July 8, 2025, 9:11am
George R.R. Martin has been famously stuck on his follow-up to A Song of Ice and Fire for…ever.
The Winds of Winter was meant to be the sixth in a seven book series. But Martin has been working on the novel for thirteen years, as fans seethe and spin-offs accrue.
In an interview last week with his publishers, GRRM finally teased meaningful progress. He’s apparently now written about 1,200 pages(!), “with another 400 to 500 still to go.”
Should this prove true and the editor lenient, that would make WoW longer than all previous installments in this epic fantasy series. As well as most other books.
As writer’s block goes, this is a pretty notorious case. But Martin has peers in the trenches. Ralph Ellison, Truman Capote, and Harper Lee all took their sweet time drafting follow-ups to seismic early work. In all cases, pressure seems to have played a factor.
I can sympathize, to a point. It must be hard to get back to the desk knowing that millions of readers are hoping you’ll recreate lightning in a bottle. Especially when you’ve got a Meerenese Knot to untangle.
But many writers, like the late Toni Morrison, Min Jin Lee, and Alexander McCall Smith, dismiss “the block” wholesale. Though they account for the possibility that the work is harder to get down if you are depressed, distracted, or don’t know what you’re trying to say yet. Martin’s got a pretty good excuse for distraction in the series that made Game of Thrones a household name. But despite regular tantalizing pronouncements, there have been times in the past dozen years when it seems like he’s been deliberately lost in Westeros.
He’s also been taking side projects. Last year, Collider reported that Martin picked up a gig executive producing another television show. An AMC thriller called Dark Winds, adapted from Tony Hillerman’s Leaphorn & Chee series—i.e., some other books he hasn’t written.
Your belief in the writer’s latest announcement makes a nice personality litmus test. Are you a starry-eyed optimist, reaching for that winter coat? Or a steely rationalist, girding for continuous summer? Are you a dragon mother with magic at your fingertips? Or a mercenary merchant, with two feet clapped tight to the ground?
Either way, you’ll always have HBO. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is still meant to premiere there later this year. While the third season of House of the Dragon is scheduled to arrive “sometime” in 2026.