Although I respect Tolkien as a world builder he is an incredibly overrated writer. I'm sure some people will try to crucify me for it but that's how I feel; his prose is not nearly equal to the praise he gets. He does however deserve tons and tons of credit for essentially creating modern fantasy all by himself. Orcs, elves, wood-elves and high-elves, goblins, halflings, and on and on, all the tropes of modern fantasy is what Tolkien really deserves credit for. As a novelist and in his prose, Martin is ahead of Tolkien by a mile. Both are great but for different reasons.
It's cool to see how Martin's early life is similar to mine in some ways, granted, instead of books and comics to read, I had shows and old vhs movies to watch. It's also nice to see how he made up stories for those figurines he still has, making stories has been there since he was a kid, and he made that childhood pass time into a career.
I can honestly say that this man has forever changed my life. So much of what makes me the me I am today is thanks to his story telling. After making me love a character such as Jaime Lannister, I started questioning my perspectives on everyone, story & real life alike. I certainly never loved history like I do until I discovered Asoiaf was based largely on the War of the Rose's...
George is the man. He will be considered one of the greatest American writers of this century by the time it's all said and done. I hate that he gets so much vitriol online. He has produced amazing work so far.
I genuinely feel like the only reason the books are taking too long is that GRRM is too much of a perfectionist and he's trying to constantly outdone himself and make it as mind blowing as possible and he's having trouble doing that because when you're a perfectionist nothing is ever enough and you do things that are too hard for you and outside of your skillset. obviously doing other projects is a big part of the delay and I think he's doing those to get inspired or be able to look at ASOIAF and how it should end from other points of view
Yes I am a writer and also a perfectionist so chapters take longer to get out. It's a struggle. Then there is also writers block and if you have fans people want what they want when they want it.
I didn't know he was that old...which is a compliment I hope. But I just realized he was a kid when LOTR literally came out. Like I always saw him like one of us who look back at Lord of the rings as a historical piece of literature. But he literally witnessed it it all first hand. Like to him LOTR is literlally just a book that came out once and he liked it.
Think the that best authors come from personal stories - disiherited GRR Martin writing about the belongings his family used to have and former soldier GRR Tolkien writing about his youth during the war
