[Note: The following report comes from Kiran Bellubbi's SmallDoses blog.]
Yesterday Karen and I spent 45 mins listening to George R R Martin talk about his writing philosophy, how he channels his thoughts on a particular story he is writing and what influences his stories from the real world. Both of us were introduced to George R R Martins work by our good friend Amit Rathore - who has read a LOT of fantasy fiction. I was always hessitant to get into reading fantasy sci-fi since I always thought it was too time consuming (gigantic epics all of them) and my friends tended to fixate on characters in these epic books and the character would live on forever and conquer one and then conquer all.
When I started reading the Song of Ice and Fire (which was about a year ago) I was introduced to a new kind of fantasy fiction that George R R Martin gave to the world - one that still holds some roots in reality. The Worlds described by him are alien and unnatural but the characters seem so REAL! Well - anyways - you should really read the books. I guarantee you will enjoy them.
Something interesting that GRRM mentioned in his chat with fans yesterday was that for him Ideas were Easy but words were really difficult. He stated that sometimes he spends upto 3 days on introducing a known character into a room - "How should the walls look?", "who notices him/her first?", "how do the people in the room react?" etc.
Finally, GRRM spoke about a guy he met at a convention who wanted to do "business" with him - he apparently had this "great idea" for a fantasy series and wanted to get GRRM to "write it up" so they could "share the profits".
What do you say when you meet someone with this disease?