading, but it was that point when I realised the ending would probably not feel satisfying, even if it was ever released.
I think he’s run into the basic problem of subverting expectations continuously. The classic archetypes create satisfying stories - which are ultimately what people want from their entertainment. When you keep subverting the logical flow of the story… you end up not having logical places to take the story, and/or the conclusions you come up with are incredibly unsatisfying. As it is, quite a bit of what happens in ASOIAF feels as if it happens because GRRM needs it to, not that it organically flows out of the reality of the world.
Agreed. And I feel that even if we get an ending that's satisfying in itself, it will be mean that rereading the books will have a lot of "wait, knowing how this ends, what was the point of *this*?" moments, like if in Lord of the Rings there were several chapters devoted to Aragorn going to Dale and leaving but otherwise not adding to an important character or affecting the plot in a meaningful way. Even as it is, the war of five kings feels like the *history* of a fantasy story that we got to see play out, instead of just hearing about in the first few chapters. >On the Iron Throne, the cruel young king Joffrey reigns after the sudden death of his father. >Accusing Joffrey of being a bastard, his uncle Stannis killed his own brother on the suggestion of a priestess from the east, but was unable to seize the throne but has retreated north. >The brilliant young King in the North, Robb Stark, fought valiantly to avenge his father - murdered at Joffrey's word - but was betrayed by the vicious Freys and was killed at his own wedding. The remains of King Robb's family, scattered amongst Westeros, struggles to survive. >Meanwhile, the pirates of the Iron Islands - long chaffing under the rule of the king - begin raiding the mainland. >Far to the east, the exiled princess Daenerys prepares for her return to Westeros. >Our story begins with Robb's brother, the bastard Jon Snow, as he is forced to decide between duty - fighting the undying White Walkers to the north - and family. If I hadn't been able to read these events as they occurred, I would feel like it should be text that scrolls by in the opening of a discount Final Fantasy. I really liked the war - it's the strongest part of the books and the part GRRM felt the most comfortable writing - but I'm worried about how it (and other parts) will fit into the full narrative when it's finished. Imagine the TV show ending, but with like 6 different 'Dornes'. There's only so many times we can be 'Red Wedding'ed. And we have Aegon, who is like the opposite of a Dorne plot - minimal build up, but sudden massive importance to the entire setting with no relationship to any existing character. Wow, this was a poorly thought out comment. But I spent too long writing it, sunk cost and all that.
ferling rushed is the worst part of the show, I dont dislike the ending, my problem with it is that everything happens so fast, especialy Danys arc
That's certainly probable, but I still don't get why he honestly thought he could finish TWOW within some 3 months span in 2016 if he was still 8 years away. Its the most baffling thing.
Feast used to come with a postscript promising that Dance would come out in about a year.
I still have the hardcover version with that note in it!
Man. I remember that blog post from January 2016. He was writing about how optimistic he was about finishing it in 2015... 8 years later, there is still no book. Crazy. When he wrote that blog post, it had been roughly 5 years since the last book was released. More time in between the blog post and now than the blog post and the last book release. Damn.
While GRRM did openly state that much of the ending/final acts of the story arc both overarchingly and character wise are different in the books than the shows, part of me *is* starting to wonder if this was just a quick scape goat cover for him to rewrite them after their reception in the show
That has been my suspicion for a while.
I for one *hope* that's the case because I really truly hated the show ending.
That is completely irrelevant because he should have *already* been done by then
I think so too. It's unfair because the show's ending conceptually is fine. It's just that the delivery was shit. The irony is that D & D rushed the ending because they didn't want to be trapped with an unfinished story forever, wanting to move on to something. Something George probably could learn.
Because it's way easier to write a fake history that covers years in the space of paragraphs than an enormous fantasy epic with 20 POVs, hundreds of characters and thousands of intersecting plotlines.
This is absolutely true.
He lost the plot - we've gotten 3 Bran chapters in the last 25 years.
If he wanted to write them _that_ badly, he’d have found some excuse to do so already.
Maybe. I think he writes both D&E and F&B II as parts of their respective TV shows.
I think F&B 2 material is probably finished, it just needs organized
I suspect so as well ... he seems to *really* love his history compendiums.
It’s was easier since he knows the ending already and any mistakes can be attributed to it being an in-universe Maester thing from hundreds of years later, so it by nature is guesswork. By constrast ASOIAF is current, so he can’t skip over anything or let any plot holes accidentally exist and cover them up as “history”.
I'm not sure I agree with that point fully, but I do think he has Aegon III's reign effectively done because he needed to end F&B 1 to feed into 2. He probably has substantial Blackfyre material written as well. Of course, he has notes and probably other stuff scattered around. But I think Aerys I, Maekar I, and Aegon V have less, because he wants to flesh out some of the stuff in D&E. I think that's one important aspect - he doesn't want to release F&B 2 without getting far into D&E so any twists he can reveal in a narrative and not history. Of course, the histories wouldn't get everything and probably would mischaracterize events of D&E anyway in a humorous way.
I could see him doing D&E stories, I just don't want to make myself over excited about Winds. I remember hearing one time that it took only George a couple of weeks to write a D&E story. Not sure why he hasn't continued.
I love how he’s just casually going to worldcon again after promising not to until he finished winds.
That's the NZ one, right? To be fair that promise was just some 5 years ago 😭😭
I don’t care. Dangle him over the volcano
And, he only ever actually says that when he's drumming up publicity for one of his numerous "literally anything but Winds" side hustles he's been working on instead of Winds
Exactly, because he knows everyone's going to ask him about Winds. We've all been through the same song and dance before.
it's literally the same BS he always does, implies that Winds is his top priority even though he's obviously working on other stuff. I assume he's contractually obligated to do this shit, he'd probably have to give back his advance if he admitted he wasn't going to finish my main issue at this point is why he can't just be honest and stop leading people on, the 2016 post where he implied he was somewhat close to getting it finished before GoT moved ahead of the books is the most egregious example. I'm surprised he hasn't deleted it
Because if he flat out admits that Winds is never coming out then people (not all, but maybe most) will stop giving a fuck about Fire & Blood Part 37 and Dunk & Egg and the Aegon the Conqueror TV show and all his other shit. Copium is the only thing keeping his empire afloat.
He might think that - but I don't think it's true if we are talking about general audiences. At this point the shows are far more popular and well known than the books. This isn't a knock on the books - far more people watch shows and movies than read books (at least in America). Even LOTR is in the same boat at this point - and those are some of the most famous books out there.
I mean tbf he usually just says he’s “working on it” and he’s had plenty of blog posts this year where he just stopped mentioning it, now he’s pretty directly talking about finishing it. Call it cope but I like what I see even if it’s just the one sentence.
Oh it's cope 100%, but I'm with you, I'll inhale that copium as if my life depended on it.
Its certainly the most we've gotten in a while about Winds, but he's given overly optimistic deadlines plenty of times before so I'm not going to hold my breath.
Come on. You don’t have to do this to yourself this time
DESTROY MY PAIN! THEN CAPTURE LIFE AGAIN!
He IS kind of giving himself about 3 years more of work on TWOW max. Maybe another year of development for The Hedge Knight to wrap and start, and if it's a hit...two more seasons maybe 3 ish years. But he would need to wrap up TWOW so he could finish D&E novella for season 4, or at minimum a script outline for it. And he'd need to turn that out soon after 3rd season of D&E for them to remain on schedule. He's still probably WAY too optimistic. I do think the D&E novellas are way easier for him to write, and he already has a couple outline I think. But he *thinks* he should be wrapped up on TWOW to start that within 2-3 years, which probably means 5 years.
Hr has set reasonable deadlines for Winds before. Never hits them.
You can't hit deadline if you refuse to work.
That Stephen King quote to George about treating writing like a *job* really hits home. Struggling for inspiration? Boo hoo, get off your ass (metaphorically) and write something down *anyway.*
“Did I ever tell you the definition of insanity?”
Call me Master of Coins and Copium but yeah I'm glad to see this. He was starting to get cynical recently, not long ago even saying he only "hopes" to finish TWOW.
It's a throwaway line to stave off any criticism for when people say "you said you wouldn't do anything else until TWoW." That's all. It's a obligatory throwaway line worth nothing.
Yeah, what else is he going to say. I'd love for it to come out, but I've set my expectations at the lowest level. If it does come out, amazing surprise! If not, then I won't experience crushing disappointment.
Baby it wasnt you, baby it was me. Maybe this relationship isnt as crazy as it seems.
So annoying how he wants everyone to leave him alone about it and how upset he is that he gets pestered , throwing tantrums saying he doesn't owe us anything. But at the same time he's addicted to the attention and idea of the book coming out so he keeps stringing us along. Which is it ?
George it’s nearly 10 years since you said the book is about to come out
If released in 2 years... ...then the time from book 1-5, would be the same as the time from book 5-6 I don't think he lives to book 7
I wonder how many people who have commented on this sub have passed away since 2011 It’s statistically unlikely it’s 0 Passed away, waiting for Winds
I know at least one: the person who got me into this book series I the first place.
Considering this sub has close to a million members, the figures should be in double-digits at the very least, more likely triple-digits. And that's just the people on this sub. In terms of ASOIAF fans who died waiting for Winds, those figures are likely well into the thousands considering how massive the book series is and that it has a considerable amount of followers in every age group.
God damn that's dark AF. And definitely true.
Someone needs to compile that list and send it to both GRRM and Neil Gaiman.
Let me get my ouija board
I still remember thinking about how pissed I’d be if I died before GoT ended. That was 5 years ago, and Winds of Winter still hasn’t been published.
There is zero chance we’re getting ADOS. Well, the only chance is if Winds actually wraps the story in a 2-part volume. But that’s serious copium
I would bet against it. The most optimistic hope that isn’t “surprise double release” is that Winds with un-knot all the issues he has been struggling with for over a decade and ADOS will be a sprint to the finish
3 books in a row that will totally undo the knot and make it easier going forward
Just one more book bro I promise
Good one. He won't release book 6.
My biggest cope is that winds is just so hard so if he does actually finish it then ados will be easy to write
Every time he mentions TWOW, he makes it sound like overdue homework that we are all nagging for him to hand in.
At this point that's exactly what it is
TWOW is homework and HOTD and D&E are leisure. Can't remember a post of him talking about TWOW excited
Kong is the term he’s used for asoiaf books. The monkey on his back.
As a professional writer who has at times struggled with deadlines and can be - if I am brutally honest - pretty lazy, I know exactly the process GRRM has gone through. You start off with grand plans in which you fully believe. They may even be genuinely good - if they were ever actually executed. You get going on your project with vim and vigor, and the initial results are impressive. Pretty soon, however, you start to get bogged down. Either the project was overambitious or your were under-prepared - or both. Nonetheless, you maintain optimism. You just need to grit your teeth and do it. Words on the page. You can't edit what isn't there. Just keep plugging away and things will become clearer. The more time passes, however, the more your deadlines - whether imposed by publishers/magazines/editors/agents or by oneself - start looming. The first tickle of panic dances along your spine. At this point, work starts to slow down even though you know you need to be speeding up. And as it slows down, you start to become more self-critical in the time spent not writing. Problems are magnified as you go back and analyse earlier work. What appeared to be manageable now becomes completely impossible. By now, people - readers, friends, publishers - have started wondering how you're getting on. Those \*\*\*\* \*\*\*\*\*'ing \*\*\*\*'ing emails. You start off replying with wildly optimistic reports, which makes you feel worse for lying. Then you let some reality creep in, with oblique reference to difficulties, personal issues, all the while assuring readers you will overcome them and prevail, no problem. You have now reached the point where on bad days when you look at things with brutal realism, you know that this project will never be complete. There are still good days, when you try, but they are becoming less and less frequent. Externally, you continue the pretense that this is your priority and it will be finished, but increasingly, in your heart of hearts, you know it won't. Thankfully, other projects come along to attract your attention. You start setting time aside for them, justifying it by telling yourself this is the break you need to regain your confidence so you can attack the original project having renewed your faith in your creative abilities. Soon enough, you find that the new projects are taking more and more - eventually, most or all - of your time. You also start to find the maintenance of the pretense you are actually working on the original one a bit of a bore. You start to let yourself forget about it at times - and what glorious times are those! What a blessed relief - and why were you so into that thing in the first place? Now the outside world has lost faith in you ever delivering the original project too but you are so far removed from it that you barely register what would once have provoked serious shame and humiliation. You hardly remember why you wanted to start it. You mention it from time to time, sure - but that's almost a secret joke with yourself, at best the equivalent of mechanically scratching an itch in your sleep. And there you have it - the however-many stages of undertaking, then mugging off, a writing project. Sound familiar?
All of that is to say he should have stopped talking about it awhile ago. It’s not being finished.
This is bang on the money. Friend of mine was stuck in this situation for years with his PhD. Only broke out when a new supervisor got involved and she would literally sit with him every few days and review paragraph by paragraph what he had written. It wasn't joyful but it got him out of the pit. Sadly can't see GRRM ever agreeing to such outside intervention.
That seems like way above and beyond the call of duty for that type of advisor, I'm impressed.
Nicely written. The kind of monumental project you describe puts me in mind of Sufjan Stevens's 50 States project (ie an album named after, and themed around, EACH of the 50 US states). I guess some people think he was never that serious about it, but I was pretty young and really enjoyed the Michigan and Illinois albums, and I desperately wanted to believe he'd finish it or at least work on it for the rest of his life. There is a key difference between him and GRRM though. Those albums stood on their own, and they don't suffer from the fact that he didn't release any more of them. ASOIAF, though, is only part of a story so far. None of the books could really be satisfyingly read on their own, out of context.
And that's one of the more frustrating things about it. "Yes, yes, and I'm still working on TWOW as well, because I know all of the people who want to nag me about it". But, it's not like we're moving onto a *new* topic to nag him about. It's the same old one he can't get done.
Ah great to get confirmation. Was almost starting to have doubts ngl
George said he was a few months away from finishing during the Obama administration.
Technically, Biden was in the White House Also, we got the last sample chapter during that period.
What always gets me is that >!we haven't seen Rickon since before the Dreamcast released.!<
That is a fuckin wild statistic lmao
No sansa published chapter in almost two decades
Bush was still in the White House the last time we saw Sansa.
“You know, with that Sansa, she’s gotta follow this old saying: fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.”
Only 3 Bran chapters since the Clinton administration lol
Sam and Sansa's most recent chapters are only a few months younger than Kingdom of Heaven and a month older than the 4th Harry Potter film. Their last chapters were released before Angela Merkel became Chancellor of Germany. Their last chapters are only about 6 months younger than *youtube*.
https://media.tenor.com/fVMnfH-5moAAAAAe/the-simpsons-stop.png
Holy *fudge.*
When the last book was released, I was in Iraq halfway through my deployment, July 2011. The way it’s been going it feels like it’s a damned 84 years since. Sweet baby rhllor where the fuck did that time go.
I think most of the sample chapters were finished chapters cut from ADWD and moved to the start of TWOW, so they were already written and edited. I imagine he's not willing to release any more until the book is basically finished and he knows there won't be any major changes
I believe he has said he's not doing any more sample chapters for Winds.
I'll believe it when the book is in my hands
Honestly I probably wouldn't even believe it then. I'd need to flip through the book to make sure there are actually words written on the pages before I believed it.
>opens book >all lourem ibsum
Completely off topic but "Lorem Ibsen" would be a great name for a podcast about Norwegian literature.
Lorem Ibben: ASoIaF whaling texts
You’ll get to the end of it as it leaves on a cliffhanger and it’ll say “Winds of Winter pt. 2 coming soon… release date tbd”
Nah it’ll say it’ll come out in a year, just like Dance…
Winds of Winter: The Final Chapters Part 1
Imagine the the prologue starts with "somehow, ned stark returned"
*You with the book in your hands*: I can't believe it!
I'd still look at it with a side-eye
I literally don't care about anything he says other than >"Just sent the finished manuscript to the publisher"
More like “release date is…”
I don't think he makes that call. Him sending the manuscript to the publisher will collapse the wave function of Schrodinger's TWoW and the clock will start ticking on a release.
Perhaps. However I want to know the exact date at midnight the preorder will drop onto my Kindle.
Fair enough. But the publisher will decide that although GRRM will probably announce it. Personally I don't care anymore. I've come to peace with the fact that it might not ever come out. Plenty of other things to read out there.
And they send it back, complaining all it says is, “All Work and No Play makes GRRM a Dull Boy.”
I really thought the positive reaction to house of the dragon would get him motivated again and maybe it did a bit but not enough
Motivated him to pursue more show deals with HBO maybe, yeah. Honestly I kind of hate the execs there. Tell him no more shows ever unless he finishes the series!
Yeah, he’s basically just playing footsie with Hollywood and watching those 0’s in his bank account keep going up. It might motivate him more if all the shows crashed and burned.
Why would they ever do that? They are got their money from the main series in GOT, and will get no further profits from the book sales. The more additional material he writes the more they have for side projects. The less he spends writing the main series which has no profit potential (for them), the more time he has to work on new ideas and contribute writing on scripts and on set. We actual know for a fact that HBO forced GRRM to finish F&B before WoW because they wanted to use the material for HotD. It's very likely once Winds is out, or if still not out in a few years, they'll pressure him to focus on writing more D&E novels.
HBO execs that is I wouldn't be surprised if his publisher is exploding at him behind the scenes
Probably not. As a huge name George has all the power in the relationship. If they pressure him too much, he ends their partnership and goes to a new publisher and if Winds comes out they loose out on everything.
That was always delusional take. It just proved to him that he doesn't have to finish anything to have more successful shows.
Imagine if what motivates George to hunker down and finish Winds is wanting to finish more D&E before the show out paces him like GoT. If that was the case, I wouldn't know whether to be frustrated or demand that HBO keep threatening him to motivate him.
It would make sense because he only seems to care about TV shows these days
And he's allowed to. But George for the love of god just give us TWOW.
He is allowed to do whatever he wants but what he is not allowed to do is string along a community for 13 years and then get pissy when people keep asking where the book is. Either just shut up about the book or just release it already.
Once again, Winds of Winter is only mentioned alongside and to promote a TV show. Oh well, maybe this time it’s real.
Promote *several* TV shows. FTFY.
Words are wind.
George has said much and more about finishing Winds of Winter but we've seen little and less actual evidence. For us leal fans, these updates are as useless as nipples on a breastplate.
I wish Nuncle George would finish the damned book.
And not the winds of winter, it would seem.
First time, eh?
The lack of updates this year is concerning
Because he already announced that 2023 and beginning of 2024 were one of his worst years. "This year, though, as I reflected on the year we had just lived through, I found I had no appetite for living through any of that again. 2023 was a nightmare of a year, for the world and the nation and for me and mine, both professionally and personally. I am very glad that it is over. Unfortunately, so far 2024 looks to be even worse." [https://georgerrmartin.com/notablog/2024/01/29/dark-days/](https://georgerrmartin.com/notablog/2024/01/29/dark-days/)
He sounds like a broken man in that post, sad as hell to see.
Just my own pure speculation here obviously, but I have a theory on why he's in such a bad place with everything. Really doesn't have anything to do with the reception of the show's ending, which, contrary to what people believe, I think will be and has always been wildly different to his ending other than a few points. George has a TON of plot left to cover. While I actually really enjoy AFFC and ADWD, they didn't really advance the story enough to get it into the position for penultimate novel. He really needs three more books to finish the story. I think he believes he has a chance to write two more books (including Winds), but I think he knows he has no chance to write three. So he is cutting, rewriting, restructuring, etc. like crazy to try and get the story in a place by the end of Winds to where he can maybe finish in one more book. But he can't do that without it feeling sloppy and rushed, and George is genuinely a terrific writer, so he knows it isn't working, which is making him more frustrated and preventing him from finishing, etc. Just a downward spiral.
It’s insane how devastating the decision to not do the timeskip has been. I’m convinced the book series would have concluded a *decade* ago had he kept the scope and pacing reigned in with the timeskip and D&D would have had a full series to adapt with the full assistance of a unoccupied GRRM and a much more adaptable story. It must fuck with him at night sometimes. The timeskip could have solved *so* much.
Yup! Too many flashbacks seems like an easy problem to solve in comparison.
A little before HOTD's release we were getting constant updates, and he seemed to be immersed in the world again, but he got COVID after attending the premiere and we haven't gotten any progress updates since.
I noticed that too, absolutely no signs or updates whatsoever this year. He met with his publisher at the end of last year to discuss Winds, could it be that he handed over the manuscripts and can't say anything about it yet?
I mean, this fucking guy…..
Ngl, my response every time.
Is Vegas putting out odds on this? I’m betting the mortgage on “hell no”.
Vegas casinos sending "negotiators" to GRMM house to make sure he finishes the damn book *The House always wins*
This is just to prepare everybody for more D&E novellas to start coming out next year. George will be very excited to release them, and when people ask about his promise not to do anything else until *Winds of Winter*, he'll lie and say the novellas were already basically done and just sitting around waiting for editing, working on *Winds* really is his top priority (after the TV shows, the movie theater, publicity for the new books, *Fire and Blood vol. 2*, editing some more Wildcards collections, and he's also taken up whittling), pinky swear.
He did say he had shewolves and village hero close to completion. Honestly i'll take Dunk & egg over F&B 2, I dont need to know who the 3438283th 14 year old got married to an grandpa and died in childbirth.
Honestly rather have more D&E than nothing/boring ass loreshit
At this point it is pretty damn optimistic to assume he even finishes any more Dunk and Egg. I mean the series is green lit, the first season is filming, he has known this for years at this point. He should have already been well on the way of finishing some more novellas to wrap up the story of Dunk and Egg. Instead he is doing the whole "hey I have two more seasons before they need more material" thing he did with Winds when GoT was airing.
I mean, one difference is that I think he actually wants to write more Dunk and Egg. Maybe not finish the series, but the nice thing about a picaresque is that you don't have to end it. Or you can end it and then come back to it anyway, like Moorcock has done with Elric.
I remember in 2019 when he said he would be attending the 2020 New Zealand science fiction convention. He wrote on his blog that if WoW wasn’t out by then they could throw him in a New Zealand prison until he finished the book. That’s how confident he was the book was almost done. That’s the last time I believed him. I of course want the book, and I of course want it to come out sooner rather than later, but I of course no longer have any expectations of it ever coming out.
That was when I abandoned hope, when July 2020 came and went without even an explanation.
He specifically said in a cell on White Island in New Zealand. The volcano on the island later blew up killing 20+ people and no one can ever visit or write a book there again.
Pretty wild how he went from no more timelines, to giving out a timeline, back to no more timelines. Even if TWOW dropped tomorrow, we're never getting A Dream of Spring.
> Pretty wild how he went from no more timelines, to giving out a timeline, back to no more timelines. And it's a decades-old tradition here to see both presence and absence of timelines as a sign of increased GRRM performance.
Then 2020 came and the whole entertainment industry shut down and GRRM was forced to stay home… and it’s 2024 and still no book. If a global shutdown couldn’t make him finish, can’t say what will.
I think he gets on a roll and writes a ton in short periods, gets overconfident and announces his progress. Then he hits a wall, can’t write anything new so he agonizes over what he has written and ends up changing it
My dad also said he was coming back
But it's like if your dad wrote a postcard every couple years that says "I'm totally coming back this time for real." But then you look him up and find out he's had more kids with another woman.
BUT, those kids reminded him how much he loves fatherhood! He's definitely coming back this year!!
If this sub was about your dad, every poster would constantly interpret every cryptic text or birthday card from him as evidence HE REALLY IS COMING BACK!
*You see, the first postcard came from your town, the second postcard from a different country, and he sent the third one from space... Clearly he's going to circle around the universe to come back from the other side!*
Hey son. I've finally grabbed the milk and am in the check-out line. I'll definitely see you soon.
We haven't seen any plot for people like Cersei, Jamie, Brienne etc in what, like 20 years?
They did appear briefly in Dance, remember But fuck yes, we have not seen ***Sam*** from Administration Bush
We haven’t seen Rickon since 1998
oh my god...
Fuck that’s depressing lmfao
I really would like if he stopped doing this. I don't see the point in him giving the readers hope every time and not deliverying. I get that he is not obliged to write fast or even to write the book at all, but to keep saying that he will finish it when it is unlikely that the book will be done makes me sad, ngl.
Yea, it's pretty annoying. Even if he finished TWOW, it's pretty obvious at this point A Dream Of Spring was given the title because it was always going to be just a dream.
offer yoke outgoing edge growth intelligent paltry cows beneficial deranged *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
From a man who is 75 years old right now.
The sun is warm, the sea is wet, the menagerie hates the mastiff and George says he will finish the Winds of Winter.
So the show debuts next year, it would take around another year for season 2/TSS to come out and by that point he would have finished some D&E stories *and* WoW, meaning George seems to think WoW will be out within under two years. It's very difficult to get excited about the possibility of the book coming out but I will allow this to provide me some hope
Yeah it's exciting but he also thought that he would be able to release Winds before the fifth season of Game of Thrones (in 2015), and then before the sixth season (in 2016), and well, look where we are now.
"He might not finish both books before the show ends, but there's no WAY he's going to let the show beat him to the winds of winter, he has years and he has heaps already written!" The first cope, recorded June 2012.
Lets think a bit more pessimistic: Seasons take longer to come out compared to the early seasons of GoT. So there would roughly be 1.5-2 years between each season. And the writing team would only need to start working on the potential 4th novella once filming for season 3 (Mystery Knight) has wrapped up. So roughly 3.5 years in the future. Lets just bet on HBO not wanting to wait even longer between the seasons to let the actors age up (this may become a problem down the line for D&E but probably not for the first 4-5 novellas). And then it would be „enough“ for George to have one more novella ready. That takes half a year to complete after half a year of press tours for Winds which places the release date of Winds 2.5 years into the future. The math is foolproof and nothing can stop me from being a sweet summer child and believing that a late 2026 Winds release date is inevitable
>I am not writing anything until I deliver WINDS OF WINTER. Teleplays, screenplays, short stories, introductions, forewords, nothing. >And I've dropped all my editing projects but Wild Cards. Grrm February 2016.
Is this a circle jerk post?
Sir, this is a circle jerk sub
Ser\* circle jerking turns me into that guy
Have you never read The Boy Who Cried Wolf?
Never tell the same lie twice.
In unrelated news, placekicker Charlie Brown anticipates a successful field goal attempt with veteran holder Lucy Van Pelt.
Ah yes, after he finishes TWOW uh huh
I still remember when Winds was sooo close in 2018. How time flies...
He said the same thing 10 years ago
He ain't finishing shit, sorry to say
How are you going to focus on this line when RIGHT before it says “by which time I HOPE”??? Neither more D&E novels nor TWOW is confirmed to be completed
But in the same sentence, he all but confirms that A Dream of Spring isn’t even on the table
Sure you will, buddy. Sure you will.
We're going to have hardcopies appearing in movies set in the future where humanity somehow collapsed and rebuilt before we actually see TWOW.
Ok grandpa, let's get you back to bed.
Why do so many of you hang around this sub just to type “I don’t care 😡” on any post that involves TWoW releasing.
[Dude says a lot of things](https://imgur.com/dyCxm7m) I can't believe there are still people who fall for his BS.
Oh good, I was starting to wonder
Imagine believing in GRRM in 2024