GRRM explains why he’s still not finished with “the curse of his life”:
Game of Thrones novelist George R.R. Martin recently shared a new update on where he was with the next book in his Song of Ice and Fire, The Winds of Winter, and described completing it “the curse of my life.”
Speaking with Time, Martin was asked for an update on the novel after he did press for Colossal Biosciences and its genetic altering of DNA to create what they are calling dire wolves. He answered, “That’s the curse of my life here. There’s no doubt that Winds of Winter is 13 years late. I’m still working on it. I have periods where I make progress and then other things divert my attention and suddenly I’m working for-. I have a deadline for one of the HBO shows. I have something else to do.”
“But, you know, the two things are not connected. I swear,” he continued. “I open a book store and people say, ‘Why is George R.R. Martin opening a book store? He could be writing Winds of Winter.’ And now we’re getting this. I don’t actually work in the book store. I own it. I hired people to do it. If you go into the book store, yes, a lot of my books are there, which I’ve signed, a lot of books by other people. I’m not going to ring up your register. I’m not going to order what books are coming in.”
He’s actually correct. Martin’s problem isn’t distractions, it’s the technical corner into which he wrote himself. Even AI can’t really help him finish the story properly, because he has far too many perspective characters. Ironically, given his reputation courtesy of the Red Wedding, Martin’s problem is that he’s too delicate.
If I was tasked with finishing ASOIAF, I could do it, but at a cost that would upset a lot of fans because I would kill off two-thirds of the perspective characters with either sorcery, a plague, or by having the White Walkers get a lot further south than Martin appears to have wanted to permit them to reach. There are other possibilities too, but if he doesn’t get rid of most of the perspective characters, he’s not going to be able to finish the series.