Jeśli George R. R. Martin nie chce pisać Winds of Winter, to jest w porządku.

At this point in my career, I’ve written many thousands of words and edited rather a fewer different writers. I know a lot about procrastination. That is why, without speaking to the man or knowing him personally at all, I am nevertheless prepared to make the case that George R. R. Martin simply does not want to finish writing The Winds of Winter.

He’s just not into it. If he continues to force himself to do it, the end consequence will most likely be a beautiful terrible book — and I think he knows that, and that’s why he can’t finish it, due to the fact that he doesn’t want to print a bad book. The alternative? We don’t get the book at all. And for me, that’s actually preferable.

I could be misreading the signs, of course. Like so many another unhinged fans of A Song of Ice and Fire, I’m basing this purely on vibes, and Martin does love to troll all of us by posting oblique productivity quotes and tagging them with the word “writing,” suggesting that he’s rather merrily chugging along on The Winds of Winter. I besides realize that by writing this post, I may be invoking the wrath of destiny itself in specified a way that Martin will post on his blog next day that The Winds of Winter is officially done and now in his editors’ hands. That would be great, actually! But I don’t think that’s gonna happen.

I realize this is simply a controversial opinion amongst fellow A Song of Ice and Fire fans. I read the first books all in a whack long before the tv show was even announced, and I waited along with everyone else for A Dance with Dragons, which was a day-one acquisition for me. I’m 1 of those people who has always powerfully preferred the books to the HBO series, which was 1 reason why I actually fell off watching, alternatively content to wait for the book series to conclude the communicative instead. Given all of that, you’d think I’d be 1 of the fans begging GRRM to finish The Winds of Winter already, lest I never get closure on the long-running story. Instead, I feel the complete opposite.

Part of my change in opinion is due to the different circumstances in which GRRM finds himself. There are very fewer another examples of a hit book series getting adapted into a show before it has concluded, but I can think of at least 1 other: Fullmetal Alchemist, for which the first manga had not concluded even as the anime adaptation sped past it and had to invent its own (widely disliked) ending to the story. The manga’s author, Hiromu Arakawa, was inactive busily writing the remainder of her manga, 1 that ended up with a much stronger conclusion. A full different anime called Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood got released a fewer years later — a redo of the full adaptation concept, this time more faithfully following Arakawa’s communicative and, possibly most importantly, her intended ending.

Like Arakawa, George R. R. Martin had any engagement in the tv adaptation of his work, although he claims not to have been as active in the show’s final seasons. Speaking to the fresh York Times in 2022, Martin said “by period 5 and 6, and surely 7 and 8, I was beautiful much out of the loop.” As for why that happened, “I don’t know — you gotta ask [showrunners] Dan [Weiss] and David [Benioff].” At that time, Martin had this to say about The Winds of Winter: “My ending will be very different.”

Yet unlike Arakawa, who kept on writing the Fullmetal Alchemist manga at a steady clip (while simultaneously lending an opinion or 2 towards the 2 anime adaptations), George R. R. Martin appears to have had respective another priorities. These priorities haven’t all been divergent from the characters from A Song of Ice and Fire, of course; Martin’s 2018 fresh Fire & Blood, which is set 300 years before the events of A Song of Ice and Fire, led to the tv show House of the Dragon, which Martin has besides been working on and has seemed beautiful excited about, if his individual blog is any indication. He’s clearly not tired of the planet he built and he inactive has more to say.

It just doesn’t seem like The Winds of Winter fits into the category of things that Martin is excited about.

This is super weird to me, due to the fact that if I were Martin, the shitshow that was Game of Thrones’ final period and the disappointed fan reactions would be adequate to psychologically propel me into angrily and speedily writing a “very different” ending, like the 1 Martin seemingly has in mind. Spite can be a powerful motivator, and if Martin is correct that he got slow-faded out of that Game of Thrones production room, wouldn’t he be even more motivated to correct the record? And yet, here we are, in a planet where years and years go by and Martin seems far more curious in telling totally different stories.

Game of ThronesPhoto: Helen Sloan/HBO

This is the part of the article where we’re going to talk about procrastination and why it happens. In my experience, there are 2 major reasons why it can occur. Again, I’m only talking about myself here; mine is the writer’s brain I know the best, after all. always since I got an ADHD diagnosis at the age of 12, I have become highly acquainted with the 2 kinds of procrastinating that I do.

The first is the better kind, due to the fact that I personally have found I can solve it with a Wellbutrin prescription. The way it works is simple: It’s just besides damn hard to get started on a given task, especially a hard one. Even people without ADHD can realize this experience, but people who have ADHD may experience it in a far more acute way, to an degree that their brain may feel that it is impossible to get started at all. I’ve seen it called “ADHD paralysis.” Whatever you call it, it’s a immense pain in the ass if you want to get any writing done, especially hard or complicated writing. Imagine this: You have writing you want to do, you have a deadline (maybe 1 you’ve already blown), you know precisely what you want to write, and you do want to compose — you just cannot get yourself to start. Here’s the crucial part of that sentence: You want to write. The only thing holding you back is your own brain.

Again, I don’t know Martin personally, but based on his updates, I don’t think that’s his problem with The Winds of Winter. I think the problem is that he doesn’t actually want to compose it — or even worse, he has no thought how to compose it, due to the various game entanglements the characters in the book now face. This would consequence in an entirely different kind of procrastination.

This happens to me, too. It besides happens to another writers I know, including ones I’ve edited. Sometimes you have an thought and you’re truly excited about it, and the pitch gets accepted. But then erstwhile you actually start writing, you realize that the thought doesn’t work. Or possibly it just doesn’t excite you anymore. Even though you’ve already started, you just can’t seem to continue, or finish, your first idea. Remember the another kind of procrastination, where getting started was the hard part, and erstwhile you started, you were off to the races, writing and excited about what you had to say? This isn’t that. This is the opposite, where you’ve started but you’re realizing that you have absolutely no fucking clue what you even want to say, or even if you have anything to say at all. This is around erstwhile you go to your editor and you say, “This isn’t working.” Or possibly your editor comes to you and asks why your draft is so late, and you admit defeat. At that point, you can work together to turn the thought into something else. That doesn’t always work, though. Sometimes the only solution is to walk distant from the thought entirely.

We’ll always have the memories…Photo: Clinton Gilders/FilmMagic

No 1 is sadder than I am about this situation. I want to read The Winds of Winter, too. I’ve wanted to read it for a very long time. But you know what makes me even more sad? The past decade of listening to the ways that George R. R. Martin talks about The Winds of Winter on his individual blog, in interviews, and at press events. There is no joy in this man’s eyes. During a live event in October 2023 with fellow author Cassandra Clare, who said her next book is due out in 2025, Martin said in a visibly defeated and frustrated tone, “Really depressing thing is, that inactive may beat The Winds of Winter. Who knows? […] I’m 12 years late with The Winds of Winter, as we know. I’m just gonna put it right out there. You guys don’t gotta pester me about it.”

And yet, people have been pestering him, and they show no sign of stopping. It keeps on feeling like the book is almost ready. 2 years ago, Martin told the public the book was “75% done.” But possibly alternatively than talking about his fresh estimated percentages, it would be easier to link to this extended Esquire article outlining all single time that Martin has attempted to put a timeline on the book’s completion, always since he started writing it circa 2010. There have been quite a few bad guesses on this man’s part about how shortly he’s going to be able to finish this book. It’s giving Zeno’s Paradox.

Here’s what I can’t halt reasoning about: The Winds of Winter is not even the last book in the series. So it’s not like fans are just impatiently waiting for the conclusion. This is actually the penultimate book. So let’s just say George does manage to knock this 1 out (which I don’t think he will, based on how much difficulty he’s had thus far). Do fans truly think that A Dream of Spring is going to come easy to this man, based on how he’s been doing so far with The Winds of Winter?

Just look at the print dates for all A Song of Ice and Fire book up to now. Starting with A Game of Thrones in 1996, A Clash of Kings in 1998, and A Storm of Swords in 2000, each book was 2 years apart (impressive!). Then there’s A Feast for Crows in 2005, and A Dance with Dragons in 2011 — 5 years in between, then six. Now we’re up to a staggering 13-year wait, and counting.

Elden RingImage: FromSoftware via Polygon

Meanwhile, Martin doesn’t seem to have a problem getting other projects done — like, say, contributing to Elden Ring’s lore — nor any problem with agreeing to do another projects. This only annoys the fans who want him to have a one-track head for The Winds of Winter. But to those fans I can only say, put yourself in his shoes. You’re a creative person; you want to do projects that excite you. What does it say that he keeps on choosing other things to do? What does it say about The Winds of Winter that it’s always last on the to-do list? In my case, that would be a beautiful strong indication that I simply didn’t have any interest in doing the task that I just kept on pushing off, year after year after year after year. And it might even indicate that I was not-so-secretly hoping that peculiar task would vanish entirely.

George R. R. Martin’s editors are most likely not always going to do this for him. After all, for them, it’s a immense financial boon if he manages to finish the book. Even if it sucks ass, it will sell! The very possible of ending his contract would be absurd on their end. And yet, having seen so many years go by with no final draft, it very much appears to be torture for him. I can’t condone that. And I’m a small worried about what kind of book could even consequence from specified a death march.

As fans, or just as humans, we request to accept this reality. halt asking this man to compose the book he clearly hates. After all, we did get an ending, in the form of a rushed tv finale; respective of the game points in that finale did line up with where quite a few the books’ foreshadowing appeared to be heading. It’s not like we have no closure at all. It’s very sloppy closure, but it’s something. It’s most likely about as good as the first Fullmetal Alchemist ending.

I don’t truly know what it looks like for us as laypeople to free George R. R. Martin from this situation. Without his publisher actually forgiving him, he most likely won’t always experience the actual relief that comes from an editor telling you that you don’t gotta keep working on something that you despise and can’t seem to finish or make into a draft that’s any good. It’s kind of like the relief that happens erstwhile you get plans canceled that you never wanted to do in the first place, but way better. Since this will most likely never happen for Martin, I can only hope that with this essay, I manage to convince just a fewer another people to halt pestering the man to finish a book that he seems to have no interest in completing. Imagine how bad he must already feel. He doesn’t request any more reminders of the fact that this series ended with a whimper alternatively of a bang.

At least Elden Ring was a truly cool game, start to finish. We’ll always have that. And most likely a hell of quite a few another truly cool projects from George R. R. Martin that he actually wants to work on. The Winds of Winter just isn’t going to be 1 of them.