George R.R. Martin is done predicting when he’ll finish The Winds of Winter

It’s becoming something of a running joke at this point; each time George R.R. Martin guesses when he’ll finish The Winds of Winter, we see that date pass by again and again. It’s been over a decade since Martin released the last installment of his ground-breaking fantasy series, but he’s sick of giving updates to inpatient fans.

George R.R. Martin recently spoke with Vanity Fair alongside House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal. While Martin admits that he’s gotten quite a lot done during the COVID years, he’s done trying to predict when he’ll finish the novels.

Oddly enough, although I hate having COVID here, the two years of enforced isolation enabled me to get a lot more writing done, because I was doing a lot less traveling and public appearances and speeches and all of that stuff,” the 73-year-old said. “I’m making progress, but I’ve given up on any hope of predicting the end. Every time I do, I don’t make it and everybody gets mad at me, and there’s no sense. It’ll be done when it’s done.

With A Dream of Spring set to follow The Winds of Winter, some fans have expressed a morbid concern that the 73-year-old author won’t live long enough to complete his saga. “Hopefully, COVID won’t kill me, so we won’t have that issue,” Martin said. “I do find it a little grisly, people speculating online about what’s going to happen to the rest of the books when I die. I don’t like to speculate about that. I don’t feel close to dying.” Although Martin wasn’t that involved with the final seasons of Game of Thrones, he has a bigger role in the upcoming prequel series, House of the Dragon. “George, for us, in this process has been a really valuable resource,” HBO’s chief content officer Casey Bloys said. “He is literally the creator of this world. He is its historian, its creator, its keeper. And so I can’t imagine doing a show that he didn’t believe in or didn’t endorse.“

House of the Dragon is set hundreds of years before the original series and is based upon George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood, a Targaryen history book which chronicles the history of House Targaryen, starting off with “Aegon the Conqueror, creator of the Iron Throne, and [going on] to recount the generations of Targaryens who fought to hold the throne, all the way up to the civil war, known as the Dance of the Dragons, that nearly tore their dynasty apart.” House of the Dragon will debut on HBO on August 21st.