George R.R. Martin has been writing The Winds of Winter, the sixth book in his A Song of Ice and Fire series, for a long time: 14 years, specifically. He knows that. He's said it often enough. He is writing slowly. There are many theories out there about why it's taking so long. The book will get here when it gets here.
Unless it never gets here, which is something enough fans have wondered about online. Martin has seen those opinions. Or at least I'm guessing he has, because he just wrote a blog post where he does some serious venting.
The blog post is ostensibly about a new animated movie Martin is producing: A Dozen Dirty Jobs, based on the story by Martin's late friend Howard Waldrop. In the past few years, Martin has had a hand in producing a few short films based on Waldrop's stories, and now he's producing a feature. For the record, I don't think he's deeply involved in these projects to the point where he's getting pulled away overmuch from work on Winds, but he knows a lot of people look at announcements like this and jump to that conclusion.
"I know, I know," he writes. "Some of you will just be pissed off by this, as you are by everything I announce here that is not about Westeros or THE WINDS OF WINTER. You have given up on me, or on the book. I will never finish WINDS, If I do, I will never finish A DREAM OF SPRING. If I do, it won’t be any good. I ought to get some other writer to pinch hit for me…I am going to die soon anyway, because I am so old. I lost all interest in A Song of Ice and Fire decades ago. I don’t give a shit about writing any longer, I just sit around and spend my money. I edit the Wild Cards books too, but you hate Wild Cards. You may hate everything else I have ever written, the Hugo-winners and Hugo-losers, 'A Song for Lya' and DYING OF THE LIGHT, 'Sandkings' and BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, 'This Tower of Ashes' and 'The Stone City,' OLD MARS and OLD VENUS and ROGUES and WARRIORS and DANGEROUS WOMEN and all the other anthologies I edited with my friend Gardner Dozois. You don’t care about any of those, I know. You don’t care about anything but WINDS OF WINTER. You’ve told me so often enough)."
"Thing is, I do care about them.
And I care about Westeros and WINDS as well. The Starks and Lannisters and Targaryens, Tyrion and Asha, Dany and Daenerys, the dragons and the direwolves, I care about them all. More than you can ever imagine."
These sound like the words of a man who is fed up with what he feels are ways he's been mischaracterized by his fans band by the media over the years. He sounds a bit on edge, doesn't he? But there I go, characterizing Martin in a way he may not like. I hope I don't make the list.
I'm sure this experience must be frustrating for Martin; I can't really relate, but I hope he finds ways to deal with it. As for The Winds of Winter, I at least am content to wait and see what happens. I do think we'll get it sooner or later, hopefully sooner. And if we don't, Martin himself is being plenty entertaining on his own.
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