George RR Martin on the Struggles of Being a Writer

Georgie was saying earlier that a writer's career trajectory can be an odd one sometimes and it can take a long time to reach that one perfect shining moment that you that you seek for what's the run-up to that like I think it's different for every writer I mean the one thing that's common for fiction writers and I know and it crowd this size they're probably a good number of you who are aspiring writers or people who who do write and think about writing someday it's it's not a career for anyone who needs or values security it's a career for gamblers because you know your type you write a book here you're throwing a dice again and you don't know whether it's gonna crash and burn or whether it's gonna be a big success most folks of course or somewhere in between it's a career of ups and downs and I've been very fortunate I've experienced far more ups than I have downs but I have had a few downs and you know dark times where I thought my career was over and I wasn't sure I was ever gonna sell another book what's important to me looking back on those is that even at the times where I was afraid I wasn't ever going to sell another book I never doubted that I would write another book and that's the real thing that I think distinguishes a real writer from from the false ones that even if you can't sell the books you're gonna write them anyway because you got these stories inside you that you want to tell you have these stories inside you that that it got to get out and you got to get it down on paper and you know hopefully you do hopefully you persist but it's a tough gig bumpy road and the obstinacy that writers must have do you think writers have to be a certain sort of character you have to be quite obdurate and quite bloody minded I think in your in your own skin it's a quite determined just keep doing it yes and and you know you have to you have to be ready to take a certain amount of criticism and rejection you are gonna get the rejection slips you're gonna work for projects that you love and people aren't gonna understand what you're doing and you know and and boy for most writers you can work for a year or two years on a book and even if you sell it and get it published then it's like you you threw it down a well hopefully you scan oh here's one one review in a newspaper from Des Moines Iowa and that's the only notice that you get for that you if you're lucky enough to be sent out for your publisher on book tours you find yourself sitting in a mall for three or four hours and no one is coming and that's funny somewhat you you got a big stack of books in front of you and and and you see some someone coming up to you Oh finally I have a customer yes that's the kind of experience you hope you have so it's it's not all you know book launches with champagne and interviews by the New York Times or the London Times as the case may be but it is a casino when sometimes someone like me gets lucky and you do get the other the end of the end of it which has its own challenges but its own rewards as to the main thing is the stories though it's is exactly as Robin said all of the other stuff is it's fun but or not fun as the case may be but ultimately you want to get back to that room and you want to get back to your to your people to fits in the fool in your case or to in my case the Tyrian and are you so and so forth or stolen absolutely the best feeling is the feeling that you get when you when you're really reading a really cool book and you have to put it down because it's time to do something else cook dinner or do homework or whatever in that feeling I'm going to go back to that and I'm going to jump back into that story and when that happens and you realize that's the story I was writing that it is is that moment and when it shifts gears and you say I hope somebody else is going to feel about this like I am because I can't wait to get back and and finish what's going to happen that was a watershed moment for Evan oh yes it's a curious thing this I know exactly where you're feeling and there are books I love it when I find a book like that the book that at the end of the day I can't wait to read a few more chapters before I go to sleep and sometimes it grabs me and then I I don't go to sleep I stay up all night reading it that's that's great but it sometimes I wonder what the quality is what is that readability I suppose does the job of editors like gain - to find that because sometimes I find myself reading a book critically and sit and saying this isn't right no no I could do better than this this is I'm not convinced later but I'm still reading the chapters because the book has B book even though I'm criticizing in my brain really and just to reverse other books I read sometimes very highly praised books oh this is beautiful prose oh this is he's really he's really got a gift here this is this is a terrific and I put it down I never pick it up again even though I have this great intellectual admiration somehow the hooks not being set and and I don't know quite what the distinction is I don't know if anybody knows if we knew we would all be doing it with every book right we would bottle it and sell it but it's that's why it's in art and not a not a choice every book every when you're reading money scripts and you know and even those don't always work even if you like it not everybody else is gonna like it so it's very intangible I don't know what it is but I know exactly what you mean about a very highly praised book and you can you can really think it's a remarkably well written but it just hasn't got you and I now put those away I haven't got time to waste on things that I'm not going to enjoy it's it's very magical process reading I think it's the most personal thing you can ever do because it's just you and that story and nobody else can interfere with it while you're sharing that book and that's an amazing thing but also writing is a very magical process as well and that's also an intangible extraordinary process and remember over the weekend you you described it so beautifully Megan you said it was like chasing butterflies and trying not to crush them it's somehow trying to capture that moment of inspiration and get it down on paper can you can you talk a bit more about that there was a lovely book out and I think I'm going to mess up the title but it was a was a fairy book and it was about this lovely Victorian lady that was catching fairies in the book that was it wasn't the crushed fairy book it was it had a title similar to that and really for me writing us like that I get an idea I think I can see it it's absolutely beautiful and I start writing it and I get it trapped on the page and it looks like it's it's not what I thought I was going to write and then the rewrite is it's it's rearranging the little body to make it look nice but it's taking off the paragraphs that didn't work and with coming back to it and saying I really I didn't describe anything I just said they they walked into the room and I and the right I'm not in the room with them because I haven't bothered to slow down and describe it so for me it's it's um I enjoy rewriting much more than I do doing first drafts doing first drafts it's like it's like it's really hard and then rewriting you've at least got something to work with and you can always make it better but we hope but but first drafts are very hard for me George how are you I agree what what what everything Robert said about how hard it is you know one of the one of the key bits of writing advice that I got from a book was when I was quite young before I'd made any sales when I was ready for families and all that was up Robert a Heinlein's for rules of writing which was you know you must write was number one there's a lot of people talk I'm gonna write someday but they never never actually get around to writing anything so that one I was already writing so that one didn't make much sense to me oh I could see the sense of it but the second one he was finished what'd you write that was very important to me at an early age because I was I was constantly not finishing what I like I was buried in fragments for precisely the reasons that Robin talked about I would have this story idea and they will exist in my head in this platonic perfection and I would sit down to try to capture it and I'd be writing writing on it and wrestling it and writing with these words and then I would look at it and it was not that the beautiful dream city that I had imagined it was this kind of slum of words and and no I didn't get it right it was horrible and I'd get like halfway through it and then I'd have another idea and that would exist in platonic perfection and we'd seen so much more attractive than this mess that I had half written on paper so I put the mess aside and I start a new story and exactly the same thing that would happen would happen it was really the Heinlein thing that said you must finish what you write and I made myself start actually finishing these stories no matter how much I hated loathe and despise them and you know by the end I usually like them a little better and they still weren't the incredible stories that I saw in my head but uh you know they were good enough that at least for fanzines and fans seem to like them and that encouraged me and I did more and you know then after they have Scandinavian story got rejected I said well maybe I'll I'll send some out and one thing led to another but it's hard it's still it's still hard I mean if there was just telepathy you know it's part of me that loves words I mean I feel great pleasure when I come up with a great line of dialogue or even a way of describing a sunset or a castle a metaphor something that that were the words ring what or decimo tree to them that's terrific but sometimes it seems like the words are you know you're trying to drive a nail with your shoe and it's it's boy you wish you had a hammer and the hammer is a word that you don't have or or some way to make the reader see that's the way you see it that it it can be very very frustrating Thomas Mann said a writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people

Channel: Aegon Targaryen

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Keywords: winds of winter, 2019, new, stephen king, jon snow, emilia clarke, kit harrington, a dream of spring, jrr tolkien, collegehumor, south park, audiobook, jimmy fallon, trailer, leaks, spoilers, theory, bran, bronn, lannister, cersei, tyrion, dragons, theme, season 8, episode 1

Id: hdA5Q82ByjE

Length: 12min 1sec (721 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 11 2019