Not a fan of fanfiction, says George R. R. Martin

George R. R. Martin is definitely a great writer, and there is no doubt that he will go down in history as one of the most notable popular writers in the English language. The author recently discussed a few things about his life as a writer, and apparently he’s not a fan of fanfiction. Read on!

George recently accepted the Carl Sandburg Literary Award at an annual gala sponsored by the Chicago Public Library Foundation, where he gave a speech. The full speech is 40 minutes long. Check the video out, below:

Winter is Coming did a roundup of the most important bits from the interview. Starting off, George talked about finishing The Winds of Winter:

“It’s very important to me to finish A Song of Ice and Fire,[…] and I want to finish it strong, so people look at it and say, ‘This entire thing is an important work, not a half-finished or broken work.’ I know some of the more cynical people out there don’t believe that, but it is true.”

He also discussed his writing process, and said that he needs a distraction free chunk of time:

“When I’m really in a writing groove, my real life falls to pieces.”

He also talked about how there’s a pressure to finish the books, especially from some impatient fans. He then discussed violence in his works:

“If you’re gonna write about violence and killing, I think you should present it honestly. Just because you include dragons doesn’t mean that the whole thing should be removed from our human experience that we know about.”

He then said that he didn’t like fanfiction, and talked about why he didn’t:

“I don’t think it’s a good way to train to be a professional writer when you’re borrowing everybody else’s world and characters. That’s like riding a bike with training wheels. And then when I took the training wheels off, I fell over a lot, but at some point you have to take the training wheels off here. You have to invent your own characters, you have to do your own world-building, you can’t just borrow from Gene Roddenberry or George Lucas or me or whoever.

The other thing is there are all sorts of copyright issues when you’re using other people’s work…My understanding of the law is that if I knew about I would have to try to stop it, so just don’t tell me about it and do what you want there.

It’s not for me. I don’t wanna read it and I would not encourage people to write it.”

Well, he makes some great points. What do you guys think? Talk to us in the comments below!