George RR Martin says New Zealand can imprison him if he doesn't finish 'Winds of Winter' by summer 2020

By VT

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Being a writer full-time is a... funny thing.

Stephen King has written 58 novels in his time - at a rate of more than one a year ever since he legally became an adult - but he's a very, very rare breed of wordsmith. For the rest of us, writing is a slog, and writer's block is never more of a problem than when you actually need to write quite a bit.

For example, look no further than George RR Martin.

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His books have given us the source material for one of this decade's defining shows, but now that it's over and people aren't too happy with how Game of Thrones deviated from his masterful tome, the pressure is on him quite a bit to finish his next book, entitled The Winds of Winter.

Check out the trailer for HBO's Game of Throne's documentary, 'The Last Watch':

And you could Martin has been working on it for quite a while. His last book, A Dance With Dragons, came out back in 2011, and he's been busy, writing other books on the side, while chapters from his next in the book series have been published on his blog. But finishing the book is proving another thing entirely, and it's gotten so bad that even Air New Zealand are trying to help him out.

Here's Air New Zealand's message to George R R Martin:

But Martin will not be tempted! In a blog post, Martin politely turned down the offer to fly down to the island nation: "As it happens, I do have enough money to make it to New Zealand on my own," he said, but maybe they could fly fans out there instead?

"If you’d care to fly, say, twenty or thirty or fifty of them to Wellington in place of me, I have no doubt they would instantly accept, and fall in love with Middle Earth.. er, New Zealand… just as I have."

But Martin also used the opportunity to give himself a deadline for The Winds of Winter, and I don't know about you, but that's a lot of pressure. Here's what he said:

"As for finishing my book… I fear that New Zealand would distract me entirely too much. Best leave me here in Westeros for the nonce. But I tell you this — if I don’t have THE WINDS OF WINTER in hand when I arrive in New Zealand for worldcon, you have here my formal written permission to imprison me in a small cabin on White Island, overlooking that lake of sulfuric acid, until I’m done. Just so long as the acrid fumes do not screw up my old DOS word processor, I’ll be fine."