George R. R. Martin has been falling behind schedule with his work on “Winds of Winter”, the latest installment in his epic book series. The situation has actually reached a point where “Game of Thrones”, the TV show based on the books, has pulled ahead of the books themselves, and is now about to enter its new season before the latest book has been released.
A situation which obviously disappointed some fans, as it means that they would have to actively avoid the show if they don’t want to spoil the book for themselves. Not only that, but they would also have to stay away from online discussions about “Game of Thrones”, which might not be exactly easy to do for someone who uses the Internet regularly.
Now, Martin has announced that he will not be contributing anything to the script of the show until he’s done with the book. A decision which could certainly make sense if he wants to make sure that his fans will get the book on time. It’s not like the producers of the show will be lost without him anyway, as they have been able to handle the production fine on their own so far.
Of course, Martin still had to occasionally join the brainstorming for the script in order to ensure that the show doesn’t contradict any important plot points. We’ve heard several reports of the writer getting together with the production crew to discuss how an episode should be written, and he’s apparently had to share at least parts of his work in order to keep the production going.
Currently, fans of the book series have been advised to avoid the TV show due to the situation with the scheduling – but hopefully, George R. R. Martin will speed up his work and release the next book in due time, so his fans won’t have to wait that long. In the end though, the wait should definitely be worth it, as the writer has proved that he values the quality of his work over everything else, and his strong work ethic will not allow him to release the book in anything but a perfect state.
According to some, the reason for the delay is that Martin is actually worried about the response. Thus book’s release is surrounded with a lot more anticipation than previous entries in the series, and Martin will have to put in extra effort to ensure that it will live up to expectations. Given his perfectionist nature, it makes sense that a situation like this would make him quite nervous. But then again, few authors can probably deliver consistently good work under the kind of pressure Martin is seeing now.