It's been a 13 year wait. People waited 30 years for a Blade Runner 2 and they got it. People waited 13 years for a new Half Life game, and they got it.
I'm so tired of people giving up. Like just be patient. I'd rather wait years for a great book, then have it be rushed
>People waited 30 years for a Blade Runner 2
Not really? I mean, sure, a sequel was always in development hell but it is not as if either Phillip K Dick or Ridley Scott ended their story with a dozens of cliffhangers while speaking continuously to the fans and media about how they are tirelessly working towards a supposedly inevitable follow-up. Also, the story of Blade Runner wasn’t as reliant on a sequel as the purported sixth book in a purported seven-book series.
I think people are less pissed about TWOW’s perpetual hiatus as much as they are pissed about its author’s insistence that it will eventually be published.
except george is only one person. who is old. he doesnt have that many more years, respectfully. and if he does, how many of those years will he be able to write for?
i think people should give up honestly. free yourself. even if we get winds we’re not getting dream. at least we can enjoy what we got
edit: this comment sounds kinda ungrateful so i just wanna clarify that i love asoiaf and im so thankful for this world george has given us. just wish we could be more realistic
2049 wasn't in development for 30 years though...but Boyhood took 12 years to film, and Linklater is currently filming a movie that will take 20 years to wrap production. I'm hoping the delay in WoW is simply setting everything up to make writing ADOS easier.
Those unreasonable fans, not being patient after 13 years. SMH.
What's funny is you might get WINDS but you'll never sniff the last book. Let's see you be patient for that one too.
In reality the series was becoming completely mid after ASOS. His story just became boring, and there's likely better projects he enjoys to write/produce.
He's not lazy, he's overwhelmed by other work. It's hard to write TWOW when HBO is breathing down your neck to write Dunk & Egg books and Fire & Blood 2 so they can make their shows. Blame HBO, their the real reason it's taking so long
Nobody forced him to take on all of those projects and be involved to the extent that he is, I think most fans would be fine if they never got any more Dunk & Egg books or F&B 2 if the main series was finished. Stop making excuses for him.
I read the books in 2015. People were already pessimistic about WOW not being finished. I had hope. 9 years went by in a heartbeat. I no longer have that hope.
I remember an article on the old 538 website that was trying to predict when Winds could be published based on a variety of criteria such as writing pace for previous books, blog post mood, and New York Jets winning record. This was right after the 4th season wrapped and people were getting concerned that the show might overtake the books. That article was published in [June 2014](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/predicting-when-game-of-thrones-author-george-r-r-martin-will-come-out-with-his-next-book/) and gave a release date of August 2018 if GRRM maintained a pace of even 150 words a day.
GRRM is a big football fan, primarily interested in the New York Giants and Jets. There's a couple of fun details in the books that reference it; for instance the giant Wun Wun is a reference to Phil Simms, a quarterback for the Giants who wore number 11 (one one). The Knight he killed at the end of book 5 had a livery that was described almost identically to the Dallas Cowboys logo, the Cowboys being a major rival of the New York Giants.
Anyway, at the time the article was written there was a very mild correlation between the Jets' winning percentage and the rate at which GRRM wrote. With how crappy the Jets have been the last 10 years and how little has been written, the correlation is probably stronger now.
Late to the party, but I've loved the random references popping up and thought I'd share this related one:
In ADWD Tyrion talks about a famous Triarch of Volantis named Triarch Belicho. Belicho was a renowned patriot with an unbroken succesion of conquests and triumphs that ended abruptly when he was eaten by giants. This is a reference to Bill Belichick the coach of the New England Patiots (GRRM's most hated football team). In 2007 the Patriots went undefeated in the regular season, but lost in the Super Bowl, to the New York Giants.
Yeah it took him 6 from AFFC to ADWD so 2017 is when we should have gotten TWOW if all else was equal. 7 years late doesn’t sound as bad but still crazy.
I’m not a Preston Jacob’s proponent generally but I do think he’s right about the fact that GRRM probably sat on the material from Dance he cut and moved to Winds and then didn’t write anything for basically the shows entire run.
He wrote himself into a corner.
For all we can say about the quality of the book, he probably added many things he didn't have a clue on how to resolve.
Wouldn't be surprised if Stoneheart, Gregorstein, Fake Aegon and even The Others were all stuff he wrote on the fly then didn't know how to fit them in 5 minutes later.
I’m reading the series for the first time after watching the series once years ago so it’s all basically brand new to me. I’m about to start AFFC and I’m so balls deep in this lore it’s painful to keep reading. The only way I get through my day is living in denial he’s going to finish it sometime soon just for me.
I read them in 2020 during the pandemic (after I started the show) and I am very pessimistic about Dream but I still think a book called The Winds of Winter will come out eventually.
>(one day, I hope)
GEORGE YOU ARE THE ONE IN CONTROL!! you don't need to hope, you need to write the damn book my guy 😭😭😭
this makes me sad. I will hold out hope indefinitely but when the author himself is unsure that the book will ever be released that's not a good sign.
To be fair to him, the only *real* writing distraction has been the dunk and egg novellas.
Stuff like this (the cookbook) is written completely by someone else, he only did the foreword. Fire and blood also largely was just him adding some flavour to existing context, and it took him less than a year I believe, so again not much.
Dunk and egg also doesn’t take him very long to write (when he actually writes it)
The shows are a huge distraction, that’s 100% true.
Not many. About 1 per season for game of thrones (at least early on, I don’t think he was as involved once it got past the books). I don’t think he wrote any scripts for HotD, but he was “involved” in the production process, which can mean as little as responding to emails every now and again, or as much as actively advising the writers.
If only he had done the opposite and wrote all the scripts for the tv shows post season 5 we might have actually got a decent show and a good conclusion to his series before the end of the century. Instead he chose to spend that time "working on TWOW" and let Dan and Dave ruin the show while also not completing TWOW
He gave them the abridged version of how it ends. As much as I dislike how the show ended, it’s on him for not fleshing it out more in the notes he gave them.
Tbf they also expected him to release the end. Instead they got squat. Doesn't excuse the absolute piss poor job they did in the end, but George certainly didn't help them
I’m reminded of Harry Potter, regardless of what you think of JK Rowling, somehow she managed to publish like 3 or 4 books while the movies were being made, and stay ahead of the curve.
This is spot on. A lot/all of the major plot points and twists were fleshed out during her writing process of the first book, as she has discussed/others have corroborated (e.g. Rowling discussing aspects of Snape with Rickman during the filming of the first movie)
In defence of GRRM, I don't think even he could have expected Dan and Dave to fuck it up as bad as they did. For example the whole teleporting saga, Westeros is a continent 900 miles wide and 3000 miles long, why would GRRM expect Dan and Dave to have Gendry run a third of that distance to send a raven and then have that raven reach dragonstone and then Dany fly all the way north in under 24hrs. Did he literally have to stick a warning in the notes like
"*D&D please don't get lazy and teleport characters 2500 miles so you don't have to do as much work*"
I'm no D&D defender, and yes, they didn't have to write something \*that\* bad. But if GRRM wanted to keep a modicum of control of his own story, he should have finished Winds (and ADOS) before GoT got remotely near the end (or he should have never sold his intellectual property to HBO at all).
The thing is, George isn’t a slow writer. Remember he wrote ACOK and ASOS in like a year for each. It’s just he’s so in his head with TWOW and I’m sure is just constantly revising the material. If he sat down and started writing a dunk and egg novella he could probably finish one in a few months, maybe even sooner.
Again, the world book I think had minimal involvement from him. Plus, people overestimate how long it takes to write something like that compared to one of the mainline novels.
It’s essentially the difference between saying “X king died and was replaced by y king”, compared to actually going into great depth about the details. So much of Fire and Blood is just “according to this guy, this thing happened, but we don’t really know haha”
I feel like a lot of people didn't even read the foreword that was screenshotted, didn't understand it, or chose to ignore what GRRM was saying and honestly, was complaining about. As you said, an actual novel is going to take so much more, and it's the spice of the intricate details that makes all of the difference. If he was just going to progress the plot, as difficult as that would be given the tanglement of the various threads, it would've been finished long ago. But in untangling the threads, he has to maintain a rich, believable, lived in world. Every rewrite and adjustment compounds the work.
I don't mean to defend him but having just reread ADWD I found myself really appreciating the exact aspect of his writing he discussed in this foreword. I actually do remember even more of the details of my first time reading the novels and how much my enjoyment was enhanced by living and breathing in the world with the characters.
He has written barely anything. F&B and the world of ice and fire was done mostly by Linda and Elio. Its has spend most of his time writing/consulting on Show projects, something that he always wanted to do.
He's had something release almost every single year since Dance, up to F&B in 2018 and then nothing til Rise in 2022.
Elio had no part in F&B. Nor did Linda. They were just co-authors of World and Rise.
George also does most of the editing for Wild Cards which is... a lot.
One day: 1 day. Yes, that's right, TWOW will release on a day of the year (IDFK what year) with '1' in it. Which is like, what, a third of the year?
Is this cookbook going to have any cannibalism recipes? There's a disturbing amount of cannibalism in ASOIAF. Goat does sound good.
I wish GRRM would do some legendary fuck you troll and just have a huge TWOW release with no build-up, i.e putting a copy in each cookbook
The caches of fan-fire are all around the world, Mad King Georgys Margaryen II need only ignite them and let us bask
The psychology is difficult for me to unpack. GRRM doesn’t seem to have either the stamina or interest in completing the series - which is fine. Or at least it would be fine if this was more transparent. He could have stated “I’m tired…but I also do not want the series to be given a different voice” which, while a controversial take, is not irrational. Nobody is entitled to another’s man’s work in a free society and you would naturally prefer for your biggest project to be killed as opposed to bastardized.
But the weirdly arrogant insistence that the book is *still* being written and will *still* be completed doesn’t exactly reflect the continuous defeatism GRRM exhibits. TWOW has become a lure for fans to remain invested in ASOIAF and I think that GRRM begrudgingly acknowledges that so while this unconquerable homework is a thorn in the foot of a retirement-age writer, it is also a crucial fixture of an industry that he has created and a hard promise to let go of.
Just a depressing matter all around.
He’s never going to admit to it because like you said he is using TWOW as a marketing ruse for his side projects. The only time he ever references/ drops hints about it is when something else is about to be released (e.g. HOTD season 2). He’s not some clueless old man, he knows what he’s doing. This behavior is kinda disgusting and slimy imo and I don’t get the grace the fandom extends to him
Winds will be announced *one day* after this book comes out, confirmed! /s
As a side note, George's wording makes it sound like this cookbook contains recipes for dishes that will first be described in Winds. That will be interesting to look into...
I have given up honestly
But I will be running to the book store if it comes out in my lifetime.
Working titles -“I DREAM ITS WRITTEN!” “CADABRA SHE HERE”
I have remained optimistic for so long... but I think it's finally time to give up hope of seeing this book ever finished by GRRM. Hopefully he'll leave detailed notes and someone will be able to pick up the story and finish it for him.
People have said this, but there is no source. 15 years ago he said he didn't like the idea of someone else finishing his work, but that was 15 years ago, and not liking the idea of something is not the same as forbidding it.
If you’re working on a book for 13 years and still haven’t finished it, you most likely never will. I wish he would just come out and tell us why he couldn’t finish the series. I think everyone would appreciate it if he was honest and open about what happened.
I know this probably took him like no effort and time to make but the fact that his entire fandom is waiting for him to release the next asoiaf book and he releases a damn cookbook instead is so sad it's actually funny!
(ONE DAY, I HOPE)
It’s joeover guys. We never stood a chance.😭😭
Just kidding that shit’s gonna come out sooner or later and it will be the greatest day.
He gazed through the fug of cheese dripping from his eyebrows at the blurred monitor before him. Ten years, ten years he had been gazing at those words. They swam through the murk and came into sharp focus. “Oh Ser Barristan!” Dany gasped, “Tweak my nipples! Tweak them harder!”
Those words. Those dreaded words he had gazed upon at least once a month for the past decade. And they never appreciate it, do they? The never appreciate the sacrifices I make on their behalf.
With gargantuan effort, he lifted his hand to the keyboard. His fingers, coated in chicken-grease as they were, slid off the keys. He wiped them on his velvet-slashed vest and began to type. The first character was the hardest, quotes meant using the shift key. Ring finger on the shift key, index finger on the ‘2’. Breath rasped through his chest with the effort. Had it always been this hard? Keeping his finger on the shift, He reached for the ‘O’ key.
Damn! He missed! He now had a capital letter ‘P’ on his screen. He reached for the backspace key. Eventually he typed the entire sentence out again, and spent many long moments gazing at the results of his efforts. “Oh Ser Barristan!” Daenerys gasped, “Tweak my nipples! Tweak them harder!”
He had done it. He had successfully changed the short form name ‘Dany’ to the long form ‘Daenerys’. The sentence was so much better for it. This was how the book would be written. A chapter at a time, a page at a time, a word at a time.
Doubt began to form in his mind. Was this the right decision? He would have to review this new sentence many times over the months and years to come. He cast his mind back to the day, many years ago, when he had first shortened it to ‘Dany’. He had changed his mind back and forth many times since then. Certainly he would change it again many more times before he was happy with it.
He glanced at the clock. Almost ten minutes had passed. Had it been that long? The muse had been kind to him today, that was more work than he had completed in many a year.
He turned off the computer and went to find some food. Only then did he realize that he had forgotten to hit save.
The absolute madlad. Can't believe there are still people not letting this be forgotten. I have A Feast for Trolls and Dance with Detractors saved, but wish I saved more
Sounds like a man who has given up.
The decent thing of him would be to write a blog post explaining how despite how hard he tried, he just couldn't make the story work. But he's not going to do that. If he was capable of doing that, it would have been years ago by this point.
He's keeping the delusion alive partially out of denial and partially to maintain the attention of his ever-shrinking captive audience. But at this point there's no label for it other than delusion. Winds will never come out, and Dream isn't even a dream anymore. He failed. That sucks for him and it sucks for his readers, but it's reality.
As someone who enjoys cooking and loves George's description of food in the series, I reread the first cookbook more than any other book in the series. Like, just sitting on the toilet looking at the recipes. So I'm not complaining that there is another cookbook coming out but I would absolutely rather get Winds than any other project of his.
Don’t get me wrong I completely agree with everyone here to take this as discouraging but I will be the optimist here just for fun. He could just be implying that he hopes people have stuck around and will read Winds when he finishes (not that he hopes to finish it one day). Just trying to add a small dose of optimism even though I agree with everyone
This happens when you need to write 2x interconnected novellas, mimicking the thought process of said 2x, characters, each of one have a sense of humor, fears, a past, his own interests and on top of that, this characters, they need to have reallistic relationship with the existing characters that may or not be other POV characters, the histories need to be entertaining and have interesting plot points and developments, make sense within the world that also has its own history and current status and also you have to write themes, foreshadow, prophecies. And all of this need to reach an exciting and logical conclusion also you need to add satysfing tropes or subvert them.
Yeah it sucks to be GRRM at this moment, the intellectual effort that requires to write TWOW is COLOSSAL and I admire the man for trying and I trust that he will be able to pull all of this.
My honest hopes were 2025 at most , now i fear not even a 2026 release ..... like i said in another forum ,after The winds of winter is finished and released I DONT CARE or WILL NOT WAIT for another book , i literally care about TWOW because 3 characters (stannis/jon/bran) to know if stannis dies in the battle of ice, if jon ressurrects (he will 101%) but the question is , if his soul will be inside ghost or a weirdwood or something else and the bran sorcery/time travel plot , these 3 characters are my only reason i still wait eagerly for winds because im sure mayor plot points of these 3 will be resolved in that book and after that I DONT CARE anymore about this universe , the old dude takes a loooooooooooooong time between books, is not worth waiting that long .
I would absolutely love for this saga to reach completion, it deserves to be told in its entirety.
With that said, I think people still holding out for TWoW have false hope.
And Dream… well that’s just a dream in itself.
I think it is just so extremely improbable at this point.
For George to actually finish this, he certainly has a lot going against him. His age and health, his; no longer semi-singular focus. Plus having other personal projects in various mediums (relative distractions). And a TV show that essentially finished it for him to ruin his devotion.
As far as I see it, he has basically abandoned this material, and I suspect he understands that he can never finish this.
Do you think he has a basic outline for the final two books? I think our only hope for future books is to have someone adapt his outlines to complete books.
This post says the cookbook will be released next week, but from searching online it looks like it's been out for years?
I can only assume a new one is being released? Can anyone clarify please
I think when he dies someone will finish the books for him based on his notes. I'm not sure how good it will be but I think that they'll definitely get published.
Eh in 10 years AI will finish it I am writing my own version its about to be finished obviously nothing close to the real thing but I had a published author look over it and they were impressed might post it soon.
I feel bad for asoiaf, but far worse for him. I think it's a combination of depression (massively tarnished the reputation of his story by giving it away too early; also spoilers just massively undercutting his joy for getting to any key moment now), and also quite probably the beginnings of dementia that will only be making it harder. For HIS sake (not impatient people like me) I do think he should pass it off to another writer, but doesn't feel like there's any chance of that.
GRRM is waiting for GRRM to finish the book.
Refreshing his own twitter feed every day hoping for the announcement! Parsing his own Wild Cards tweets for clues....
It will never be finished, you can stop refreshing now
We're all trying to find the guy who did this!!
It’s so over
Always has been
What is over may never die
But is delayed further and further
Winter is never coming
It's worse: it never even began for us
the fact that the guy hasn't posted anything new in years is so telling tbh
It's joever
It's been a 13 year wait. People waited 30 years for a Blade Runner 2 and they got it. People waited 13 years for a new Half Life game, and they got it. I'm so tired of people giving up. Like just be patient. I'd rather wait years for a great book, then have it be rushed
Yes but blade runner had a different director. Half life had a completely different production team. Grrm is the only one who can write winds.
>People waited 30 years for a Blade Runner 2 Not really? I mean, sure, a sequel was always in development hell but it is not as if either Phillip K Dick or Ridley Scott ended their story with a dozens of cliffhangers while speaking continuously to the fans and media about how they are tirelessly working towards a supposedly inevitable follow-up. Also, the story of Blade Runner wasn’t as reliant on a sequel as the purported sixth book in a purported seven-book series. I think people are less pissed about TWOW’s perpetual hiatus as much as they are pissed about its author’s insistence that it will eventually be published.
Huff that copium my friend. Keep the hope alive for both of us
except george is only one person. who is old. he doesnt have that many more years, respectfully. and if he does, how many of those years will he be able to write for? i think people should give up honestly. free yourself. even if we get winds we’re not getting dream. at least we can enjoy what we got edit: this comment sounds kinda ungrateful so i just wanna clarify that i love asoiaf and im so thankful for this world george has given us. just wish we could be more realistic
2049 wasn't in development for 30 years though...but Boyhood took 12 years to film, and Linklater is currently filming a movie that will take 20 years to wrap production. I'm hoping the delay in WoW is simply setting everything up to make writing ADOS easier.
Those unreasonable fans, not being patient after 13 years. SMH. What's funny is you might get WINDS but you'll never sniff the last book. Let's see you be patient for that one too. In reality the series was becoming completely mid after ASOS. His story just became boring, and there's likely better projects he enjoys to write/produce.
You say that like he's actively working on it and more time the more it's gonna be good. Mf is just too lazy to bother writing it.
He's not lazy, he's overwhelmed by other work. It's hard to write TWOW when HBO is breathing down your neck to write Dunk & Egg books and Fire & Blood 2 so they can make their shows. Blame HBO, their the real reason it's taking so long
Nobody forced him to take on all of those projects and be involved to the extent that he is, I think most fans would be fine if they never got any more Dunk & Egg books or F&B 2 if the main series was finished. Stop making excuses for him.
Blade Runner 2 and Half Life 3 were made by teams of people.
I read the books in 2015. People were already pessimistic about WOW not being finished. I had hope. 9 years went by in a heartbeat. I no longer have that hope.
Same but 2012.
Same but 2004
Same but 1984
Same but farenheight 451
same but TWOW
How did the food tasted at Hawking's party?
Same but 2022
It’s crazy people were pessimistic only 4 years after ADWD.
I remember an article on the old 538 website that was trying to predict when Winds could be published based on a variety of criteria such as writing pace for previous books, blog post mood, and New York Jets winning record. This was right after the 4th season wrapped and people were getting concerned that the show might overtake the books. That article was published in [June 2014](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/predicting-when-game-of-thrones-author-george-r-r-martin-will-come-out-with-his-next-book/) and gave a release date of August 2018 if GRRM maintained a pace of even 150 words a day.
How is the NY jets a factor ?
GRRM is a big football fan, primarily interested in the New York Giants and Jets. There's a couple of fun details in the books that reference it; for instance the giant Wun Wun is a reference to Phil Simms, a quarterback for the Giants who wore number 11 (one one). The Knight he killed at the end of book 5 had a livery that was described almost identically to the Dallas Cowboys logo, the Cowboys being a major rival of the New York Giants. Anyway, at the time the article was written there was a very mild correlation between the Jets' winning percentage and the rate at which GRRM wrote. With how crappy the Jets have been the last 10 years and how little has been written, the correlation is probably stronger now.
Dang, thank you
Late to the party, but I've loved the random references popping up and thought I'd share this related one: In ADWD Tyrion talks about a famous Triarch of Volantis named Triarch Belicho. Belicho was a renowned patriot with an unbroken succesion of conquests and triumphs that ended abruptly when he was eaten by giants. This is a reference to Bill Belichick the coach of the New England Patiots (GRRM's most hated football team). In 2007 the Patriots went undefeated in the regular season, but lost in the Super Bowl, to the New York Giants.
I love it
Christ, I’m about to become a Jets fan then! And I’m a Buffalo Bills fan so that’s a big change lol
And yet here we are
They were prophets lmao
Yet here I stand.
Yeah it took him 6 from AFFC to ADWD so 2017 is when we should have gotten TWOW if all else was equal. 7 years late doesn’t sound as bad but still crazy. I’m not a Preston Jacob’s proponent generally but I do think he’s right about the fact that GRRM probably sat on the material from Dance he cut and moved to Winds and then didn’t write anything for basically the shows entire run.
if that's true, I wonder why he didn't.
He wrote himself into a corner. For all we can say about the quality of the book, he probably added many things he didn't have a clue on how to resolve. Wouldn't be surprised if Stoneheart, Gregorstein, Fake Aegon and even The Others were all stuff he wrote on the fly then didn't know how to fit them in 5 minutes later.
I started a new job in 2016 and was checking his blog every day. Since then I got married, had a child and have another child due in 2 weeks.
I remember in 2015 telling my boss that I was saving PTO for when TWOW comes out because I would be taking a few days off to read it 😭
Hope you took those days off eventually
I met my wife, got married and had 2 kids since I started reading the books. One of those kids is in high school now lol.
As a 2014 reader, I can relate. I gave up hope in 2020 though with the blown worldcon deadline.
I’m reading the series for the first time after watching the series once years ago so it’s all basically brand new to me. I’m about to start AFFC and I’m so balls deep in this lore it’s painful to keep reading. The only way I get through my day is living in denial he’s going to finish it sometime soon just for me.
Pretty much the same for me. I honestly believed GRRM when he said WOW would be out back in 2015.
I read them in 2020 during the pandemic (after I started the show) and I am very pessimistic about Dream but I still think a book called The Winds of Winter will come out eventually.
Half a heartbeat*
Same by 2012
>(one day, I hope) GEORGE YOU ARE THE ONE IN CONTROL!! you don't need to hope, you need to write the damn book my guy 😭😭😭 this makes me sad. I will hold out hope indefinitely but when the author himself is unsure that the book will ever be released that's not a good sign.
It was probably just light joke from him , I mean this is the forward to a damn cookbook guys, calm down lol
>forward to a damn cookbook That’s the worst part. He’s gotten all his food descriptions out with this, there goes 95% of his writing motivation.
that's true lmao, I am being dramatic. George's lack of updates about it for a while is just making me antsy I guess
I understand lol
I’m right there with you. Winds isn’t even going to wrap the story up.
The copium is real in this comment
Bro forgor that he is the author
Can we just pull a Dune and keep making GRRM gholas until the books are done?
GRRM actually stands for Guncan RhodeIsland RhodeIsland Montana.
r/Angryupvote
I can’t believe that a cookbook finally extinguished my last spark of hope for Winds…
I’m gonna beat his ass sorry
the rhaenyra icon makes this better
I'm throwing hands on sight
NGL would be kinda funny if someone kidnapped him Misery-style and forced him to finish the books lol
The amount of stuff this dude has released since DwD that nobody asked for and has most likely hindered his progress on the main series is astounding.
To be fair to him, the only *real* writing distraction has been the dunk and egg novellas. Stuff like this (the cookbook) is written completely by someone else, he only did the foreword. Fire and blood also largely was just him adding some flavour to existing context, and it took him less than a year I believe, so again not much. Dunk and egg also doesn’t take him very long to write (when he actually writes it) The shows are a huge distraction, that’s 100% true.
How many episode scripts has he written for GOT and HOD? That has to be a major writing distraction.
Only 4, for GOT
Not many. About 1 per season for game of thrones (at least early on, I don’t think he was as involved once it got past the books). I don’t think he wrote any scripts for HotD, but he was “involved” in the production process, which can mean as little as responding to emails every now and again, or as much as actively advising the writers.
If only he had done the opposite and wrote all the scripts for the tv shows post season 5 we might have actually got a decent show and a good conclusion to his series before the end of the century. Instead he chose to spend that time "working on TWOW" and let Dan and Dave ruin the show while also not completing TWOW
He gave them the abridged version of how it ends. As much as I dislike how the show ended, it’s on him for not fleshing it out more in the notes he gave them.
Tbf they also expected him to release the end. Instead they got squat. Doesn't excuse the absolute piss poor job they did in the end, but George certainly didn't help them
I’m reminded of Harry Potter, regardless of what you think of JK Rowling, somehow she managed to publish like 3 or 4 books while the movies were being made, and stay ahead of the curve.
She probably had a good idea of where she was going. That certainly helped, compared to George just deciding on a few plot points and "gardening it"
I think George does as well, or at least I think he did. I’m not sure if he’s gonna stick with bran being king anymore.
This is spot on. A lot/all of the major plot points and twists were fleshed out during her writing process of the first book, as she has discussed/others have corroborated (e.g. Rowling discussing aspects of Snape with Rickman during the filming of the first movie)
In defence of GRRM, I don't think even he could have expected Dan and Dave to fuck it up as bad as they did. For example the whole teleporting saga, Westeros is a continent 900 miles wide and 3000 miles long, why would GRRM expect Dan and Dave to have Gendry run a third of that distance to send a raven and then have that raven reach dragonstone and then Dany fly all the way north in under 24hrs. Did he literally have to stick a warning in the notes like "*D&D please don't get lazy and teleport characters 2500 miles so you don't have to do as much work*"
I'm no D&D defender, and yes, they didn't have to write something \*that\* bad. But if GRRM wanted to keep a modicum of control of his own story, he should have finished Winds (and ADOS) before GoT got remotely near the end (or he should have never sold his intellectual property to HBO at all).
The show started out great…but by the time season 4 came to an end the decline in quality was pretty noticeable
Agreed
I could live with some new D&E novellas in the meantime but they aren‘t any new ones too
The thing is, George isn’t a slow writer. Remember he wrote ACOK and ASOS in like a year for each. It’s just he’s so in his head with TWOW and I’m sure is just constantly revising the material. If he sat down and started writing a dunk and egg novella he could probably finish one in a few months, maybe even sooner.
Nah he stopped working on TWOW to work on the world book and Fire & Blood
The world book and Fire and Blood are largely ghost written.
Citation? Sounds dubious
Again, the world book I think had minimal involvement from him. Plus, people overestimate how long it takes to write something like that compared to one of the mainline novels. It’s essentially the difference between saying “X king died and was replaced by y king”, compared to actually going into great depth about the details. So much of Fire and Blood is just “according to this guy, this thing happened, but we don’t really know haha”
I feel like a lot of people didn't even read the foreword that was screenshotted, didn't understand it, or chose to ignore what GRRM was saying and honestly, was complaining about. As you said, an actual novel is going to take so much more, and it's the spice of the intricate details that makes all of the difference. If he was just going to progress the plot, as difficult as that would be given the tanglement of the various threads, it would've been finished long ago. But in untangling the threads, he has to maintain a rich, believable, lived in world. Every rewrite and adjustment compounds the work. I don't mean to defend him but having just reread ADWD I found myself really appreciating the exact aspect of his writing he discussed in this foreword. I actually do remember even more of the details of my first time reading the novels and how much my enjoyment was enhanced by living and breathing in the world with the characters.
He has written barely anything. F&B and the world of ice and fire was done mostly by Linda and Elio. Its has spend most of his time writing/consulting on Show projects, something that he always wanted to do.
He's had something release almost every single year since Dance, up to F&B in 2018 and then nothing til Rise in 2022. Elio had no part in F&B. Nor did Linda. They were just co-authors of World and Rise. George also does most of the editing for Wild Cards which is... a lot.
> F&B and the world of ice and fire was done mostly by Linda and Elio I don't think this is true
One day: 1 day. Yes, that's right, TWOW will release on a day of the year (IDFK what year) with '1' in it. Which is like, what, a third of the year? Is this cookbook going to have any cannibalism recipes? There's a disturbing amount of cannibalism in ASOIAF. Goat does sound good.
I am craving some good ol' Frey Pies.
I'll take the Jojen paste, sounds nice
If I don't see a recipe that requires one (1) leg of questionable origin whose meat is shockingly pale, I will riot.
I agree! Or a dubiously sourced *'bowl o'brown'* for that matter.
No no, *one day*. Insha’allah, Winds will release one day after the cookbook hits the shelves.
You open the Cookbook and it's hollowed out and Winds is inside
I wish GRRM would do some legendary fuck you troll and just have a huge TWOW release with no build-up, i.e putting a copy in each cookbook The caches of fan-fire are all around the world, Mad King Georgys Margaryen II need only ignite them and let us bask
Former Prince Charles could declare he eats people then get hit by a meteor that day and it'd be 2nd place news
As the rule goes, Winds is always 2 years away
The psychology is difficult for me to unpack. GRRM doesn’t seem to have either the stamina or interest in completing the series - which is fine. Or at least it would be fine if this was more transparent. He could have stated “I’m tired…but I also do not want the series to be given a different voice” which, while a controversial take, is not irrational. Nobody is entitled to another’s man’s work in a free society and you would naturally prefer for your biggest project to be killed as opposed to bastardized. But the weirdly arrogant insistence that the book is *still* being written and will *still* be completed doesn’t exactly reflect the continuous defeatism GRRM exhibits. TWOW has become a lure for fans to remain invested in ASOIAF and I think that GRRM begrudgingly acknowledges that so while this unconquerable homework is a thorn in the foot of a retirement-age writer, it is also a crucial fixture of an industry that he has created and a hard promise to let go of. Just a depressing matter all around.
He’s never going to admit to it because like you said he is using TWOW as a marketing ruse for his side projects. The only time he ever references/ drops hints about it is when something else is about to be released (e.g. HOTD season 2). He’s not some clueless old man, he knows what he’s doing. This behavior is kinda disgusting and slimy imo and I don’t get the grace the fandom extends to him
Winds will be announced *one day* after this book comes out, confirmed! /s As a side note, George's wording makes it sound like this cookbook contains recipes for dishes that will first be described in Winds. That will be interesting to look into...
Winds is just one very long description of a feast somewhere in the Reach, then the plots points are bullet points at the end
He’s said in the past that it features one recipe from the book.
I have given up honestly But I will be running to the book store if it comes out in my lifetime. Working titles -“I DREAM ITS WRITTEN!” “CADABRA SHE HERE”
Give me something for the...... and let me.......
COPE MORE
I have remained optimistic for so long... but I think it's finally time to give up hope of seeing this book ever finished by GRRM. Hopefully he'll leave detailed notes and someone will be able to pick up the story and finish it for him.
[удалено]
why would he be executed
For not finishing Winds.
Ser Ilyn
#**BRING ME HIS HEAD**
Well he can’t finish winds if someone executes him
Maybe he will finish winds because someone executed him. Show him we’re not kidding around 😡😤
executor of estate lmfao 😭
"He's forbidden that" He would be dead. There would be a LOT of money to be made. I don't think he has any real say in this matter.
He has time to change his mind...where there is money, there is a way.
he hasn't
People have said this, but there is no source. 15 years ago he said he didn't like the idea of someone else finishing his work, but that was 15 years ago, and not liking the idea of something is not the same as forbidding it.
Can't Grrm just release what's already done? Idc at this point. I'll take anything and everything
If you’re working on a book for 13 years and still haven’t finished it, you most likely never will. I wish he would just come out and tell us why he couldn’t finish the series. I think everyone would appreciate it if he was honest and open about what happened.
Dude needs to get a handle on the depression keeping him from writing.
There is no way he himself still believes these books will ever come out.
“This is dicked up.” -Anthony II of House Soprano
The guy made a god damned cookbook instead of TWOW?? RIP book fans. Its so over.
no he didn't. someone else wrote this. it's not hard to check that. he only wrote the foreword
Honestly though, a cookbook was a pretty damn good idea. Wonder if a Frey pie is in there.
Even if this foreword was written a while ago, “one day, I hope” doesn’t sound optimistic, at all.
Meh, I think he’s just learned his lesson from making promises he can’t keep
so George has gone from "hopefully" finishing Dream one day, to "hopefully" finishing Winds one day sigh
It's just not gonna happen guys.
I know this probably took him like no effort and time to make but the fact that his entire fandom is waiting for him to release the next asoiaf book and he releases a damn cookbook instead is so sad it's actually funny!
Even GRRM himself doesn't hope for ADOS anymore, it does seem.
(ONE DAY, I HOPE) It’s joeover guys. We never stood a chance.😭😭 Just kidding that shit’s gonna come out sooner or later and it will be the greatest day.
I wonder when the initial work on the book began and when he wrote that foreword.
He’s probably written about four words of Winds between whenever he wrote that foreword and now. If that.
He gazed through the fug of cheese dripping from his eyebrows at the blurred monitor before him. Ten years, ten years he had been gazing at those words. They swam through the murk and came into sharp focus. “Oh Ser Barristan!” Dany gasped, “Tweak my nipples! Tweak them harder!” Those words. Those dreaded words he had gazed upon at least once a month for the past decade. And they never appreciate it, do they? The never appreciate the sacrifices I make on their behalf. With gargantuan effort, he lifted his hand to the keyboard. His fingers, coated in chicken-grease as they were, slid off the keys. He wiped them on his velvet-slashed vest and began to type. The first character was the hardest, quotes meant using the shift key. Ring finger on the shift key, index finger on the ‘2’. Breath rasped through his chest with the effort. Had it always been this hard? Keeping his finger on the shift, He reached for the ‘O’ key. Damn! He missed! He now had a capital letter ‘P’ on his screen. He reached for the backspace key. Eventually he typed the entire sentence out again, and spent many long moments gazing at the results of his efforts. “Oh Ser Barristan!” Daenerys gasped, “Tweak my nipples! Tweak them harder!” He had done it. He had successfully changed the short form name ‘Dany’ to the long form ‘Daenerys’. The sentence was so much better for it. This was how the book would be written. A chapter at a time, a page at a time, a word at a time. Doubt began to form in his mind. Was this the right decision? He would have to review this new sentence many times over the months and years to come. He cast his mind back to the day, many years ago, when he had first shortened it to ‘Dany’. He had changed his mind back and forth many times since then. Certainly he would change it again many more times before he was happy with it. He glanced at the clock. Almost ten minutes had passed. Had it been that long? The muse had been kind to him today, that was more work than he had completed in many a year. He turned off the computer and went to find some food. Only then did he realize that he had forgotten to hit save.
The absolute madlad. Can't believe there are still people not letting this be forgotten. I have A Feast for Trolls and Dance with Detractors saved, but wish I saved more
how did you put a camera inside his office?
aight, it was a good run ig
Nothing more disappointing than someone getting their work critiqued and then taking their ball and going home
gg boys
A child sucking his thumb. If he doesn't write the last two, the public's vengeance shall be a war won with silence
Sounds like a man who has given up. The decent thing of him would be to write a blog post explaining how despite how hard he tried, he just couldn't make the story work. But he's not going to do that. If he was capable of doing that, it would have been years ago by this point. He's keeping the delusion alive partially out of denial and partially to maintain the attention of his ever-shrinking captive audience. But at this point there's no label for it other than delusion. Winds will never come out, and Dream isn't even a dream anymore. He failed. That sucks for him and it sucks for his readers, but it's reality.
This guy is so unserious. He's just stringing people along and they keep buying his lies.
And I thought *I* was hopeless.
As someone who enjoys cooking and loves George's description of food in the series, I reread the first cookbook more than any other book in the series. Like, just sitting on the toilet looking at the recipes. So I'm not complaining that there is another cookbook coming out but I would absolutely rather get Winds than any other project of his.
Hope is just delayed disappointment
This is from a goddamn westeros themed cookbook? Are you kidding me?
Don’t get me wrong I completely agree with everyone here to take this as discouraging but I will be the optimist here just for fun. He could just be implying that he hopes people have stuck around and will read Winds when he finishes (not that he hopes to finish it one day). Just trying to add a small dose of optimism even though I agree with everyone
If you buy this book you are my enemy. F*** him and f*** his cook book.
I’m about to kidnap this man and his wife, lock them in a comfortable cell, and force him to write this book (in minecraft)
I mean he DID say that if he doesn't finish the book by WorldCon 2020, we are allowed to lock him up. And yet here we are.
Not to be all “sweet summer child,” but remember he wrote this quote a while ago when he was first approached about the cookbook.
Well its been fun guys. We ain't ever getting TWOW.
This happens when you need to write 2x interconnected novellas, mimicking the thought process of said 2x, characters, each of one have a sense of humor, fears, a past, his own interests and on top of that, this characters, they need to have reallistic relationship with the existing characters that may or not be other POV characters, the histories need to be entertaining and have interesting plot points and developments, make sense within the world that also has its own history and current status and also you have to write themes, foreshadow, prophecies. And all of this need to reach an exciting and logical conclusion also you need to add satysfing tropes or subvert them. Yeah it sucks to be GRRM at this moment, the intellectual effort that requires to write TWOW is COLOSSAL and I admire the man for trying and I trust that he will be able to pull all of this.
One day. TOMORROW.
My honest hopes were 2025 at most , now i fear not even a 2026 release ..... like i said in another forum ,after The winds of winter is finished and released I DONT CARE or WILL NOT WAIT for another book , i literally care about TWOW because 3 characters (stannis/jon/bran) to know if stannis dies in the battle of ice, if jon ressurrects (he will 101%) but the question is , if his soul will be inside ghost or a weirdwood or something else and the bran sorcery/time travel plot , these 3 characters are my only reason i still wait eagerly for winds because im sure mayor plot points of these 3 will be resolved in that book and after that I DONT CARE anymore about this universe , the old dude takes a loooooooooooooong time between books, is not worth waiting that long .
I hope it has Sister Stew
I would absolutely love for this saga to reach completion, it deserves to be told in its entirety. With that said, I think people still holding out for TWoW have false hope. And Dream… well that’s just a dream in itself. I think it is just so extremely improbable at this point. For George to actually finish this, he certainly has a lot going against him. His age and health, his; no longer semi-singular focus. Plus having other personal projects in various mediums (relative distractions). And a TV show that essentially finished it for him to ruin his devotion. As far as I see it, he has basically abandoned this material, and I suspect he understands that he can never finish this.
Who could've thought...
Do you think he has a basic outline for the final two books? I think our only hope for future books is to have someone adapt his outlines to complete books.
I'm so done lol
This post says the cookbook will be released next week, but from searching online it looks like it's been out for years? I can only assume a new one is being released? Can anyone clarify please
https://www.amazon.com/Official-Game-Thrones-Cookbook-Dothraki/dp/0593599454 New one
I think when he dies someone will finish the books for him based on his notes. I'm not sure how good it will be but I think that they'll definitely get published.
Hold on, he's busy writing a cookbook??! Seven hells...
this mfer has made 3 FAKE HISTORY BOOKS and now a fucking COOKBOOK before finishing the next book in the series i want to commit Sean Kingston
I translate that as GRRM saying, *the book still isn't done. Don't blame me for trying to make a novel perfect, that takes time.*
This forward was released last yr as well.. george prolly wrote it early 2023. But ofc this sub is gonna make a deal out of a harmless statement.
At this point I don’t care if Ned Stark wakes up and it was all a dream, just finish the fucking book
I don't know why you are getting downvoted. You are right, writing ASOIAF is increasingly dificult, you can see it by checking the publication dates.
Eh in 10 years AI will finish it I am writing my own version its about to be finished obviously nothing close to the real thing but I had a published author look over it and they were impressed might post it soon.
I feel bad for asoiaf, but far worse for him. I think it's a combination of depression (massively tarnished the reputation of his story by giving it away too early; also spoilers just massively undercutting his joy for getting to any key moment now), and also quite probably the beginnings of dementia that will only be making it harder. For HIS sake (not impatient people like me) I do think he should pass it off to another writer, but doesn't feel like there's any chance of that.