He needs to finish it just to get the ****ing taste of GoT's seasons 7 and 8 out of our collective mouths. Charges should be brought up against D&D, let's be real here.

And to give Barristan Selmy a proper end to his story. Christ.

If its finished he's sitting on a massive pay day.

When he dies, the publisher will probably end up getting a ghost writer to finish it from his notes and story outline.

He's got everyone spread out so far that he's going to have a difficult time bringing them back together to tie it all up. HBO is supposed to be filming the next spinoff "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms" now but that's just more reason for him not to write the damn book. He's 75 and not the picture of good health. It will never happen unless he gets someone else to do it.

I don't pretend to be an IP attorney, so I don't really know how the rights work, but George has gone on record many times saying he doesn't want anyone to finish the series in his stead if he can't finish it himself.

At the very least, I would think an author with any integrity would respect that.

The publisher will find someone to finish the book.

Exactly.

As sprawling as the HBO series ended up around season 6, it was nothing compared to the books. I mean there are entire POV characters that got deleted from the series that are still bouncing around the book universe.

I mentioned this years ago but GRRM is someone who 'loses control of his instrument' so to speak. He can't help but get bogged down in details and he often struggles badly to keep his story coherent. And his answer to a loose thread somewhere is to try to use that thread to knit another sweater.

He's seemingly disinterest or perhaps incapable of simply cutting off the thread.

He just reminds me so much of Stephen King in that regard. The expanded version of The Stand is what happens when everything goes right in that regard. Sometimes you manage to take the plane through all that turbulence, do a couple barrel rolls and put it on the tarmac. Then you have The Gunslinger series when he just kept doing loops until he put the damn thing into a mountain.

3 books in, he could've still brought this sucker home in a satisfying fashion. But instead he just kept getting broader and broader. When he tried to write book 4 and it was too long and unwieldy to put in one book, that should've been a sign to him that he was on the wrong track.

And instead of taking that overly long and convoluted story and editing the shit out of it, he just decided to make it two books.

Nothing he's said since then has been more demonstrative of his mindset than how he had to handle Feast and Dance. Hey George, when you can't decided on pizza or fried chicken, the answer shouldn't be full sized portions of each. This applies in both your writing and your life.

Having forced my way through the conclusion to the Dune series with Kevin Anderson and Brian Herbert....I think I'll pass.

I never read Wheel of Time but I hear that Sanderson did well enough with those. I just think it's so rare. Even reading the "Tom Clancy With..." books that guys like Mark Greaney co-authored with him is simply jarring. And the "Tom Clancy's..." books that came after he died are worse still. And those don't have anywhere near the world-building that stuff like ASOIAF and Dune have had.

Maybe he's doing a reverse ADWD/AFFC where he's working on both Winds and Dream simultaneously?

Just no way.

If he were working on them at all (and again, I don't think he is or has any designs on doing so), he'd end up turning those 2 books into 5. And those 5 into 9. He's just lost the plot.

I think King's success with The Stand is what killed The Gunslinger series.

If the show ending is the rough strokes of what he was getting at, doesn't that mean he only needs to plausibly wrap up the Dorne and Young Griff / fAegon plotlines in way people haven't anticipated?

Just a ASOIAF Wiki peruser. I've read the samples of the first few novels to see how GRRMs style compares or contrasts to Fevre Dream and Way of the Cross and Dragon.

He’s got everything going on with the Ironborn as well. Victarion is on a collision course with Daenerys, Barristan, and the newly freed dragons with the dragon binding horn and Euron’s doing some weird shit around Oldtown.

I hope he finishes it so my boy stannis can get a proper ending.

Hah, my goodness. It’s been so long I forget how far behind GRRM is..

He’s basically got to iron out two wars in the beginning of Winds with Stannis at Winterfell and Daenerys vs Victarion in Meereen or wherever.

Jon Snow just got stabbed to death, Bran is still in the cave with Bloodraven, and Brienne & Jaime are probably going to be brought to zombie Catelyn.