George R.R. Martin has been struggling to complete The Winds of Winter since he started working on it around 2011, and in an interview with Portuguese magazine Bang, he had expressed regret for not working on other novels, particularly the smaller ones, all the while finishing the massive volume:
I have like 1,100 pages written but I still have hundreds more pages to go. It’s a big mother of a book for whatever reason. Maybe I should’ve started writing smaller books when I began this but it’s tough. That’s the main thing that dominates most of my working life.
Martin indeed became less productive in the past decade, mainly because of the several projects that took a chunk of his time, but what’s intriguing is that he was able to publish one bulky prequel book while fans were expecting the release of The Winds of Winter.
GRRM Surprised Fans With Fire & Blood Amid Anticipation For The Winds of Winter
Martin’s statement about wanting to write smaller books while he worked on The Winds of Winter
In his interview with The Guardian, he noted how The Winds of Winter almost feels like a compilation of different stories: “The Winds of Winter is not so much a novel as a dozen novels,” he stated, later adding that each chapter has a different set of players and their own arcs. Taking this thought, Martin could have truly published smaller novels in the past decade.
This would have been easy if he had not needed to interweave the different viewpoint chapters into one cohesive narrative. This brought frustration to Martin, and in the same interview, he confessed it’s the main reason he released Fire & Blood. Apart from its linear process, it’s fairly easier to write because it is framed as a historical book.
| Fire & Blood (No. of Pages) | Release Date | Goodreads |
| 736 | November 20, 2018 | 4.05/5 |
Not everyone was happy when Martin announced a new book release, and it wasn’t The Winds of Winter. Even if he did write smaller books, it would not change the fact that he’s 14 years late in delivering the sixth installment of the A Song of Ice and Fire saga.
Why Martin Releasing Smaller Books to Fill the Gap Isn’t a Good Idea
Martin publishing smaller novels in between writing The Winds of Winter may be of good intentions on his part, but this will certainly further delay the book that everyone is dying to read. The work might distract him from his frustration, but it won’t resolve the issue. The Meereenese knot still plagues the book.
The author’s last positive comment on his progress was from early this year, when he said that the book is coming along pretty well, although he wishes to have done more pages. While this doesn’t really reveal anything, it ignites a spark of hope that Martin is still enthusiastic about finishing the novel.
What are your thoughts on Martin releasing smaller books? Let us know in the comments!
