An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time III: Something's Fishy in the White Tower

[Sapphire Guard]

That would just fan the flames. Especially if progress stalled due to some roadblock or other. Books like those are a massive undertaking, they take however long they take.Deciding that an author isn't writing because you see them doing something else is a faulty conclusion which has nothing to do with the author.

The contract is with the publisher, not the fanbase.

[Ninja_Prawn]

But we're moving terribly off-topic

What is this... 'topic' of which you speak?

[Anteros]

That would just fan the flames. Especially if progress stalled due to some roadblock or other. Books like those are a massive undertaking, they take however long they take.Deciding that an author isn't writing because you see them doing something else is a faulty conclusion which has nothing to do with the author.

The contract is with the publisher, not the fanbase.

When you see the author doing a billion other things besides writing, and then the next book takes 10 years to release, it's absolutely a fair assumption that he isn't spending enough time writing.

Obviously he doesn't legally owe anyone anything, but morally when you take someone's money to tell them a story, you have an obligation to actually tell the second half of the story as well instead of getting bored in the middle. He's basically taken enough of everyone's money for his story to live comfortably, and then decided not to fill the obligation. It's not illegal, but people have a right to criticize him. I say this as someone who doesn't even enjoy GoT and won't bother reading it even if he magically completes it.

Let's say I take your money to build your house with the agreement that you'll pay me in stages as I complete each step. Would you be happy if I just constructed the walls and decided I had enough money so I don't need to build your roof? I did everything I was paid to do...but you probably made the decision to pay me in the first place with the assumption I would actually try to finish the job.

[monomer]

Again, I totally understand GRRM and Rothfuss doing it, and like Gaiman says, the author is not our bitch. But an occasional, honest update would go far to foster some goodwill. Even if it is just the occasional tweet saying "book still with editor, hang on a while longer". Or whatever.

GRRM tried that a while back and turned out to be wildly wrong on his estimate, so decided to never do that again.

The problem, it seems to me, is that his story has gotten wildly more complex the more he's written, and he's having a hard time keeping everything together cohesively, which kills his ability to determine how much writing/editing/re-writing he really has ahead of him.

[georgie_leech]

GRRM tried that a while back and turned out to be wildly wrong on his estimate, so decided to never do that again.

The problem, it seems to me, is that his story has gotten wildly more complex the more he's written, and he's having a hard time keeping everything together cohesively, which kills his ability to determine how much writing/editing/re-writing he really has ahead of him.

50 odd competing characters and motivations will do that. See also: The Wheel of Time

[Misery Esquire]

50 odd competing characters and motivations will do that. See also: The Wheel of Time

Ah, but the Wheel of Time went from 1990 to 2005 with twelve books, and then three more in the 2009 to 2013 bracket after Jordan died. While A Song of Ice and Fire has been 1996 to 2019 with five (last in 2011).

[The New Bruceski]

This is why I'm lucky to be a Sanderson fan. When he gets tired of writing he takes a break to write something else.

[Lake Huron]

This is why I'm lucky to be a Sanderson fan. When he gets tired of writing he takes a break to write something else.

A Fanderson, if you will

[Ashen Lilies]

Something to keep us going in between updates:

Some details on the Wheel of Time adaptation.

[snowblizz]

Something to keep us going in between updates:

Some details on the Wheel of Time adaptation.

Not having read the link yet it's gonna be awesome or utterly dreadful. There's never a just ok with these things.

[Ninja_Prawn]

One of the comments on that link mentions that the actors are going to have pronounce all of Jordan's made-up words aloud... That's gonna be weird.

[PraetorDragoon]

Not having read the link yet it's gonna be awesome or utterly dreadful. There's never a just ok with these things.

Either way it will be an enjoyable watch.

[georgie_leech]

One of the comments on that link mentions that the actors are going to have pronounce all of Jordan's made-up words aloud... That's gonna be weird.

Seeing as how there's a pronunciation guide, hopefully we can avoid any Ong or Soak-ka situations. Curse you Shyamalan.

[Wookieetank]

Seeing as how there's a pronunciation guide, hopefully we can avoid any Ong or Soak-ka situations. Curse you Shamylan.

But then you get things like Heavy Rain where Every. Last. Character. mispronounces Oragami of all things. We'll just have to wait and see.

[Rodin]

But then you get things like Heavy Rain where Every. Last. Character. mispronounces Oragami of all things. We'll just have to wait and see.

I've never played Heavy Rain so I don't know how they pronounce it there, but it's spelled and pronounced Origami. Just sayin'.

[An Enemy Spy]

Seeing as how there's a pronunciation guide, hopefully we can avoid any Ong or Soak-ka situations. Curse you Shyamalan.

At least in this one they'll have the excuse that they're adapting written a written work. Shayamalan's source material literally said the names out loud HUNDREDS OF TIMES!!!!

[Anteros]

There's already a great audio book of the Wheel of Time that gets everything right, so I don't think it should be a very big issue. It was a bit jarring to learn I'd been pronouncing things wrong in my head when I read though.

[Lapak]

Again, I totally understand GRRM and Rothfuss doing it, and like Gaiman says, the author is not our bitch. But an occasional, honest update would go far to foster some goodwill. Even if it is just the occasional tweet saying "book still with editor, hang on a while longer". Or whatever.

I thought that the interview/conversation they had with GRRM and Stephen King was illuminating in this regard. Different writers have both different approaches to writing and different experiences with it as well; it sounds like GRR has a kind of love-hate relationship with everything he writes. And I identify with that, but it makes for sloooooooooow progress.

(Viewed less charitably, King is a consummate professional who Puts. Words. Down. until he is done, while GRRM and - presumably - Rothfuss are prone to letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.)

[Traab]

I thought that the interview/conversation they had with GRRM and Stephen King was illuminating in this regard. Different writers have both different approaches to writing and different experiences with it as well; it sounds like GRR has a kind of love-hate relationship with everything he writes. And I identify with that, but it makes for sloooooooooow progress.

(Viewed less charitably, King is a consummate professional who Puts. Words. Down. until he is done, while GRRM and - presumably - Rothfuss are prone to letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.)

Meanwhile king has about 50x as many works to his name and even though they arent all huge money makers, enough of them are to show his style has some serious merit to it. Heck, if you added them together im sure his biggest hits outnumber everything martin has done. I loved the epic rap battle of history between him and edgar allen poe. One line sticks out

Racks on racks cause I pen fat stacks of frightening writing
Have you seen the pile?
I can even take a break from my routine style
Crank out a Shawshank or a Green Mile

[Seerow]

Meanwhile king has about 50x as many works to his name and even though they arent all huge money makers, enough of them are to show his style has some serious merit to it. Heck, if you added them together im sure his biggest hits outnumber everything martin has done. I loved the epic rap battle of history between him and edgar allen poe. One line sticks out

It's hard to say. Martin is a giant in the industry, basically dwarfing all other fantasy. I remember reading a comparison once saying Rothfus, Sanderson, and Butcher had all sold similar numbers of books. Which is to say Rothfus' two books have sold about as much as the 20-30 of Sanderson and Butcher, and those two are fairly big names in the genre.

And both of them are basically dwarfed by asoiaf and Harry Potter.

... Which are in turn dwarfed by twilight.

[Lapak]

It's hard to say. Martin is a giant in the industry, basically dwarfing all other fantasy. I remember reading a comparison once saying Rothfus, Sanderson, and Butcher had all sold similar numbers of books. Which is to say Rothfus' two books have sold about as much as the 20-30 of Sanderson and Butcher, and those two are fairly big names in the genre.

And both of them are basically dwarfed by asoiaf and Harry Potter.

... Which are in turn dwarfed by twilight.

Not an authoritative source or anything, but the Wikipedia article about fiction authors by total sales has Rowling at #9, King at #22, Tolkien at #41... and that's it from the folks in the conversation. Jordan and Martin both fall off the list - which starts at ~100 million copies sold - but only barely based on Googling their total sales, which apparently are in the 80-90 million range.

Looks like Rothfuss, Sanderson and Butcher are all apparently in tens-of-millions somewhere.

[An Enemy Spy]

Not an authoritative source or anything, but the Wikipedia article about fiction authors by total sales has Rowling at #9, King at #22, Tolkien at #41... and that's it from the folks in the conversation. Jordan and Martin both fall off the list - which starts at ~100 million copies sold - but only barely based on Googling their total sales, which apparently are in the 80-90 million range.

Looks like Rothfuss, Sanderson and Butcher are all apparently in tens-of-millions somewhere.

I doubt any of them are crying any tears over their book sales.

[Corvus]

My personally opinion is that GRRM has basically lost interest in writing the series and would rather be doing other things. I could be wrong, but it is just a feeling I get from a few of the things he has said. I don't really have an interest in it one way or another - never watched GOT and got turned off the series in the first book given how depressing the whole thing was.

But this is a WOT thread.

It'd be interesting to see how the TV show goes (and not just to see them try to pronounce names that at times defy logic.) There is so many inner thoughts and inner info dumps throughout the books that I'm not sure how you could convey a lot of the story from the book. And I wonder what rating it will end up as - I know it doesn't have near as much raunch as GOT, but there is a lot more nudity in the book than I remembered.

I actually started a reread thanks to AES and this thread - when it first came out I was a big fan of the series but I burned out halfway through. I had bought the first nine books (with the Sweet covers) as they came out, but to my surprise found out that I'd only read the first six. 7, 8 and 9 had sat on the shelves unread for years.

I do not what happens in the rest of the series - I read the cliff notes when the series was finally done as I was interested in seeing how it ended.

I've just hit book 7 and I do think I know why I gave up in the first place.

Spoiler

Show

I think it was the journey of Nynaeve and Elayne that drove me to it - the sheer arrogance and bitchiness of the duo on their journeys was not a fun read.

In fact the arrogance of a lot of the characters helped play a part of it, starting with Egwene, all of 18 years old, deciding that she knows better than anyone else, including the Dragon Reborn himself, on what Rand should be doing. And then there is Cadsuane who appears out of nowhere without a hint of her existence before, who takes arrogance to new levels.

[Anteros]

My personally opinion is that GRRM has basically lost interest in writing the series and would rather be doing other things. I could be wrong, but it is just a feeling I get from a few of the things he has said. I don't really have an interest in it one way or another - never watched GOT and got turned off the series in the first book given how depressing the whole thing was.

But this is a WOT thread.

It'd be interesting to see how the TV show goes (and not just to see them try to pronounce names that at times defy logic.) There is so many inner thoughts and inner info dumps throughout the books that I'm not sure how you could convey a lot of the story from the book. And I wonder what rating it will end up as - I know it doesn't have near as much raunch as GOT, but there is a lot more nudity in the book than I remembered.

I actually started a reread thanks to AES and this thread - when it first came out I was a big fan of the series but I burned out halfway through. I had bought the first nine books (with the Sweet covers) as they came out, but to my surprise found out that I'd only read the first six. 7, 8 and 9 had sat on the shelves unread for years.

I do not what happens in the rest of the series - I read the cliff notes when the series was finally done as I was interested in seeing how it ended.

I've just hit book 7 and I do think I know why I gave up in the first place.

Spoiler

Show

I think it was the journey of Nynaeve and Elayne that drove me to it - the sheer arrogance and bitchiness of the duo on their journeys was not a fun read.

In fact the arrogance of a lot of the characters helped play a part of it, starting with Egwene, all of 18 years old, deciding that she knows better than anyone else, including the Dragon Reborn himself, on what Rand should be doing. And then there is Cadsuane who appears out of nowhere without a hint of her existence before, who takes arrogance to new levels.

Spoiler

Show

Honestly, I just completely skip the Perrin and Elayne chapters whenever I re-read things. It makes things so much more bearable and you really don't miss much at all. Of course, it helps that I already know what happens in those chapters, but seriously, both of those portions are about 10X longer than they need to be. At least Perrin becomes relevant towards the end of the story. Elayne is basically a worthless character throughout. Egwene is another character that never stops being annoying, but her chapters are too important to skip.

[An Enemy Spy]

My personally opinion is that GRRM has basically lost interest in writing the series and would rather be doing other things. I could be wrong, but it is just a feeling I get from a few of the things he has said. I don't really have an interest in it one way or another - never watched GOT and got turned off the series in the first book given how depressing the whole thing was.

Considering that the World of Ice and Fire had to cut out thousands of words of content because GRRM wrote way more for it than was required and he just released the first half of a history book that's longer than most novels I can't imagine this is true. I think TWOW is just a very complex and difficult book and he hits slumps and gets frustrated as we all do. I can tell you from personal experience that longform writing is very difficult, and my story isn't nearly as complex as ASoIaF. Not every writer can go on a week long cocaine bender and wake up with three published novels and no memory of how they got there. My hope is that writing Fire and Blood has invigorated him to get enthusiastic about TWOW and hopefully finish it.

[Anteros]

Considering that the World of Ice and Fire had to cut out thousands of words of content because GRRM wrote way more for it than was required and he just released the first half of a history book that's longer than most novels I can't imagine this is true. I think TWOW is just a very complex and difficult book and he hits slumps and gets frustrated as we all do. I can tell you from personal experience that longform writing is very difficult, and my story isn't nearly as complex as ASoIaF. Not every writer can go on a week long cocaine bender and wake up with three published novels and no memory of how they got there. My hope is that writing Fire and Blood has invigorated him to get enthusiastic about TWOW and hopefully finish it.

I agree that not every author can (or should) be like Sanderson and pound out 1,000 pages of crap in a weekend, but GRRM is definitely on the other extreme end of the spectrum. I don't know if he's bored of it or not, but 10 years for a single book is ridiculous by any measure if he's actually working on it. That's probably less than a sentence a day on average. I have a hard time believing that he's actually hard at work rather than getting bored of the story and invested in other products...such as a history book.

[Traab]

Its also probably got a lot to do with how complex and cemented his world building is as well. When you have such a deep world with such a well codified set of rules and behavior from your characters (The last part especially) it must get monumentally harder to write a story that goes where you want it to go while having it make sense. I wonder how many times grrm has gone "I want this character to go there, but I cant think of a reason that would make sense for them to head that way because of xyz!" With stories like harry potter that has all of 5 main characters and a bunch of supporting cast who basically only show up to cause whatever events rowling wanted, its a lot easier because you are only doing with the motivations and characters of the golden trio and the bad guy. Her world was so under developed that she can toss literal time travel into it halfway through and just handwave it away for the rest of the series and it works because it contradicts nothing else other than common sense which her magical world lacks anyways.

[lord_khaine]

Its certainly whats makes me appriciate Sanderson, for the ability to kick out a book about once per year in a at least sometimes even more complicated universe.

[Tvtyrant]

Sanderson and King's books are the Tortuga of the literary world.

[Iruka]

Sanderson and King's books are the Tortuga of the literary world.

Full of pirates?