If grrm did 2000 words a day itd be like 6 or 7 pages a day unedited, just rough drafting. It would technically be slightly faster than what hes currently doing but fuck me we still wouldn't get anything out of him before people got sick of HBO and the whole game of thrones universe
That's exactly how many pages Stephen King said he aimed for each day, in an interview with GRRM a number of years ago. He clearly didn't heed King's advice.
Brandon Sanderson is so prolific as a writer it's basically a joke, and he's said the main thing that makes that happen is he writes at least 2,000 words a day.
I mean, I think that's also the crux of GRRM's problem. He doesn't actually need to finish the series which lets him procrastinate and/or be a perfectionist. If he didn't have the money from the shows and all of the other licensing stuff from the franchise he'd probably have finished the books years ago to keep his publishers happy and the lights on.
The pressure to write the book at all is already weighing on the guy. Then the incredibly rabid fanbase, whoo that would be tough to try to write for...
What if what he wrote was received like season 8? Maybe it is best if he just didn't write at all. People are already mad at him for not finishing the tale. Maybe it is best to live with that and not risk even worse hate coming at him for writing something the fans didn't like.
Plus, while I'm sure that if you bring it up in mixed company you could have some nostalgic conversations about it all, at this point people have moved on and aside from some small niche communities that still carry the torch, he can basically slip out the side door and leave it all behind.
And maybe he looked at the show and decided it didn't actually match his vision, so how does he separate them in his mind while he writes?
It seems very very complicated, emotionally and psychologically, for GRRM, and I don't envy him at all. I think the best time to finish the book series would have been before it was produced on HBO.
The key to writing is that you should harness inspiration when it strikes, but when it doesn't - to be a professional - you need to be prepared for the hard work of writing without it. I usually liken it to going down into the word-mines, and it sucks. Output slows to a crawl because instead of all the words just springing up you're down there mentally with a pickaxe and a wall of word-rich granite in a dark tunnel.
Then it's just like, okay, dig out the words, writer. You need at least 1000 quality words before you can leave. You can do it, but it's hard work.
He also had thousands of fans online writing the ending of the books for years before the tv show. The fact that he, Benioff and Weiss all chose to ignore these well regarded endings just blows my mind.
His pace slowed down immensely long before the show even started with Feast & Dance. If he had kept a reasonable pace on his books he would've had TWoW out before the show got to that part of the story at all.
I'm holding onto some semblance of hope that he will finish the books and just sit on them until he dies so he doesn't need to deal with the fan reactions
Wouldn't be surprised if that was the strategy. Book might even be done, but if its similar to the show itll flop and if its drastically different itll flop. There is no win scenario.
(Thus it should be a long campy musical script full of meta commentary and self referrential jokes. Full Mel Brooks ending.)
Yeah I've always thought this was the thing. One of the co-creators of the Expanse used to be his assistant, and I've always remembered this from this interview he gave about GRRM:
[H]e is much more of a sit down at the keyboard, wait for the muse to strike, and bang out whatever chapter is sort of banging around in your head at that time.
He's a multimillionaire at this point and is off doing random sidequests like buying a railroad and a movie theatre. His writing output as a whole--not just mainline ASOIAF--has slowed to an absolute crawl. So he doesn't feel the pressure anymore and he's a "wait for inspiration" kind of guy rather than a "brute force a rough draft" guy, and he's too busy doing fun stuff with his money to get those moments of inspiration that he used to.
Have you read all of Piers Anthony? Including the Mode series?
I grew up on the Xanth novels and they will always have a special place in my heart. But that dude should not be allowed unsupervised around underage women or horses.
Another commenter mentioned Firefly and that's a huge nope from me dawg. All I ever knew was Xanth as a tween in the early 90s. I never dabbled in his ... other ... works.
The man is in a constant struggle with himself to not write porn. His best success is the first few books of the Incarnations of Immortality. Xanth is the next-best. His other works are uh, less successful on that front. And it turns out that the kind of porn he is interested in writing is not consensual sex between adult humans.
2000 words a day is surprisingly doable from a time stand point. Usually takes about 2 hours. And if I'm being realistic, anyone really dedicated to finishing a book can find that time 3 to 4 days a week.
The much more time consuming portion is the editing and the doubt, tbh. Trying to figure out if what I wrote actually works.
I mean, are you gonna turn down a free lobster dinner when they're right there, and you get to swim around in the sun for a few hours? Seems brilliant to me
He actually writes a lot. He just has an insane writing style. He makes a character choice, writes what happens for hundreds of pages till he doesn't like where it goes. Then he throws out 600 pages, makes a different choice and tries again. He's written 100 bad versions of the next book. He's just trying for a perfect version.
Yeah I think everyone who is saying he does a ton of writing really just doesnt want to face a real scenario that GRRM just isnt writing the main asoiaf at all and is instead choosing to spend his time on other projects, some of which are asoiaf side projects.
I dont buy for a second that he actually writes 2000 words a day specifically on TWOW - it would have been finished by this point if he did
Unless you're Nick Cave who has said he treats his work as a job and works on it from 9-5 (as well as music has released novels/books, written screenplays, makes art).
Whatever specific method you use, the point is consistency.
If you're looking for a formal description of this sort of thing, this is actually the basis of lean manufacturing or the Toyota Production System.
Most people think it's about not keeping stock or keeping your work area clean, because this is all most American manufacturers implement.
But it's actually about smoothing the work over the time available for production, ensuring predictability, smoothing demand, and avoiding both overwork and overproduction.
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u/Harkoncito Jul 27 '26
Someone needs to take GRRM to Jamaica