Forget Finishing Winds of Winter—George R.R. Martin Says Modern Fandom Is Killing Storytelling
George R.R. Martin is done with the nagging: as fans clamor for The Winds of Winter, he concedes he no longer writes at his 1999 clip and is far from the roughly 150-page bursts he once managed.
George R.R. Martin knows you want The Winds of Winter. He also knows you keep reminding him. But the guy is 77 now, and by his own admission, he is not the page-producing machine he was in the late 90s. And no, he is not going to write by committee just to calm the comments section.
Where he is with Winds (and why it has taken forever)
Martin once said the early drama was trying not to let HBO's Game of Thrones catch up to his books. That ship obviously sailed years ago, and the fandom conversation has shifted into a constant countdown clock on his progress. He says he is working, but it is slower. On his Not A Blog, he laid out the then-vs-now reality pretty plainly:
"I was averaging about 150 pages of manuscript a month. I fear I shall never recapture that pace again."
He is now closing in on 15 years since A Dance with Dragons, and he has taken plenty of heat for missed deadlines and vague updates. The cycle is familiar: he posts an update, fans parse it, then some pile on because the word count did not jump enough. And if we are being honest, the way people hammered the Game of Thrones ending did not exactly make the ecosystem gentler.
His stance: art is not a vote
Martin says he does not mind impatience, but he is not going to write to appease a crowd. Talking to Adria's News, he said he is trying to make The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring as good as he can and still believes many readers will be happy with where it lands. He is also very clear about his approach:
"Trying to please everyone is a horrible mistake; I don't say you should annoy your readers but art isn't a democracy and should never be a democracy. It's my story and those people who get annoyed should go out and write their own stories; the stories they wanna read."
He has also watched how the internet turned everyone into a critic with a platform. In his view, writers now worry more about backlash than about accidentally publishing a weak book. That fear of the pile-on is not how he wants to work.
The 'anti-fans' problem
Martin misses when online debates felt fun and informed, even when people disagreed. Now, he says the loudest voices are people who seem to be there to hate things. As he put it on his blog:
"Now social media is ruled by anti-fans who would rather talk about the stuff they hate than the stuff they love."
He shared that a reader once wrote to scold him for not giving her an escape from harsh realities. His answer, basically: these books are not for everyone. He does not write fairytales with tidy endings, and he is not trying to be anyone's therapist.
Yes, he says he is finishing the saga
At the Carl Sandburg Literary Awards Dinner, Martin said it matters to him to finish A Song of Ice and Fire, and he wants to finish it strong. He knows some of the more cynical fans do not believe him, but that is still the plan.
A Song of Ice and Fire timeline at a glance
- A Game of Thrones — 1996
- A Clash of Kings — 1998
- A Storm of Swords — 2000
- A Feast for Crows — 2005
- A Dance with Dragons — 2011
- The Winds of Winter — TBA
- A Dream of Spring — TBA
Do you think modern fandom's constant nitpicking actually changes how stories get told, for better or worse? Tell me where you land.