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How would George R.R. Martin change his Song of Ice and Fire books? “I’d have them finished”

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How would George R.R. Martin change his Song of Ice and Fire books? "I'd have them finished"

As a die-hard fan of George R.R. Martin’s epic saga, “A Song of Ice and Fire,” I find myself both enthralled and exasperated by the author’s seemingly eternal struggle to bring us the next installment, “The Winds of Winter.” Over the past decade, we’ve witnessed seven out of eight seasons of HBO’s adaptation, while the books that started it all remain tantalizingly incomplete.

George R.R. Martin initially penned the first book in his epic series titled Song of Ice and Fire, specifically A Game of Thrones, as far back as 1996. The latest addition to this series, A Dance with Dragons, was published in 2011. Since then, eager fans have been anticipating the next installment, The Winds of Winter. Regrettably, a release date remains elusive even after more than a decade. Meanwhile, HBO has aired seven out of eight seasons of their adaptation of Martin’s books, titled Game of Thrones, during this period.

As a passionate gamer, I can’t help but feel the same impatience as many others. Theories abound, but it’s clear that George R.R. Martin shares our frustration with the delay in the conclusion to his epic saga. During a recent chat at Oxford Writers House, when asked about potential alterations in his works, he candidly admitted what we all secretly wished: “If I could rewrite one aspect of one of my books, I’d make them completed.”

Martin declined to delve into the reasons why it’s taking him so long to complete “The Winds of Winter,” but he shared an intriguing tale that could potentially offer some insights. In the 1970s, when Martin was just beginning his writing journey, he was part of a writers group in Chicago. This group included many budding authors like himself, as well as established ones such as Gene Wolfe, who penned the renowned “The Book of the New Sun” series, often called the “four-book trilogy.” Martin referred to these books by their original title, “The Shadow of the Torturer,” which is the name of the first book in the series.

Martin often admired a practical aspect of Gene: despite being exceptional, Gene was not a full-time writer. He held a day job as an editor for a technical magazine called “Plant Engineering,” which provided him with a good income. With this income, he purchased a home, funded his children’s education, and supported his family. In his spare time on weekends and nights, he wrote the entire “Torturer” series, a task that typically involves submitting work to editors and negotiating contracts with deadlines. However, Gene finished all four books before showing any of them to anyone. He didn’t follow the usual route of submission; instead, he completed the entire series first. Only when all four books were written did Gene submit the series for publication, which was later bought and published.

I kind of envied him the freedom to do that. But I knew even then, I was not the editor of Plant Engineering magazine. I had no other salary. I lived entirely on the money that my stories and books earned. To write those four books took him like six years or something. I couldn’t take six years off with no income. I would have wound up homeless or something like that. But there is something very liberating from an artistic point of view if you don’t have to worry, you know if you happen to inherit a huge trust fund or a castle or something like that and you can write your entire series without having to sell it, without having to worry about deadlines, that’s something that that I would envy, but I’ve never done that, I never could have done it even now. But believe it or not, I am not taking all that time to write Winds of Winter just because I think I’m Gene Wolfe now. I would love to have had it finished years ago, but yeah, that’s the big thing I think I would change.

Initially, it seemed challenging to connect Martin’s desire for his books to be completed with the tale about an author who wrote all his series before publishing them, allowing him to revise earlier works as needed. However, upon deeper contemplation, the connection becomes clearer. My hypothesis is that the reason George R.R. Martin is taking so long to complete The Winds of Winter is due to the complexity of managing a series with numerous plotlines, characters, and relationships. At some point, it becomes extremely difficult to progress such an intricate story in a way that satisfies all readers. It’s possible that Martin wishes he could revise certain aspects of the earlier books in the A Song of Ice and Fire series to facilitate writing the new book more easily. Of course, he can’t do this, as he feels a strong obligation to maintain consistency throughout his series. If only he had written all the books ahead of time, he wouldn’t be facing this predicament now.

However, he failed to deliver and is still holding back, leaving us in anticipation for his next moves. Following “The Winds of Winter”, George R.R. Martin has at least one more book lined up: “A Dream of Spring”. Yet, it remains uncertain how this story will evolve during the writing process, potentially bringing about either favorable or unfavorable outcomes.

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2024-08-20 19:42

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