Yesterday fans were disappointed when George R.R. Martin’s promised New Year’s post was lost. Martin used his Live Journal site to explain that the post – which many thought would contain an update on The Winds Of Winter release date – disappeared when the author experienced some kind of software error. Many fans took to Reddit and Facebook Groups (such as Fantasy-Faction’s) to vent their displeasure at Martin’s comment that he didn’t have the “energy (or time) to recreate it”.
Well, thankfully, George R.R. Martin rethought that comment and ended up writing nine in-depth posts that summarised his 2015 on a subject by subject basis. One covered the awards he’d won, another covered his travels, his producing, his short story publications and the final one covered The Winds of Winter.
Now, take a breath, because it’s probably not the news you’ve been waiting for… Here’s a summary:
“THE WINDS OF WINTER is not finished” Martin wrote. Even more disappointing for fans will be the confirmation that the book will not be released by April’s premiere of Game of Thrones season 6.
Martin writes that in order to beat the show, he’d been set an October deadline by his US publishers. This would have allowed them to get the manuscript on shelves by early April and save fans from the inevitable spoilers the television series would bring. The blog doesn’t mention whether the seventh and final book’s submission date was discussed, but we’ll presume that HBO’s recent admission they will be going “beyond” 7 seasons would have made the spoiler race possible to win.
Martin certainly felt the October date was doable and agreed to it. The author, however, missed that deadline. He explains though that his publishers were quite understanding about the whole thing (maybe even expecting it) and set an end of 2015 deadline instead, confident they could still beat Season 6 of the show if Martin sent it in by then.
The author struggled again though. He explains: “the days and weeks flew by faster than the pile of pages grew, and (as I often do) I grew unhappy with some of the choices I’d made and began to revise… and suddenly it was October, and then November… and as the suspicion grew that I would not make it after all, a gloom set in, and I found myself struggling even more. The fewer the days, the greater the stress, and the slower the pace of my writing became.”
Martin confirms that as of 2016 he is relieving himself of deadlines (the reason he rejected a job as a journalist), returning to the way he wrote his first couple or novels: “I am going back to my stance from last March, before all this. It will be done when it’s done. And it will be as good as I can possibly make it” and added that: “the deadlines just stress me out.” One thing that will please readers is the note that both Bantam and Voyager (his US and UK publishers) can have the book on shelves within three months of Martin submitting the manuscript to them.
Once the bad news had been dropped, Martin went on to discuss whether the television show will spoil the books. “Yes and no” wrote the author. “There will be certain plot twists and reveals in season six of Game of Thrones that have not yet happened in the books.” However, Martin says there is a butterfly effect in play, “some of the ‘spoilers’ you may encounter in season six may not be spoilers at all… because the show and the books have diverged.” He backs this statement up by listing 13 characters that are alive in the books and yet dead in the show, and lists over 20 characters who he has written about and who may play a role in the future direction of the book that haven’t a planned place in the show too.
Martin’s message is simple: “Enjoy the show. Enjoy the books” … “it does not need to be one or the other.”
Is that fair though? Well, in my humble opinion, George R.R. Martin isn’t doing anything wrong… really. Artists, throughout time, have proven themselves prone to perfectionism – it’s often what separates a good artist from a bad one. The very best of them can suffer the worst of it too… Patrick Rothfuss is another example of a hugely talented, popular author who really struggles with deadlines. In addition to their own hard-to-realise expectations of their own work, they also a huge amount of pressure on them from their adoring fans who are saying to them on a daily, hourly basis: “this book is going to be incredible!”. I can’t even begin to imagine that kind of pressure being on your shoulders as you write. You must second guess everything you put down on the page and, again, would explain why Martin (and Rothfuss) are so prone to revisions and rewriting.
Of course, you can utter the word “Sanderson” or the word “Hobb” and you’ve proof that not every author writing lengthy, bestselling fantasy is taking five years + to put out a novel, but the reality is that different authors are living different lives and have brains that work in different ways. George R.R. Martin makes it very clear that “I do other things besides A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE“. When you hear George talk about his editing work, his producing in Hollywood, his Wildcards series (“[it is] is in my blood, and I plan to continue with those books as long as someone will keep buying them”), travelling (“I never went anywhere at all [as a child] except in my imagination, so now, when I have the means, travel is hard to resist. It’s a big wonderful world.”) or his Jean Cocteau Cinema you really feel the passion he has for it.
I imagine that for George, A Song of Ice & Fire has become a bit like Football for a child who has a dad who REALLY likes football and the pressure being put on him to excel at it and train it every day has killed his love of it somewhat. That kid wants to try Basketball and Surfing too, but his father keeps saying “No. Go practice throwing that damned ball”. Of course, George doesn’t need to appease anyone, really. He is surely one of the wealthiest authors in the world by this point (in Fantasy, at very least) and if he wrote “I’m done writing A Song of Ice & Fire” tomorrow, it’s not really going to hurt him… Hollywood would knock on his door tomorrow and offer him a million dollars for a far easier project.
Sadly, the only answer to this problem is for him to begin seeing A Song of Ice & Fire as fun again, to rekindle the fire… but, just like the parent who is always waiting at home for his son to return from practice to hound him about how it went, when the next session is and whether he is improving fast enough, George will never be able to escape his fans should he continue with the series (as I’m sure he will). My hope is that once The Winds of Winter is done the ‘end in sight’ feeling will take over, tunnel vision will be engaged and we’ll see that final book within a few years. I think, though, that A Song of Ice & Fire is destined to be at least another 3 books though (The Winds of Winter and two more)… whether that is a two part finale or two separate books remains to be seen (George admittedly this was a big possibility at EastCon in April 2012).
At the end of the day, George is an artist. He is a rich artist who has lots of hobbies and passions. No one, however frustrated we get, wants a rushed, ‘lite’ version of any A Song of Ice & Fire title. In 2030, I want to look back on A Song of Ice & Fire and say “that is probably the best fantasy series of all time” versus “*sigh* Martin totally dropped the ball at the mid-way point and never recovered, did he?” And, if I do have to think that, I’d like to remove myself from all accountability for it being the case!
