George R.R. Martin made huge progress on The Winds of Winter in 2020

A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin has been pretty quiet on his Not a Blog lately, but he just wrote a sober post entitled, “Reflections on a Bad Year.”

2020 was pretty rough. In fact, between the coronavirus killing hundreds of thousands of Americans and former President Trump trying to upend democracy on his way out of office, Martin laments that “2020 was probably the worst year I have ever lived through, for the country and the world if not for me personally, and I say that from the perspective of someone who lived through, and remembers, 1968.”

1968, for reference, included the Tet Offensive of the Vietnam War, North Korea capturing the USS Pueblo, both Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy being assassinated, and riots at the Democratic National Convention. It was a bad year, but 2020 may have topped it. Martin, who is 72, also laments that he lost a number of dear friends in 2020 and has others who are in ill health. “Growing old sucks,” he muses.

In 2020, George R.R. Martin made more progress on The Winds of Winter than in any year since he started writing it

That said, there was a silver lining to the year: he made a lot of progress on The Winds of Winter, the long-awaited sixth book in the Song of Ice and Fire series. “I wrote hundreds and hundreds of pages of THE WINDS OF WINTER in 2020,” Martin wrote. “The best year I’ve had on WOW since I began it. Why? I don’t know. Maybe the isolation. Or maybe I just got on a roll. Sometimes I do get on a roll.”

"I need to keep rolling, though. I still have hundreds of more pages to write to bring the novel to a satisfactory conclusion. That’s what 2021 is for, I hope."

So that’s good news, but still not the news a lot of fans are hoping for. At this point, I’ll take what I can get.

“I will make no predictions on when I will finish,” Martin continued. “Every time I do, assholes on the internet take that as a ‘promise,’ and then wait eagerly to crucify me when I miss the deadline. All I will say is that I am hopeful.”

"I have a zillion other things to do as well, though. My plate is full to overflowing. Every time I wrap up one thing, three more things land on me. Monkeys on my back, aye, aye, I’ve sung that song before. So many monkeys. And Kong."

“Kong,” FYI, is Martin’s pet name for The Winds of Winter. Technically, it’s “Son of Kong” — A Dance With Dragons, the previous book, was just Kong.

In any case, Martin promised to talk more about that in “a different blog post.” We’ll be reading.

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