With all that in mind, it’s pretty hard to tell where the book is right now and how far along Martin is in writing it. It could be a month away from completion, or half a year or more – we won’t know for sure until the writer himself comes out with a public statement and gives some details on his progress.
This has been a source of frustration for some of his fans who have been claiming that Martin could use a bit more practice in communicating with his fans. The author is notorious for not only his slow working pace, but also his relatively low frequency of making public statements about his work, leading to a lot of disappointment among fans who expect him to put certain books out by a given date.
But in the end, in those cases the problem lies entirely on the shoulders of the people with the wrong expectations.
If someone is convinced that Martin is going to release the book by a given date without having any solid information to back that up, that’s entirely that person’s fault and nobody else’s. Martin can’t really do much to change the minds of those people, and while he does have a responsibility to occasionally communicate with his fans, he definitely doesn’t need to keep anyone updated on a regular basis.