Something about Writing

Okay, so even though I've only just begun A Game of Thrones, I tend to over-fascinate myself with the author, their works, and anything related to them. For some reason, the writing part of my mind seems to feed off of this information in order for me to continue reading the book without doing much else except reading it. Anyhow, I have recently been reading on about George R.R. Martin. The only thing that I just can't seem to find about him is why he writes his books so incredibly slow. Now, before anyone pulls out their shotgun, I'm not bashing Martin, I just want to know whats the hold up. Even with me only being on the first book in the series, I can understand why some people would be angry, especially with a series. I can infer than most of the people who read Martins A Song of Ice and Fire series were once YA or Adult Fiction readers. With those types of novels, and in most cases, series, you would get the book at least a year later. There are very special, and rare cases where the book was out two years later. One of the most recent cases of this would be with Cassandra Clare who is making fans wait unil 2014 for the conclusion of her best selling Mortal Instruments series. The fifth book-City of Lost Souls-was released in 2012. Most fans complain that they will have outgrown the series by that time, especially since CoLS was released early in 2012, so that's an almost 3 year wait. So, if these fans of ASoIaF were YA or Adult fiction readers at one point, they are not accustomed to having to wait 5 and 6 years for the next installment of a series.

Martin is, unfortunately, like many other adult authors who can afford this. Stephen King can write 1,000 page novels, but he of course, takes 5 years max on each one-The Stand and It; Under the Dome took him a stunning 2 years to write, from 2007 to 2009-but the thing is, they aren't in a series, so he doesn't have to be pestered by fans who want him to write the books faster-I feel very sad for Martin who is probably complained to about this daily. On Martin's Wikipedia page, it is said that he writes everyday, starting where he left off each time without editing. This has been proven to be fiction since it is known that Martin takes a sort of holiday during Football season since he takes NFL very seriously. He also runs a blog, and he has the HBO show to work on, and not the mention that he's human.

I know many fans have heard this before, but Martin can't spend his every waking hour on the books. If he did this, I'm sure he'd commit suicide. The thing that I have learned as an author is that, several things happen when your writing, especially sequels. One of them is that, you are at a loss for what should happen next, or you even become bored of your characters-maybe that is one of the reasons why third person narrative works so well; in third person, you have a bazillion characters to lean on if you get bored with one-also, you have to remember that Martin has told us that he had nothing written down. So in some ways, he's writing these books off the top of his head, and he seems to not have any major plot points, or even minor ones, to look over and say 'Oh, yeah, that would be good to add here right now' to move it along a little faster. Don't get me wrong, I keep very minimal notes as well. One of the books I'm writing called Hero has a few notes that I wrote down, nothing like plot points, but stuff that I needed to know and remember to make sure I got there.

One of the benefits, I have found, of writing down notes for things that you one to happen is that you can rely on them to guide the story. You can write up to that point, and your novel will move smoothly. It seems to work that way for many television shows. They will build up and up to this big climax every other episode, and you find that the show ran quickly.

Martin, from what I have gathered, seems to spend a lot of time on extra, unnecessary details. Maybe he isn't as bad as some authors who describe every article of clothing, and every movement of the characters wrist, but he must be pretty big on details to take up 900 and 1,000 page novels, I mean all of it can't be plot, some of it has to be setting and description, and inner thoughts of characters.

This makes me think about something that I notice in YA fiction, as well. In YA fiction, the books are pretty short compared to a lot of adult novels. In YA fiction, description is kept at a one sentence to one paragraph(and I mean the five liner ones, not the epic Stephen King paragraphs)descriptions, and they spend no time elaborating very greatly on the characters clothes in these settings. In YA, they are pretty much forced to move the story along quickly in order to keep the readers attention. In some ways, YA is a show of how short of an attention span we humans have for literature, not to say YA isn't good, because I've had my fair share of YA love too, I just don't read it as much as I used to and would like too.

With Adult books, description had babble on for pages at a time, inner thoughts could take up whole chapters, and the plot progression seems to be relatively slower in Adult fiction books, but I don't understand why. It would seem that adults have less free time to read the monster books than teens who have more breaks than most, even with all their studying and whatnot, there are some teens who can finish a book in at leat two or three days at the least, a week at the most. I mean, I read Divergent in four days, and that was from interruptions at school; I read Invincible by Sherrie Kenyon in 2 days, with interruptions from school; I was able to read The Hunger Games in just about 3 days, tops. I managed to swallow 11/22/63 by Stephen King in maybe a month, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in a similar, maybe a little bit longer, time frame. Under the Dome took me a few weeks because of the fact I didn't buy it until maybe a month after checking it out from the library, and the first time I checked it out, five months before the second check out, I'd only gotten up to page 206 or something.

The point is, the pacing of books differs greatly from book to book, and description plays a key role in how fast a writer writes, and a reader reads.

This stands half-true for Martin and his fans. The fans read the books faster than he can produce them, swallowing the mammoths in a few days, or a week at a time, even with their hectic schedule. And they continue to read even when his books become boring-A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons.

So, that answers why fans are so fed up with Martins writing speed, especially since he is such a brilliant writer, with characters so compelling, that people just can't put the books down, possibly resulting in the deduction of pay every week.

Now, we come to why does Martin write so damn slow?

One of my theories is that, Martin just collects himself with too many different projects at a time, even though he says he enjoys this. Also, Martin seems to have a very, very large control over his writing schedule. Most series have deadlines they have to meet in order to get paid for their contracts, whereas Martin seems to write at any pace he wants, he almost writes like a self-published author who publishes on their own terms.

Another is that, well, like most others have said before, but Martins pretty old. Who knows how much time the geezer spends watching television, or resting in bed, or even reading books? It  would seem that Martin spends some of his retirement while writing, seeing as if he doesn't finish the series by 2017 or so, he will be heading into his 70's, and I think by then, he may he all written out, with ASoIaF being his final work. But, I won't say that that's not a bad way to go out, I mean look at what he's done with it! Also, maybe Martin is punishing fans because of all their nasty remarks about how old, fat, and tired his is daily. Maybe he just wants to let them all simmer in a pot until they burn over, then release the next book. He's waiting out the storm.

I just hope that Martin dosen't end up like Paul Sheldon, kidnapped by a fan and forced to write day in and day out, surviving on only coffee and crackers. Shiver. We can only hope that Martin doesn't die that way.