It wasn't inability. If you look closely, the first Wheel of Time book stands alone and actually concludes the story by beating the main bad guy at the end of b

It wasn't inability. If you look closely, the first Wheel of Time book stands alone and actually concludes the story by beating the main bad guy at the end of book 1. However, after the first book's success, Jordan obviously realized he could make it a trilogy, which he did and once again has Rand fight a triumphant battle that defeats all the forces of evil at the end of book 3. And then...Jordan finally just decided to pretend like he hadn't ended it twice already and settled in to write non-stop in that universe forever...which he did. I personally quit reading the series somewhere around book 6 or 7, but it wasn't inability that kept him going...it was sales. GRR Martin, on the other hand, I firmly believe lost track of his story. I don't think he would ever have made any more headway on it had it not been for the HBO miniseries and all the help and fan-made reference pages that cropped up as a result. I predicted for years that the story had stalled and would never see anymore progress during the mid 2000's.