system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: Not being able to finish his story makes George R.R. Martin a bad writer

A major part of the story is the ending. Endings can make or break stories, and I do think they are difficult to write. GRRM has been putting off ending the Game of Thrones series since he started and has changed the projected amount of books a couple of times. Many people say he knows how he wants it to end, he just doesn't know how to get the characters there, but that's the point of good writing. You get your characters there and create a great ending. Writing a story that you can't end makes you a bad writer. If he does finish the story that's a different conversation, but really I don't think he ever will because he can't because he's not a good writer.
gpt
I have a different theory to propose—Martin is a good writer who no longer gets good editing.

Some writers may not need strong editing, but it’s clear that others do, even good ones, especially those whose strong suit is building well developed worlds.   

A good editor, especially for those types of authors, provides necessary detached perspective to help the author trim out the fat and focus the text on what makes the book better.

Martin seems to have fallen into the same trap that other famous authors seem to hit.  They submit a book as a relatively unknown but talented author.  A good editor helps them polish the early work into some excellent books.   

Then they get popular.  That translates into more power for a more famous and important author.  The author feels empowered to keep more of their ideas, since their ideas are clearly so good and popular.  Editors and publishers are increasingly wary of questioning their cash cow.  As a result, the books get longer, more detailed, and flabbier, with more ideas introduced than the author can possibly resolve well.   In Martin’s case, he’s gotten so far afield that it’ll be nearly impossible for him to bring it back.

The other obvious example is JK Rowling and how much messier Harry Potter books got deeper into the series and pretty much everything she’s done since then.   If you go into the movie world, it’s what led George Lucas to make increasingly bad decisions about Star Wars.    There just seems to be a type of creator who excel under constraint but go off the rails once the shackles come undone.

I don’t think that makes them “bad” writers, just good writers who don’t succeed under the wrong circumstances.