He is a lazy fat fuck that lost interest in his most popular story, keeps claiming he is going to finish his next book by 20XX misses the date and then attacks his own fans. Fuck him. His legacy is possibly the worst received tv ending and his most popular female character literally having diarrhea in the grass.
Why would anyone care at this point?
The series started 30 years ago. In that time frame I went from not knowing about his books, to reading them all in a frenzy, to waiting eagerly for the next one, to realizing that he doesn't know what he's doing, to actively despising the subversive anti-heroic narrative he's trying to spin.
+1 for this. I realized after book 3 what Martin was doing but read book 4 after an outpouring of "It fixes everything!" claims from (lying) fans. Never bothered with book 5.
I don't buy that he's been sitting on an finished book, if there were any truth to that I'm sure his publisher would have sued him. What I do buy is he's made more money than he could ever spend in however many years he has left to live, so what motivation does he have to keep writing? Legacy? He's a childless man in his 70's, who has gone on record that he's not going to allow anyone to finish his books in his stead should he die before they're written. The fans? In interviews he speaks with anger about fans who ask if he's going to finish the books before he dies. The best he could do is ride out the clock with his millions of dollars and leave people wondering what might had been, rather than putting all the effort in attempting to tie up the multitudes of loose threads he's written himself into and risk disappointing everyone. It's a low bar to make something better than the show, but for years he was hyped up as "the American Tolkien", no way could he ever live up to that.
I am almost certain that a large amount of what people hated about the last season of the show was his own doing, and he sold the showrunners out by letting people think it must have been them instead of him.
So now he can't actually write his story anymore, else that house of cards will all collapse on him. But because he is obsessed with his very specific brand of bullshit, he can't write anything else.
Yes. When the show ending bombed, fans screamed at him on twitter to tell them that wasn't the "real" ending. Instead of confirming or denying this obvious question, he evaded and claimed there was no such thing as canon.
i.e., it was the ending he intended. 100% shit, all his.
One thing that was mentioned is that he planned for Nymeria, Arya's dire wolf, to actually fucking do something, and not be a throwaway scene like happened in the show.
Some variation of the theory has been around for a while. I’ve heard that he had just about finished and saw the reaction and restarted. I think he is just being lazy and if he dies his publisher will find someone to finish. The show ending wouldn’t be bad with proper buildup. Also there are still a number of plots and Jon Snow and Young Griff will be interesting
I can say I thought the ending was really bad. Even the technical mistakes like the coffee cups and water bottles showing up. That's not something that appeared in the earlier series.
Martin is being super lazy and super salty about his fans expecting an ending
The ending was a disaster. What other shows bar HIMYM have gone for massive success to basically zero rewatch potential because of how the end was? Arya killing the Night King instead of Jon, ANY of the other white walkers actually fighting someone with a darksteel Valyrian steel sword since those were shown to actually stop their ice blades when Jon fought one at Hardhome, Jon being named Aegon (again) instead of something far more fitting like Aejon, Arya fucking off on her own despite her entire arc being about learning "the solo wolf dies while the pack lives" or some other version of the metaphor, Sansa seceding from the other kingdoms which means the North is now open season for raiders from the other kingoms, which includes the pirate kingdom that was going to secede under Dany anyway then forgot after she died, and a whole other list of things that were just one fuckup after another.
Lost comes to mind. And Walking Dead but I wouldn't know... I stopped watching long before the end.
I always imagine the showrunner leaves with bags of cash, the writers next with a few stacks, and the final season or two is written by interns who put up the chairs and vacuums before they leave.
Lost actually admitted eventually they didn't know what the fuck they were doing at the time and were just going from mystery box to mystery box. It probably all changed when they started killing off characters left, right, and center as a means to get back to a story.
I believe it, I lived it when it was happening. After the Survivor, Lost was the zeitgeist show of the time. They even admitted they wanted a scripted show that has Survivor vibes.
But what I never understood is that it's not like turning in their homework every week, they're working on the show, thinking about the show, talking about the show, they can even read the boards and fan speculations and steal their ideas. They didn't know what the fuck they were going with when they made the mystery box, but the answers they provided was so dog shit it doesn't even seem like they were trying.
Whatever I'm over it.
Only show in history I can think of, worst than game of thrones, that poisoned itself in reverse. I can't even rewatch the early seasons because it'll just piss me off.
HIMYM had a shit final season but you can still watch the first 8 and have a good laugh.
I'm not going to rant for an hour plus on that shitshow. But I will bring up that it has one of my favorite scene of all time, where Adama calls his son a weak, fat piece of shit for getting fat.
I loved that scene so much that wanted to put my face over Apollo's so I can see myself get my ass chewed for letting myself go.
Hah, I hadn't thought about that scene in years. That was great. That show was so damn entertaining, at the time. A group of friends would watch each new episode every week when they aired. After that last season (or two), I have not felt the slightest desire to go back and rewatch. Never watched Caprica either.
You even had the technical issues like the coffee cup and water bottles popping up. Look stuff happens especially with hi-def cameras now, but earlier seasons happened with zero Starbucks on screen.
The water bottles in the finale were at least partially obscured by the seats the cast were on. The coffee cup was literally on the middle of the table during the post zombie apocalypse banquet. Then they tried scrubbing it from future showings.
I guess I think in book form you could get to the ending with good writing. Yea his annoyance when people want to know about Winds of Winter is ridiculous. He knows people don’t care about his side projects
It seems obvious he's "stuck" in some way, whether that's fear of his ending being unpopular or perhaps a lack of planning on how to get to his ending (or even how concrete that ending is) leaving him somewhat written into a corner. It could be that his ending was like the show, it could be that his ending was different, it could even be that his ending doesn't exist at all—he might have no idea how he wants to move forward. I have some trouble believing this rumor, though, because even if there were murmurings of unease that would mean he had to have a whole book written and submitted to the degree that this alleged industry insider could have heard about it before season six aired and then waffle on it for another three years before abandoning it after season eight. I know he's got a lot more leeway than most writers, but I imagine his publisher would have pushed him forward at some point if the completed book really did exist.
On a side note, I think the popular theory about Martin is that he's got a real downer ending because of all those comments he made about wanting to write a grimmer and grittier, more "realistic" fantasy story where there aren't as many real heroes, and they aren't as successful, and that now that he's seen how "subversions" like that are received, he's nervous. I think that's definitely possible. But another, funnier possibility is that he actually has a more traditionally upbeat ending where the characters he's set up as heroes (Jon, Bran, Arya, Daenerys, Tyrion) actually do end up doing heroic things and now he's afraid to disappoint people who expect him to be a cynic to the end. I mean, he did set up all these characters... he can't be totally blind to what he's doing, right?
He's talked about how he has an ending place in mind but he doesn't know how to get all the characters there. And I've heard him talk about how he's not an architect with writing, he's a gardener. That he loosely plans and tries to cultivate the characters as he is writing.
It would be kind of funny if the problem in his subversive fantasy novel is it keeps ending like a fantasy novel. But even those are usually more bittersweet than sugary sweet. Either way that fat fuck should make a decision and move forward. Let the pieces fall wherever they land
Based on fan theory the ending will be about taking down the wall to save the others. Basically the whole thing seems to be an allegory for "putting up walls to keep people out is bad and it creates monsters"
And if that isn't what George intended and it was always his plan for the Others to be an evil that needed to be walled off and eventually beaten back, then it's likely putting him in a crisis of conscience as his books are preaching the value of borders and walls when his whole political faction is fighting tooth and nail against that entire concept. Hell, you could say ASoIaF is unintentionally making a case against globalism because we're seeing how the Seven Kingdoms are breaking down (and apart) despite the ruling bureaucracy's every attempt to preserve the empire. Definitely not a theme he wants to preach in his "realistic" fantasy series.
It's the only explanation that ties in Danaerys doing everything with freeing slaves, the house of the undying, and Arya with the faceless men into the main core themes of the story. They are not random diversions, but directly tie into the main concept he started with.
One of the reasons its so compelling is that George is still basically an old hippie so it makes sense that would essentially be the core of it all. And it might be why he is struggling so much, that in this modern world where the US and Europe basically have torn down the wall and welcomed "the others" in its leading to the destruction of culture and cities. He might be having a change of heart, or at least hesitation to keep up with that central theme.
and that now that he's seen how "subversions" like that are received, he's nervous.
Well that's what happens when you go so slowly that you manage to not only help found a cultural shift towards a certain genre, but you manage to first make people sick of it and then outlive it entirely before you finish a single fucking book.
There are too many PoV characters. It makes the story almost impossible to write. Pacing becomes a nightmare.
On top of that, GoT was unapologetically filled with brutal sex and violence.
George has lead the charge of feminists in the publishing industry. Writing a story like the early GoT is politically suicidal. No matter what he does more than half his audience will be pissed off. It is a no win situation.
He most likely had a contractual obligation to HBO that stipulated that he may not finish the GOT series until they're done with the series, but after the disastrous reception of the ending (based on his notes), he no longer wanted to finish the book to begin with. He was already working on several other projects.
We should also factor in the culture war, the Trump presidency and his proposed 'wall'. G.R.R. Martin is a left-progressive crazy (he even drags black female nobody writers to red carpet events to promote them) and probably didn't want his 'work of art' to feed the 'right fascist MAGA Nazis' in their culture war, just like Tolkien's work began to do (with the Sauron reports). (Perhaps this is also the reason why Amazon completely sodomized and vandalized the work of Tolkien.)
rofl, you're right, but I still think it was part of his HBO contract. He was probably getting tens of millions out of it. The franchise supposedly generated 2.2 billion dollars worth of profit, as of 2019.
While I totally buy Grr obsessing over how popular he will be to the point of sinking his own career, I highly doubt it was turned in back in 2016 and the publisher took a leisurely two years to edit, allowing him to see the reaction to the last season and withdraw it.
They would have sent that shit to the printers to start raking in money and told fatty to start the next one.
No, what actually happened is he set out, by his own description, to write an un-Romantic, un-troped Romance (in the chivalric sense) and it turns out such a thing isn't possible. As is obvious to anyone with access to a dictionary.
I doubt it because of the timeframe. If it was finished in 2016 it would have been out the door before the TV show keeled over and died - at the latest, it would be in stores waiting to be released alongside the finale if you wanted to make a big gimmick out of avoiding spoilers.
Im of two minds. 1. This could totally be possible and he was holding off publishing it to "test audiences" and now is in panic mode and trying to do massive rewrites.
Or 2. He's just a lazy hack. He finally got his fame and thats all he cares about. So he has no desire to actually finish the thing people want and instead fucks around with other projects and gets butt hurt that no one cares.
I'm more of a mind that it is 2. Because if it was 1 he had plenty of time to rewrite book 6 even if it was just 1 page a day.
I regret ever watching a moment of that show. It started out fairly decent if low budget. Reminded me of something like Sliders season 4. Not horrible, and it had heart, but could have been so much more if it had a budget.
Fuck that show. They didn't close a single story thread in any memorable or significant way. Instead just kept fucking up what they had. and starting new story threads leaving old ones to rot.
I don't think it was finished, but I do think he had a lot more to do with GoT's "original" elements than was advertised. Since it bombed so hard, he would have had to rethink everything he was planning, but he's a hack so he just gave up instead.
He probably honestly thought the "Bran wins" ending was going to knock everyone's socks off. But it didn't, so he has to rewrite it, but there's no writing out of the mess. So he'll never finish it.
He is a lazy fat fuck that lost interest in his most popular story, keeps claiming he is going to finish his next book by 20XX misses the date and then attacks his own fans. Fuck him. His legacy is possibly the worst received tv ending and his most popular female character literally having diarrhea in the grass.
Why would anyone care at this point? The series started 30 years ago. In that time frame I went from not knowing about his books, to reading them all in a frenzy, to waiting eagerly for the next one, to realizing that he doesn't know what he's doing, to actively despising the subversive anti-heroic narrative he's trying to spin.
Are you me?
My AOL Instant Messenger screen name was a GRRM character.. today, I doubt I’ll ever read another word he wrote or will write.
+1 for this. I realized after book 3 what Martin was doing but read book 4 after an outpouring of "It fixes everything!" claims from (lying) fans. Never bothered with book 5.
I don't buy that he's been sitting on an finished book, if there were any truth to that I'm sure his publisher would have sued him. What I do buy is he's made more money than he could ever spend in however many years he has left to live, so what motivation does he have to keep writing? Legacy? He's a childless man in his 70's, who has gone on record that he's not going to allow anyone to finish his books in his stead should he die before they're written. The fans? In interviews he speaks with anger about fans who ask if he's going to finish the books before he dies. The best he could do is ride out the clock with his millions of dollars and leave people wondering what might had been, rather than putting all the effort in attempting to tie up the multitudes of loose threads he's written himself into and risk disappointing everyone. It's a low bar to make something better than the show, but for years he was hyped up as "the American Tolkien", no way could he ever live up to that.
Lol, good luck with that. Whoever ends up with the copyright is going to want to cash in on it.
Indeed. His estate will go to his wife, but who will it go to after she dies?
I am almost certain that a large amount of what people hated about the last season of the show was his own doing, and he sold the showrunners out by letting people think it must have been them instead of him.
So now he can't actually write his story anymore, else that house of cards will all collapse on him. But because he is obsessed with his very specific brand of bullshit, he can't write anything else.
Yes. When the show ending bombed, fans screamed at him on twitter to tell them that wasn't the "real" ending. Instead of confirming or denying this obvious question, he evaded and claimed there was no such thing as canon.
i.e., it was the ending he intended. 100% shit, all his.
One thing that was mentioned is that he planned for Nymeria, Arya's dire wolf, to actually fucking do something, and not be a throwaway scene like happened in the show.
Yeah, I've heard the big dog pack led by her becomes a bigger deal.
Some variation of the theory has been around for a while. I’ve heard that he had just about finished and saw the reaction and restarted. I think he is just being lazy and if he dies his publisher will find someone to finish. The show ending wouldn’t be bad with proper buildup. Also there are still a number of plots and Jon Snow and Young Griff will be interesting
I can say I thought the ending was really bad. Even the technical mistakes like the coffee cups and water bottles showing up. That's not something that appeared in the earlier series.
Martin is being super lazy and super salty about his fans expecting an ending
The ending was a disaster. What other shows bar HIMYM have gone for massive success to basically zero rewatch potential because of how the end was? Arya killing the Night King instead of Jon, ANY of the other white walkers actually fighting someone with a
darksteelValyrian steel sword since those were shown to actually stop their ice blades when Jon fought one at Hardhome, Jon being named Aegon (again) instead of something far more fitting like Aejon, Arya fucking off on her own despite her entire arc being about learning "the solo wolf dies while the pack lives" or some other version of the metaphor, Sansa seceding from the other kingdoms which means the North is now open season for raiders from the other kingoms, which includes the pirate kingdom that was going to secede under Dany anyway then forgot after she died, and a whole other list of things that were just one fuckup after another.Lost comes to mind. And Walking Dead but I wouldn't know... I stopped watching long before the end.
I always imagine the showrunner leaves with bags of cash, the writers next with a few stacks, and the final season or two is written by interns who put up the chairs and vacuums before they leave.
Edit: Weeds!
Lost actually admitted eventually they didn't know what the fuck they were doing at the time and were just going from mystery box to mystery box. It probably all changed when they started killing off characters left, right, and center as a means to get back to a story.
I believe it, I lived it when it was happening. After the Survivor, Lost was the zeitgeist show of the time. They even admitted they wanted a scripted show that has Survivor vibes.
But what I never understood is that it's not like turning in their homework every week, they're working on the show, thinking about the show, talking about the show, they can even read the boards and fan speculations and steal their ideas. They didn't know what the fuck they were going with when they made the mystery box, but the answers they provided was so dog shit it doesn't even seem like they were trying.
Whatever I'm over it.
Only show in history I can think of, worst than game of thrones, that poisoned itself in reverse. I can't even rewatch the early seasons because it'll just piss me off.
HIMYM had a shit final season but you can still watch the first 8 and have a good laugh.
Battle star Galactica.
I'm not going to rant for an hour plus on that shitshow. But I will bring up that it has one of my favorite scene of all time, where Adama calls his son a weak, fat piece of shit for getting fat.
I loved that scene so much that wanted to put my face over Apollo's so I can see myself get my ass chewed for letting myself go.
Hah, I hadn't thought about that scene in years. That was great. That show was so damn entertaining, at the time. A group of friends would watch each new episode every week when they aired. After that last season (or two), I have not felt the slightest desire to go back and rewatch. Never watched Caprica either.
You even had the technical issues like the coffee cup and water bottles popping up. Look stuff happens especially with hi-def cameras now, but earlier seasons happened with zero Starbucks on screen.
The water bottles in the finale were at least partially obscured by the seats the cast were on. The coffee cup was literally on the middle of the table during the post zombie apocalypse banquet. Then they tried scrubbing it from future showings.
I guess I think in book form you could get to the ending with good writing. Yea his annoyance when people want to know about Winds of Winter is ridiculous. He knows people don’t care about his side projects
Oh yeah. The books aren't as infested with the girlboss shit as the show got.
Yea, Arya killing the night king was pure girl power nonsense
I think I remember at the time hearing even Maisie's boyfriend asked her why Jon wasn't the one to kill the Night King.
Yep. The showrunners said it would be too obvious. At the very least they could’ve had them fight each other.
Imagine if Dominoes sent you a goulash because sending a pizza would be 'too obvious'.
I don't see how Jon coming back to life is interesting. It kind of betrays the whole concept of the story. And Griff is beyond moronic.
There were people already brought back to life. As for Griff I’d like to see what happens with him as well as Stoneheart
It seems obvious he's "stuck" in some way, whether that's fear of his ending being unpopular or perhaps a lack of planning on how to get to his ending (or even how concrete that ending is) leaving him somewhat written into a corner. It could be that his ending was like the show, it could be that his ending was different, it could even be that his ending doesn't exist at all—he might have no idea how he wants to move forward. I have some trouble believing this rumor, though, because even if there were murmurings of unease that would mean he had to have a whole book written and submitted to the degree that this alleged industry insider could have heard about it before season six aired and then waffle on it for another three years before abandoning it after season eight. I know he's got a lot more leeway than most writers, but I imagine his publisher would have pushed him forward at some point if the completed book really did exist.
On a side note, I think the popular theory about Martin is that he's got a real downer ending because of all those comments he made about wanting to write a grimmer and grittier, more "realistic" fantasy story where there aren't as many real heroes, and they aren't as successful, and that now that he's seen how "subversions" like that are received, he's nervous. I think that's definitely possible. But another, funnier possibility is that he actually has a more traditionally upbeat ending where the characters he's set up as heroes (Jon, Bran, Arya, Daenerys, Tyrion) actually do end up doing heroic things and now he's afraid to disappoint people who expect him to be a cynic to the end. I mean, he did set up all these characters... he can't be totally blind to what he's doing, right?
He's talked about how he has an ending place in mind but he doesn't know how to get all the characters there. And I've heard him talk about how he's not an architect with writing, he's a gardener. That he loosely plans and tries to cultivate the characters as he is writing.
It would be kind of funny if the problem in his subversive fantasy novel is it keeps ending like a fantasy novel. But even those are usually more bittersweet than sugary sweet. Either way that fat fuck should make a decision and move forward. Let the pieces fall wherever they land
Based on fan theory the ending will be about taking down the wall to save the others. Basically the whole thing seems to be an allegory for "putting up walls to keep people out is bad and it creates monsters"
And if that isn't what George intended and it was always his plan for the Others to be an evil that needed to be walled off and eventually beaten back, then it's likely putting him in a crisis of conscience as his books are preaching the value of borders and walls when his whole political faction is fighting tooth and nail against that entire concept. Hell, you could say ASoIaF is unintentionally making a case against globalism because we're seeing how the Seven Kingdoms are breaking down (and apart) despite the ruling bureaucracy's every attempt to preserve the empire. Definitely not a theme he wants to preach in his "realistic" fantasy series.
It's the only explanation that ties in Danaerys doing everything with freeing slaves, the house of the undying, and Arya with the faceless men into the main core themes of the story. They are not random diversions, but directly tie into the main concept he started with.
One of the reasons its so compelling is that George is still basically an old hippie so it makes sense that would essentially be the core of it all. And it might be why he is struggling so much, that in this modern world where the US and Europe basically have torn down the wall and welcomed "the others" in its leading to the destruction of culture and cities. He might be having a change of heart, or at least hesitation to keep up with that central theme.
That's a pretty fascinating theory actually
The Dothraki will end up ruling Westeros and the 'white' walkers will have been held back behind the Wall.
Gay if true.
Well that's what happens when you go so slowly that you manage to not only help found a cultural shift towards a certain genre, but you manage to first make people sick of it and then outlive it entirely before you finish a single fucking book.
There are too many PoV characters. It makes the story almost impossible to write. Pacing becomes a nightmare.
On top of that, GoT was unapologetically filled with brutal sex and violence.
George has lead the charge of feminists in the publishing industry. Writing a story like the early GoT is politically suicidal. No matter what he does more than half his audience will be pissed off. It is a no win situation.
Do people really think that a soap opera writer not being able to think of endings is implausible?
"And then Bran woke up in his bed, it was all a dream. The end."
Before the last book I had said that the ending of Harry Potter should be "And Harry woke up in his closet and it was all a dream".
He most likely had a contractual obligation to HBO that stipulated that he may not finish the GOT series until they're done with the series, but after the disastrous reception of the ending (based on his notes), he no longer wanted to finish the book to begin with. He was already working on several other projects.
We should also factor in the culture war, the Trump presidency and his proposed 'wall'. G.R.R. Martin is a left-progressive crazy (he even drags black female nobody writers to red carpet events to promote them) and probably didn't want his 'work of art' to feed the 'right fascist MAGA Nazis' in their culture war, just like Tolkien's work began to do (with the Sauron reports). (Perhaps this is also the reason why Amazon completely sodomized and vandalized the work of Tolkien.)
The current book that this rumor is about isn't even the last one. Five books are published. This is book six out of a planned seven.
rofl, you're right, but I still think it was part of his HBO contract. He was probably getting tens of millions out of it. The franchise supposedly generated 2.2 billion dollars worth of profit, as of 2019.
Bullshit.
First two books were awesome. Third was decent. Fourth was ass.
No. Causes hes a lazy fuck
Epstein not being Mossad is more likely than GERM finishing his books.
While I totally buy Grr obsessing over how popular he will be to the point of sinking his own career, I highly doubt it was turned in back in 2016 and the publisher took a leisurely two years to edit, allowing him to see the reaction to the last season and withdraw it.
They would have sent that shit to the printers to start raking in money and told fatty to start the next one.
No, what actually happened is he set out, by his own description, to write an un-Romantic, un-troped Romance (in the chivalric sense) and it turns out such a thing isn't possible. As is obvious to anyone with access to a dictionary.
I just don't care to read it anymore, especially after he's demonstrated who he is.
I doubt it because of the timeframe. If it was finished in 2016 it would have been out the door before the TV show keeled over and died - at the latest, it would be in stores waiting to be released alongside the finale if you wanted to make a big gimmick out of avoiding spoilers.
Bullshit.
A finished first rough manuscript, maybe. But nothing he did edit properly, and especially nothing that he gave to his publisher's editors.
Writers like Peter Hamilton are pretty bad with endings imo, but at least the books end.
GRRM probably hasn't started the final book yet, or he planned it to end like the show and the reaction wasn't good.
Someone else will finish it when he dies using his notes.
I think his old ass hipster computer went pop somewhere around 2016, destroyed the sole existing copy, and he's been lying about it ever since.
Im of two minds. 1. This could totally be possible and he was holding off publishing it to "test audiences" and now is in panic mode and trying to do massive rewrites. Or 2. He's just a lazy hack. He finally got his fame and thats all he cares about. So he has no desire to actually finish the thing people want and instead fucks around with other projects and gets butt hurt that no one cares.
I'm more of a mind that it is 2. Because if it was 1 he had plenty of time to rewrite book 6 even if it was just 1 page a day.
It feels like he was too busy riding the fame from the TV show instead of sitting down and writing for the fans.
And I think he had a cameo or two. I know he had at least one in Z Nation.
I thought it was an actor in Z-nation. I can't believe how liberal Z-nation was.
I regret ever watching a moment of that show. It started out fairly decent if low budget. Reminded me of something like Sliders season 4. Not horrible, and it had heart, but could have been so much more if it had a budget.
Fuck that show. They didn't close a single story thread in any memorable or significant way. Instead just kept fucking up what they had. and starting new story threads leaving old ones to rot.
I agree. I forced myself to watch through half of season 5.
I don't think it was finished, but I do think he had a lot more to do with GoT's "original" elements than was advertised. Since it bombed so hard, he would have had to rethink everything he was planning, but he's a hack so he just gave up instead.
He can live out his days on royalties. It's doubtful he even wants to do anything else.
This sounds plausible to me.
He probably honestly thought the "Bran wins" ending was going to knock everyone's socks off. But it didn't, so he has to rewrite it, but there's no writing out of the mess. So he'll never finish it.