He's said this across multiple interviews. When he started writing, he said he had no idea where the story was going. He just wrote, and said he wanted to see where it was going.
I've read quite a few interviews from Martin and I've never had that feeling about him. He has said that he dreamed (or maybe day-dreamed) about a boy witnessing an execution and started to write from there. However before writing the first book he had a clear idea of what was going to happen. As he started to write, his story has grown and he realised he needed more books to tell the story properly, but there is no suggestion that he doesn't know exactly where the story is going to end up.
Its true that he is having problems delivering books on time. I think it is more to do with the fact that after the opening act, most stories have a more muted middle to set up another conclusion. He's found it difficult to make 4 and 5 interesting AND set up all the characters to where they need to be to tell 6 and 7 in the way he wants. Those books have too many characters (including too many new characters).
If you go back and read the books again it is amazing how much is foreshadowed in earlier books, suggesting that Martin knew exactly what he was doing.
In book 2, Dany sees a vision of a banquet involving a man with a wolves head, clearing showing the Red Wedding from book 3.
In book 1, Barristam Selmy is the only one who supports Ned in not wanting to assassinate Dany and is allowed to escape (If it was just for plot purposes he could have been killed to show how evil Joff was) Clearly Martin is planning his meet-up with Dany at the end of book 2.
In book 1, Ned sends Dondarrington to lead men against the Mountain. In book 2 it is clear that the Bloody Mummers are looking for Dondarrington but we still don't know who he is. It's only in book 3 that we we get the point of the Dondarrington storyline and its wider implications.
One of the things I loved about re-reading the books is the tournament in the middle of book 1. On the first reading when Martin list a whole series of endless of the combatants. When you re-read it, you know who everyone is and their relative strengths and weeknesses and it is really fun to see who beats who. There's so much attention to detail and rich background that I don't believe Martin is just winging it.
I got the impression that he had a general ending in mind, but he's having trouble getting there. My primary concern is the amount of clutter in his works that could be trimmed down. I often feel like I read an entire novel, and yet very little happened. The exception would be the first one, which was actually quite good. But then... everyone jut felt horrible irrelevant. Arya is my favorite character, but she hasn't done much. I counted, and she was kidnapped no less than five times. It felt like a convoluted excuse to move her around the map. Brianne is also interesting, but like Arya, all she's done is travel from one end of the map to the other, and she hasn't really advanced the plot.
Martin does have his strengths though. He writes brilliant characters, even if he doesn't always do much with them, and he's quite consistent with his existing lore. I just feel like the whole plot could have been told in three or four large books if he had cut out all the fluff, and they would have been better for it.
I got the impression that he had a general ending in mind, but he's having trouble getting there. My primary concern is the amount of clutter in his works that could be trimmed down. I often feel like I read an entire novel, and yet very little happened. The exception would be the first one, which was actually quite good. But then... everyone jut felt horrible irrelevant. Arya is my favorite character, but she hasn't done much. I counted, and she was kidnapped no less than five times. It felt like a convoluted excuse to move her around the map. Brianne is also interesting, but like Arya, all she's done is travel from one end of the map to the other, and she hasn't really advanced the plot.
Martin does have his strengths though. He writes brilliant characters, even if he doesn't always do much with them, and he's quite consistent with his existing lore. I just feel like the whole plot could have been told in three or four large books if he had cut out all the fluff, and they would have been better for it.
Yeah, that's all fair enough. I watched the first two seasons of GoT then went and read the books and so Arya seemed to spend a huge amount of time "on the road". Brienne's story is fairly tight in book 3, but very unfocused in book 4. The problem for Arya is that she is used to set up the story for other characters in the book (Dondarrington and the Hound especially) without advancing her own development, which is a shame as she's a great character in her own right.
Well, to be fair, people act like George RR Martin invented many things. . .
Do not get me wrong, I do like the novels, as a whole, but they are largely inspired by Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Water Margin, two great classics of Chinese literature. In short, he is not as surprising and original as some people make him out to be.
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