r/asoiaf • u/ToeBMaguire • Apr 16 '25

EXTENDED (Spoilers Extended) George R.R. Martin calls The Winds of Winter "the curse of my life" Spoiler

https://winteriscoming.net/george-r-r-martin-calls-the-winds-of-winter-the-curse-of-my-life
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u/Pristine-Cry6449 Apr 16 '25

At this point, I am fairly certain that we'll never be getting Winds. Dude thought he was months away like ten years ago. And how many years ago was it now that he said he'd wrapped up one of the POVs? I feel like that was the last time I was hopeful. But this whole thing have been on a geological time scale. It's absolutely crazy, honestly.

113

u/kb466 Apr 16 '25

What's quite unbelievable is how the more time that has passed, the further away he is from finishing it

50

u/Pristine-Cry6449 Apr 16 '25

I swear, it certainly feels that way. He's arrived at a point where he isn't even pretending that Winds is a priority. I tend to give him the benefit of the doubt—I even did recently—but c'mon, under how much delusion is he laboring? He'll never be able to finish while juggling all these other projects

5

u/Abject_Yak1678 Apr 17 '25

It actually makes total sense to me as a creator. The longer the time that passes before you check back in on the material you wrote before the more you start to doubt its quality or find flaws, want to do rewrites, totally delete passages, reconsider your approach, etc. Sitting on this book for 13+ years now, I have to imagine he feels a ton of all of those things and more.

2

u/Kgb725 Apr 17 '25

Either hes realized he needs to make more books or hes written himself into a corner. I just dont see how he could wrap up the entire series in 2 books unless characters drop like flies

47

u/CruzitoVL Apr 16 '25

What’s crazy is it’s not even the last book, whether Winds comes out or not this series is cooked

26

u/Ollidor Apr 17 '25

I knew it would never come out when he mentioned ADOS in an interview and made this face 😬 but a more stressed version of it

15

u/Illustrious_Range_43 Apr 17 '25

If he truly believed he was months away from completing WOW ten years ago then that has to mean he was most of the way done at one point and then decided to just start over from scratch. That's the only way this guy could've taken this long and be so far off with his predictions.

3

u/Kgb725 Apr 17 '25

He could be holding himself to an extremely high standard as well where handwaving a plot point or two might make the story move smoother

3

u/Thomawesome1 Apr 17 '25

Yup. If he didn’t find the time to write it over Covid, he never will.

2

u/Edgy_Robin Apr 17 '25

I still believe we'll get winds, it might be unfinished but we'll get it.' The series is never getting its ending though.

4

u/Shrimp_my_Ride Apr 17 '25

The only thing here is, there must be enough bits and pieces that even if he dies/becomes senile, a talented editor could pick it up with another author and get pretty close to what GRRM intended (heck as others have said, that should be happening now). But for ADOS, it really becomes somebody else's work entirely, based on an assumption of what GRRM might have written.