What I’ve been wondering lately, is if the cause of the delay is much sadder.
People do get old. Some old people develop mental problems. I’m not talking about psychological problems, purely flat out mental deficits that result from brain cells dying or becoming damaged. And it’s the higher abilities where the loss shows first.
Have you ever been a caretaker or close to someone with what turns out to have been early Alzheimer’s? In a lot of ways it looks ‘normal’ at first. Yeah, they forget things. Well, who doesn’t forget where they put their car keys now and then? And, yeah, they just asked you what was for dinner, and you’d already told them that an hour ago. But, hey, maybe they were distracted and didn’t really hear you. You don’t realize it’s just the first step on a continuing slide.
What will amaze you, in hind sight, is how well they can continue a ‘normal’ social life for quite a while. They can still carry on casual conversations with people, go to parties, express sympathy and interest and friendliness and all that.
But the kind of creativity that would let a mind come up with and carry out the production of a world and stories on the level of ASOIAF is found in, what, one percent of one percent of all humans? Less? It takes an extraordinary mind, and one operating at full bore. What happens when, say, 2 or 3 or 5% of that creativity is gone? When ideas get harder to come up with, or if you do manage to create them, but they slip away, forgotten, before you can get them fully written out?
Even if you can remember your new ideas, and jot them down right away, what about your memory of the tens of thousands of details you’ve already built into the world over literally decades??? Can you possibly be sure this new idea doesn’t contradict something else?
And you will KNOW this is happening to you, at least for the first stages. You will know you are forgetting things you should remember, and want to hide that ugly truth from those around you and most especially not flash it in front of the entire world.
Worst of all, what if your ability to create is going, but your ability to judge and appreciate creations isn’t? What if you write out that great new scene… and tomorrow you reread it, and realize it’s clumsy, slow, thick, boring, pedestrian??
Maybe this is all totally wrong. Maybe the reason Martin has been unable/unwilling to finish his book is that he’s said, Fuck it, I’m tired of Jaime and Cersei and Tyrion and all that. I’m rich enough and having more fun doing other things than sitting in front of computer for hours and hours wrestling with plot and characters and all. I’m going to go to cons and drink and laugh with fans and friends, and maybe I’ll license some more of my old writing to make even more money, sure, why not?
I really hope for his sake that is true. (And if so, I really, really hope he decides to hire a ghost writer and hands off his no doubt extensive notes, for our sake.)
But… I don’t think so. Look at the various chapters of the new book he’s read at cons. They all clearly happen shortly after the end of the last book. Likely they were written then, too. Might even be chapters he wrote FOR that book, that got moved to the next volume because the book just got too damn long to suit the publisher.
How long can you listen to someone say “soon” before you realize “soon” means “never”?
