What’s the status of The Winds of Winter?

The Winds of Winter. Once just the title of the eventual sixth book in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series, it has now become a symbol of yearning for us, the fans. Since the release of A Dance with Dragons in the summer of 2011, readers have been eager to jump back into Westeros and continue the journeys of Jon Snow, Daenerys Targaryen, Tyrion Lannister and all the rest. But years went on, and the book didn’t come.

It’s been nearly a decade since the release of the last book in the series. In that time, there were eight seasons of Game of Thrones to fill the gap, along with a few companion books and novellas. All the while, fans have been, for lack of a better word, teased. 

This isn’t on Martin. If he thinks the book isn’t good enough to be released at this point, then by all means, continue to do your best. But readers are fully aware of how long this process has dragged on. How many news articles have fans seen over the years with references to the author cancelling a convention appearance to work on Winds, or heard rumors about a release date, only for it not to pan out?

Let’s look at the timeline. GRRM most likely began working on The Winds of Winter in 2012, after a lot of the noise from the production of Game of Thrones and the release of Dance had died down. His first deadline was the end of October 2015, but his publishers granted him to the end of December to deliver the manuscript. He made a good amount of progress by the end of 2016, but the book remained unfinished.

"Not done yet, but I’ve made progress. But not as much as I hoped a year ago, when I thought to be done by now.I think it will be out this year. (But hey, I thought the same thing last year).– GRRM: January 10, 2017"

In 2017, Martin hoped to have both The Winds of Winter and the first volume of Fire and Blood, a book of Targaryen history that has inspired HBO’s upcoming House of the Dragon series, out the following year. Only one arrived. In an official blog post, Martin confirmed Winds would not release in 2018. From then on, most of the attention fell on the final season of Game of Thrones.

Things have been fairly quiet since then. The biggest bite of information coming from an article by Alexandra Wolfe in November of 2018, which said that Martin had left for a remote cabin in the mountains with the intention of finishing Winds. Unfortunately, it was a false alarm. So far as we know, he returned from that trip with the novel still incomplete.

Then there’s all the circumstantial information from over the years. For example, there’s Martin opting out of writing episodes of Game of Thrones in its later seasons. There’s him passing on convention appearances and nixing interviews, all presumably so he could focus on Winds.

Basically, it’s been a slow drip of information, slight official reports mixed in with lots of speculation and rumor. Surely many fans have grown exhausted by it over the years.

SAN DIEGO, CA – JULY 25: Writer George R.R. Martin and actress Natalie Dormer attend HBO’s “Game Of Thrones” panel and Q&A during Comic-Con International 2014 at San Diego Convention Center on July 25, 2014 in San Diego, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

It’s now 2020, and Game of Thrones has ended. The spotlight on the author has diminished, hopefully for the better. In an interview with German newspaper Welt, Martin talked about some of the benefits that come with less attention:

"Every day I sat down to write and even if I had a good day – and a good day for me is three or four pages – I’d feel terrible because I’d be thinking: ‘My God, I have to finish the book. I’ve only written four pages when I should have written 40.’ But having the show finish is freeing, because I’m at my own pace now. I have good days and I have bad days and the stress is far less, although it’s still there."

Around the same time as the final season of Game of Thrones premiered, an interview with The Hollywood Reporter Martin talked about how he had been focusing on Winds for the past few months. Apparently, he had been in isolation, chained to his infamous Wordstar 4.0 computer, and eating healthy foods.

With all this going for him, it sounds like it might be the time to get our hopes up again? Last Martin gave us an update, he said he’d show up this August at Worldcon in New Zealand with The Winds of Winter “in hand,” and that if he didn’t, we could lock him on a lake of sulfuric acid until he finished. Does this mean we’ll see Winds published this year, in 2020?

I’d guess no, although I hope I’m wrong. To start, this wouldn’t be the first time Martin had set a deadline and then blown past it. But even if Martin complete Winds by Worldcon, that still probably wouldn’t be enough time to get in published. Here’s what he said back in 2016, when he recalled some failed plans to get Winds on shelves before the premiere of Game of Thrones season 6:

"We all wanted book six of A Song of Ice and Fire to come out before season six of the HBO show aired. Assuming the show would return in early April, that meant The Winds of Winter had to be published before the end of March, at the latest. For that to happen, my publishers told me, they would need the completed manuscript before the end of October."

So in this case, there was going to be five-month gap between completion of the manuscript and publication. Assuming that gap remains in place, even if Martin shows up to this Worldcon with a finished manuscript, the book still wouldn’t be on shelves until January 2021 at the earliest.

Then again, he could finish before then, in which case anything is possible. Martin has said that he will post to his blog when the book is finally done. For example, he posted this photo when he finally finished A Dance with Dragons in April 2011. A mark of his triumph.

Keep your eyes on the lookout this month. There might be a morning when you see a bit of news you once thought impossible. One of the most beautiful things to ever trend. A headline near a decade in the making.

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