The Winds of Winter is, as you may have heard, taking a long time to happen. Game of Thrones Season 1 premiered a few months before George R.R. Martin’s fifth book in A Song of Ice and Fire, titled A Dance with Dragons, was released back in 2011. Since then, the series has finished an entire eight season run, we’ve seen two seasons of a prequel (with a third on the way), and another spinoff TV show is about to arrive as well. Of course, art should not be rushed, and nobody is owed the release of anything, but this particular date does put the delays and struggles into a stark perspective.
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In early 2016, with the release of Game of Thrones Season 6 on the horizon, Martin wrote an entry on his Live Journal page about The Winds of Winter taking so long. The author had always wanted to stay ahead of the TV show with his books, but with the sixth season fast approaching – where it would really start to move beyond the source material – those hopes were fading. He revealed that in order for it to happen, he’d actually been given (and subsequently missed) the first deadline for the book: Halloween 2015.
“Assuming the show would return in early April, that meant THE WINDS OF WINTER had to be published before the end of March, at the latest. For that to happen, my publishers told me, they would need the completed manuscript before the end of October. That seemed very do-able to me… in May. So there was the first deadline: Halloween.”
Why Is The Winds of Winter Taking So Long?
Even back in 2015-16, Martin was acknowledging that there was various issues behind the delays to The Winds of Winter. These include his increased schedule following the success of Game of Thrones, and the demands of his workload with myriad other projects he was involved in, whether directly as the creator, an editor, or executive producer. He wrote: “Unfortunately, the writing did not go as fast or as well as I would have liked. You can blame my travels or my blog posts or the distractions of other projects and the Cocteau and whatever, but maybe all that had an impact… you can blame my age, and maybe that had an impact too…but if truth be told, sometimes the writing goes well and sometimes it doesn’t.”
That’s pretty much in line with everything he’s said about the delays since then. There isn’t any one defining factor, but that he has good days and bad days. Whenever Martin’s name is attached to a new project that isn’t The Winds of Winter, there’s a collective sigh from the ASOIAF fandom, with many resigned to the books not being finished. That is an understandable frustration after so long, although, again, Martin doesn’t owe anyone anything, and he is absolutely free to work on whichever projects he so desires.
Still, the delays are striking, especially with another 10 years on the clock. That amount of time means it can’t be attributed too much to the other projects and his busy schedule, though it’s nonetheless a factor, and perhaps more to the story at hand. It’s worth noting that this series was originally envisaged as a trilogy; it’s now planned to be seven books. The Winds of Winter won’t even be the final one, and it will have to be at least 1,500 manuscript pages. In truth, Winds alone could probably fill two books, because Martin has introduced so many characters and plot lines it’s difficult to keep track, and even more so to get them to begin coalescing for the final installment.
The author’s self-professed writing style is another part of this. He has described himself as a gardener, not an architect; that is, he doesn’t have detailed plans for everything, but knows the broad strokes and some destinations, begins writing, and goes where the story and characters take him, pruning different bits as it moves along. That’s obviously worked, because we have five classic fantasy books, but also has meant some narrative cul-de-sacs and tangled webs to try to write himself out of, all of which complicates the process for The Winds of Winter.
Game of Thrones itself can’t have helped, with it doing some version of the story he’s writing, not to mention the backlash to the finale. That may have been more to do with execution than ideas, but if he is planning on having Bran become king and Daenerys become the so-called Mad Queen, then the response would be enough to give anyone pause. But more simply than that, I think there’s also a shift in the story that Martin is telling: he’s moving from something very gray into setting up what’s ostensibly a more black and white, good vs. evil battle with the White Walkers, and that alone could be difficult to pull off.
It’s also not like Martin hasn’t written anything. At last count, back in 2023 [via Bangcast], the author estimated he’d written around 1,100 pages, and was 75% of the way done with the writing process. If there’s hope, it lies in that so much has been done. Martin still speaks passionately and determinedly about the series, and insists finishing Winds is his priority, and you don’t spend 14 years working on something if you simply don’t care about it. If he was bored and wanted it over with, he could’ve rushed out a much worse version or handed it off to someone else, and that he’s done neither is, in its own way, some kind of positive sign, despite the many delays, struggles, and frustrations. If The Winds of Winter is to come, though, hopefully it’s not another 10 years.
All seasons of Game of Thrones are available to stream on HBO Max.
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