I saw a very good point made by Mormon Branderson. Name of the Wind was Rothfuss's debut, it was his first book. Dude painted Guernica on his first attempt.
Then he kinda followed up but it was difficult.
Closing it off is almost impossible because Rothfuss skipped over the normal evolution of a writer. He never learned how to handle this.
It's like being a super fast runner and playing soccer. Sure, it will make you a beast for a few matches but you will get to a point where you need to learn more than just speed. Problem is that Rothfuss jumped over the baby leagues and straight into the Championship and now he's stuck.
Martin on the other hand has been writing for decades before AGoT. He should have known better.
As someone whose trajectory is kinda similar, just not as much in the public eye, this is definitely plausible. When the growth of your talent outpaces the growth of your experience and infrastructure and then suddenly your talent means that people have expectations of you rhat you’re not sure you can meet, it can be paralysing. Especially cause sometimes your best work gets made in flashes of inspiration, when you’re in flow state whatever, but it gets so much harder to reach there when you know people are watching and sometimes it just doesn’t come and you lose confidence etc.
It took me a lot of reflection, growth and practice to get there and I have like 1% of the eyes on me that rothfuss has.
I published my debut novel when I was 19. First draft took me 2-3 months. Editing another 6-8. All of it was such a breeze. I was in love with the story, the characters, as were my beta readers.
It founds its audience, made me good money for being 19, and then I was expected to write a sequel and I realized I have no idea how. The next 3 years I spent trying to write something, planning it, not planning it, using all kinds of challenges and tricks
Nothing.
By year 4 any 'fanbase' the novel had was gone and I vanished from the public eye never to be seen again.
or, you know, these 2 made more money than they will ever need in 1 or 2 lifetimes and just have no more motivation to even try to deliver something or to even work at all.
every now and then i get pissed at both (around 2011 i read both their 7 books back to back and here i am, 15y later, still waiting for the next fucking book) but i just remember that, if i came up to a huge fucking amount of money, the very first thing id do is fuck off from work and never work again in my life, so can i reaaaaally blame them for doing that?
Rothfuss didn't jump no baby leagues, he went to college for 10 years where he also took writing courses. He's not an ignorant prodigy, he just seems like a lazy writer who got fame and money way before his time
Getting a degree in English doesn't make you a writer. Studying art history doesn't make you capable of just painting or sculpting something all of a sudden.
There is a progression to how one produces their art. You learn a lot about your own processes as you write more and more books and stories that never leave the confines of your laptop. Only once you know how you work you can realistically write a series worthy of publishing.
Rothfuss not only got published with one of his earliest works but he also became uber successful right there with his debut.
I will forever pound the drum that both should just hire writers rooms to finish the stories for them. Make it like a TV show. They still get final approval, it's still their book, you just have 5-10 people writing simultaneously and providing chapters to push through any writer's block. Martin has already worked on a bunch of shows, he knows how to manage this.
I saw a very good point made by Mormon Branderson. Name of the Wind was Rothfuss's debut, it was his first book. Dude painted Guernica on his first attempt.
Then he kinda followed up but it was difficult.
Eh, he sold "Name of the Wind" by claiming he had pre-written the whole trilogy and the 2nd book was already in editing. That clearly was a lie.
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u/WandererMisha 5h ago
I saw a very good point made by Mormon Branderson. Name of the Wind was Rothfuss's debut, it was his first book. Dude painted Guernica on his first attempt.
Then he kinda followed up but it was difficult.
Closing it off is almost impossible because Rothfuss skipped over the normal evolution of a writer. He never learned how to handle this.
It's like being a super fast runner and playing soccer. Sure, it will make you a beast for a few matches but you will get to a point where you need to learn more than just speed. Problem is that Rothfuss jumped over the baby leagues and straight into the Championship and now he's stuck.
Martin on the other hand has been writing for decades before AGoT. He should have known better.