 Hello there, I'm wearing a nice shirt to give off the impression that I've groomed myself despite the fact that I obviously haven't shaved and my hair has been out in the wind and I haven't done anything with it. But I'm also here to talk about something that has just been on my mind for quite a while now and I haven't really known how to put it into the form of a script. So I just took some notes and I'm just gonna sort of run with my thoughts here and basically I want to talk about the dangers of too much success. Now that sounds weird, I know, and specifically I want to talk about this with regards to writing and publishing, but just hear me out for a minute. Think of A Song of Ice and Fire written by George double R Martin. Now, remember, it's been nine years since the last book released and we have no idea how far along the next book is or even how much George is actually working on it. Now, I want to reiterate, he doesn't owe us anything. Like, if he just wants to take his money and retire and not deal with the pressure anymore, I get that. I'd be upset, but I get that. However, keep in mind that his series has been going on for over 24 years now and a Feast for Crows and Dance with Dragons were originally going to be one book, but he just kept writing more and more and more and adding more and more and more stuff. And presumably his editor never said, uh, George, I think you should pull it back a little. And I think a big reason for that is that he had gotten popular to the point where she didn't really need to. Because think about it, he could write pretty much anything by that point because he'd had a long successful career as a fantasy sci-fi author and the Song of Ice and Fire had already been super big back in, uh, like 2005 when Feast for Crows came out. So when he started coming up with new ideas and adding more and more plot lines, which wound up not really going anywhere and weren't that interesting, then his editor didn't come in and say, hey, maybe that's a bad idea. Maybe we should stop. And so he just kept adding more and more stuff and he got himself into this tangled web that he doesn't know how to write his way out of. And I think it's even worse because when the show came out and everything exploded in popularity, that put a lot more pressure onto him. And so he was thinking, okay, it has to be perfect now. Like everyone loves it so much. I have to continue to blow their minds every book with every chapter, every line on the page. I have to continually blow their minds. And that's putting a lot of pressure on him. And I think he's sort of losing perspective with it. And when you lose perspective like that, you just feel, okay, well, what's even the point? Why should I bother? I'm never going to live up to their expectations. And in addition, he's also getting a deluge of hate because that's just, that's just what happens when something gets that popular. I've experienced that myself. You sometimes just get shit on from a lot of different directions in an unyielding fashion. It's not fun, but it comes with the territory. And so I'm pretty sure all of that coalesced together and has made it so that George either just can't finish his series or is unwilling to. And quite frankly, I don't blame him. You can also look at Patrick Rothfuss. The difference being that King Killer is his first series. You know, he didn't have a long career before that. It's just this one series. And the first book took off and got crazy popular. So they knew the second book's going to sell. So they didn't bother telling him, hey, you have 10% of this book with Kevoth just having sex with a fairy. Cut that out. That's stupid. Let's actually move the plot along. And even without that, Rothfuss has also gotten into just a tangled web of his own creation and he doesn't know exactly how to write his way out. And so he's trying so much to perfect it or possibly trying like, I don't know if you heard, but a little while ago, his editor came out and publicly said that she has not read a word of the Doors of Stone in years. Like, I think she said 2014 was the last time she actually read anything from him. So it's possible he just hasn't even been writing. I don't know. I can't say for certain. We can only speculate. But at least part of that has got to be that he doesn't feel he can write his way out of this and he needs it to be absolutely perfect. And he's constantly getting praise. And so he wants to live up to that praise and he's constantly getting shit on. And so he wants to prove them wrong and he wants to fix things. And there's just too much information. There's information overload coming from every direction. And to an extent, you can't really rely on publishers because once you reach a certain level of success, they will just publish whatever you write. And both of those guys, while they are skilled writers, they are pretty well set for money. So there's not really that motivation to keep going. You know, if they were, let's say, writing the exact same series, but they weren't all that successful and, you know, they made money. They made enough to like make rent and not starve. But they weren't living it up. Well, not to say they're precisely living it up now, but they're pretty well off with the way their series of soul. But anyways, if they didn't have that, then eventually they would just have to say, okay, I'm just gonna have to put it out there and finish it. Like my publisher's telling me you got a deadline, meet that fucking deadline. And so you'd have to put something out, something out, even if you're not super happy with it. And just so you know, even if you're not happy with something, other people can still be. And vice versa. And this applies to tons of other writers too. Even guys that don't write big, epic, long fantasy series, like Stephen King's a good example. Now, he's a pretty good writer, don't get me wrong. And he's had a long story career, but he could wipe his ass with a piece of paper and someone would read it and love it. And the publishers know that. So they aren't gonna bother editing his stuff beyond spell check, basically. I mean, think about it. When was the last time he really wrote something amazing? Like, he's written plenty of stuff over the past like 20, 25 years, that's good. But there's nothing that has reached the same level of like it or carry, you know, he just hasn't, he doesn't have that spark anymore, I should say. And granted, part of that is probably that he got sober and good on him for doing that. I'm not saying that he should continue drinking and snorting cocaine and all that just so that he can write entertaining books for us. Don't get me wrong, I'm very glad for him being able to do that. But I'm just saying that without publishers coming in and saying, hey, this is kind of stupid, you should change it or, hey, you should focus a little more on this or hey, twist this around a little, because sometimes you need other people to take a look at things that you create if you want to do it properly. And Stephen King just doesn't have that anymore. And so I'm convinced that that's the main reason why his work has, it feels weird saying that it's suffered because I don't think it's bad. I think it's still pretty good for the most part, but it's just not on par with his older stuff. And that's because they know whatever it is. It's going to be a best seller. And so why bother? And I brought this up in my review of Oathbringer, like many, many two and a half years ago. But Brandon Sanderson seems to be having similar problems. Because don't get me wrong, he's a skilled writer. All these guys I've mentioned so far are skilled writers. But Oathbringer was a lot longer than the first two Stormlight Archive books. And those were already huge. And Oathbringer, there were parts that just felt kind of fillery. The going through shades mark felt like it could have been shaved down a little. Like I understand it was important to the story, but it could have been shorter. All the stuff that happened in Kohlenahr, that could have been shorter. And just a lot of little moments like that where I feel like, is this really necessary? And I'm sure it feels necessary to Brandon when he's writing. But when you're going back through it as another person, it might feel like, and we don't really need this. And when you're writing something that long, every word has to count. Like if there's a single wasted word, then you're going to be wasting a lot of people's time with it. And the thing is, even as a skilled writer, you need other people to come in and tell you stuff. And publishers, at the end of the day, they're our business. You know, they're there to make money. They're there to maximize their profit. And you can talk about the morality of that and stuff all day. But that is what they're there to do. And part of maximizing profit is selling the most stuff, which is why they focus their resources on people they know are going to sell. And when they bring in new writers, they want stuff that's popular. You have to be able to convince them that, yes, this is going to be a success of some sort, maybe not a huge success, but at least a moderate success. And another way that they're going to increase profit is by spending as little money on this as possible. And so they're going to want to spend as little time as possible editing, and they're going to want to not have to have four or five people go in and examine it with a fine tooth comb and find out all the, oh, hey, there's a little bit of a plot hole or an inconsistency here. Let's fix that. They're not going to want to do that because they are a business. You can see this in other industries too. Like, I've been hearing unkind things about Tenet, that Christopher Nolan movie that just came out, and I haven't seen it so I can't say for certain, but a lot of people have been saying that, yes, in terms of spectacle and the action scenes, that's great. The acting is pretty solid, but you can't hear a lot of the dialogue and the story is just really fucking confusing and the characters are bland. And I'm pretty sure a big part of that is because Christopher Nolan movies, they just make money. You know, you don't need to put in a lot of effort into the script and say, hey, the characters have no personality because they make money, no one's going to give a shit. If it has Christopher Nolan's name attached to it, it will do well. So as I was getting at is that is the danger of success, you know? When you're not successful, you have to put in 150% into everything you create, whether it's music or movies or books or whatever. And remember when Kanye West released a gospel album? That was terrible. No one told him that was a bad idea because he's just too successful. Once you get to that level, you become a brand and if that brand is successful, then you're not going to have people coming in and helping you refine and shave off the edges of your work because that's what you need no matter how skilled you are and no matter how refined your skills are, I kind of repeated myself, whatever, no matter how good you are, you need other people to help you. And so I'm not sure about a solution to this danger of success problem. In long term, maybe just get money out of the arts, but that's basically impossible now and I'm not sure how possible it's going to be in the future. Uh, so for the meantime, just keep in mind that we're all fallible, including the people whose works we love and so we shouldn't be afraid to criticize it. We shouldn't be afraid to say, and that doesn't intrigue me that much. And just remember, we all make mistakes and I know this is kind of rambly and I wouldn't call it a rant quite because I did more or less know where I was going with it, but still it's a it's a bit of a discussion and I'd like to hear your thoughts, so comments and stuff. Bye. 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