I can’t help but feel that if your magnum opus goes unfinished, than it cannot help but be regarded as one of the greatest failures in your life to that selfsame work, audience, and indeed, yourself.

I have never written as a prospective career, but I cannot help but suspect that like any long-term project, the biggest barricade to finishing it is simply sitting down and starting on it, and continuing to sit down and start on it every day until it is done.

I also strongly suspect professional writing falls well within the realms of human endeavor such that a large percentage of the population can accurately assess what it’s like.

For example, some professions involve routinely assaulting what may be, in fact, theoretically impossible. Now that’s a tough project to work on. Hell, in writing at least when you scrap something, you can usually salvage some of the effort that went into it, which is a damned sight more than I can say for some other failures.

The sad situation of Robert Jordan (who I heard joking around at a signing a few years before his death about not wanting “Wheel of Time” filed alongside “The Canterburry Tales” in the great unfinished works section of the library, btw, talk about irony!) is just one unfortunate example of what happens when authors decide they have a 20+ year window to finish their tale. I think the better example is Stephen King’s near death encounter with a mini-van: he got right down to work on finishing The Dark Tower, and in the introduction to those books even speaks of his obligation to finish the tale. I think that is something that authors of extended series tend to forget. When they start publishing something as epic and well received as RJ, SK, or GRRM’s works have become people buy the later volumes with the expectation that the story will reach *A* conclusion in something that resembles a timely fashion– maybe not the ending fans will like, but a definite end to the tale.

GRRM is pushing the envelope on that, and he may wind up finding his base of readers has shrunk a bit. I’ve had people ask me if HE died too, or if he just gave up… not something his publisher would want to hear, no? To be fair, and to continue with the Robert Jordan example, in the time since the last GRRM book was released in 2005, a Wheel of Time book was released, Robert Jordan died, a replacement author was found, and another book has been released under the new author. After Steven King’s accident, he spat out three volumes in about as many years, one of them a genuine shelf-cracker. Still think GRRM fans are being “pissy?”

What GRRM needs to do is realize that its the fans who are being “pissy” who have given him enough comfort in life that he can afford side projects, creature comforts, etc. Going into the fifth year of keeping his fans waiting I would hope he can’t even look at his television without feeling like a slacker. When he released book number one he made a promise to his fans. If he doesn’t want to keep that promise because now he’s more comfortable in his life or he’s just lost interest in the story then he should just say so, call the promise broken, and take the hit to his reputation… which he has already damaged with the interminable delays.

I’ll finish with this: I’ve loved reading GRRM’s stuff, but his lazy pen keeps me from encouraging friends to pick up his work. In contrast, I never stopped pushing Robert Jordan’s for a second, not when he was sick, not after he died: Jordan understood the value of giving your word (his flap-bio said he intended to write until they nailed shut his coffin and he delivered, God bless!). Martin doesn’t seem to value the business relationship he entered into with his fans as soon as he decided his story was going to be put on the market as a multi-part epic.

I also think the best hope for the series being finished is if it takes off as a hit on cable TV. Fans not be able to force him to finish up, but the TV producers will have a bit more leverage.

“Isn’t authors complaining about their fans not being good/rational/awesome enough just as idiotic as fans complaining their idols aren’t writing fast enough?”

No.

“If GRRM can’t carry the freight, that’s okay. It sort of pushes him down into 2nd tier status behind the economic rock stars that can churn 3 or 4 books a year.”

You know, your whole post would be a lot more interesting if the books sales in question supported anything you’re saying. But they don’t. I just had a friend check BookScan, and it turns out that this week (just as an example), George Martin has sold a third more books than John Ringo, they’re about even in sales for the year, and (not surprisingly) in aggregate Martin’s far ahead. And more to the point, Martin’s work is selling as well as (or better than) the work of quite a number of writers you might care to name who produce books on a more regular basis, and even more to the point the books he has sell consistently, week in and week out.

So before you go declaring the new era in publishing, etc, make sure the facts support your assertions. And the facts are George Martin is a top-tier seller, has been for years and is very likely to continue to be for some time.

For all that GRRM may be kiteboarding with naked supermodels (effing Richard Branson – google it) or drinking tea or doing whatever thing it is that he enjoys, that doesn’t matter. At all.

As a professional author, he writes books and gets paid for their sales. Anything that he does that isn’t writing books or increasing the sales of his existing books just doesn’t count, in economic terms.

Sure, there are things like “sharpening the saw” that he might be doing. I don’t know, and you don’t seem to know, exactly how much of that is necessary FOR HIM. It’s not clear if HE knows – has there been an interval of rapid production with low quality that cost him reputation points?

Regardless, Baen & Tor, and eBay, and now Amazon, have demonstrated that there are idiots out there (like me!) who will pay a significant premium for early access to the works of their favorite writers. To wit, 20 smackers for an unedited electronic copy of a book I’ll have to buy later in paperback. (I have no idea of the author’s cut of that – I just know what it costs me.)

I once worked for a CEO who said, “You never get a second chance to make [today's] money. Tomorrow’s money is different money, and whatever you left on the table today is gone.”

And he was right. The $20 that all the GRRM fans didn’t spend buying an e-arc of whatever comes next might go to buy food, or pay their mortgage, or it might go into JK Rowling’s pocket. But he didn’t get it, and now he can’t get it. All he can hope for is tomorrow’s money.

Maybe he’s okay with that. But there are authors out there that produce, with a quality level that satisfies their audience. Maybe that means writing bodice-rippers, maybe it’s that freak out in California with a computer program that generates economic predictions, maybe it’s Johnny Ringo (“I really don’t understand what all these so-called professional authors are bitching about. You’re an author, you get paid to write, so sit down and write the book. How hard can it be?” “You don’t understand what you’re talking about. It’s harder than you think. You should try it sometime.” “Finished. Here.” “What is it?” “It’s a book. It wasn’t hard.”).

If GRRM can’t carry the freight, that’s okay. It sort of pushes him down into 2nd tier status behind the economic rock stars that can churn 3 or 4 books a year. There are trade-offs there. A lot of the new audience is used to (addicted to) “internet speed” authoring. A series moving that slowly just won’t get them hooked, which means lower growth in his readership.

You can argue that he is writing better prose. Or that his world is more complete, or somehow better. But other brands that take that approach charge a premium. Unless GRRM starts charging Ghirardelli prices, he’s stuck competing with Hershey’s, and he’ll be judged accordingly.

The problem “old skool” authors face is the same problem faced by fat, ugly musicians. The industry is changing under them, and laying on a requirement that they be able to support this new business model. For musicians, that was video. For authors, it’s web-hype, long-running series, and frequent updates.

As much as I hate to jump on a buzz-word, “mediocre prose, quickly produced” is a (ugh) disruptive innovation that has historically been held at bay by editors. I don’t see that happening any more. The mediocre authors have gotten a lot more productive in the last 20 years, and editors have learned how to “rock star” their authors.

Maybe when GRRM runs out of money for supermodels and crumpets he’ll get back in front of the typewriter.

I think you’ll find many who disagree with you regarding the merits of the Silmarillion as published by CT (such as myself).

That aside, would it have been better if Tolkien finished it to his satisfaction and released it? Assuredly.

But if he had released it just to get his fans off his back, would it have been better then as well? Not to Tolkien, I suspect, and in the end whose opinion matters most to a creator than their own?