If There’s an Upshot to the Coronavirus, George R.R. Martin May Finally Finish The Winds of Winter

It’s getting real! Photo: Jon Kopaloff/FilmMagic

For many of us, the coronavirus quarantine has not been as productive as we might have originally envisioned: Who can get any work done when there are hands to wash, TV shows to watch, and symptoms to Google? We can’t all be Sir Isaac Newton! But at least one person seems to have the fortitude to put the crisis out of his mind and focus purely on the task in front of him: George R.R. Martin, who writes on his blog that he is spending his mandatory period of social distancing making good progress on the forthcoming Winds of Winter, which fans have been waiting for since Barack Obama’s first term in office. “Truth be told, I am spending more time in Westeros than in the real world, writing every day,” Martin says. “Things are pretty grim in the Seven Kingdoms… but maybe not as grim as they may become here.” Though the 71-year-old author is in a high-risk demographic for the illness, he reassures fans that he is taking all the right precautions for the sake of himself and others. “I am off by myself in a remote isolated location, attended by one of my staff, and I’m not going in to town or seeing anyone,” Martin writes. Regular readers may recall that we’ve been down this road before, but even if the book continues to not come out, at least we can take solace in the fact that Martin is spending his time more wisely than Vanessa Hudgens.