Now that it’s pretty clear that Winds of Winter will never come out, despite George R.R Martin’s claims (which I do not believe one bit), I thought that the “book community” should try to make the best out of this shitty situation and learn from the author’s mistakes.

Before we go on, I feel the need to say that this post is meant for constructive critcism and not for slandering Martin, because slandering wouldn’t really accomplish, but I’m not going to sugarcoat it either. Georges R.R Martin HAS FUCKED UP, he has FUCKED UP BIG TIMES, and I believe that the amount of fuck up is so great that it will eventually cost him the finish of the book, now matter how hard he tries.

I believe that he has commited the following fatal mistakes :

• Not Planning : I have personally always been skeptical about that whole “gardener thing” when I heard him talk about it roughly ten years ago. While I could picture “improvisational writing” working for say a short sotry, I could not imagine how you could ever do it for a big serie where each volumes is a worth thousand pages. And it turns out that indeed you can’t because now Martin has to find a way to arrange this forest of a garden in a way that gives a satisfying conclusion, a problem he wouldn’t have had if he had plotted and prepared more.

• Taking too much time/lack of focus : Frankly, I don’t think Martin is as lazy as others might say, but he sure is a procrastinator when a project doesn’t meet his dopamine needs. It’s only natural for such a large and complex book as Winds of Winter to take time, but taking too much time is never good when you’re making art, because let’s face it, you don’t need 12 years to write any kind of book, not even winds of winter. Martin is the worst kind of author that you could ever get for a project this long, because how many times do you think he has changed his mind about what he wants to write for the book ? The problem is not effort, but lack of focus, (a focus he would have had if he had plotted his story), and the problem will only get worse as more time goes on.

• Persisting in error : The author has failed to realize that his methodology needed to evolve in order to write the Winds of Winter. Despite the fact that so far, Winds of Winter is an utter failure and has been so for a decade, Martin did no effort to make the situation better. He has continued to pursue side projects, he has not tried to seek help in any way (be it with ghost writers or assistants). I don’t deny him his right to work on others things than a Song of Ice and fire, it’s only natural after all, but I will say that he’s not fooling anybody by claiming that “Winds of Winter is his top priority”.

So that’s about it. I believe that in general, as long as you don’t do these mistakes while writing your own big fantasy/science fiction epic you’re pretty much good to go (if you don’t forget to write a good book that is).