Clearly, George R.R. Martin has been going through some stuff.
I realize that this might seem like an understatement for those who have followed Martin’s literary tribulations over the years. Ideally, this should have culminated with him missing the date where he told readers to imprison him for not finishing Winds of Winter. Martin, however, still finds himself entirely torn between the art of putting words on paper and seeing those words realized on the TV screen. Distractions abound. It happens.
On the bright side, these diversions have led Martin to help bring AMC’s impeccable crime thriller, Dark Winds, to the world. On a darker note, Martin recently admitted (in an 1,800+ word rant) his severe disappointment in HBO’s House of the Dragon “Blood and Cheese” episode for omitting a character who Martin insisted is central to the emotional thrust of significant events to come. Martin then dropped some spoilers while concluding that showrunner Ryan Condal’s “outline for season 3” would spawn “toxic butterflies,” and something then prompted Martin to delete the rant (a post that was so jam packed that Daemon spending an entire season pouting through hallucinations somehow didn’t make his frustration short list).
Less than a week later, Martin is back with an additional lengthy post that can be summarized with his Live Journal-style “Current Mood: stressed”:
This follows Martin never mentioning the words “House of the Dragon” while admitting that certain unpleasant TV business was leaving him “between fury and despair” and unable to sleep:
Writing came hard, and though I did produce some new pages on both THE WINDS OF WINTER (yes) and BLOOD & FIRE (the sequel to FIRE & BLOOD, the second part of my Targaryen history), I would have liked to turn out a lot more. My various television projects ate up most of those months. Some of that was pleasant (DARK WINDS, and THE HEDGE KNIGHT), most of it was not. The stress kept mounting, the news went from bad to worse to worst, my mood seemed to swing between fury and despair, and at night I tossed and turned when I should have been sleeping. When I did sleep, well, my dreams were none too pleasant either.
Additionally, Martin describes how he was “so stressed out” about his mounting tasks that he nearly skipped this year’s Worldcon in Glasgow, but the event (although it gave him Covid) was “a blessing, balm for my bruised soul.” Yet his “stress came rushing back” upon returning, and although he did manage to write some Winds of Winter pages, “my problems… were still waiting for me.”
Martin does not allude to his deleted blog post, but he previously went in so hard with his “Butterfly Effect” argument that it seems obvious what he’s still discussing. Meanwhile, HBO has acknowledged GRRM’s HotD criticism with a statement via Deadline:
“There are few greater fans of George R.R. Martin and his book Fire & Blood than the creative team on House of the Dragon, both in production and at HBO. Commonly, when adapting a book for the screen, with its own format and limitations, the showrunner ultimately is required to make difficult choices about the characters and stories the audience will follow. We believe that Ryan Condal and his team have done an extraordinary job and the millions of fans the series has amassed over the first two seasons will continue to enjoy it.”
