#notablog

[twinge-of-cosmicangst]

[bestofgrrm]

Updates on The Winds Of Winter, Notablog, December 6 2023

[jackoshadows]

A blue flower grew from a chink in a wall of ice, and filled the air with sweetness...- Daenerys Targaryen

"Do you ever find anyone in your dream?" Sam asked. Jon shook his head. "No one. The castle is always empty." He had never told anyone of the dream, and he did not understand why he was telling Sam now, yet somehow it felt good to talk of it. "Even the ravens are gone from the rookery, and the stables are full of bones. That always scares me. I start to run then, throwing open doors, climbing the tower three steps at a time, screaming for someone, for anyone. And then I find myself in front of the door to the crypts. It's black inside, and I can see the steps spiraling down. Somehow I know I have to go down there, but I don't want to. I'm afraid of what might be waiting for me. The old Kings of Winter are down there, sitting on their thrones with stone wolves at their feet and iron swords across their laps, but it's not them I'm afraid of. I scream that I'm not a Stark, that this isn't my place, but it's no good, I have to go anyway, so I start down, feeling the walls as I descend, with no torch to light the way. It gets darker and darker, until I want to scream." He stopped, frowning, embarrassed. "That's when I always wake." - Jon Snow

[grennseyelashes]

Cos the thing is. he said he'd only start writing dream when winds was finished didn't he. #dreams #writing. writing dream. cos winds is finished.

(a) dream has only one owner (him) cos he's still dreaming it, but winds............ ??

[georgescitadel]

Dany is white, just as she has been from the beginning, and she may or may not be a savior (the last scene in "Mhysa" is not the end of her journey by any means), but she frees slaves of all colors, races, creeds, and nationalities. […] There is no racial component to slavery as practiced on Essos. It is based on slavery as it existed in the ancient world. The Romans and Greek were just as willing to enslave other Greeks and Romans as they were Celts, Goths, Germans, and Africans. It's on the page. […]  I am the author of the novels. I have lived in this world, off and on, since 1991. I know what I wrote, I know what I intended...

- George R.R. Martin, NotABlog (2013)

[jozor-johai]

ok straight up did George just finish Winds?

anyone else see his notablog post?

[hylialeia]

latest notablog post has me dead for real

George just come for their throats we know you want to

[lupinusalbus]

https://georgerrmartin.com/notablog/2023/05/07/strike/

"((Some of you, I fear, may be having anxiety attacks just now, on the mistaken assumption that this strike affects WINDS OF WINTER.   You can relax.   The WGA is a union of film and television writers.  It has nothing to do with novels, short stories, or any other form of prose fiction, nor comic books and graphic novels, nor stage plays, nor the editing of collections and anthologies   I have on-going projects in all those areas, and that work continues unabated.  And WINDS continues to be priority number one))."

[thelustybraavosimaid]

https://georgerrmartin.com/notablog/2023/01/10/2024-calendar-featuring-justin-sweet/

Looks like Lyanna/Rhaegar, knight of the laughing tree

Justin Sweet! Nice!

I'll post that picture here.

Though not by him, her face here reminds me of the big piece in TWoIaF depicting Rhaegar crowning Lyanna as the Queen of Love and Beauty!

But I'd like to compare that picture with other brilliant pieces from him.

This is Arya:

And this is Jon:

Haha yeah the woman deftly walking on weirwood roots is almost certainly Lyanna. Look at the blue winter roses pooled at the bottom ❤️

[lenbryant]

Bring out the dragons to the picket lines in Westeros. George R.R. Martin tells it like it is.

https://georgerrmartin.com/notablog/

[twinge-of-cosmicangst]

When he didn’t even MENTION winds in the new year notablog post

[bestofgrrm]

Grrm speaking out in support of the writer's strike and giving updates on his current shows, NotaBlog, May 7 2023

[jackoshadows]

I feel like GRRM is stuck on Bran Stark. Bran being hard to write is why, despite being one of the central characters of the books, he only has half the POV chapters of Jon Snow. And why he is unable to finish The Winds of Winter and is doubtful of even finishing by 2025.

As a serial procrastinator, I can sympathize with a tendency to put off the hardest task with excuses, while eagerly completing the easiest first.

It's clear that GRRM loves writing Tyrion and Arya. He has an entire novel's worth of material in Braavos for Arya and I feel like the difficulty will be in editing it and cutting it down to fit into TWoW. Similarly Tyrion is most probably done as well, considering all the mentions of him writing Tyrion chapters in his notablog posts. So he's most likely done with the Tyrion and Arya POV chapters. They are the easiest characters for him to write.

Tyrion being done would mean that the Essos plot is largely dealt with as well considering Dany's POV would intersect with Tyrion's at some point and he can't fully finish Tyrion until Dany's is mostly done as well. In May 2012 he mentioned writing Dany's Essosi chapters.

WINDS OF WINTER. Yes, I’m working on that too. At the moment, I am writing about the Dothraki. More than that, I sayeth not, you know I don’t like to talk about this stuff.  - Daenerys POV (Essos)

In June 2020, he mentioned Barristan and more chapters in the North.

In between tapings, I return to Westeros. Of late I have been visiting with Cersei, Asha, Tyrion, Ser Barristan, and Areo Hotah. I will be dropping back into Braavos next week. - Cersei, Asha (North), Tyrion, Barristan (Essos)

He has also mentioned writing Victarion chapters.

We also know that the two battles - battle of fire in Essos and the battle of ice in the North - is already written and was simply moved from ADwD to TWoW.

With all this being intricately tied together into one giant plot - Stannis Vs Boltons at Winterfell, Theon and Asha with Stannis, the pink letter to Jon, Jeyne being send to the Wall, GRRM writing about how we will be getting 'Direwolves Vs Ramsay's hounds' etc. - means most of this is also done. GRRM has also mentioned writing Melisandre - the only POV at the Wall now that Jon Snow is dead - chapters. Which means the North/Wall is also mostly done.

“I think we’re gonna start out with a big smash with the two enormous  battles,” Martin says (Essos and North).  In addition, Martin says, “We have more deaths, and we have  more betrayals. We have more marriages.” Let the speculation begin. As  he’s noted before, Martin says the Dothraki are coming back into the  story (“in a big way”), and he says “a lot of stuff is happening at The  Wall.” - GRRM

August 2020:

My life is at home, on hold, and I am spending the days in Westeros with my pals Mel and Sam and Vic and Ty. And that girl with no name, over there in Braavos. -  The Wall/Mel, Sam, Victarion, Tyrion, Arya

So there's also Sam/Oldtown/Euron chapters - Sam is another character he loves writing. So that section of the story - possibly Euron's attack on Oldtown seen through Sam and Aeron POV chapters - has also got attention.

What about KL and the Riverlands?

November 2020:

Of late I have been spending a lot of time with theLannisters. Cersei and Tyrion in particular. I’ve also paid a visit to Dorne, and dropped in to Oldtown a time or three. In addition to turning out new chapters, I’ve been revising some old ones (some very old)… including, yes, some stuff I read at cons ages ago, or even posted online as samples. I tweak stuff constantly, and sometimes go beyond tweaking, moving things around, combining chapters, breaking chapters in two, reordering stuff. - Cersei (KL), Tyrion, Sam(Oldtown)

June 2022

WINDS, you say?   Yes, still working.   Finally finished a clutch of Cersei chapters that were giving me fits.   Now I am wrestling with Jaime and Brienne.   The work proceeds, though not as fast as many of you would like. - Cersei(KL) Jaime, Brienne (Riverrun, Lady Stoneheart)

So GRRM has recently (recent for us asoiaf fans lol!) finished Cersei, Jaime and Brienne chapters as well. So that's Essos, the North, the Wall, Oldtown, King's Landing and the Riverlands.

What's missing is Bran and Sansa in the Vale in terms of major POV characters. The Vale may just be an instance of being too isolated and unconnected from the rest of the plot until Littlefinger makes his move or GRRM may find writing LF's plotting a bit hard to tackle.

However, it's Bran that stands out for me in not being mentioned, considering this is the penultimate book and the threat from beyond the Wall has to be a big part of this book.

It has been my intention from the start to gradually bring up the amount of magic in each successive volume of A Song of Ice and Fire, and that will continue. - GRRM

“ And it is important that the individual books refer to the civil wars,  but the series title reminds us constantly that the real issue lies in  the North beyond the Wall. Stannis becomes one of the few characters   fully to understand that, which is why in spite of everything he is a   righteous man, and not just a version of Henry VII, Tiberius or Louis   XI.” - GRRM

From all his interviews here and there, I can think of 3 reasons why the Bran chapters are hard.

This is where a lot of the hard core high fantasy happens. And we know that there's a backstory with Hodor that involves some complex time travel shenanigans - not going to be easy to write for someone in his seventies. Even more complicated in terms of causal loops and temporal paradoxes if it's Bran's consciousness that's doing the time traveling.

Age. GRRM has admitted before that he finds Bran the hardest to write as a disabled little boy. Bran's grown up a couple of years and yet he's still a little boy - Arya's age in AGoT.

Isolation with few fun side characters. GRRM really loves that world building and writing for those tertiary characters surrounding his main character. Arya meeting fun new characters everywhere she goes, her arc in Braavos, Dany in Essos, Jon's colorful and fun side characters, Tyrion traveling through Essos. One reason for why the series blew up from a trilogy into this unfinished mess is because GRRM enjoying writing for the side characters more than the main characters. Brienne got 8 chapters traversing the Riverlands searching for Sansa while Bran languished with 3 chapters in ADwD. Thus far Bran's world is very isolated and disconnected and has the least side characters - Meera, Jojen, Summer, Bloodraven and Coldhands. Of these, only 3 speak.

I think therefore that having written everything that GRRM can of the characters he does enjoy writing and finishing off the political plot points, he has finally turned his attention to Bran Stark. This is hardest part, involves a lot of sticky notes and attention to detail and needs to cover a lot of ground, bringing the Others back into the story in a big way.

I wish him luck. It's not going to be easy to write plots and details that he thought of some 30 years ago but I hope that he gets to finish a decent chunk of Bran chapters so that TWoW can finally be published.

[finitevariety]

lol i went to find the source for the grrm news about him meeting with his publishers, and it was literally a throwaway line in his last notablog and now also notalivejournal entry

I also found time to meet with my British publisher, and my other British publisher, to talk WILD CARDS and A SONG OF ICE & FIRE and (of course) THE WINDS OF WINTER.

great fit though george

[georgescitadel]

George: Amazing series (Breaking Bad).  Amazing episode last night (Ozymandias). Talk about a gut punch. Walter White is a bigger monster than anyone in Westeros.

Fan: As bad as Walter is, he's still trying to save his family. That scene where he berates his wife, calls her all kinds of names... he's trying to give her an alibi, so she gets off as the battered wife with no choice but to do as she was told. It comes full circle, where Walt is still trying to take care of his family, as screwed up as it is. He isn't all bad.

George: Hey, Tywin Lannister is all about family too.

- George R.R. Martin, NotABlog (2013)

[fedonciadale]

Does he even write Bran chapters? I have never seen him mention anything about Bran in notablog posts. That character is supposed to be your king. D&D didn't have enough material for Bran to be adapted for which I don't blame when the source material isn't even devoting that much time for a protagonist. I don't think POV count is necessarily an indicator of how important a character is to a story but he still has so few. With this pace imao even Jaime will end up equalising or even surpass Bran by TWOW. I am sure that 9 yr old kid is giving him nightmares and even 5 yrs later he would have finished every character but still would have been stuck with Bran.

Hi there!

I agree, it's probably Bran POVs that have him stuck.

I also think that Bran as king is not as fleshed out in his head as D's path to villainy or Jon and Sansa and Arya. I think somewhere in his Bran timeline there is a white field he hasn't filled yet although he knows where Bran is supposed to be after passing that field.

Looking at the foreshadowing in Bran chapters I always have the feeling that it's just a bit more on the vague side than in the other POVs.

Thanks!