George R. R. Martin explains why he’s more of a gardener than an architect

It has been quite a while since we got a new book from George R. R. Martin in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, and we have been talking about how we might get the next book, The Winds of Winter this year, but we also know that there is a chance that we won’t, considering how George seems to take his own time to write. Talking of which, he’s always talked about gardeners v/s architects, writers who write the story on the go, as compared to writers who plan out the story in advance. A new video shows him explaining why he’s more of a gardener than an architect.

George posted on his Not A Blog about him interviewing author Carrie Vaughn at the Jean Cocteau Cinema, a Santa Fe movie theater owned by him. Watch the video, below : (skip to 53:40 for the gardeners v/s architects bit)

George says :

“For me, when I go architect, when I try to outline something, if I’m successful in doing it, it almost feels like I’ve written the book, and now I don’t wanna write the book anymore.

You can look at The World of Ice and Fire…my book of fake history…and there’s a lot of stuff in there about what led up to Game of Thrones, all the preceding kings and the conflicts of their era and all that, and people have said to me, “You have 50 other novels in here. You could write a novel about Aegon’s conquest, and all that.” And yes, I could, but I don’t think I will because I already wrote those 20 pages about Aegon’s conquest and that’s the important stuff that happened in Aegon’s conquest…I’ve made up the fun stuff, and the twists and the characters and the cool lines of dialogue, you know? I skip over the boring lines of dialogue…The few times I actually quote dialogue it’s great lines of dialogue said by famous historic figures at fraught points. There’s very little of “Hey, what’s for dinner?””

George says that A Song of Ice and Fire is supposed to be a story true to the story, rather than being a full fledged novel. He goes on to say :

“And of course I love the fully fledged novels, so that’s why I’m mostly a gardener when I write a novel. I know that highlights. I haven’t written them yet, though…and I’m getting from one cool thing to another cool thing.”

“Sometimes the cool things are very very difficult to write, because they’ve existed in your head for some time and they’re awesome. And then you put them in words and they’re less awesome.”

At least we have some explanation as to why George isn’t delivering books as fast as we would like. Game of Thrones, in the meantime, will return with Season 7, on July 16th. Talk to us in the comments, below!