The Lengths People Go To In Order To Avoid Spoilers: This Guy Refused To Finish Writing The Books His Favorite TV Show Was Based On So He Could Be Surprised

People will go to extreme lengths to avoid spoilers. They’ll avoid friends. They’ll completely avoid social media. And one man neglected to do his one and only job for eight years.

Writer George R. R. Martin is a huge fan of the show Game of Thrones. He had just one problem: The show was based on the A Song of Ice and Fire book series that he was writing. “I really enjoyed the show,” Martin explained. “The cast. The acting. The cinematography. And let me tell you, there’s a huge difference between writing the sentence ‘There were lots of naked ladies’ and seeing it on screen. The only problem was that nothing ever surprised me.”

Martin just couldn’t enjoy the series as much as everyone else because he already knew every twist and turn from having read and reread every chapter of the existing books over and over in his lengthy, lengthy, lengthy, lengthy writing process. But then Martin had a brilliant idea: Don’t finish writing the book series so the last few seasons of the show would be a surprise.

It wasn’t easy for Martin, since writing those books was basically his only job. Still, for eight years, Martin found other things to do than his primary occupation. “The house has never been cleaner,” Martin said. “And my beard has never been neater.” It got pretty harried for a while, as he constantly had to avoid phone calls from the desperate showrunners wondering when the rest of the series would be ready, but for Martin, it all paid off.

“Wow, those last few seasons were exciting,” Martin stated. “I had no idea what was going on. The way Daenerys suddenly went evil—that was insane! And Bran won the Iron Throne! I never in a million years would have thought of that! Wow. Just wow.”

So with spoilers successfully avoided, is it back to work for Martin? “Yeah, I guess so,” he said. “The landlord has really been on me for not paying rent for eight years, so I guess I had better start working again. Hopefully, I can hack those things out in a few days.”

[Ed. note: The preceding article contained spoilers for Game of Thrones, a secular television show.]

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