George R.R. Martin is headed to Chicago in a couple days to receive the Carl Sandburg Literary Award, and to give a couple of interviews. Ahead of his touchdown in my hometown, he’s talking to the Chicago Tribune’s John Kass about Game of Thrones, A Song of Ice and Fire, and why The Winds of Winter is taking so long to write.

You can hear the full interview over at WGN Radio, and we’ll hit the highlights below.

Kass covered a wide range of topic, starting with how Martin feels about having millions of fans out there eager to read Winds, the long-awaited sixth book in his saga. Predictably, Martin says it’s a “mixed blessing.” For many writers, Martin explains, the problem is getting noticed at all. He has a very different issue.”

I do indeed have millions of people waiting for this book to come out, which is very gratifying…but some of them are extremely impatient and some of them are full of their own ideas about the fates of the various characters. I’m glad they can get so emotionally involved with these characters, but sometimes I yearn for the days when I could just work in quiet obscurity…but those days are gone for me, I’m afraid. This is the reality of my life now.

Indeed it is, and let’s all remember that his time is occupied with far more than A Song of Ice and Fire now. You know that Hulu is developing the series of Wild Cards stories he edits into a series? On top of Winds, he’s also writing more Dunk and Egg stories and another volume of Fire & Blood. On TV, he’s executive producing an HBO adaptation of Nnedi Okorafor Who Fears Death, and of course there are those Game of Thrones prequel shows waiting in the wings.

The success of the show and the success of other things has injected a lot of other aspects into my life. So sometimes I lay in bed at night and I’m not thinking about…Westeros. I’m thinking about some other problem I’m having, one of the other shows I’m involved with, or a deadline on an anthology I’m editing, or something that’s happening with the non-profit organization that I started. All of these other things are filling my head and that is one of the thing’s that’s delayed me. I really have to get Winds done. I have to put myself on a state where I’m not being distracted by other stuff, and that period of time at night is filled with the voices of Tyrion Lannister and Arya Stark and the other fictional characters who live inside of me.

That’s opposed to how he prefers to work, when he has the time to luxuriate in his invented world, and is free to think about it unburdened. “If my writing is going well, and I’m really ‘in Westeros,’ it does haunt me day and night,” he said. “I’m laying there in bed, I’m waiting to go to sleep, the lights are out, and the scenes that I’m gonna write tomorrow are in my head. Or maybe the scenes I’m gonna write next week, or maybe the scenes from a different chapter…I can’t control it, but something starts filling my head and the characters start coming alive, and I start hearing snatches of dialogue, and I drift to sleep with Westeros and Ice and Fire in my head, haunting me.”

All of that adds up to a lot of distraction, although it’s lessened since the main show ended. “There was a period where the show caught and past me, and I hadn’t anticipated that happening, so there was a tremendous amount of stress on me a few years ago when that was about to happen but hadn’t happened yet, and I was desperately trying to finish Winds and stay ahead,” Martin remembered. “And it didn’t work. The amount of stress that was on me at the time slowed me down rather than speeding me up.”

Now that the show’s over, any stress in that regard is done, but of course, we have five successor shows in various stages of development–and one of them’s just finished shooting [the pilot episode] in Northern Ireland and another one’s very close to getting a pilot order. I’m involved with those as well. Game of Thrones, that particular story, may be over on TV, but it’s not over for me–I still have these two more books to write. And there’s other stories in the world of Westeros, which is an entire world, and I’m still deeply involved with those. So believe me, there’s plenty to keep me busy.

So Martin, for better or worse, has a lot on his mind. “I do sometimes wish it had happened to me 30 years ago, rather than happening to me at my age, because it does kind of wear me out sometimes,” he said. “But I still have a fair amount of energy and I still get a fair amount done.”

It’s kind of ironic, isn’t it? If A Song of Ice and Fire were less popular it would probably get finished faster, but then we wouldn’t want it so bad. Food for thought.

Finally, Kass did ask Martin about the backlash to the final season of Game of Thrones, coming as close as anyone I’ve heard in an interview to outright saying he didn’t like season 8, and criticizing showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss for botching the big finish. Martin did pretty much the only thing he could do in that situation. “I’m not gonna comment on that,” he said. “They’re two different forms of the same story. When I finish my books, read ’em. But other than that, that’s not something I want to get into.”

That’s such a weird tightrope to walk. I mean, I get that Kass can ask that question as a journalist, but he’s basically asking Martin to rag on his colleagues, which is kind of tasteless. After the interview portion if over, Kass says that Martin “got a little testy” with him, which I don’t agree with. But even if Martin had been salty, what do you expect when you ask a question like that, Kass?

Martin also remembered some of his early days falling in love with books and his memories of the famous 1967 Chicago blizzard. I hope he enjoys his time back in town!

And y’know, weirdly, he won’t be the only Game of Thrones bigwig in town over the next week. Both Kit Harington (Jon Snow) and Gwendoline Christie (Brienne of Tarth) will be at the ACE Comic Con Midwest this weekend at the Donald E. Stephens Center in Rosemont, right outside Chicago. When it rains Game of Thrones legends, it pours Game of Thrones legends.

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h/t Daily Herald