!bookworms Here's my TWOW take.
A Dance with Dragons got published in 2011 and he got some leftover chapters for TWOW.
He started writing some of the book in the 2011-14 frame but his ADHD lead him to promote the show, go on tours and write TV scripts. So advancement was slow.
2015-18 he misses his deadline, the show outpaces the books, during this time he writes Fire & Blood (2014 was A World of Ice and Fire and 2015 A knight of the Seven Kingdoms) because he loves the Targaryens and is obsessed with Lore.
2019 the show ends and he gets sadge because it was shit and probably rewrites a ton of TWOW.
2020-2022 Pandemic Years: He said he made tons of progress writing hundreds of pages. By late 2022 he gave the first major update of the book in years, it was 75% done.
Now it's likely his ADHD is striking again with House of the Dragon and the Knight of the Seven Kingdoms show that he's producing himself plus depressed with Drumpf and his old friends dying (the latter I suspect is a bigger cause).
I still believe we'll get TWOW eventually as too much of the book exists but ADOS is getting extremely unlikely as he wants to write another Dunk and Egg novella and Fire & Blood part 2 after TWOW. I hope he at least writes some outline for ADOS to get published if he kicks the bucket before lol.
Also some excerpts from his blog lmao.
There is war everywhere. Ukraine and Gaza dominate the news, but there is a war in Myanmar as well that our western media just ignores, things are heating up in Yemen and the Red Sea, North Korea has nukes and is testing missiles and rattling sabres, Venezuela is threatening to annex three quarters of neighboring Guyana.
Meanwhile the US grows more polarized every day. Hate is rising, democracy is under threat, millions of Americans have swallowed the lie that the 2020 election was stolen. Newspeak has taken over political discourse, cancel culture is destroying lives and careers, and we have a disgraced, indicted, venomous ex-president winning primaries despite openly declaring that he will be a dictator on day one and will govern on a platform of "retribution," when he is not busy grabbing women by the kitty. His last attempt to overthrow the government failed on January 6, but some of his more ardent supporters are now saying that "next time" they will bring more guns. There are actually folks out there wanting civil war.
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Sorry man, but this is premium grade
What's more likely? That the guy known for a glacial writing pace rewrote his book several times or, in actuality, never wrote a darn thing?
Covid was your last best hope for getting this series finished. No cons to show up and be lathered in praise. No new show generating interest and glowing reviews. GRRM is basically an attention whore and he still couldnt bother to put out TWOW in that timeframe to fill the hole until HOTD came out.
I expect Winds to come out in some incomplete state at some point, just because the publisher will force it, but that's it.
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