no oh prince that in between the years
when the oceans drank Atlantis in the
gleaming cities and the years of the
rise of the Sons of the Arya's there was
an age undreamed of when shining
kingdoms lay spread beneath the world
like blue Mantle's beneath the Stars
Nemedia Oh fer rafinha
hyperborea Zamora with his dark haired
women and towers of spider haunted mr. e
zingaro that chivalry cost it bordered
on pastoral lands of Shem
Stiga with its shadow guarded tombs her
Kenya whose writers were steel and silk
and gold but the proudest Kingdom in the
world was Aquilonia reigning supreme in
the dreaming West hither came Conan the
Cimmerian black-haired sullen eyed
sordin and a thief a river a slayer
which I Gantt ik melancholy x' and
Megantic Mertz to tread the jeweled
thrones of earth beneath his sandaled
feet they had me I think we turned to
fiction at least in part to provide us
for something we don't have in our real
lives growing up and beyond we had no
money we never went anywhere I lived in
a world that was five blocks long so I
dreamed of going to Mars going to hang
I'm going to middle-earth all sorts of
fabulous places were it would be amazing
and wonderful and I would see incredible
sights beyond the sights that I could
see between First Street and Fifth
Street the best fantasies and science
fiction stories for that matter create
worlds that are vivid and that do seem
very real to us
and my stories I think are solely
defined by by Westeros
you know Westeros achieves its own
imaginative reality I know for some
writers they they they do the
world-building before they even write
the story but it's really not me I mean
Game of Thrones and and the whole Song
of Ice and Fire sequence began with my
vision of a chapter where some people
some medieval people find some dire wolf
pups in the summer snows
I always knew they were summer snows why
did I know that but I knew that right
from the beginning as I wrote the books
as I wrote the story the world evolved
and at some point I stopped I drew a map
the map has gradually become more
detailed it's it's a process of filling
in
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well I have always said that I believe
there are two types of writers which I
call the architect and the gardener the
architect plans everything in advance he
grows his blueprint he knows where the
plumbing is gonna run he knows how many
rooms they're gonna be exactly what the
square-foot it could be true miss
everything is finalized before you dig
the hole in the ground or drive the
first nail the gardener he may know the
general shape of the garden that he
wants but still he's digging a hole in
the ground he's planting a seed and you
know he has some idea what's gonna come
up with the gardener he the gardener
knows whether he's planted an oak tree
or whether he's planted a radish so it's
not totally random but no it's del prete
gonna be a healthy oak tree is it gonna
be windblown is lightning gonna strike
it there's a lot that goes to chance
with the and two other elements with
with the gardener the the garden is a
living thing
and I think it's the same for writers I
think all writers are mixture of both
but some lean much more heavily to one
side then then to the other and there's
no doubt that I leave much more heavily
to the gardener side people who'll
incline more to the architects side
sometimes don't really understand how
the gardener type of writer works and
they have this misapprehension that you
don't know anything about what you're
doing or where you're going which is not
true you do you do know where you're
going but at least in broad strokes I
mean there's a lot of things you don't
know you discover those things on a
journey and that's what makes the
journey interesting that waits
what makes driving across country much
more interesting than just getting on an
airplane and getting off the airplane I
do
one is quicker but the other one to my
mind is more the denture is more
interesting
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