An Apology

Rik ... I think the better analogy would be, if you sign a contract to cater an event (GRRM's first sold books) and the client loves it, says "can you do this for us annually?" And you reply, "sounds good" ... But don't sign a contract binding you to do it for the next several years. If you keep doing it for years, so much the better, but if you find something you like more (or just plain don't need to do it to pay the bills, as is GRRM's case) it's disappointing, but not a violation of a real commitment, not to do it in perpetuity.

I also think, in this particular case, that GRRM may have no idea how to end the series. He has said he knows how it ends, but has dropped some pretty heavy hints about delays coming from having serious problems getting his characters from where they are now, to where they should be at the end of volume 7 (or whatever ... It was originally to be a trilogy.)

I'd be surprised to learn that GRRM had a contract to write books one by one -- I would imagine that once he pitched it as a septology, he would have had a contract that required him to finish it. But I have not been reading it, nor following the news of his writer's block.