This is actually GRRM's attitude in the first place. To be honest, I'd probably not even get involved in the debate (and my plan at the moment is to not do so once the same discussions inevitably begin over Book 6, which will be about 2 weeks before ADWD even comes out) if other people close to George were not getting quite annoyed about the false information being spread out there.



This is another point I would be interested to see people discuss more: is the key problem that the author is too much of a perfectionist and cannot let go of the material? ASoS, by most accounts the best book in the series, was written in a little more than two years. So WTF is up with AFFC and ADWD?

And I think the answer to that is to do with the whole structure of the series and the decision to radically change the structure mid-flow and the subsequent new decision (made after the promise ADWD would be out in a year) to re-structure the series again so it would be a bit faster and wouldn't sprawl.

But again, we don't see a huge amount of discussion about that either.



Agreed.



Interesting. In effect, Jordan and Martin have faced the same problem and Jordan's answer was to write his way out of it (so new material was still coming out) whilst Martin's is to edit and rewrite his way out of it, which means no new material is actually released in the meantime. As you say, the question is which approach is better.

If ASoIaF is eventually completed and the rewriting approach pays off and the final three books are as well-received as the first three, then that decision will be validated, as ASoIaF will be left as a 7-book series with a slightly below-par book right in the middle. The problem WoT faces is that even if books 12-14 are mindblowingly brilliant, the series is still going to have the rep of there being at least 3 (or more, depending on viewpoint) books which are quite weak, damaging its overall perception. GRRM's approach, whilst frustrating to readers right now, is probably the better one in the long run.

Unless of course the later books take ages to come out and then they suck, in which case he's in real trouble