When will The Winds of Winter be released? How different will the final books be from the TV show? Well, GRRM has now chimed in about the ending, or as he calls it, "an ending." In his latest blog post, GRRM congratulates the creative forces, cast, and crew responsible for Game of Thrones, in particular singling out David Benioff, Dan Weiss, Bryan Cogman, and Richard Plepler. Now that Game of Thrones is over and the adaptation has finished its story, all eyes are on George R. GRRM also briefly discusses his excitement for HBO's House of the Dragon, but opines that his other television and film projects are stuck in "development hell." You can read the whole Not a Blog entry here.
But I slogged on, and of late I am picking up steam again. I suffered a gut punch in early August that really had me down for a time, and another, for different reasons, in early September. Progress has continued since then, but more slowly.
I was really on a roll back in June and July. It is how the first five books were written. I tweak stuff constantly, and sometimes go beyond tweaking, moving things around, combining chapters, breaking chapters in two, reordering stuff. including, yes, some stuff I read at cons ages ago, or even posted online as samples. In addition to turning out new chapters, I've been revising some old ones (some very old). I've also paid a visit to Dorne, and dropped in to Oldtown a time or three. Of late I have been spending a lot of time with the Lannisters. I write a chapter at a time, a page at a time, a sentence at a time, a word at a time. No, sorry, still not done, but I do inch closer.