George R.R. Martin's long‑delayed fantasy novel The Winds of Winter may owe its troubled progress to a decision he made more than two decades ago, according to a resurfaced interview in which the author admitted he refuses to use formal outlines and instead lets stories grow as he writes them.
Speaking at the US Library of Congress' National Book Festival in 2005, the A Song of Ice and Fire creator said he 'never wrote outlines' for his books and suspected he 'might be faster' if he did.
