Inside George R.R. Martin’s Relentless Push to Complete THE WINDS OF WINTER
Any time George R.R. Martin sits down for an interview, there’s an unspoken countdown until the same question comes up. It doesn’t matter if the conversation is about dragons, Dunk and Egg, or the state of television fantasy. Eventually, it always circles back to The Winds of Winter.
That moment arrived again in a recent Hollywood Reporter profile that covered a lot of ground. Martin talked about his excitement for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, weighed in on the odds of a Jon Snow follow-up to Game of Thrones, and even let a little tension with House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal slip into the conversation. But none of that carries the gravitational pull of the long-delayed next chapter in A Song of Ice and Fire.
The question still clearly hits a nerve. Martin hasn’t forgotten a moment from last year’s WorldCon, when a fan asked whether he’d allow another writer to finish the book given his age. He’s 77 now, and the comment still stings. “I really didn’t need that shit. Nobody needs that shit.”
That frustration sits alongside an acute awareness of time passing. Martin confirmed that he’s currently sitting on roughly 1,100 pages of The Winds of Winter, the same figure he’s cited in recent years.
What’s changed is what’s actually on those pages. He describes a constant cycle of revisiting chapters, scrapping sections, and shifting focus between characters depending on what feels right on a given day.
“I will open the last chapter I was working on and I’ll say, ‘Oh f*ck, this is not very good.’ And I’ll go in and I’ll rewrite it. Or I’ll decide, ‘This Tyrion chapter is not coming along, let me write a Jon Snow chapter.’ If I’m not interrupted though, what happens—at least in the past—is sooner or later, I do get into it.”
Even in ideal conditions, the process doesn’t move quickly. During the pandemic, Martin isolated himself in a cabin to focus solely on writing. It led to a lot of new material, but also plenty of second-guessing.
“I wrote a Tyrion chapter I just loved. Then I looked at it and said: ‘I can’t do this, it will change the whole book. I’ll make this into a series of dreams. No! That doesn’t work either …’”
Despite all of that, quitting isn’t on the table. The book may be a source of stress, but abandoning it would be worse. “It would feel like a total failure to me. I want to finish,” he said.
The idea of handing the story off to someone else is equally off the table. Martin made it clear that no other writer will complete The Winds of Winter in his place. If he’s unable to finish the novel due to death or incapacity, that will simply be the end of it.
“My work won’t be finished,” he said, comparing the situation to Charles Dickens’ unfinished novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood. That’s the legacy he’s prepared to accept if it comes to that.
For fans, it’s a sobering thought. Martin is still writing, still revising, still invested in finishing the book, and getting it right. Whether The Winds of Winter eventually reaches shelves or joins the list of legendary unfinished works remains unknown.
In the meantime, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms premieres January 18 on HBO and HBO Max, offering a return to Martin’s world while the long wait for Winds of Winter continues.