10 ms·

Entitlement issues (2009)

121 points by drx 12y ago

wgx 12y ago
"Sometimes it happens like that. You don't choose what will work. You simply do the best you can each time. And you try to do what you can to increase the likelihood that good art will be created." Great advice.
nasmorn 12y ago
If he made it an app instead people would be up in arms the updates don't come fast enough too. But with books at least they would pay him again if he released a new one.
VLM 12y ago
Site's dead. Can someone summarize better than the title? (edited an hour later, nobody's posted a cache link and nobody's summarized the actual post... so all I got is along the lines of "somebody's expectations collided with reality" and a bunch of off topic yet interesting literary discussion. And it seems to have something to do with the multiple laptop power standards that I already know about for aircraft and their airlines)
- inspectahdeck 12y ago
  "George R.R. Martin is not your bitch."
  - danielweber 12y ago
    That felt a little hostile; maybe I wasn't reading it in the proper voice, or reading the letter writer in the proper voice, but in my head the letter writer seemed to know that GRRM didn't owe him anything, and just wanted some more meat put on those bones of an idea.
    - calibraxis 12y ago
      I think that even with free software authors, it's easy to act entitled to their work. (Undervaluing people's work is one of the world's great issues...)
      - danielweber 12y ago
        True. I remember people getting angry at the TrueCrypt guy(?) for daring to quit.
- throw7 12y ago
  American Airlines was not gaiman's bitch.
padobson 12y ago
It's disappointing to me that this needs to be said. I read the first Song of Ice and Fire book in the middle of 2013, and I finished the fifth book this past March. That's several thousand pages of fiction in less than a year. Clearly, I like the books. But I can wait for the sixth book. I did fine in 2012 without ASOIAF, and I'll do fine in 2015 and 2016 and even 2017 if it comes to that. Last year I discovered I prefer novels and assorted nonfiction to reading random articles on the Internet. I prefer to chew on one idea for a long time than a thousand little ideas at once. So what I'd really like is a way to find other books to read that I enjoy as much a Martin's work. I've signed up for GoodReads, but nothing has come of it just yet. Does anyone have any suggestions other than browsing Amazon or strolling through a Barnes and Noble?
- AndrewDucker 12y ago
  Pick up Cryptonomicon. If you like big books with lots of ideas in them then you'll almost certainly enjoy it.
- DanielStraight 12y ago
  One suggestion: Most artists like to promote other artists. For example: http://www.georgerrmartin.com/about-george/what-im-reading/ http://www.georgerrmartin.com/about-george/what-im-reading/ I like looking at John Scalzi's "Big Idea" section where he lets other authors talk about their books on his blog. Find it here: http://whatever.scalzi.com/category/big-idea/ http://whatever.scalzi.com/category/big-idea/
- masklinn 12y ago
  Well depends what you're looking for in suggestions. If you're looking for something somewhat reminiscent of ASOIAF (huge worldbuilding, multiple complex storylines, etc…) I suggest Malazan Book of the Fallen (though it's by no means an ASOIAF copy). I enjoyed it (though I found it could have done with tighter edition and IIRC book 8 was a bit long in the tooth).
- gshubert17 12y ago
  Neal Stephenson books that had lots to chew on are his Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World) and Anathem.
bhauer 12y ago
Title should probably have [2009] added.
maerF0x0 12y ago
I enjoy the musings of the contract between writer and reader. If the author doesn't agree, on some level, to finish the series and it's the reader's requirement that a whole series must be read, then the reader is left with no choice but to wait until a series is finished before beginning. In various degrees of depth, we enter into obligations to others by beginning something, whether writing a book, having a child, ordering food etc. Seems the blog author's opinion is that GRRM has no obligation to his readers. I'd argue he has some form of professional obligation, but certainly no contractual ones w/ recourse.
- Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
  I don't think Gaiman is simply pointing out that there is no contractual resource, I think he's pointing out, in part at least, that there's no point in trying to hold someone in a creative endeavor to a commitment of this type, at least not if you don't want the quality to suffer as the process simply doesn't work like that. People in technology are very keen to point out when people don't understand how our processes work and when they're asking us to work in ways which are counter productive. This feels to me like a writer doing the same, essentially saying, I understand what you want, but please understand that the way you want it to work isn't going to get you the result you want.
- orclev 12y ago
  The author has no FORMAL contract, but there is certainly an expectation that a series will be finished at some point. It is certainly the case that when someone purchases one of a series of works, unless it is of a nature that it's expected to continue indefinitely (E.G. any given Marvel comic for example) people generally expect that at some point in the future the series will conclude. At a bare minimum they expect the current story arc to be resolved in something approaching a satisfactory way (for varying values of satisfactory). Importantly there is no guarantee of when precisely that conclusion will be provided, or truly a guarantee it will be provided at all, but there is certainly the expectation. Further once an author has set a known "pace" to his writing people tend to expect him to continue that pace (rightly so or not), so when he massively deviates from that pace people tend to take notice. E.G. if an author were to publish 3 books in a series, one every year, and then suddenly go 4 or 5 years before publishing the next book in the series people would most likely be very angry with that author (wrongly or not, it's more a question of human nature). So no, while the author is not in fact their "bitch" as Neil Gaiman puts it, there is a certain expectation on both sides, namely the audience expects the work to be concluded at some point in the future and for work to be released at something approaching a regular schedule, while the author should then also have the reasonable expectation that those purchasing his books will continue to do so in the future. Generally both parties end up with their expectations largely met, and things work out for everyone.
knowtheory 12y ago
Expectation is a fascinating thing. Gaiman is essentially describing the dichotomy in expectation between products and consultancy. This is particularly complicated in fandom, because creators often say (and legitimately mean) that a body of work exists because of (the encouragement of) their fans. That's true, but it doesn't mean that what they're creating isn't a product first, and not bespoke work on the authority of and responsible to fans. Apple has fans too, but took basically no heed of complaints that the Mac Pro hadn't been updated in years.
felix 12y ago
tl;dr GRRM is not your bitch. Remember that.
- jmelloy 12y ago
  This blog post has become so famous I just assumed the title was "GRRM is not your bitch."
jhwhite 12y ago
I think part of this is the contract that exists would be between Martin and the publisher. They're the ones that would need to get the finished product from GRRM. But what about kickstarter projects? If I'm now the one funding or partially funding does the artist then, in Neil Gaiman's words, "become my bitch"? What the difference in expectations when you're a consumer of a product (GRRM to me) or a funder of a product (kickstarter to me)?
- OliverM 12y ago
  There's no difference; you're still entirely at the mercy of the producer of the artwork. You pay your money with that understanding upfront (or you should, at least). Sure, vet your artist a little for their track record. All you're doing is paying in advance, if you're confident they'll produce. If you're not confident, don't back them!
  - watwut 12y ago
    There is at least one lawsuit going on with relation to kickstarter. There is some kind of contract involved/assumed and you can expect "good faith" attempt to produce result. If they just take your money and run away, they are as liable as any other fraud.
- preinheimer 12y ago
  I think part of the difference there is that you haven't pre-purchased GRRM's next book. Maybe you're good friends with your local bookshop, and they've agreed to put a copy aside for you when it comes out, but that deal hasn't made it up to him. To use Gaimen's terminology, GRRM may be his publisher's "bitch", but at this level of success they're probably pretty happy to have him. His contract may in fact say "when it's done" rather than "June 3, 2014, minimum 20,000 words, and someone the readers love must die".
  - zrail 12y ago
    > someone the readers love must die Other than royalty terms this is actually the entire contents of his contract with the publisher.
thedaveoflife 12y ago
Ironic, the entitlement he feels about having an adapter on his AA flight before complaining about entitlement issues from his/GRRM's audience... or was that the point?
- kelukelugames 12y ago
  I'm sure that was the point. Gaiman is a pretty smart guy. :)
Marazan 12y ago
If I promise to produce a piece of work in a time frame and then didn't produce that work in that time frame then I would expect to take some shit.
- mcphage 12y ago
  Who did he promise?
  - Jemaclus 12y ago
    In the Author's Notes of Book 4 in 2006, he writes that he completed the book, and it was so large (2000 pages) that he was forced to cut it in half, and that first half was Book 4, and that Book 5 would be out the following year. Then he took another 6 years to publish Book 5, which was ostensibly done back in 2006. Granted, he said he changed his mind about a lot of things and had to rewrite stuff, but the fact remains that he said it was "done" in 2006. In the meantime, his blog posts were about his football predictions and painting his house. I have sympathy for authors who don't put deadlines out there, but there's no excuse for being 6 years late after saying it was already done. Considering that the release of the 5th book coincided with a TV series, it strikes me as nothing more than a cash grab. One of the (many) reasons why I don't support GRRM or his work anymore. Which is a shame. The aSoIaF series was fantastically written.
    - mcphage 12y ago
      Maybe you and I have different definitions of the word "promise", then.
- OliverM 12y ago
  Sure, if that piece of work is completely predictable, and no rocks fall on you. But shit happens, and project management is still a dark art in many other ways.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
vacri 12y ago
Very bad intro for the main article, because apparently Gaiman doesn't realise that American Airlines is 'not his bitch' either, and similarly he has no right to be outraged that his laptop didn't plug into their power adaptors. I'm actually a bit sad that Gaiman went with "is not letting you down" rather than "is letting you down, but seriously, it's not that big a deal". If you build an audience with an expectation, and you don't see it through, you've let them down. That doesn't give the audience the right to do anything nasty to you, but you have disappointed them. If you, as a writer, have stated an intention to make a series of X length, but any of the Life things that Gaiman mentions happen and you fail to complete it, that's fair enough. Life happens. But you've failed to see through on your commitment - that's a disappointment to people that wanted to see it through. It's not the end of the world - those people don't lose their jobs or their cats or whatever - but it's still a let-down. The final moral of the story really should have been "So what, move on, Life happens", rather than implying that the questioner is a bad person for expecting someone to see through on something that they said they'd do.
- enneff 12y ago
  When you pay insane amounts for first class and they try to nickel and dime you on the electricity (which FTR has never happened to me in a decade of using laptops on planes) that is outrageous.
- steveax 12y ago
  Or perhaps the AA interlude was very intentionally ironic.
  - vacri 12y ago
    I thought it might be at first, but I didn't see anything else in the body of the article that tied back to it. It wouldn't make much sense if it was intentional, because it undermines the very lengthy point he was making in the rest of the article.
    - allannienhuis 12y ago
      I think it reinforces it rather brilliantly. As someone else mentioned - he's a very bright writer :)
jangel 12y ago
While I agree with the comments with respect to GRRM, I can't let Patrick Rothfuss off the hook. I started reading the Kingkiller Chronicle with the understanding that he had already finished the books, and would be releasing them each year for three years. Now that he's blown each deadline by a couple years, I'm a lil' salty. Was I incorrect to infer some light social contract there?
- smeyer 12y ago
  Yes, you were incorrect. He underestimated how much revision his books would require and how long it would take, but that doesn't mean he owes you.
- fredleblanc 12y ago
  It seems like the general idea for the full story was done, and "The Book" (as he called it) "existed" in a very rough draft, but with each release he's going back, re-editing and re-working them, adding bits here and there, improving the story until it's to the point that he wants it to be. It would make sense to me that, with each book, the ripple of stuff that needs fixing in the story later on needs more and more re-work. I believe the first two books were released 4 years apart. It seems that that's the cadence for the books. And hey, Auri novella this fall! :D
- jkaunisv1 12y ago
  Yes, you were incorrect. He had written a story but not edited it at all, and it changed a lot in the editing process to get the first book out. See the article again: Patrick does not work for you. I am also eagerly awaiting the third book but I want it to be as awesome as it can.
- monitron 12y ago
  Imagine you're Patrick Rothfuss... Kingkiller just might be the most popular thing he ever writes. Not to minimize his future potential, but IMO he just somehow began his novel-writing career with an exceptional series. Anyway, he's only got one chance to finish the story and make it everything it can be. You'd want it to be perfect, wouldn't you? I know I would rather wait a bit longer for a fitting end to one of my favorite narratives of all time. As an aside, I got restless recently and decided to reread the first two books. It really was a different experience the second time around, and I think well worth the time. This is one of those tightly interwoven tales where knowledge of the 'future' brings out details you never could have fully understood the first time around.
rglover 12y ago
Favorite bit that I constantly struggle to explain to people who are biding for my time: “But what if he wanted to paint his house?” Great find :)
thirdtruck 12y ago
And there's a song about this: http://scifisongs.blogspot.com/2009/08/sci-fi-song-20-george-rr-martin-is-not.html http://scifisongs.blogspot.com/2009/08/sci-fi-song-20-george....
logfromblammo 12y ago
Creative writing is, much like software development, one of those jobs where you need to enter a different kind of mental state to be really productive. And that state cannot be maintained indefinitely. George R.R. Martin writes big, fat books that are highly multithreaded, as part of a series that is already complex enough that it makes real life seem simple. If it were a software project, there would already be four or five more developers working on it. But he's trying to punch it out solo. I don't expect him to finish, really. He's probably burned out for the second or third time, at least, and is getting too much fan pressure resulting from the television adaptation bump to focus on regenerating the artistic mojo. If you ever read bestselling authors, they're always thanking their support people in the dedication or foreword or colophon or wherever. Most of them only need a few part-time or shared employees, like their editor, agent, and publicist. Martin probably needs at least one full-time assistant just for indexing and continuity. This is why I like books that say "third book of the Whatever Trilogy" and the other two are right there on the shelf next to it. It lets me know that the author can finish something, and I don't have to wait for it to happen. I did read the first few books in Martin's series, but I borrowed those copies. I don't really want to get sucked in and be left hanging like those people who got into Wheel of Time. With something like this, you never really know if the bus that just pulled away was the last one on the route for the night. So if you sit on that bench, the next one may never come.
carlob 12y ago
While I agree wholeheartedly with the article I feel there is a flip side to this: announcing what you're going to do can be a way to put some pressure on a late project. Be it a business project (signaling we're in crunch because we've half announced it), or a personal (as in a way to fight procrastination). Now I don't know how much GRRM tells about his progress on his blog, because I don't follow it, but I'm sure some authors in the past have used this technique to feel some pressure to finish up something.
- joezydeco 12y ago
  Martin is in a tough spot, and Gaiman points that out. It's a known quirk that announcing you're going to do something decreases the likelihood that you'll actually get it done. http://sivers.org/zipit http://sivers.org/zipit But if you actually publish a book that's labelled "BOOK ONE OF A SERIES" then you're implicitly saying that you will be working on a sequel. You don't need to say anything to anyone. This is why Gaiman says "Both of these things make me glad that I am not currently writing a series".
  - carlob 12y ago
    Interesting read. I wonder how universal that is. Some years ago I told a bunch of friends that my new year's resolution was quitting smoking and if they were to see me smoke they were allowed to call me an idiot. It worked pretty well for me.
    - syntheticnature 12y ago
      Ah, but that was adding social pressure as opposed to just saying "I'm going to do X."
Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
Authors have been missing deadlines pretty much as long as they've been writing books. If you wish to have an expectation that author X or book Y isn't going to fit that pattern then feel free, but I'm not sure you should be terribly surprised or outraged if / when it doesn't happen. The simple solution would seem to be that if you are someone who likes reading things in a nice predictable pattern the wait for the series to complete before starting. After all, it's not as if there are a lack of things to read in the meantime.
zaphar 12y ago
Periodically someone will ask me if I've read any of the Song of Ice and Fire books. My answer is always no. Then I launch into a rant about the Wheel of Time series. I got sucked into that series on book one and chewed through it all the way to book 7. At book seven I had caught up to the author and the fact that he hadn't written the next book in the series yet gave me an opportunity to take stock. I realized that the books had been getting less satisfying and more work to read than before. I also realized that Robert Jordan didn't know how to finish the series. He hadn't met a plot line he didn't like. I was sure he would die before Wheel of Time was finished. Right then and there I decided I was done and would no longer give my money to the series or any other series that showed signs of the same problem. I totally called the Wheel of Time. Robert Jordan died and they had to bring in Brian Sanderson to finish. Brian definitely knows how to finish. But for me the magic had already gone. It's not out of a sense of entititlement. I just don't enjoy unfinished stories. It bugs the crap out of me. George R. R. Martin strikes me as an author with different symptoms but a similar problem. I'm not sure he knows how to finish it. I won't spend my money until he proves it.
- seren 12y ago
  I used to have a similar stance, and I agree on most points. Long series tend to become less and less interesting, and weirder as they go along (Dune, Gormenghast, Hyperion, ...) Maybe it is the novelty that wears off, the author has used his most powerful ideas first, or the last book is written because of children's college tuition. Moreover, even if I enjoy reading, I think that if the author hasn't managed to enclose a proper story in 500-1000 pages, there is probably something that is off. However, I have recanted my previous position because if every series tend to go downwards, why not reading the first few books? I'd rather enjoy the journey even if the final destination is a bit underwhelming. In the worst case, if the latter books are absolutely atrocious, I can live with reading a quick summary on Wikipedia.
  - will_work4tears 12y ago
    Dune, sure, I get it (especially when his son took over). Hyperion though? If you count both parts as one series it's 4 books. Even at pretty respectable page contents, they don't compare to a series with 11 (? or more) books, many of which came pretty close to 1000 pages! It did get a little weird there at the end, but still pretty good books. And nowhere near as bad as WOT, or hell, not even as bad as the Sword of Truth series.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
Ntrails 12y ago
I can only say that I was very glad that Robert Jordan had time to plan out and pass on the whole of his story to another writer. I know it's entitled - but I really expect GRRM to make considerations to ensure that the whole story will be told. I don't think he owes me the story now, I don't mind waiting for him to do the writing as he envisions it - but I do kind of feel that he owes me a complete tale.
- mikeash 12y ago
  Why do you feel he owes you anything at all? Unless he held a Kickstarter in which he promised to finish the series if he got enough money, or something like that, why is there any obligation of any kind whatsoever? I feel you owe me a reply, so get to it. (Kidding, but I hope you see how absurd that is.)
  - lmm 12y ago
    There's a convention, when you sell a book, that it's a complete story. An implicit contract, if you like. If you sold a book that was half a book - just stopped mid-sentence and you had to buy a different book to finish the story - most people would consider that a dick move. Likewise a book that's advertised as part of a series can be understood to come with an implicit promise that the rest of the series will exist. Why do I feel he owes me anything at all? Well, I did pay him for it. If I bought some software and the author refused to fix bugs, I'd feel cheated. An unfinished story is somewhat like that.
    - mikeash 12y ago
      Clearly there is no such convention that books are complete stories, because then series wouldn't exist. And clearly there is no such convention that a series will be finished, because then there wouldn't be permanently unfinished series out there, and there are a lot of them. You paid him for the book, which you received. Transaction complete. Debt paid. He no longer owes you more.
      - Shamanmuni 12y ago
frobozz 12y ago
GRRM could take a leaf out of Douglas Adams' book(s) and just declare ASOIAF a trilogy.
crazy1van 12y ago
GRRM is not my bitch. Point taken, for sure. However, I hope GRRM realizes that the opposite is also true. His readers aren't his bitch either. Without new quality material, interest in his books will fade. Also, HBO isn't his bitch either. If he doesn't produce new material, the TV show plot will pass the book's and he will lose some control over what people consider the real tale.
- curun1r 12y ago
  On the HBO point, that was my thought while reading Gaiman's thoughts. Us readers have no claim to his work. Buying his books doesn't form a contract that means he owes us something. But HBO is a completely different story. They do have a claim to his work. When they bought the rights to bring his books to TV, they most certainly did sign a contract and I'm sure that, given the series was unfinished when the contract was signed, there were provisions for the possibility that he wouldn't finish in time. The way things are looking, it's a pretty good bet that HBO's writers will be the ones that finish GoT and he'll eventually have to write the last two books to follow the plot that HBO settles on. Hopefully he'll be consulted on plot points, but HBO isn't going to put the show on hiatus while they wait for him to finish it himself.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > The way things are looking, it's a pretty good bet that HBO's writers will be the ones that finish GoT and he'll eventually have to write the last two books to follow the plot that HBO settles on. Hopefully he'll be consulted on plot points, but HBO isn't going to put the show on hiatus while they wait for him to finish it himself. ISTR reading that GRRM has provided, and continues to provde, HBO's writers plot outlines and drafts ahead of what has been published, as well as being actively consulted on plot points in the show (which don't always follow the books precisely.)
  - crazy1van 12y ago
    > it's a pretty good bet that HBO's writers will be the ones that finish GoT That idea used to frustrate me, but I think the HBO writers have ended up doing a better job with the story than GRRM. The show is just so much crisper without a loss of authenticity. (Don't get me wrong,... I love the books)

121 points by drx 12y ago

wgx 12y ago

"Sometimes it happens like that. You don't choose what will work. You simply do the best you can each time. And you try to do what you can to increase the likelihood that good art will be created." Great advice.

nasmorn 12y ago

If he made it an app instead people would be up in arms the updates don't come fast enough too. But with books at least they would pay him again if he released a new one.

VLM 12y ago

Site's dead. Can someone summarize better than the title? (edited an hour later, nobody's posted a cache link and nobody's summarized the actual post... so all I got is along the lines of "somebody's expectations collided with reality" and a bunch of off topic yet interesting literary discussion. And it seems to have something to do with the multiple laptop power standards that I already know about for aircraft and their airlines)

inspectahdeck 12y ago
"George R.R. Martin is not your bitch."
- danielweber 12y ago
  That felt a little hostile; maybe I wasn't reading it in the proper voice, or reading the letter writer in the proper voice, but in my head the letter writer seemed to know that GRRM didn't owe him anything, and just wanted some more meat put on those bones of an idea.
  - calibraxis 12y ago
    I think that even with free software authors, it's easy to act entitled to their work. (Undervaluing people's work is one of the world's great issues...)
    - danielweber 12y ago
      True. I remember people getting angry at the TrueCrypt guy(?) for daring to quit.
throw7 12y ago
American Airlines was not gaiman's bitch.

padobson 12y ago

It's disappointing to me that this needs to be said. I read the first Song of Ice and Fire book in the middle of 2013, and I finished the fifth book this past March. That's several thousand pages of fiction in less than a year. Clearly, I like the books. But I can wait for the sixth book. I did fine in 2012 without ASOIAF, and I'll do fine in 2015 and 2016 and even 2017 if it comes to that. Last year I discovered I prefer novels and assorted nonfiction to reading random articles on the Internet. I prefer to chew on one idea for a long time than a thousand little ideas at once. So what I'd really like is a way to find other books to read that I enjoy as much a Martin's work. I've signed up for GoodReads, but nothing has come of it just yet. Does anyone have any suggestions other than browsing Amazon or strolling through a Barnes and Noble?

AndrewDucker 12y ago
Pick up Cryptonomicon. If you like big books with lots of ideas in them then you'll almost certainly enjoy it.
DanielStraight 12y ago
One suggestion: Most artists like to promote other artists. For example: http://www.georgerrmartin.com/about-george/what-im-reading/ http://www.georgerrmartin.com/about-george/what-im-reading/ I like looking at John Scalzi's "Big Idea" section where he lets other authors talk about their books on his blog. Find it here: http://whatever.scalzi.com/category/big-idea/ http://whatever.scalzi.com/category/big-idea/
masklinn 12y ago
Well depends what you're looking for in suggestions. If you're looking for something somewhat reminiscent of ASOIAF (huge worldbuilding, multiple complex storylines, etc…) I suggest Malazan Book of the Fallen (though it's by no means an ASOIAF copy). I enjoyed it (though I found it could have done with tighter edition and IIRC book 8 was a bit long in the tooth).
gshubert17 12y ago
Neal Stephenson books that had lots to chew on are his Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World) and Anathem.

bhauer 12y ago

Title should probably have [2009] added.

maerF0x0 12y ago

I enjoy the musings of the contract between writer and reader. If the author doesn't agree, on some level, to finish the series and it's the reader's requirement that a whole series must be read, then the reader is left with no choice but to wait until a series is finished before beginning. In various degrees of depth, we enter into obligations to others by beginning something, whether writing a book, having a child, ordering food etc. Seems the blog author's opinion is that GRRM has no obligation to his readers. I'd argue he has some form of professional obligation, but certainly no contractual ones w/ recourse.

Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
I don't think Gaiman is simply pointing out that there is no contractual resource, I think he's pointing out, in part at least, that there's no point in trying to hold someone in a creative endeavor to a commitment of this type, at least not if you don't want the quality to suffer as the process simply doesn't work like that. People in technology are very keen to point out when people don't understand how our processes work and when they're asking us to work in ways which are counter productive. This feels to me like a writer doing the same, essentially saying, I understand what you want, but please understand that the way you want it to work isn't going to get you the result you want.
orclev 12y ago
The author has no FORMAL contract, but there is certainly an expectation that a series will be finished at some point. It is certainly the case that when someone purchases one of a series of works, unless it is of a nature that it's expected to continue indefinitely (E.G. any given Marvel comic for example) people generally expect that at some point in the future the series will conclude. At a bare minimum they expect the current story arc to be resolved in something approaching a satisfactory way (for varying values of satisfactory). Importantly there is no guarantee of when precisely that conclusion will be provided, or truly a guarantee it will be provided at all, but there is certainly the expectation. Further once an author has set a known "pace" to his writing people tend to expect him to continue that pace (rightly so or not), so when he massively deviates from that pace people tend to take notice. E.G. if an author were to publish 3 books in a series, one every year, and then suddenly go 4 or 5 years before publishing the next book in the series people would most likely be very angry with that author (wrongly or not, it's more a question of human nature). So no, while the author is not in fact their "bitch" as Neil Gaiman puts it, there is a certain expectation on both sides, namely the audience expects the work to be concluded at some point in the future and for work to be released at something approaching a regular schedule, while the author should then also have the reasonable expectation that those purchasing his books will continue to do so in the future. Generally both parties end up with their expectations largely met, and things work out for everyone.

knowtheory 12y ago

Expectation is a fascinating thing. Gaiman is essentially describing the dichotomy in expectation between products and consultancy. This is particularly complicated in fandom, because creators often say (and legitimately mean) that a body of work exists because of (the encouragement of) their fans. That's true, but it doesn't mean that what they're creating isn't a product first, and not bespoke work on the authority of and responsible to fans. Apple has fans too, but took basically no heed of complaints that the Mac Pro hadn't been updated in years.

felix 12y ago

tl;dr GRRM is not your bitch. Remember that.

jmelloy 12y ago
This blog post has become so famous I just assumed the title was "GRRM is not your bitch."

jhwhite 12y ago

I think part of this is the contract that exists would be between Martin and the publisher. They're the ones that would need to get the finished product from GRRM. But what about kickstarter projects? If I'm now the one funding or partially funding does the artist then, in Neil Gaiman's words, "become my bitch"? What the difference in expectations when you're a consumer of a product (GRRM to me) or a funder of a product (kickstarter to me)?

OliverM 12y ago
There's no difference; you're still entirely at the mercy of the producer of the artwork. You pay your money with that understanding upfront (or you should, at least). Sure, vet your artist a little for their track record. All you're doing is paying in advance, if you're confident they'll produce. If you're not confident, don't back them!
- watwut 12y ago
  There is at least one lawsuit going on with relation to kickstarter. There is some kind of contract involved/assumed and you can expect "good faith" attempt to produce result. If they just take your money and run away, they are as liable as any other fraud.
preinheimer 12y ago
I think part of the difference there is that you haven't pre-purchased GRRM's next book. Maybe you're good friends with your local bookshop, and they've agreed to put a copy aside for you when it comes out, but that deal hasn't made it up to him. To use Gaimen's terminology, GRRM may be his publisher's "bitch", but at this level of success they're probably pretty happy to have him. His contract may in fact say "when it's done" rather than "June 3, 2014, minimum 20,000 words, and someone the readers love must die".
- zrail 12y ago
  > someone the readers love must die Other than royalty terms this is actually the entire contents of his contract with the publisher.

thedaveoflife 12y ago

Ironic, the entitlement he feels about having an adapter on his AA flight before complaining about entitlement issues from his/GRRM's audience... or was that the point?

kelukelugames 12y ago
I'm sure that was the point. Gaiman is a pretty smart guy. :)

Marazan 12y ago

If I promise to produce a piece of work in a time frame and then didn't produce that work in that time frame then I would expect to take some shit.

mcphage 12y ago
Who did he promise?
- Jemaclus 12y ago
  In the Author's Notes of Book 4 in 2006, he writes that he completed the book, and it was so large (2000 pages) that he was forced to cut it in half, and that first half was Book 4, and that Book 5 would be out the following year. Then he took another 6 years to publish Book 5, which was ostensibly done back in 2006. Granted, he said he changed his mind about a lot of things and had to rewrite stuff, but the fact remains that he said it was "done" in 2006. In the meantime, his blog posts were about his football predictions and painting his house. I have sympathy for authors who don't put deadlines out there, but there's no excuse for being 6 years late after saying it was already done. Considering that the release of the 5th book coincided with a TV series, it strikes me as nothing more than a cash grab. One of the (many) reasons why I don't support GRRM or his work anymore. Which is a shame. The aSoIaF series was fantastically written.
  - mcphage 12y ago
    Maybe you and I have different definitions of the word "promise", then.
OliverM 12y ago
Sure, if that piece of work is completely predictable, and no rocks fall on you. But shit happens, and project management is still a dark art in many other ways.
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vacri 12y ago

Very bad intro for the main article, because apparently Gaiman doesn't realise that American Airlines is 'not his bitch' either, and similarly he has no right to be outraged that his laptop didn't plug into their power adaptors. I'm actually a bit sad that Gaiman went with "is not letting you down" rather than "is letting you down, but seriously, it's not that big a deal". If you build an audience with an expectation, and you don't see it through, you've let them down. That doesn't give the audience the right to do anything nasty to you, but you have disappointed them. If you, as a writer, have stated an intention to make a series of X length, but any of the Life things that Gaiman mentions happen and you fail to complete it, that's fair enough. Life happens. But you've failed to see through on your commitment - that's a disappointment to people that wanted to see it through. It's not the end of the world - those people don't lose their jobs or their cats or whatever - but it's still a let-down. The final moral of the story really should have been "So what, move on, Life happens", rather than implying that the questioner is a bad person for expecting someone to see through on something that they said they'd do.

enneff 12y ago
When you pay insane amounts for first class and they try to nickel and dime you on the electricity (which FTR has never happened to me in a decade of using laptops on planes) that is outrageous.
steveax 12y ago
Or perhaps the AA interlude was very intentionally ironic.
- vacri 12y ago
  I thought it might be at first, but I didn't see anything else in the body of the article that tied back to it. It wouldn't make much sense if it was intentional, because it undermines the very lengthy point he was making in the rest of the article.
  - allannienhuis 12y ago
    I think it reinforces it rather brilliantly. As someone else mentioned - he's a very bright writer :)

jangel 12y ago

While I agree with the comments with respect to GRRM, I can't let Patrick Rothfuss off the hook. I started reading the Kingkiller Chronicle with the understanding that he had already finished the books, and would be releasing them each year for three years. Now that he's blown each deadline by a couple years, I'm a lil' salty. Was I incorrect to infer some light social contract there?

smeyer 12y ago
Yes, you were incorrect. He underestimated how much revision his books would require and how long it would take, but that doesn't mean he owes you.
fredleblanc 12y ago
It seems like the general idea for the full story was done, and "The Book" (as he called it) "existed" in a very rough draft, but with each release he's going back, re-editing and re-working them, adding bits here and there, improving the story until it's to the point that he wants it to be. It would make sense to me that, with each book, the ripple of stuff that needs fixing in the story later on needs more and more re-work. I believe the first two books were released 4 years apart. It seems that that's the cadence for the books. And hey, Auri novella this fall! :D
jkaunisv1 12y ago
Yes, you were incorrect. He had written a story but not edited it at all, and it changed a lot in the editing process to get the first book out. See the article again: Patrick does not work for you. I am also eagerly awaiting the third book but I want it to be as awesome as it can.
monitron 12y ago
Imagine you're Patrick Rothfuss... Kingkiller just might be the most popular thing he ever writes. Not to minimize his future potential, but IMO he just somehow began his novel-writing career with an exceptional series. Anyway, he's only got one chance to finish the story and make it everything it can be. You'd want it to be perfect, wouldn't you? I know I would rather wait a bit longer for a fitting end to one of my favorite narratives of all time. As an aside, I got restless recently and decided to reread the first two books. It really was a different experience the second time around, and I think well worth the time. This is one of those tightly interwoven tales where knowledge of the 'future' brings out details you never could have fully understood the first time around.

rglover 12y ago

Favorite bit that I constantly struggle to explain to people who are biding for my time: “But what if he wanted to paint his house?” Great find :)

thirdtruck 12y ago

And there's a song about this: http://scifisongs.blogspot.com/2009/08/sci-fi-song-20-george-rr-martin-is-not.html http://scifisongs.blogspot.com/2009/08/sci-fi-song-20-george....

logfromblammo 12y ago

Creative writing is, much like software development, one of those jobs where you need to enter a different kind of mental state to be really productive. And that state cannot be maintained indefinitely. George R.R. Martin writes big, fat books that are highly multithreaded, as part of a series that is already complex enough that it makes real life seem simple. If it were a software project, there would already be four or five more developers working on it. But he's trying to punch it out solo. I don't expect him to finish, really. He's probably burned out for the second or third time, at least, and is getting too much fan pressure resulting from the television adaptation bump to focus on regenerating the artistic mojo. If you ever read bestselling authors, they're always thanking their support people in the dedication or foreword or colophon or wherever. Most of them only need a few part-time or shared employees, like their editor, agent, and publicist. Martin probably needs at least one full-time assistant just for indexing and continuity. This is why I like books that say "third book of the Whatever Trilogy" and the other two are right there on the shelf next to it. It lets me know that the author can finish something, and I don't have to wait for it to happen. I did read the first few books in Martin's series, but I borrowed those copies. I don't really want to get sucked in and be left hanging like those people who got into Wheel of Time. With something like this, you never really know if the bus that just pulled away was the last one on the route for the night. So if you sit on that bench, the next one may never come.

carlob 12y ago

While I agree wholeheartedly with the article I feel there is a flip side to this: announcing what you're going to do can be a way to put some pressure on a late project. Be it a business project (signaling we're in crunch because we've half announced it), or a personal (as in a way to fight procrastination). Now I don't know how much GRRM tells about his progress on his blog, because I don't follow it, but I'm sure some authors in the past have used this technique to feel some pressure to finish up something.

joezydeco 12y ago
Martin is in a tough spot, and Gaiman points that out. It's a known quirk that announcing you're going to do something decreases the likelihood that you'll actually get it done. http://sivers.org/zipit http://sivers.org/zipit But if you actually publish a book that's labelled "BOOK ONE OF A SERIES" then you're implicitly saying that you will be working on a sequel. You don't need to say anything to anyone. This is why Gaiman says "Both of these things make me glad that I am not currently writing a series".
- carlob 12y ago
  Interesting read. I wonder how universal that is. Some years ago I told a bunch of friends that my new year's resolution was quitting smoking and if they were to see me smoke they were allowed to call me an idiot. It worked pretty well for me.
  - syntheticnature 12y ago
    Ah, but that was adding social pressure as opposed to just saying "I'm going to do X."

Tyrannosaurs 12y ago

Authors have been missing deadlines pretty much as long as they've been writing books. If you wish to have an expectation that author X or book Y isn't going to fit that pattern then feel free, but I'm not sure you should be terribly surprised or outraged if / when it doesn't happen. The simple solution would seem to be that if you are someone who likes reading things in a nice predictable pattern the wait for the series to complete before starting. After all, it's not as if there are a lack of things to read in the meantime.

zaphar 12y ago

Periodically someone will ask me if I've read any of the Song of Ice and Fire books. My answer is always no. Then I launch into a rant about the Wheel of Time series. I got sucked into that series on book one and chewed through it all the way to book 7. At book seven I had caught up to the author and the fact that he hadn't written the next book in the series yet gave me an opportunity to take stock. I realized that the books had been getting less satisfying and more work to read than before. I also realized that Robert Jordan didn't know how to finish the series. He hadn't met a plot line he didn't like. I was sure he would die before Wheel of Time was finished. Right then and there I decided I was done and would no longer give my money to the series or any other series that showed signs of the same problem. I totally called the Wheel of Time. Robert Jordan died and they had to bring in Brian Sanderson to finish. Brian definitely knows how to finish. But for me the magic had already gone. It's not out of a sense of entititlement. I just don't enjoy unfinished stories. It bugs the crap out of me. George R. R. Martin strikes me as an author with different symptoms but a similar problem. I'm not sure he knows how to finish it. I won't spend my money until he proves it.

seren 12y ago
I used to have a similar stance, and I agree on most points. Long series tend to become less and less interesting, and weirder as they go along (Dune, Gormenghast, Hyperion, ...) Maybe it is the novelty that wears off, the author has used his most powerful ideas first, or the last book is written because of children's college tuition. Moreover, even if I enjoy reading, I think that if the author hasn't managed to enclose a proper story in 500-1000 pages, there is probably something that is off. However, I have recanted my previous position because if every series tend to go downwards, why not reading the first few books? I'd rather enjoy the journey even if the final destination is a bit underwhelming. In the worst case, if the latter books are absolutely atrocious, I can live with reading a quick summary on Wikipedia.
- will_work4tears 12y ago
  Dune, sure, I get it (especially when his son took over). Hyperion though? If you count both parts as one series it's 4 books. Even at pretty respectable page contents, they don't compare to a series with 11 (? or more) books, many of which came pretty close to 1000 pages! It did get a little weird there at the end, but still pretty good books. And nowhere near as bad as WOT, or hell, not even as bad as the Sword of Truth series.

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Ntrails 12y ago

I can only say that I was very glad that Robert Jordan had time to plan out and pass on the whole of his story to another writer. I know it's entitled - but I really expect GRRM to make considerations to ensure that the whole story will be told. I don't think he owes me the story now, I don't mind waiting for him to do the writing as he envisions it - but I do kind of feel that he owes me a complete tale.

mikeash 12y ago
Why do you feel he owes you anything at all? Unless he held a Kickstarter in which he promised to finish the series if he got enough money, or something like that, why is there any obligation of any kind whatsoever? I feel you owe me a reply, so get to it. (Kidding, but I hope you see how absurd that is.)
- lmm 12y ago
  There's a convention, when you sell a book, that it's a complete story. An implicit contract, if you like. If you sold a book that was half a book - just stopped mid-sentence and you had to buy a different book to finish the story - most people would consider that a dick move. Likewise a book that's advertised as part of a series can be understood to come with an implicit promise that the rest of the series will exist. Why do I feel he owes me anything at all? Well, I did pay him for it. If I bought some software and the author refused to fix bugs, I'd feel cheated. An unfinished story is somewhat like that.
  - mikeash 12y ago
    Clearly there is no such convention that books are complete stories, because then series wouldn't exist. And clearly there is no such convention that a series will be finished, because then there wouldn't be permanently unfinished series out there, and there are a lot of them. You paid him for the book, which you received. Transaction complete. Debt paid. He no longer owes you more.
    - Shamanmuni 12y ago

frobozz 12y ago

GRRM could take a leaf out of Douglas Adams' book(s) and just declare ASOIAF a trilogy.

crazy1van 12y ago

GRRM is not my bitch. Point taken, for sure. However, I hope GRRM realizes that the opposite is also true. His readers aren't his bitch either. Without new quality material, interest in his books will fade. Also, HBO isn't his bitch either. If he doesn't produce new material, the TV show plot will pass the book's and he will lose some control over what people consider the real tale.

curun1r 12y ago
On the HBO point, that was my thought while reading Gaiman's thoughts. Us readers have no claim to his work. Buying his books doesn't form a contract that means he owes us something. But HBO is a completely different story. They do have a claim to his work. When they bought the rights to bring his books to TV, they most certainly did sign a contract and I'm sure that, given the series was unfinished when the contract was signed, there were provisions for the possibility that he wouldn't finish in time. The way things are looking, it's a pretty good bet that HBO's writers will be the ones that finish GoT and he'll eventually have to write the last two books to follow the plot that HBO settles on. Hopefully he'll be consulted on plot points, but HBO isn't going to put the show on hiatus while they wait for him to finish it himself.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > The way things are looking, it's a pretty good bet that HBO's writers will be the ones that finish GoT and he'll eventually have to write the last two books to follow the plot that HBO settles on. Hopefully he'll be consulted on plot points, but HBO isn't going to put the show on hiatus while they wait for him to finish it himself. ISTR reading that GRRM has provided, and continues to provde, HBO's writers plot outlines and drafts ahead of what has been published, as well as being actively consulted on plot points in the show (which don't always follow the books precisely.)
- crazy1van 12y ago
  > it's a pretty good bet that HBO's writers will be the ones that finish GoT That idea used to frustrate me, but I think the HBO writers have ended up doing a better job with the story than GRRM. The show is just so much crisper without a loss of authenticity. (Don't get me wrong,... I love the books)