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I think, as a general philosophy, delays are good since I'd rather authors not release something they're unsatisfied with I'm speaking from a stance where I read a fair amount of authors that release only a tiny number of books a decade tho, so that's why I have that sort of preference Not that time spent writing is in anyway an indicator of the quality of the finished product, of course
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Oct 2, 2015 21:15
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Benson Cunningham posted:It's like if I tell you I'm taking you to Disney World for your birthday, and then I give you socks. If I just gave you socks, that's one thing. But, I unfairly planted the seeds of something much better in your mind. To be fair, he already sort of did this to us with WMF.
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Oct 2, 2015 21:25
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Benson Cunningham posted:Specifically, the author made a verbal commitment to release dates. Given the degree to which that slipped, it is not unfair for people to be upset. quote:April 18, 2007 In November 2012, Rothfuss thought he would have to "rush" to get Day 3 out by the end of 2013. You'd think two extra years would be enough to fix that "rush" problem. but apparently not. Hilariously, he later then said it "probably won't be 2015," which people in 2013 took to mean "2014" rather than "2016 or after I'm dead." quote:[Update: Pat has said in another interview that “It probably won’t be 2015, but it isn’t going to be this year as well.” Which means the release date for book 3 will probably be in 2014. — Just thought I’d add this is, since most of you have come here from trying to find the release date ulmont fucked around with this message at 22:13 on Oct 2, 2015 |
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Oct 2, 2015 21:48
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Kids these days want to be authors more than they want to write.
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Oct 2, 2015 22:26
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Zorak of Michigan posted:Kids these days want to be authors more than they want to write. This is really a thing. Someone mentioned Sanderson upthread a bit - I get the impression of him being the only major player in fantasy right now (since Pratchett died  ) who treats writing as his job. Not being a writer, WRITING, actually getting behind a computer and putting words on disk. It seems to be something he does more than full-time, and the side-stuff like Writing Excuses and book tours are just that - site stuff, hobbies. There are a lot of people whose job is author who don't actually WRITE much, and I always find it to be a shame.No, they don't owe us creative endeavour, or indeed anything. But... at the same time, it can be infuriating watching a book someone claims to have loving written already get delayed by years at a goddamn time for no apparent reason other than that he's not actually writing it enough.
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Oct 2, 2015 22:49
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For a lot of people there's a connection to the author too. There are probably a lot of people that feel closer and enjoy GRRM's books more (or the memory becomes fonder, or whatever) because they feel like they know him better. And they know him better by all the "extra" stuff he does. I'm not going to pretend to know what the balance is, but I'm sure there is one.
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Oct 3, 2015 00:19
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Someone mentioned JK Rowling as being an author who put out books at a good pace. If Rothfuss releases the next book within a year or two, he'll have written at the same pace as Rowling. It just feels slower because it's coming in three books instead of seven. The nature of Harry Potter's story structure also probably has an impact. As for the "extra stuff," all that poo poo is also part of his job. Publishers don't have much in the way of advertising. Nowadays, authors really have to foster awareness of themselves or their books won't sell. Most importantly, the fact that you see him doing anything but writing doesn't mean that he isn't writing. Writing isn't a public activity. It doesn't call attention to itself. Doing publicity stuff does. Therefore, your perception of how authors spend their time is invariably going to be skewed if you follow them on twitter or read their blogs or whatever.
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Oct 3, 2015 03:43
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There's just no way I see this working out well for Rothfuss. His limp-wristed handlers at DAW may be unable to force him to even acknowledge that deadlines are actual things, but movie studios generally don't play like that. That's a lesson GRRM seemed to struggle to learn and I can't imagine it'll be any easier on Rothfuss.
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Oct 3, 2015 04:11
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thespaceinvader posted:This is really a thing. Someone mentioned Sanderson upthread a bit - I get the impression of him being the only major player in fantasy right now (since Pratchett died Is Sanderson the one with the anecdotes about forcing himself to write a certain amount each morning, then editing it in the afternoon? Like his goal is to write at least 10 pages no matter how stuck his is, then go back over it and see if there was anything really good he wrote and then work on that aspect. Rothfuss is just GRRM 2.0, only now rather then it take 2-3 books for an author's fame to skyrocket to the point of them being invited to tons of conventions it only takes 1 that goes "viral" for lack of a better word. Even taking that stupid Auri book into account, Rothfuss has only written 3 books in almost a decade, and that doesn't take into account how long he wrote the original treatment that his editors "insisted" he break up into a trilogy.
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Oct 3, 2015 09:15
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pentyne posted:Is Sanderson the one with the anecdotes about forcing himself to write a certain amount each morning, then editing it in the afternoon? Like his goal is to write at least 10 pages no matter how stuck his is, then go back over it and see if there was anything really good he wrote and then work on that aspect. Something like that, yes. Sanderson WRITES. He writes for fun, and is lucky enough to get paid for it. He writes a certain amount each day and will not let himself do otherwise. His chill-out-on-a-plane routine is to write a book. This can lead to books that are a bit churny, and it shows with some of his earlier work, but here's the thing: by doing it, he gets practice. He's now written, I think, somewhere between twice and three times as many (published) words as Rothfuss, and many times more completed stories. And each thing he writes, gives him practice in the craft of writing. Wittgen posted:Someone mentioned JK Rowling as being an author who put out books at a good pace. If Rothfuss releases the next book within a year or two, he'll have written at the same pace as Rowling. It just feels slower because it's coming in three books instead of seven. The nature of Harry Potter's story structure also probably has an impact.
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Oct 3, 2015 09:49
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thespaceinvader posted:I've said it before and I'll say it again: I find it HILARIOUS that people still believe Rothfuss is going to stop at three books. By the time Rothfuss has finished #3, he's going to be a century old.
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Oct 3, 2015 09:58
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"Christ, he thinks, by my age I ought to know. You don't get on by being original. You don't get on by being bright. You don't get on by being strong. You get on by being a subtle crook..." Thomas Cromwell has come far in life from a beaten and bruised son of a blacksmith. He's traveled the Continent as a soldier, a banker, and a lawyer, and learned everything there is to know about the world and how it is run. He is a "master of practical solutions", the foremost political agent of his day. And the question of the day is how King Henry will annul marriage. While his master, Cardinal Wolsey, falls pursuing the answer, Cromwell finds himself the right man in the right place: the master of the law, finance, and wit against reactionaries and mystics. First part of a trilogy, Wolf Hall is a lively and convincing portrait of how lupine politics test individuals. Mantel's novel is about of a modern man in an age of transition. Wolf Hall, like its Cromwell, is not one for platitudes about power and fickleness of fortune. There are novels are about the realities of power, and then there are novels like Wolf Hall, about the very base matter of politics. What happens to great men when they fall is inseparable from what happens to their kitchens when they do. And this is how Mantel breathes life into one of the most well-trodden fields of English historical fiction: by focusing on the basic reality of life in Tudor England, the lives of people great and small. Her Cromwell is too modern and perfect, especially in contrast to the dysfunctions of 16th Century England, but through him, Mantel manages to find solid reality and a great story behind the cliches of Tudor pageantry. As a portrait of a society where high ideals clash with base realities, it is persuasive, and thus universal. The finished Kingkiller Chronicle looks to be more than twice as long as Mantel's projected trilogy, which tells the same story but better in every way. Also a BBC miniseries. BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 21:06 on Jul 10, 2016 |
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Oct 3, 2015 11:50
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I'm about a fifth of the way through Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb and I'm really enjoying that on a level that The Name of the Wind didn't really hit. Hobb's prose is really good and I have a lot more respect for her as an author than I do for Rothfuss. Is the Farseer Trilogy worth sticking with?
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Oct 3, 2015 11:56
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thespaceinvader posted:Something like that, yes. Sanderson WRITES. He writes for fun, and is lucky enough to get paid for it. He writes a certain amount each day and will not let himself do otherwise. His chill-out-on-a-plane routine is to write a book. This can lead to books that are a bit churny, and it shows with some of his earlier work, but here's the thing: by doing it, he gets practice. He's now written, I think, somewhere between twice and three times as many (published) words as Rothfuss, and many times more completed stories. And each thing he writes, gives him practice in the craft of writing. And he still writes glorified fluff out of an RPG sourcebook. He writes action scenes like he's telling you how to handle a tabletop encounter and he writes dialogue like a group of players sitting around a table treading water until the next encounter. He gets a lot of words on paper but he does it at the expense of basically everything other than world-building. I'll take Name of the Wind over any of the player handbooks that Sanderson's churned out, with no regrets. Sanderson's probably the only writer that I think might actually benefit from slowing down because maybe then we'd get a story that's more than just an excuse to show off the worldbuilding.
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Oct 3, 2015 17:50
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Take Erikson, then. 10+ books, every single one of them vastly superior, still constantly writing and planning out new stuff.
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Oct 3, 2015 17:55
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I'm not a huge fan of Sanderson's writing, it just didn't grab me the way my first read through of NoTW did. That said, Joe Abercrombie is a beast. Hugely impressed with his writing, worldbuilding, characters, and speed at which the story moved along. I'm still working my way through his catalog, but it's excellent stuff That said, I'm simultaneously doing a re-read of the Cold Commands (A Land Fit for Heroes trilogy) by Richard K. Morgan, because grimdark.
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Oct 3, 2015 18:02
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Khizan posted:And he still writes glorified fluff out of an RPG sourcebook. He writes action scenes like he's telling you how to handle a tabletop encounter and he writes dialogue like a group of players sitting around a table treading water until the next encounter. He gets a lot of words on paper but he does it at the expense of basically everything other than world-building. I'll take Name of the Wind over any of the player handbooks that Sanderson's churned out, with no regrets. Sanderson's probably the only writer that I think might actually benefit from slowing down because maybe then we'd get a story that's more than just an excuse to show off the worldbuilding. I'll grant you that he has the unfortunate tendency to write just such an RPG sourcebook description of his magic system in the first few chapters of every new series he writes, which might give somebody the wrong impression of his works. That said, this description is otherwise utterly wrong. I'll take Shallan trying to be funny (and failing) over nearly any dialogue Rothfuss has written in the Name of the Wind (Bast is clearly the superior character). I also appreciate that his magic has a clear set of rules that aren't easily broken, which makes them behave in predictable ways, until they don't when he's exploiting a loophole that you could have seen coming, but didn't. Aquarium Gravel posted:I'm not a huge fan of Sanderson's writing, it just didn't grab me the way my first read through of NoTW did. That said, Joe Abercrombie is a beast. Hugely impressed with his writing, worldbuilding, characters, and speed at which the story moved along. I'm still working my way through his catalog, but it's excellent stuff I feel that his works after the First Law trilogy were weaker. Best Served Cold was okay, but I was bored for most of The Heroes, and I didn't finish Red Country. That said, The First law books were some of the best fantasy literature I've read in the last decade. A Land Fit for Heroes is a refreshing read, too bad that the straight main character has a much less interesting story arc.
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Oct 3, 2015 18:15
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pentyne posted:Is Sanderson the one with the anecdotes about forcing himself to write a certain amount each morning, then editing it in the afternoon? Like his goal is to write at least 10 pages no matter how stuck his is, then go back over it and see if there was anything really good he wrote and then work on that aspect. GRRM and Rothfuss do tons of poo poo that involves not writing, Sanderson gets bored on a plane flight and writes a novella that ends up becoming a trilogy. I have a huge fear that he's going to burn out in a few years and we'll be stuck on book 3 or 4 of Stormlight and never see the end of it though. Boing posted:I'm about a fifth of the way through Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb and I'm really enjoying that on a level that The Name of the Wind didn't really hit. Hobb's prose is really good and I have a lot more respect for her as an author than I do for Rothfuss. Is the Farseer Trilogy worth sticking with? It's good. The Liveship Traders is also good if you can make it through the painfully slow start where everyone seems to be competing to see who's the biggest idiot/rear end in a top hat on the planet. Though the biggest rear end in a top hat is clearly Kyle, who has absolutely no redeeming qualities at any time and is probably the biggest piece of poo poo in any of Hobbs' books, though a guy in the Rain Wild Traders books comes close. I'd say go through the first trilogy and if you like it, try the Liveship one as it's not directly related but if you move on to the Tawny Man Trilogy it'll have Liveship references that won't make as much sense, while spoiling some of the Liveship stuff if you'd read it later.
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Oct 3, 2015 18:22
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Torrannor posted:
That's depressing, I'm just about finished with the First Law books, can't put them down. I had hoped that the follow-up three set in the same world would be as good. That said the "Half a "series of books are pretty excellent, I read those first for some reason. And agreed, the Dragonsbane had the most straightforward and uninteresting arc, but I personally choose to believe that's the author's way of saying "Barbarian steppe nomads are not inherently interesting, so I'll put him next to some exciting events instead." And I enjoyed him as a character, regardless.
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Oct 3, 2015 18:46
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Should be noted that opinions on the other three books differ wildly; I, for one, enjoyed Heroes by far the most of all of Abercrombie's stuff. I'd suggest just reading them and forming your own opinion.
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Oct 3, 2015 18:49
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anilEhilated posted:Take Erikson, then. 10+ books, every single one of them vastly superior, still constantly writing and planning out new stuff. Yeah, Erikson's a great example, along with Joe Abercrombie. Jim Butcher, even. I just get irritated seeing Sanderson brought up as this great example of a writer who actually writes, because Sanderson churns out a ton of books but none of them stand out as being particularly good. "Competent but bland" is pretty much the best description of him I can come up with. Boing posted:I'm about a fifth of the way through Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb and I'm really enjoying that on a level that The Name of the Wind didn't really hit. Hobb's prose is really good and I have a lot more respect for her as an author than I do for Rothfuss. Is the Farseer Trilogy worth sticking with? The rest of that trilogy is good, and I liked the Liveship Traders. I didn't really care for the Tawny Man trilogy because I don't actually like Fitz or the Fool much at all. I'd rather read about literally anything else in that world than those two, which is why I haven't even bothered with the third trilogy about them. Rain Wilds was boring and overly long. It's two books worth of good story stretched across four books, and it does not benefit from that at all. Aquarium Gravel posted:That's depressing, I'm just about finished with the First Law books, can't put them down. I had hoped that the follow-up three set in the same world would be as good. I think that Best Served Cold and The Heroes are his best books, personally, and I like the take on Red Country. It's a western set in the Circle of the World. Khizan fucked around with this message at 18:55 on Oct 3, 2015 |
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Oct 3, 2015 18:51
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Yeah, The Heroes is great. Took me a while to "adjust" to it but by the end I was all in.
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Oct 3, 2015 19:07
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Aquarium Gravel posted:That's depressing, I'm just about finished with the First Law books, can't put them down. I had hoped that the follow-up three set in the same world would be as good. That said the "Half a "series of books are pretty excellent, I read those first for some reason.
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Oct 3, 2015 19:48
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anilEhilated posted:Take Erikson, then. 10+ books, every single one of them vastly superior, still constantly writing and planning out new stuff. While I loved the Book of the Fallen I think Erikson had really written himself into a few corners by the end of book 7. Book 8 does a good job with keeping the show running but I feel like 9 and 10 were pretty much him rolling a dice to figure out what got resolved off screen, what wound up just being unimportant (eg. Draconos killing the elder gods after they release the dragon with very little explanation as to what their plan was to begin with, or The white faces all getting killed unceremoneously because he couldn't think of an enemy army for them at the spire), and what was "all according to plan" (Everything Shadowthrone, Cottilion, and Quick Ben do). Still fantastic, loved the Bonehunters the whole way through. Currently I'm enjoying the Craft Sequence. Although I guess thats more Urban Fantasy. Its premise is essentiall that magic is a science that has replaced most of the Gods and in practice is a mix of Accounting, Lawyering, and Engineering. M_Gargantua fucked around with this message at 21:35 on Oct 3, 2015 |
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Oct 3, 2015 21:12
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After reading FoD and having most of my theories about what was going on in the Malazan world mercilessly shattered, I'd going to believe the "it was planned" angle. Some of the things you actually mention are explained (Elder Gods - what they want to do is literally gently caress poo poo up, they run on blood, the more slaughter the better and Errant more or less got away with it) and he's still got a lot going on in the universe as opposed to, say, this thread's topic which has his world literally revolve around the main character. Also the Craft Sequence is great and I wish Gladstone would write faster.
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Oct 3, 2015 21:21
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anilEhilated posted:Some of the things you actually mention are explained (Elder Gods - what they want to do is literally gently caress poo poo up, they run on blood, the more slaughter the better and Errant more or less got away with it) My big issue with this is that what they do is a key ingredient for the "It was the plan all along" bit. Yet they do it on their own as an act of chaos.
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Oct 3, 2015 21:34
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Sanderson is not a great author, and a lot of his stuff reads like a hybrid videogame/table top RPG tie-in novel; however, The Emperor's Soul is miles better than anything Rothfuss has ever done.
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Oct 5, 2015 04:13
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Hobb is not an especially great writer and there are no surprises or genius moments. She is measured and disciplined in her story though, and I enjoyed the Fitz stuff quite a bit. The characters are pretty decently fleshed out and realistic. I never read the Liveship stuff though.
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Oct 5, 2015 04:23
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M_Gargantua posted:The white faces all getting killed unceremoneously because he couldn't think of an enemy army for them at the spire), They were killed because of what they did to Tool and Hetan.
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Oct 5, 2015 19:52
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Nephzinho posted:http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/lionsgate-wins-rights-fantasy-book-828557 He has a cheese puff stuck in his beard.
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Oct 6, 2015 17:29
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Flattened Spoon posted:He has a cheese puff stuck in his beard. I assumed it was the end of an ear mic.
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Oct 6, 2015 17:54
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Benson Cunningham posted:I assumed it was the end of an ear mic. Don't ruin this for us
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Oct 6, 2015 18:31
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Its like he googled "How to look like a fantasy writer" and just ran with it. Isn't he in his early 40's?
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Oct 7, 2015 16:42
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Solice Kirsk posted:Its like he googled "How to look like a fantasy writer" and just ran with it. Isn't he in his early 40's? That early 40's age, that late 60's body.
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Oct 7, 2015 17:21
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Solice Kirsk posted:Its like he googled "How to look like a fantasy writer" and just ran with it. Isn't he in his early 40's? He used a Monkey's Paw to wish he could be like GRRM. He got both the fame and the looks, apparently.
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Oct 8, 2015 06:00
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Evil Fluffy posted:He used a Monkey's Paw to wish he could be like GRRM. He got both the fame and the looks, apparently. And the inability to publish a book in any reasonable amount of time! HEEEEYYYYYOOOOOHHHH!!!!
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Oct 8, 2015 15:54
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Not being able to name the series "Kingslayer Chronicle" was probably a bitter pill to swallow.
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Oct 10, 2015 19:18
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He really missed out when he didn't go with Kingmurderer.
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Oct 11, 2015 06:34
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Kingocide
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Oct 11, 2015 10:57
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Kvothe and the Art of Savings: A Tale of Youth and Properly Balanced Finance Sheets; Volume One: Of Lose and Work Orders
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