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ironymaideni keep returning to the comment thread on Scalzi's post about "pissy fans".
(short form: author writes giant multivolume novel, does not meet deadlines for next volume. he does, however, talk about all of his other projects and traveling. author gets upset about cranky fans who want him to stop doing other stuff and finish the book. other author/blogger defends first author.)
i'd say the comments are about 50/50 right now on whether or not fans have the "right" to be upset.
as others have said, George RR Martin has a serious PR problem. i have this hardcover book on my shelf that includes a bit from the author explaining that the book contains a polished half of a completed manuscript. so everyone who has read that book is thinking that GRRM has been editing part two of a completed manuscript since before 2005. if he hadn't set expectations, people would still be hopeful/frustrated rather than frustrated/angry. take a lesson from smarter software purveyors: make your new releases a happy surprise.
yes, people yelling at GRRM for watching football and going on vacation and saying "don't pull a Robert Jordan" are terribly rude and foolish. (i think the ones on about why he's spending time on other projects are still rude, but perhaps not so foolish.) i'm the first to lament crap product that gets pumped out in a rush to satisfy a clamoring public. a late product is late once (or over and over again as poor GRRM kept tossing new dates out there), a crap product is crap forever.
i think the core of the debate is who is doing who a favor here, and is a story a product? Scalzi and the names i recognize as authors in the comment thread seem to think they are doing a favor to readers by writing books. many of the readers seem to think that their book purchase is a favor to the author. is the author an artist, or a producer of a product? the reader is always a consumer. does the consumer have rights in regard to art? does the consumer have rights in regard to product?
the relationship between the reader and the author is certainly symbiotic; but is it mutualistic? still thinking.
and i want to know what happens next, GRRM.
ETA: Charlie Stross on same...comment thread developing.
(short form: author writes giant multivolume novel, does not meet deadlines for next volume. he does, however, talk about all of his other projects and traveling. author gets upset about cranky fans who want him to stop doing other stuff and finish the book. other author/blogger defends first author.)
i'd say the comments are about 50/50 right now on whether or not fans have the "right" to be upset.
as others have said, George RR Martin has a serious PR problem. i have this hardcover book on my shelf that includes a bit from the author explaining that the book contains a polished half of a completed manuscript. so everyone who has read that book is thinking that GRRM has been editing part two of a completed manuscript since before 2005. if he hadn't set expectations, people would still be hopeful/frustrated rather than frustrated/angry. take a lesson from smarter software purveyors: make your new releases a happy surprise.
yes, people yelling at GRRM for watching football and going on vacation and saying "don't pull a Robert Jordan" are terribly rude and foolish. (i think the ones on about why he's spending time on other projects are still rude, but perhaps not so foolish.) i'm the first to lament crap product that gets pumped out in a rush to satisfy a clamoring public. a late product is late once (or over and over again as poor GRRM kept tossing new dates out there), a crap product is crap forever.
i think the core of the debate is who is doing who a favor here, and is a story a product? Scalzi and the names i recognize as authors in the comment thread seem to think they are doing a favor to readers by writing books. many of the readers seem to think that their book purchase is a favor to the author. is the author an artist, or a producer of a product? the reader is always a consumer. does the consumer have rights in regard to art? does the consumer have rights in regard to product?
the relationship between the reader and the author is certainly symbiotic; but is it mutualistic? still thinking.
and i want to know what happens next, GRRM.
ETA: Charlie Stross on same...comment thread developing.
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no subject
Date: 2009-02-24 10:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-24 11:55 pm (UTC)Not at all. I'm an egotistical schmoe, to be sure, but not so much that I think what I'm doing is gracing the little people with my golden words. When I write a book, I just try to write a good book and hope people like it when I'm finished.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-25 12:30 am (UTC)thanks for sparking the discussion on Whatever. i'm still trying to answer my own questions and enjoying thinking about this.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-25 12:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-25 12:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-25 12:38 am (UTC)so, do you recommend ASOIAF or other series-in-progress to others?
no subject
Date: 2009-02-25 01:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-25 01:23 am (UTC)It's the type B series-in-progress that I won't touch any more (With one or two exceptions), or suggest.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-25 03:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-25 03:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-25 04:29 am (UTC)Oh for the days when authors remained inviolate in their ivory towers, and readers were free to imagine said author suffering all the agony of the creative process, regardless of whatever they might actually be doing.
Here's what I think, which is worth absolutely nothing, but is based on having been a working artist/designer all my life and now in the midst of a series.
Author writes art. Publisher buys art. Market mumbo jumbo happens. Reader buys product. If reader likes it, they'll buy lots and publisher will ask Author to write more. Maybe author will, maybe they won't. Maybe it will suck, maybe it won't, but if publisher is happy with author's output, they're the one paying the mortgage. Or at least the dog food bill, because let's face it, most writers write because they want to, not because they make a living at it. Only a few can afford the luxury (and I don't know if it is a luxury) of writing full time.
Just for context, Katherine Neville took 20 years from book 1 to book 2 of her series. Katheleen Woodiwiss took about 30, and wrote other books in the meantime.
I sympathize with readers' frustration, I am one, but art is art, and unless readers are going to pony up living expenses a la The Borgias, imo, it's between author and publisher.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-25 05:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-25 06:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-25 08:27 am (UTC)Oooo....2005? How about 92?
Like David said (and I concur/paraphrase) "I went and got a life, if this is an issue for you, maybe you should too."
It doesn't mean I don't want the next book, but I don't begrudge him the fact that he wasn't placed on the earth for my personal fucking entertainment. (and is pretty obvious, I've got issues with the people that clearly _do_ think that.)
no subject
Date: 2009-02-25 03:47 pm (UTC)This is a fair point to make. Th irony of it all is that GRRM's attitude towards not providing updates anymore was basically because he had had enough of setting "expectations" each time he so much as hinted at thinking that just maybe perhaps he could have the book done by date X. He updated relatively regularly when AFfC was dragging on, but the trolls came out of the woodwork to harrass him about that. And even more so with the delay in ADwD.
It seems the fact that since he once gave fans an inch in regards to an update, some of them wanted the whole yard to boot.
I don't really know how he'll ever be able to mesh the insistent demand for updates with the fact that his process of writing is fairly private and fairly difficult -- he does a lot of rewriting, a lot of shuffling around, and so on. He's remarked on how he's sometimes written two, three chapters pursuing some idea and then he tosses them all and starts over.
He's not Brandon Sanderson, able to tick off another 2% of manuscript every week like clockwork (nothing wrong with this -- more power to Brandon!) I suppose he could just keep track of total words written without noting the fact that he often tosses out 30 or 50 or 70% of them (or whatever the figure might be) before he even gets to working on the second draft.
In any case, the worst of it all as someone who's a fan is that part of the reason I'm a fan is that GRRM (like many SF writers) is very approachable and genuinely gregarious. He was a fan before he was a pro, after all. The LJ was supposed to be just another way to enjoy communication with fans of the genre and of his work who wanted to talk about things like football or collecting genre books or whatever, but the anonymity of the Internet has given too much opportunity for people to be jerks.
If he had no internet presence to speak of (as his late, lamented peer Robert Jordan), I expect all this vitriol would never have existed. They obviously get a thrill over the idea that their slings and arrows have a chance of actually reaching him.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-25 10:18 pm (UTC)Lotta authors/artists/so on are getting sort of seduced by that whole LJ/blog thing of being able to have your fans tell you 'in person' (as 'in person' as the internet gets) how much they loved your work. They run contests, they have chat rooms, and so on. But I think GRRM is getting the other side of having 'a community' and that is that a community is made up of individuals with thoughts and feelings, and when you give them a semi-interactive way to contact someone, they see it as establishing a 'relationship' with that person.
When you think you have a relationship with someone, you may also think you have an established 'right' to tell them exactly what you think. And when it's as easy as signing into a social networking site like MySpace or LJ, then you get a lot more people giving that feedback than you would if it were still, "Write a letter and put a stamp on it."
no subject
Date: 2009-02-26 10:16 pm (UTC)a note of sanity
Date: 2009-03-02 07:15 am (UTC)