If he doesn't want to write it, I won't force him. That's good. I feel fine.
It's okay to be mad at George RR Martin
At this point in my career, I've written many thousands of words and edited quite a few different writers. I know a lot about procrastination. That's why, without speaking to the man or knowing him personally at all, I'm still prepared to argue that George RR Martin simply doesn't want to finish The Winds of Winter.
He's just not into it. If he keeps forcing himself to do that, the end result is probably going to be a pretty terrible book — and I think he knows that, and that's why he can't finish it, because he doesn't want to publish a bad book. The alternative? We don't understand the book at all. And for me it's actually preferable.
Of course I may have misunderstood the signs. Like so many disinterested fans of A Song of Ice and Fire, I'm basing this purely on vibes, and Martin loves trolling us all by posting snarky productivity quotes and tagging them with the word "writing", indicating that he's quite merrily chugging along at The Winds of Winter. I also realize that by writing this post I may be invoking the wrath of fate itself in such a way that Martin will write on his blog tomorrow that The Winds of Winter is officially finished and now in the hands of his editors. That would be great, actually! But I don't think that will happen.
