I’m 100% convinced that they’ve been completed for years, probably even edited, and that they’re just sitting on them to be released on their death, because they’ve got enough money and simply don’t want to deal with the fallout of actually releasing them.
I think they saw what D&D did in the last few seasons and the fan reactions and said “Naw… fuck all that shit. I don’t need this”
He had the last book all meticulously planned out, and was partway through writing it when the final season of the TV show aired, based on his notes. Then, he saw how people hated the final season of the TV show. Known only to him, much of what they hated about it was explicitly his idea, and he’d insisted that it couldn’t be changed. (For example, Bran being named the new king.) After seeing all this public backlash over it, he publicly promised that the real ending of the story – the final book – would be much better than that. Problem is, now he has to write a much better ending … all the while, struggling with how it’s not the ending he wanted, and also worrying that people will hate the new ending as well. Also, maybe, he’s gotten bogged down in a mire of trying to save as much as he could of what he’s already written, rather than restarting the last book from scratch. And all these struggles have taken their toll on motivation – now getting any work done on it seems like a horrible, pointless slog. Every change he makes feels like he’s betraying himself, and yet it must be changed – he promised it would be. Facing this monumental task with very poor motivation, he’s been dithering around, supposedly ‘making progress’, but really just spinning his wheels in the mudhole he’s found himself in. And unless something major changes, he’ll probably never find the motivation to properly finish his final book.
Allowing the TV series to get ahead of the book series and then seeing the TV series fail horribly at the end has destroyed his motivation and ability to finish the book series.
I’m 100% convinced that they’ve been completed for years, probably even edited, and that they’re just sitting on them to be released on their death, because they’ve got enough money and simply don’t want to deal with the fallout of actually releasing them.
I think they saw what D&D did in the last few seasons and the fan reactions and said “Naw… fuck all that shit. I don’t need this”
I like this theory. My personal guess is that he never wrote a single word after he saw what D&D had done
Nah, here’s what happened:
He had the last book all meticulously planned out, and was partway through writing it when the final season of the TV show aired, based on his notes. Then, he saw how people hated the final season of the TV show. Known only to him, much of what they hated about it was explicitly his idea, and he’d insisted that it couldn’t be changed. (For example, Bran being named the new king.) After seeing all this public backlash over it, he publicly promised that the real ending of the story – the final book – would be much better than that. Problem is, now he has to write a much better ending … all the while, struggling with how it’s not the ending he wanted, and also worrying that people will hate the new ending as well. Also, maybe, he’s gotten bogged down in a mire of trying to save as much as he could of what he’s already written, rather than restarting the last book from scratch. And all these struggles have taken their toll on motivation – now getting any work done on it seems like a horrible, pointless slog. Every change he makes feels like he’s betraying himself, and yet it must be changed – he promised it would be. Facing this monumental task with very poor motivation, he’s been dithering around, supposedly ‘making progress’, but really just spinning his wheels in the mudhole he’s found himself in. And unless something major changes, he’ll probably never find the motivation to properly finish his final book.
Allowing the TV series to get ahead of the book series and then seeing the TV series fail horribly at the end has destroyed his motivation and ability to finish the book series.
I think this is the most realistic answer and is most likely true. He set up his ending and everyone hated it, so now he’s trapped