So by what standard do you judge too long or too short? For novels or anything? By your rationale we can't make any metaphysical claim about anything that works in grades. This is commonly known as the paradox of the heap, but also known as the fallacy of the heap, go wiki it. It's a logical fallacy. I personally think 3 years is pushing too long. If you're working 4 to 6 hour days, it shouldn't be extraordinarily hard to write a 300k word book in a year, two years if youre slow and the editing process was exhaustive. So considering his organizational problems, I think it should have taken 4 years (were he a normal hard working writer). I said 5 only to appease the Martin-sympathizer. So if it's 6.... there should be no room for consideration it's too long.




Look, I'm not about to call RJ a liar. But I'm also not about to admit that he was completely honest about this process. I mean, this is the man who conceived of Aes Sedai...He said he felt ill on Memorial Day which led him to get a check up, which led to the diagnosis. Now maybe RJ was especially careful about his health and went in whenever he felt the slightest thing wrong. Personally, I saw him as someone who wouldn't take much thought to a little discomfort and keep writing. His pace had long slowed down to a book every two years, so that's a sign his stamina wasn't the same anymore. But most importantly, one does not develop a heart condition over night. You don't wake up, feel bad, go to the doctor, and get told that overnight you developed a serious heart condition. It's not as if he had a heart attack. We're talking about a condition that likely affected him for months before he was diagnosed if not years.




I'm not at all ignoring the points that "torpedo" my arguments. I've already "nuked" them in the OP and countless other posts which you haven't taken the time to read.

(1) Granting that Martin had huge structural issues, 6 years is still too long a time for a writer to take, supposing he is making writing his full time job as a professional writer ought to. Why, you ask? A professional writer typically writes for 4-6 hours a day. If you're doing less than that, it's either bc you are spending time researching your topic or outlining/taking notes. In the first case, an author may not get to write for years. However, Martin isn't writing anything that requires exhaustive research. This is fantasy not historical fiction. In the latter case, a significant amount of time still ought to be put towards writing. Taking all those ideas into account, 2k words is not something hard to manage.

But let's suppose he writes at half the average pace. So this guy is one of the slowest writers out there. He writes at a 1k word per day pace. Fair enough? And let's say he writes five days a week for a year. 5x52 is? 260. 260x1000=260,000. Granted all those are estimates, but I think they are estimates in favor of a SLOW pace for Martin. Let's even deduct two weeks worth of writing for vacation. So let's say he manages 250k words in a year. I assume by the 250k word mark in adwd he realized that things weren't working out. But just to give him the benefit of the doubt, let's say he didn't realize till 300k words, which is around the length of his previous books. So around ten weeks into his second year working on adwd he comes to the conclusion this isn't working out and scraps it.

That leaves 42 weeks left in the year, then another 104 over the next two years. I won't even count this sixth year for editing and publication reasons. Assuming he writes 50 out of the 52 weeks, he's got as much as 140 weeks at which he should be pumping out something around 5k words per week.

OK, so what do we have here. A guy who writing 1k words per day, takes weekends off and a 2 week vacation every year can't manage to finish his book in 140 weeks? Assuming he keeps a decent pace, his book should be around 700k words. Deduct a months worth of sick days over that span of time (which is a little under 3 years) and we still have 136 weeks with which to work. Thats 680,000 words.

I'm sorry. I have given him every possible break I can. Who is even sick for a month over a three year period without a serious medical condition? A lazy ass, that's what. Or someone who is very distracted with other things. What more evidence can you ask for?

How about this: if adwd is 450k words, and he had 136 weeks with which to write it, then he is writing at a pace of 660 words per day. So apparently he is slower than you say Bakker is, who has got to be one of the slowest writers I've ever heard of. Seriously, 660 words per day is horrendously slow. That's a little over 3k words per week. So Martin is writing barely more than what some writers write in a day.

Motivations to write faster due to the LONG ass time his fans have been waiting notwithstanding, there's no excuse for this.

(2)Yeah sorry, Tolkien had some other things on his mind, like WWII. Not to mention he never considered himself a full time writer. It was what he did on the side. He always considered himself a linguist, which is why he taught at oxford despite achieving quite a bit of fame with the Hobbit and LotR. Not to meniton, LotR took so long because Tolkien face the difficulty of getting started. Once he found his story, it didn't take an incredibly long time. It was published between 1954 and 1955. But even if you don't accept that point, the main reason it took a long time was because Tolkien was always a teacher and linguist first and a writer second. The Hobbit started off as a story for his kids, for goodness sake.

(3)I've assumed he is a REALLY REALLY slow writer in above arguments and still shown that he should have finished earlier. So even assuming that slow pace is NOT indicative of a lazy or distracted writer, we have shown that Martin's pace is inexcusable. What other explanation is left other than lazy or negligent?