Stephen King Once Gave George R.R. Martin The Perfect Advice For His Writer’s Block

Sometimes, truth really is stranger than fiction. Two of America’s most popular and influential novelists have shaken up the literary world as we know it … despite taking polar opposite approaches to their own respective works. Any avid fan could tell you how legendary writer Stephen King singlehandedly changed the face of horror by delivering multiple classics over the decades, while George R.R. Martin similarly shifted the trajectory of fantasy in a more post-modernist direction. For better or worse, however, that’s where the similarities between the pair come screeching to a halt.

Once you compare the vast differences between King and Martin’s pace of writing, well, that’s there things start to get plain wonky. King has famously published over 65 fiction novels and over 200 short stories over his career, many of which have been adapted into movies and shows (though, to be fair, not all of consistent quality). Meanwhile, Martin sports a much more modest oeuvre backed by his defining “A Song of Ice and Fire” series, which in turn inspired the juggernaut known as HBO’s “Game of Thrones.” Ask any jaded book reader, however, and you’ll never hear the end of it when it comes to Martin’s notorious struggle to finish his beloved franchise. One writer keeps his publishers very happy (and rich) multiple times a year, while the other has submitted nary a draft of his most anticipated follow-up in over 13 years — seriously, you can’t make this stuff up.

So, perhaps it was only a matter of time before the two colleagues crossed paths and sat down for an extended chat. That finally came to pass back in 2016 with a lengthy interview (via Entertainment Weekly) held near Martin’s longtime residence in New Mexico. Of the many wide-ranging topics they touched on, the idea of writer’s block came up near the end of their conversation … and King dropped some seriously sage advice for our patron saint of procrastination.

Dragon-sized problems demand dragon-sized solutions, and nobody in the literary industry could be better suited for the task of snapping George R.R. Martin out of his creative malaise than Stephen King, who certainly knows his way around quality TV shows. To celebrate the release of King’s new novel titled “End of Watch,” the two authors participated in a long-awaited discussion about pretty much whatever came to mind — from politics to gun control to, of course, the pressures of writing while staring down the barrel of one of the most public-facing deadlines ever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_PBqSPNTfg

At around the 50-minute mark of their hour-long conversation, King asked whether Martin had any questions he’d always wanted to pose, to which the latter responded with his typically deadpan sense of humor, “Yes, there is something I want to ask you: How the f*** do you write so many books so fast?” After recovering from their shared fits of laughter, King proceeded to give a thoughtful and insightful explanation of his typical writing process:

“The way that I work, I try to get out there and I try to get six pages a day […] When I’m working, I work every day — three, four hours. And I try to get those six pages and I try to get them fairly clean. So if the manuscript is, let’s say, 360 pages long, that’s basically two months work. It’s concentrated, but — that’s assuming that it goes well.”

In others words, here’s an inspiring lesson for all the prospective writers among us that’s as simple as it is effective: Just keep writing!

Of course, Stephen King’s famous interviewee simply had to respond in vintage George R.R. fashion. The author has made no secret of the fact that his writing process is comparatively more strenuous than that. In a previous blogpost, Martin once likened himself to a “gardener” who plants narrative seeds as he goes along, as opposed to an “architect” who plans every beat of the story from the beginning before following those blueprints to the letter. That inevitably means that there will be those bad days when he ends up in creative dead-ends and has to scrap several pages worth of manuscripts that no longer fit, or encounters the relatable problem of simply struggling to put words together at all.

So, when confronted with King’s words of wisdom, it should’ve surprised nobody that he’d counter with another incredulous question:

“And you do hit six pages a day? You don’t ever have a day where you sit down there and it’s like constipation? And you write a sentence and you hate the sentence? And you check your email and you wonder if you ever had any talent after all? And maybe you should’ve been a plumber [laughs] — don’t you have days like that?”

Acknowledging that life can always get in the way of the writing process, King nonetheless remained resolute that six pages a day ought to be the goal. Of course, that will be cold comfort to fans who’ve been waiting another eight years since this event for Martin to finish his next book, “The Winds of Winter” … but King had some amusingly choice words for them, too: “People yell at you and say, ‘We want the next book, we want the next book right away.’ They’re like babies.” Harsh? Maybe, but King’s point was that nobody could ever understand the pressure of delivering quality writing under such circumstances. Who knows if Martin will finally finish his career-defining work? One thing’s for certain, though: It’ll be on his own terms (and at his own pace), not ours.