George R.R. Martin has been writing The Winds of Winter for a very long time, and in that process, he’s also happened to do a lot of things that are not “write The Winds of Winter.” Most of Game of Thrones‘ production, the birth and death of multiple of its spinoffs, movies, TV shows, book anthologies, video games, updates on his blog about how he is indeed writing The Winds of Winter, begging us to not ask him about updates on Winds of Winter, giving us the updates on Winds of Winter anyway: the man’s been doing stuff.
But that is still not enough for some who have made the wait for Winds of Winter become as excruciating for the writer as it is for them. And Martin is letting it be known through his medium of choice, his Not a Blog blog, that it’s really starting to annoy him. As part of an update announcing his involvement in producing an animated feature adaptation of Howard Waldrop’s novella A Dozen Tough Jobs—a mythic riff on the story of Hercules and the Greek gods, reimagined in 1920s Mississippi—with Lion Forge, Martin took a moment to pop off at anyone priming to make a joke about him adding yet another side quest to his list of projects.
“I know, I know. 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,” Martin wrote. :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,” Martin added.
The point Martin, continues, is that he does care about Winds and the world it inhabits, it’s just more than who he is as a writer—and in this case, a producer acting on the behalf of a late friend to bring their work to life. “Thing is, I do care about them. And I care about Westeros and Winds as well,” Martin continued. “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.”
“I loved A Dozen Tough Jobs the first time I read it, ages ago. I loved Howard too. It saddens me that he did not live long enough to see the film; I hope we do him justice. How can we not? Hercules, Howard, Joe, Lion Forge… I wish you all could share my excitement at the prospect of this movie.”
It’s the sort of frankness that Martin has, for better or worse, become known for on his personal blog–where has has, of course, done everything from rail on his Winds of Winter progress detractors to engage in a bit of backroom drama with HBO over changes to House of the Dragon. Martin has also used the blog to announce that he’s no longer giving the world updates on Winds of Winter, before promptly giving them anyway. It’s clear that, for as long as it is taking to finish the novel, Martin does have the passion for it that people sometimes, jokingly otherwise, accuse him of lacking. Otherwise he just wouldn’t keep telling us about it anyway, even as he rails against people’s response to those updates in turn. People are still going to complain over how long it’s taken him, but woe betide anyone who accuses the author of not caring about it.
Whenever Winds of Winter finally comes our way, there’s probably going to be plenty more Martin-affiliated projects that get announced or come along before it regardless. No one’s going to stop him from doing them±just as Martin himself insists that no one will stop him from finishing Winds on his own terms.
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