George R.R. Martin: Pressure of global fame from TV show prevented me from writing faster

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In a rare interview with the Observer which will be published on Sunday, Martin said that the TV show had not been “very good” for him, admitting that its end in May had been “freeing”. He still has two more novels of the fantasy saga to write, but insisted their endings would be unaffected by the controversy over the show’s ending.

“No, it doesn’t. It doesn’t change anything at all … You can’t please everybody, so you’ve got to please yourself,” he said.

With the combined success of his books and the show across the world, Martin, 70, is estimated to be worth $65m (£54m). But, he said, his increasing fame had made writing difficult.

“I don’t think [the TV series] was very good for me,” he said. “The very thing that should have speeded me up actually slowed me down. Every day I sat down to write and even if I had a good day … I’d feel terrible because I’d be thinking: ‘My God, I have to finish the book. I’ve only written four pages when I should have written 40.’”

Martin said he would “let fans have their theories” but that he now steered clear of the intense emotional response the show provoked online.

“I took myself out of all that ... some of [the theories] are right and some of [the theories] are wrong. They’ll find out when I finish,” he said.

When asked if he missed the early days, the author was clear: “Yeah. Honestly I do. I mean, I can’t go into a bookstore any more, and that used to be my favourite thing to do in the world. To go in and wander from stack to stack, take down some books, read a little, leave with a big stack of things I’d never heard of when I came in. Now when I go to a bookstore, I get recognised within 10 minutes and there’s a crowd around me. So you gain a lot but you also lose things.”

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