A tohle:

My original intent was to end DANCE with the two big battles, yes… intercutting between the two of them, each told through several different points of view. And both battles were partially written. But NOT COMPLETE, which became the issue. Also, maybe even more to the point, not yet good enough in my estimation. Battles are bloody hard, and I wanted these to be great.

The book had already been scheduled for publication, I had blown through several previous deadlines, and we simply ran out of time. Initially I decided to push one battle back to WINDS to focus on the other, but that did not work either, and neither of the sequences came together the way I wanted them to, so ultimately the choice came down to moving both of the battles to WINDS or cancelling the planned publication and pushing back DANCE. And given how far ahead publishers schedule their releases, the pushback would not have been a few days or a few weeks, but at least half a year, and maybe longer.

Also, DANCE was already very long, and the battles would have made it substantially longer. That could also have affected the pricing.

Did we make the right decision? I don’t know, even to this day. I understand your frustration, and some days I do feel the same way. But back then I had the fans howling after DANCE the same way they are howling after WINDS now, and my publishers really really did not want to push back again. And DANCE, even without the battles, was extremely well received — yes, there were dissenters, I know that, readers who did not like the book as well as the earlier volumes, but out in the wider world, DANCE had extremely strong sales, rode the bestseller lists for a long long time. It was a Hugo finalist, won the Locus Award for best fantasy of the year, and was named by TIME magazine as the book of the year. So even without the battles, it worked pretty well… but part of me still wonders if we made the right choice.

These things are not easy. Those who think they are have obviously never written anything, or had to deal with the realities of publishing.

A ještě tohle:

Alas, I don’t have the time, that’s the point.

IF I had all the time in the world, I would finish THE WINDS OF WINTER and A DREAM OF SPRING, write another six or eight or ten Dunk & Egg novellas, complete the second volume of FIRE & BLOOD… then I might go back my unfinished historical BLACK AND WHITE AND RED ALL OVER, do some Wild Cards stories and maybe a Wild Cards novel, write some new Haviland Tuf stories, spec a few pilot scripts for my own GAME OF THRONES successor shows, do a sequel to FEVRE DREAM, return to the Thousand Worlds for a huge space opera… and then do something completely different, like a murder mystery or a western.

Time is always the issue.

WITTGENSTEIN: imao nikdo z nich nenatáhl čtenáře do 3800+ stránkovýho děje bez konce

GRRM má dobré komentáře v diskusi pod posledním významným postem (tom o dějinách Targaryenů):

Understood, Mel… but here’s the thing. You call LOTR “the main story,” but if you had asked Tolkien, he would have said the SIMARILLION was his main story, his life’s work. Yet he was never able to complete it during his lifetime. Not because he did not care, however.

(Tolkien was an Oxford don, and may actually have considered his teaching to be his life’s work, rather than his writing).

Just for the sake of argument, let me point out that many many people invest their time into works without endings. F. Scott Fitzgerald never finished THE LAST TYCOON, Charles Dickens never finished EDWIN DROOD, Mervyn Peake never finished TITUS ALONE, yet those works are still read.

I do intend to finish A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE, of course… but doubtless Peake, Dickens, Fitzgerald, and Tolkien would have said the same.

Musím vlastně přiznat, že mi otázka, zda to Martin někdy dopíše nebo ne, spánek neruší a pruzení internetových fanoušků považuji za poměrně nevkusné. Ale přišlo by mi docela škoda, kdyby to zůstalo nedopsáno. Jakkoli mi Píseň časem přišla místy už taková únavná, pořád si myslím, že má sílu a potenciál - ale je to prostě celistvý příběh, o kterém nedokážu říci, že je opravdu dobrý, když nebude celý.
Ale možná jsem jen nemístně pesimistický, protože jsem zrovna dočetl nějaké rozhovory s Zelaznym, plné náznaků na nějaké další příběhy o Amberu, které už nepřišly. (Teď nevím, zda se opít v neděli, nebo až 14. června na žal.;)) A zrovna to, jak je merlinovská pentalogie plná otevřených témat a rozehraných příběhů, které měly být vyřešené v nedopsané povídkové antologii, ji, myslím, dělá horší než je ta Corwinova. člověk čte, čte, dočte, je to dobré, ale ten konec prostě nějak chybí...

Na okraj: Kecali takhle Zelazny s Martinem. Roger si stěžoval, že by měl napsat něco do tří tematických antologií a nějak se mu nechce. George: Tak napiš jak jednorožec hraje v baru šachy a máš to. Unicorn Variations jsou velmi vtipné - i když nevím, jak dopadly v české verzi Partie s jednorožcem. ;)

ALONSY: ...ja teda hlavne úplne nesledujem, či GRRM niekomu sľuboval, že ďalšie knihy sú už dopísané, ale trebárs taký Rothfuss pred siedmimi rokmi tvrdil, že má hotovú celú trilógiu, ktorá vyjde v rýchlom slede, a odvtedy sa čaká na ďalší diel (a Rothfuss samozrejme rovnako ako Martin robí medzitým hromadu iných vecí).
To už by som možno vnímal ako podvod, ak si niekto kúpi prvý diel na základe jasného prísľubu, že ďalšie sú hotové.

ALONSY: ani ja si nemyslím, že fanúškovia nejakého kreatívca majú právo čokoľvek požadovať.

Ale majú právo byť nasratí, keď ich autor zreteľne prokrastinuje, a majú právo prestať sa o jeho ďalšie veľdiela zaujímať.

ALONSY: V podstatě Gaimana cituješ (ale to ty asi víš) :))

You're complaining about George doing other things than writing the books you want to read as if your buying the first book in the series was a contract with him: that you would pay over your ten dollars, and George for his part would spend every waking hour until the series was done, writing the rest of the books for you.

No such contract existed. You were paying your ten dollars for the book you were reading, and I assume that you enjoyed it because you want to know what happens next.

It seems to me that the biggest problem with series books is that either readers complain that the books used to be good but that somewhere in the effort to get out a book every year the quality has fallen off, or they complain that the books, although maintaining quality, aren't coming out on time.

Both of these things make me glad that I am not currently writing a series, and make me even gladder that the decade that I did write series things, in Sandman, I was young, driven, a borderline workaholic, and very fortunate. (and even then, towards the end, I was taking five weeks to write a monthly comic, with all the knock-on problems in deadlines that you would expect from that).

For me, I would rather read a good book, from a contented author. I don't really care what it takes to produce that.

CLAVEN: já to prostě vidím tak, jak jsem psala minule. Dá se spekulovat o tom, jestli to fanouškům dluží a měl by to napsat, když už do toho investovali prachy. Ale nějak si myslím, že bude lepší, když napíše jiné věci, co ho budou bavit a budou dobrý, než aby vyplodil sračkoidni konec bez špetky lásky, protože lidi chtějí. Nemyslím si, že fanoušci jakéhokoliv kreativce mají svatej nárok po něm něco požadovat.

Ale článek mě bavil. A ještě víc ten o HF3

;)

Opinion: Listen Up Fuckfaces, I'll Write Whenever The Goddamn Fuck I Want To
https://thehardtimes.net/...inion-listen-up-fuckfaces-ill-write-whenever-the-goddamn-fuck-i-want-to/

MALARKI: A pritom tady resime jak Honza Samo bude hajit Zed u Cerneho Wogastisburgu! :-)

ZUZKAOU: mohl by o dítě a plodnost přijít při nějakém magickém rituálu.

NJAL: jedine ak to bude verzia z Opráskov

NJAL: Sámo je normálně takovej ten první Targaryen- přijde do divočiny z rozvinuté civilizace, podmaní si domorodce a bojuje proti stepním nájezdníkůmi. K tomu teda vzpoura proti původní vlasti, harémy plné slovanek krev a mlíko, stará magie vs. křesťanství a tak.

Jen to nezvládne s tím založením dynastie.