I managed to overlook Shawn Speakman's article on Suvudu.com defending George R. R. Martin and the ongoing siege fans of his A Song of Ice and Fire series are waging against him. 

Shawn's article is thorough and well thought out, allowing a measure of criticism for Martin's "unprofessional" behavior while generally defending his writing style and the long process of completing a beloved series.

Shawn was the first person I've heard describe Martin's problem as unprofessionalism.  It really does encapsulate it well: if Martin is truly guilty of anything, he's guilty of setting unrealistic goals and putting them in writing -- of making promises he should have known he couldn't keep.  That aside, you can't really fault a writer for the way his own process works.  Shawn makes a good argument that that is truly the heart of the issue: the combination of Martin's free-writing style and his strict editor's eye makes for a long writing process, and one that is frequently subject to drastic change:

George is, from what I understand, a Freewriter.

So, what does that mean? Well, it means George does not plan in advance what he writes. As a result, George will often write several chapters, which takes up several weeks, decide on a different and better course of direction, and have to erase those chapters--and quite possibly several others that came before them. Those weeks are gone with no output to show for it other than having a better sense of where he is going. According to him, that very thing has happened several times over the course of the last few years, delaying A Feast For Crows and now A Dance With Dragons. Unlike King, who sometimes has lackluster endings to his novels due to, in my opinion, lack of planning, George is an editor who will not publish something unless it is done right. The manner in which George writes can be volatile to the reader who believes George just needs to spend a certain amount of time at the keyboard to produce a manuscript.

But writing for George is not a science. He is a Freewriter. To try to make him other than that is folly--and disrespects the earlier work that has given such joy.

Shawn also brought up the subject of what he calls "the creative wall," a realism of the writing life that many writers have described in many different ways:

Every writer I have spoken to comes to a point in their creative day where, no matter how much they wish differently, the written word just does not happen the way it should. The writing becomes stagnant; it becomes useless and is simply not good enough to be published. No matter if the writer sits and tries to hammer their way through, nothing changes. To sit at the keyboard during that time is a waste of time.

I call it the Creative Wall.

All writers come to that Wall during their writing day, at least all writers I know. The average amount of time differs between writers. For instance, Terry Brooks spends between five or six hours a day before he is simply burnt out. Steven Erikson, on the other hand, doesn't come to his Creative Wall until seven or eight hours have passed. For me, it is four or five hours. Every writer is different; every writer deals with it.

George comes to a Wall during his writing day too.

Hemingway described the experience, and how he dealt with it, in A Moveable Feast: "I had learned already never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it."  He often advised writers to stop consciously short of that Wall, saying that it was best to stop when you were still going good, to leave on a high note, essentially, while you still knew what was going to happen next.  By so doing, one could begin the next day of writing that much more easily, having saved a bit of starter material.

But I digress.

Suffice it to say that Shawn's post is a worthwhile read for any Martin fan disgruntled over the long-delayed publication of A Dance with Dragons, and The Accidental Bard wholeheartedly joins him in his Defense.

Charlie Jane Anders wrote an interesting polemic on io9 concerning the growing importance of Young Adult literature for the science fiction genre.  The question presented seems to be whether the popularity of Young Adult science fiction is a death knell or a cry of rebirth for a genre that many argue is experiencing a decline, given an arguable dearth of new, successful science fiction writers.

It's been 20 years since Bruce Sterling compared the "mainstream" of science fiction to a fossilizing Politburo. Since that time, the situation has only gotten more dire. People are constantly remarking on the graying of science fiction readership, but statistics seem to be hard to come by. . . .

Meanwhile, young-adult science fiction is exploding. According to John Scalzi, the top 50 young adult science fiction/fantasy bestsellers sold twice as many books as the top 100 adult science fiction/fantasy bestsellers. As we mentioned before, there have been hardcore post-apocalyptic novels for kids and young adults for decades. With more on the way. And with City Of Ember finally being adapted to a (hopefully) major movie, more YA readers than ever will be looking for similar stories.

Ms. Anders's opinion seems to be that we should realize that Science Fiction is not in as dire straits as some have said, and that "we should especially celebrate the awesome potential of YA SF to revitalize the field, and bring new readers to SF concepts."

I can't say that I agree.

Fantasy Book Critic posted a great interview with author Kate Elliott earlier this week.  As with most of their interviews, it's detailed and engaging, with enthusiastic answers from the author.  But most interesting about this interview in particular is what Ms. Elliott has to say about writing as a career and producing work in a reliably timely fashion:

Q: One of the things that most impresses me about you as a writer, is your ability to produce novels at a regular, almost yearly rate. What's your secret?

Kate: Desperation.

On a material level, in terms of earning a living, a person might write and produce because s/he needs the money. I am currently able to write full-time, but I also have a spouse whose work provides lower-cost health insurance for our family. Obviously if I had to work another job and write, I would not be able to write as much.

On a career level, perhaps one is driven to produce regularly in order to maintain the momentum of a building career, or at least not to lose too much momentum. Big gaps between books can hurt shelf life, can cause an author to fall out of the public eye, can hurt sales. In some cases, a big gap between books might throw the much awaited novel of a writer into high relief (e.g. George R. R. Martin's forthcoming fantasy), but it's just as likely to set back a writer's career.

When my children were little--and given that I was home all the time with them--I often wrote in order to get mental space for myself, in my own world where others did not, for five minutes or an hour or two, intrude. Writing at that time was a form of sanity.

In the larger sense, I have difficulty conceiving of existing without writing, so in that sense I write and continue to write because it's like breathing. It's not that I'm desperate to breathe; it's that I have to in order to be alive.

Also, I am aware that we cannot predict what will happen tomorrow: my career or my life could be over next week (although obviously I hope not!), or I could (as I devoutly hope) be churning along still writing and publishing in my 90s like the late Jack Williamson. I have a lot of stories I want to tell, and boy will they be pissed if they don't get their chance to be told. That's desperation.

Elliott is touching on a much larger question here -- the problem of being prolific.  Perhaps more than any other genre, fantasy authors differ greatly in their comparative quantities of work product.  Some authors produce more than two books a year; others take three years to publish a single volume.  Is this difference entirely coincidental and based on personal ability and talent, or is there a ratio between quantity and quality?  Presuming a certain base level of professional ability and talent, can we presume that those authors that publish less frequently generally produce deeper, better works? 

It's interesting that Elliott describes the huge gap between George Martin's last book and his as-yet-unpublished sequel as having a positive marketing effect, given that Martin himself has written at length about what a struggle it has been to complete his forthcoming novel, A Dance With Dragons.

io9 has a great list of rules for writers of short stories/fiction.  The list is geared toward science fiction stories, but it could easily be applied to fantasy shorts as well.  For instance, the seventh rule,

Don't confuse your gimmick with your plot. You may have a great idea for a piece of future technology, or some amazing mutation that turns a whole bunch of people into musicvores who survive by eating your memories of rock concerts. Maybe you have the most original basic premise evar -- but that's not your plot. Your plot is how your new widget changes the people in your story, and how it affects their lives. Or what decisions your people make as a result of this new technological breakthrough.

could as easily be applied to magic in a fantasy story.  A cool magical ability does not a plot make.

Science Fiction Quarterly (SFQuarterly.net) is a brand new online science fiction magazine that is currently accepting submissions for its premier issue, scheduled for a March debut.  They are looking for short stories, reviews, and "think pieces" -- essays on the genre.  The magazine, in the classic sci-fi "short story tradition," is especially interested in working with new and inexperienced writers to bring their vision to publication.  The submissions guidelines are worth reading for any aspiring writer.

I emailed the editor, Glover Wright, and asked whether they were interested in stories in the fantasy genre.  He responded by saying that while they were not interested in straight fantasy, they would be willing to publish fantasy with science fiction elements and "fantasy that relies more on hypotheticals than, say, magic."

For aspiring writers in these genres, it doesn't get much better than an up-and-coming publication ready and willing to make room for new authors.

Be sure to read their blog for the latest news.

At the beginning of January Fantasy Book Critic interviewed Robin Hobb about her newest book, Renegade's Magic.  One of the more interesting things Ms. Hobb had to say therein concerned the writing of trilogies, an art she has personally mastered and one of vital importance to fantasy in particular:

Q: “Renegade’s Magic”, which was released via Voyager in the UK on July 2, 2007, is the third and concluding volume in your most recent trilogy (Soldier Son) and is finally making its US debut on January 8, 2008 (EOS Books). Compared to the other two Soldier Son books, what was it like writing “Renegade’s Magic” and how do you feel about the way you closed out the series?

Robin: For me, writing a trilogy is a single task. I break the manuscript into three publishable pieces, but I don’t really pause between books or see each piece as a separate entity. For that reason, probably the hardest task of beginning the third book was remembering that readers do experience a year’s gap between books and therefore plot points and characters should be re-introduced with enough information to either jog the memory or give the entering reader a place to start. Retreading ground without being obvious or boring is a really difficult task. I felt like the book ended pretty much as I had expected it would from the beginning, so that was satisfying.

For a writer of long fiction, be it trilogies or longer series, the need to catch the reader up eventually becomes a real issue.  Many authors struggle with how to do it effectively and whether to do it at all.  The late Robert Jordan once said that he had originally wanted his readers to be able to read The Wheel of Time starting with any of the books.  Although the increasing length and complexity of that series made it effectively impossible, it is nonetheless a vital question for writers of fantasy: how much can I rely on the reader to remember?  Do I have to summarize the events of the previous book for the readers of the current one?