George R.R. Martin is going to stop blogging so he can focus on work

It’s a sad day for LiveJournal’s hundred remaining users as one of the site’s top bloggers, George R.R. Martin, has announced he’s stepping back.

Martin, best known for creating the novel series A Song of Ice and Fire, which HBO adapted into Game of Thrones, said he’s too inundated with projects at the moment to even think of blogging. This doesn’t mean the author is stepping away from LiveJournal entirely, like the rest of the world did in 2013, but his blogging will be far less frequent. Specifically, Martin is going to stop blogging until he can “get these monkeys off my back.”

“In the near future, you’ll likely see fewer posts here,” Martin wrote. “And some of those will be by my minions. I’ll return eventually. Just don’t know when. See ya later, alligators.”

Martin’s blogs have always been a great source of insight into the mind of someone who chooses to use LiveJournal when Medium exists, but this should be taken as good news! It means that Martin may finally have enough time to finish working on his sixth book in the Song of Ice and Fire series, The Winds of Winter. Well, in due time. Martin previously said he’s dedicating all of his concentration to Fire & Blood, the two-volume encyclopedia for the Ice and Fire canon.

“The first volume should be completed soon,” Martin wrote. “The second is hardly begun. Most of Fire & Blood consists of the ‘sidebars’ I originally wrote for The World of Ice and Fire. Abridged versions of some of those pieces appeared as ‘The Princess and the Queen,’ ‘The Rogue Prince,’ and ‘The Sons of the Dragon,’ but these are the full versions, together with some chapters that have never appeared anywhere.”

Still, this is an exciting development! It’s been seven years since A Dance with Dragons was released, and less time spent blogging means more time focused on his bigger projects. Blogging does take up a lot of time, and no one’s ever really thankful for the effort you put into choosing the right emoji to convey how you’re feeling.

I get you, George. Enjoy your time off the internet and blogging! We should all be so lucky.