A Song of Ice & Fire author George R.R. Martin says he’s struggling to finish The Winds of Winter, the long-awaited next entry in his acclaimed fantasy book series. Martin revealed that he’s completed 1,100 pages so far, which is the same amount of pages he was on last year.
Speaking to Bangcast, George R.R. Martin spoke about the difficulties of finishing The Winds of Winter which has been in the works for nine years so far. Unfortunately, the anticipated book hasn’t seen much progress in the last 12 months.
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Martin opened up about his current progress of The Winds of Winter, stating:
“The main thing I’m actually writing, of course, is the same thing… I wish I could write as fast as [The Last Kingdom author Bernard Cornwell] but I’m 12 years late on this damn novel and I’m struggling with it. I have like 1,100 pages written but I still have hundreds more pages to go. It’s a big mother of a book for whatever reason. Maybe I should’ve started writing smaller books when I began this but it’s tough. That’s the main thing that dominates most of my working life.”
Back in December 2022, Martin told Stephen Colbert that he had “like 1,100, 1,200 pages” done, with 400 or 500 more to go before completion. If you take into account that this might only be the first draft of the book, then there’s still a lot of work that needs to be done with editing and revisions before it’s finalised and ready for release.
The Winds of Winter will be the second-last book in his A Song of Ice & Fire series. The popular HBO TV adaptation of his work, Game of Thrones, ran out of source material after it covered A Dance With Dragons in season 6. This led the showrunners to create new material for the show’s seventh and eighth seasons which, according to many, took a notable dip in the quality of its storytelling. Without Martin’s source material to rely on, it seems like it was always going to be a tall order to create original material to fill those gaps.
Source: Bangcast
