This is SerGoldenhand speaking. Or something like that.
And this is the piece I never wanted to write, but I think I have to.
I cannot finish this series.
I have made, several times, promises that I will get through The Changing of Seasons if it kills me. But when you start to wonder if it really might, then it is time to say that enough is enough.
There has been, I suppose, a process that is remarkably like an addiction as I write this. A COAT OF GOLD was the high - 400,000 words in a little under 9 months; once I got started, I couldn't stop. Every day, every hour that was free, was devoted to writing it. Was that unhealthy, in hindsight? Yes, I think so. Could you even say that I couldn't live without it? Maybe. A COAT OF GOLD, in style if not in content, is high fantasy - any of you who read the original draft, the very first version, could see that it was essentially a wish-fulfilment, or, as one reviewer eloquently put it, "a Lannister wank." But it was my Lannister wank (don't quote me on that, by the way), and I did love writing it.
THE SUNSET KINGDOMS was more work. I enjoyed writing it in the early days, but (with the exception of the ending 20 chapters, where I got things back), it became a slog - a slow ride from plot point to plot point, crossing endless is and dotting endless ts. It is long. It is fucking long. It's impossible to appreciate just how long, I think, unless your name is cbstevp or Gracques. TSK is 650,000 words. The length of ~65 dissertations. 1000 words a day for 2 years - or, in my case, 2 hours a day writing for a year. Which wasn't so bad, while I was enjoying it. But there were periods where I thought I should stop, and I never did. TSK was the self-realisation of a sort of addiction that came to a stop just in time.
I had a brief spell after writing TSK when I took a break from all things ASOIAF. Call it a sort of rehab, if you will. Later, I found that written KNIGHTS OF THE NIGHTINGALE no longer had the allure that writing the previous two books had. Once, for A COAT OF GOLD, I wrote 9000 words straight in a day. On KNIGHTS, that frequently takes me a month. I have written 200,000 words of KNIGHTS in a year; in that time on TSK, I wrote three times as much.
With KNIGHTS, every chapter is a fucking slog. You'll probably have noticed that they're getting shorter and shorter; KNIGHTS chapters average ~3000 words, whereas with TSK I was up near ~6000. And why is this?
There are two reasons:
First, for me, ASOIAF was starting to lose its sparkle. I think 2018 is the year I finally understood George R.R. Martin. Now, I hate GRRM's slow writing pace as much as anyone. But I think it is awful to say "GRRM doesn't give a shit about ASOIAF anymore". GRRM evidently does give a shit. He lives and breathes these characters, these imaginary people, these imaginary worlds. But I bet he more than anyone else wishes there was a way you could simply project your thoughts down onto paper without ever having to pick up the pen. Same with me. I know where Jaime ends up in KOTN, for example. I just can't be bothered to get him there anymore.
Secondly, I'm moving on to new projects. Concurrently with KNIGHTS I have been writing my first proper novel, a thing that is nowhere near finished, but I am far more proud of than I am proud of this. I've been telling myself that I'll get it finished, and then work on KNIGHTS, but I don't want to. I want to write another one. And another one. They are the future, I've realised. To keep writing KOTN is to keep holding myself back.
For a while now, I have been in an abusive relationship with this fanfiction. I know I should leave it, but it keeps dragging me back. It saps so much of the life out of me. Yes, I want to finish it, but to do so would be unhealthy. There is the oft-repeated maxim to "never give up". But sometimes "never give up" hides the insidious meaning of "never move on". And I cannot stay with this one - because the kind of completionism I am pursuing is just completionism for the sake of completionism. It will send me mad if I keep going.
Edit: please check Chapter 44 for updates on this situation.
