‘Game of Thrones’ fans relax! George R.R. Martin clearly wants you to
George R.R. Martin really doesn’t have too much to be upset about at the end of the day. He is arguably one of the most famous and successful authors on the planet right now thanks to his A Song of Ice and Fire series, and the success of “Game of Thrones” has already ballooned that to new heights. He also gets to travel the world, and use his celebrity platform to raise money for the things that he truly cares about.
However, there are a few little things that must annoy the man from time to time, with the principal one being that there are constantly people who complain that he is taking too long writing his books, and he should be basically tethered to a chair and forced to write until he dies, to ensure that nobody is left hanging.
Well, it’s easy to say that Martin has a pretty strong opinion about people like that. Just take a look at what he had to say to a newspaper in Switzerland:
“I find that question pretty offensive, frankly, when people start speculating about my death and my health. So f**k you to those people.”
Martin also had a longer explanation for why his writing takes so long to hit shelves, and it comes in the midst of other complaints that he travels too much and does too many other things:
“I don’t know what I can do about it, you know. I can’t write many more than one word at a time. And I know myself, I’m 65 years old now; I’ve been writing professionally since 1971. I know my working methods. I don’t work when I travel, I don’t work in hotels, I don’t work on airplanes, I don’t work on trains. I work at home, when I have a nice, big uninterrupted block of time in which I can really lose myself in my work. And it’s worked for me for my entire adult life. I’m not going to change it now because some people are too impatient to wait for the next book.”
Let’s phrase our question like this: Would you rather wait a long time for a great product, or have a shoddy book that comes from a place of discomfort in your hands faster? We’ll take the former just about any day of the week.
While Martin continues to put his touch on the sixth book in his series (entitled The Winds of Winter), season 5 of “Game of Thrones” is filming this summer. You can read some more about that here, or to get some further news and updates on all we cover via email, sign up for our newsletter today.
Photo: HBO