George R.R. Martin Hasn't Finished The Winds of Winter, and Here's Why

"But the book's not done . . . Nor is it likely to be finished tomorrow, or next week. Yes, there's a lot written. Hundreds of pages. Dozens of chapters. (Those 'no pages done' reports were insane, the usual garbage Internet journalism that I have learned to despise). But there's also a lot still left to write. I am months away still . . . and that's if the writing goes well. (Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn't.) Chapters still to write, of course . . . but also rewriting. I always do a lot of rewriting, sometimes just polishing, sometimes pretty major restructures."

"I failed. I blew the Halloween deadline, and I've now blown the end of the year deadline. And that almost certainly means that, no, The Winds of Winter will not be published before the sixth season of Game of Thrones premieres in April (mid April, we are now told, not early April, but those two weeks will not save me). Even as late as my birthday and our big Emmy win, I still thought I could do it . . . but the days and weeks flew by faster than the pile of pages grew, and (as I often do) I grew unhappy with some of the choices I'd made and began to revise . . . and suddenly it was October, and then November . . . and as the suspicion grew that I would not make it after all, a gloom set in, and I found myself struggling even more. The fewer the days, the greater the stress, and the slower the pace of my writing became."