Sometimes the truth really is stranger than fiction. Two of America’s most popular and influential novelists have shaken up the literary world as we know it… despite taking diametrically opposed approaches to their own respective works. Any avid fan could tell you how legendary writer Stephen King single-handedly changed the face of horror by delivering several classics over the decades, while George RR Martin also altered the trajectory of fantasy in a more post-modernist direction. For better or worse, however, that’s where the similarities between the two men come to a screeching halt.
Once you compare the vast differences between King and Martin’s writing pace, well, that’s where things start to get just wonky. King published more than 65 fiction novels and more than 200 short stories during his career.many of which have been adapted into films and shows (although, to be fair, not all of them are of consistent quality). Meanwhile, Martin sports a much more modest body of work, buoyed by his defining series “A Song of Ice and Fire,” which in turn inspired the juggernaut known as HBO’s “Game of Thrones.” However, ask any jaded book reader and you’ll never hear the end of it when it comes to Martin’s notorious struggle to finish his beloved franchise. One writer makes his editors very happy (and rich) several times a year, while the other hasn’t submitted a draft of his most anticipated sequel in over 13 years old – seriously, you can’t make this stuff up.
Perhaps it was only a matter of time before the two colleagues crossed paths and sat down for a long conversation. This finally came to fruition in 2016 with a long interview (via Weekly Entertainment) held near Martin’s longtime residence in New Mexico. Among the many wide-ranging topics they discussed, the idea of writer’s block came up toward the end of their conversation…and King gave some very sage advice to our patron saint of procrastination.
Stephen King’s advice for overcoming writer’s block: keep writing!
Dragon-sized problems demand dragon-sized solutions, and no one in the literary industry could be better placed to rescue George RR Martin from his creative malaise than Stephen King, who certainly knows his way around quality TV shows. To celebrate the release of King’s new novel “End of Watch,” the two authors participated in a highly anticipated discussion about just about anything that came to mind – from politics to gun control in passing, of course, through the pressure of writing while looking down. the barrel of one of the most public deadlines of all time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_PBqSPNTfg
About 50 minutes into their hour-long conversation, King asked if Martin had any questions he’d always wanted to ask, to which the latter responded with his typically deadpan sense of humor: ” Yes, there’s something I want to ask you: How the hell do you write so many books so fast? After recovering from their shared bursts of laughter, King gave a thoughtful and insightful explanation of his writing process? Typical writing:
“The way I work, I try to go out and try to get six pages a day […] When I work, I work every day – three, four hours. And I’m trying to get these six pages and trying to make them pretty clean. So if the manuscript is, say, 360 pages, that’s roughly two months of work. It’s concentrated, but… on condition that it goes well. »
In other words, here’s an inspiring lesson for all the would-be writers among us, as simple as it is effective: keep writing!
Will George RR Martin ever finish A Song of Ice and Fire?
Of course, Stephen King’s famous interviewee simply had to respond in vintage George RR fashion. The author has made no secret of the fact that his writing process is comparatively more arduous than that. In a previous blog post, Martin once compared himself to a “gardener.” who plants narrative seeds as they go, as opposed to an “architect” who plans every moment of the story from the beginning before following those plans to the letter. This inevitably means that there will be bad days when he hits creative dead ends and has to delete several pages of manuscripts that no longer suit him, or encounters the pertinent problem of simply having trouble putting the words together.
So, faced with King’s words of wisdom, it should have surprised no one that he responded with another incredulous question:
“And you read six pages a day? You never have a day where you sit there and it’s like constipation? And you write a sentence and you hate the sentence? And you check your email and you you wonder if you ever Did you have talent after all? And maybe you should have been a plumber. [laughs] — you don’t have days like that?
Recognizing that life can always get in the way of the writing process, King nevertheless remains determined that the goal is to produce six pages a day. Of course, this will be little comfort to fans who have been waiting for another one. eight years since this event for Martin to finish his next book, “The Winds of Winter”… but King also had some funny, choice words for them: “People yell at you and say, ‘We want the next book, we want the next book right away. They’re like babies.’ Rude Maybe, but King meant that no one could ever understand the pressure of producing quality writing in such circumstances. whether Martin will finally complete his career-defining work? One thing is certain though: it will be on their own terms (and at their own pace), not ours.
