TORONTO – As a former journalism instructor, bestselling fantasy writer George R.R. Martin says he hates to miss a deadline.
But when it comes to appeasing his legions of rabid fans and finishing the final two books in his epic series “A Song of Ice and Fire,” he’d rather file late than deliver an inferior product.
“So that’s what I’m struggling with,” Martin said in an interview during a stop in Toronto this week, noting he’s written roughly 200 pages and still has about 1,300 more to go for the ambitious series’ sixth instalment “The Winds of Winter.”
“I do hope to finish this book and to write more stories after this. I have many ideas, many other characters I want to write about and introduce,” added Martin, 63, who made Time magazine’s 2011 list of the most influential people in the world.
“But I think it’s pretty clear that this is my magnum opus. If my work is remembered at all after my death, if I’m ever going to have a part of literature, it’s going to be for ‘A Song of Ice and Fire,’ not anything that I can write before and after. So it behooves me to make it as good as it can possibly be.
“This is my masterpiece, so to speak, so I have to make it good.”
Martin – whose beloved books are the basis for HBO’s Emmy and Golden Globe-winning series “Game of Thrones” – was in the city for a couple of events at TIFF Bell Lightbox, which is also running an exhibition featuring material from the set of the acclaimed show.
He was also here to promote season 2 of “Game of Thrones,” debuting April 1 on HBO Canada, and “A Dance with Dragons,” the fifth of seven planned volumes in his “A Song of Ice and Fire” cycle that’s now in stores.
The medieval fantasy saga chronicles a violent power struggle amongst noble factions for control of the Iron Throne in the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros.
Each book in the series is about 1,500 pages long, and Martin admitted that once he completes the dark legend that’s now a global phenomenon, he won’t take on something like it again.
“I would write a series again, but not a series on this scale,” said the bearded, bespectacled Martin, wearing his signature accessories: suspenders and a cap (in this case, a Greek fisherman’s cap adorned with a turtle pin – a nod to a character from his “Wild Cards” series of books).
“This is climbing Mount Everest here and, you know, once having climbed Mount Everest, there are some nice smaller mountains I can climb,” he continued with a chuckle.
In fact, Martin wants to return to short stories. It’s genre he had great success with in the first 10 years of his writing career, which has also seen him pen scripts for the CBS series “Twilight Zone” and “Beauty and the Beast,” among other screen projects. He’s also written several other novels and edited various anthologies.
Born in the blue-collar city of Bayonne, N.J. – a peninsula surrounded by water – Martin first fell in love with fantasy and science fiction as a child. He lived with his parents in a federal housing project and would write monster stories and sell them to area kids for chump change.
They didn’t have a car and didn’t travel, save for the odd trip to nearby New York City, and Martin’s “world was five blocks long,” he said.
“There was always part of me, I think, that yearned for a wider world.”
Comic books and sci-fi paperbacks introduced him to other worlds, as did the international freighters that would navigate the waters in the channel near his home, flying their countries’ flags onboard.
“I developed an appetite watching all of those to … dream of all these countries and how I would like to visit these countries one day and what would life be like in these countries,” said Martin, who now lives in Santa Fe, N.M.
“I dreamed to go to many other places and have these exotic adventures and meet strange and colourful and wonderful people with ways alien to my own, and I think that really set me on my path that I have followed to this day.”
It’s a path that’s taken an unexpected turn, though.
When Martin first got his start as a writer, he had to work various part-time jobs – running chess tournaments and doing public relations stints – in order to get by. He also dabbled in journalism, before setting his sights on television.
In Hollywood, he spent five years writing for TV shows and another five years in “development hell,” creating ideas for new programs and writing pilots and feature films that never came to fruition.
While the development jobs paid well, he was frustrated that the stuff he was writing was never seen by people. That’s when he decided to go back to prose.
When Martin started writing “A Song of Ice and Fire” in 1991, it was supposed to be just a trilogy.
“I didn’t know it would be as long as it has turned out to be, which is, I’m now looking at seven books,” he said, laughing.
He’s also looking at worldwide fame, something he’s still getting used to.
Even though Martin’s been writing and winning awards for his stories for over 30 years, he still has moments of astonishment, he said.
“It’s like, ‘My God, is this really happening? Let me pinch myself here,'” said the genial author.
“I’m recognized on the streets. I mean, just that – that’s one of the things that startles me, and I think that’s largely a result of the HBO thing.”
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