I Can't Possibly Be Wrong All the Time

 

Night gathers, and now my watch begins…

But not quite. Night is gathering, possibly the Long Night (for Westeros) but we still have a month to go until Season Seven finally starts up. We’re kind of still in the Long Afternoon.

The wait in-between the end of Season Six and the premiere of Season Seven (just over the horizon… I can almost see it) has been very long indeed.

Since I started blogging in 2013, one of my blogging target goals centered on putting out regular content relating to Game of Thrones. I wouldn’t blog about the show while any individual season was airing – because during the season I’d be too busy watching the show, listening to podcasts, reading people’s recaps and reactions, and emailing my favorite podcasters. So many long emails.

But once the show’s finale had aired, I’d ease into publishing something every two weeks for the remainder of the year, and then double my output when the new year rolled in – cranking out weekly Game of Thrones posts until the new season started and I could relax and just watch.

Usually this would work out to around 12 articles in the immediate post-season, and 12 posts in the lead-up to the new season.

With the show airing later than usual this year, coming back around mid-July instead of early April, I had to sustain my weekly writing schedule for three additional months.

This has come close to breaking me.

My posts aren’t short or quick to crank out, so I try to write as much as I can, when I have a block of free time and the muse is available or whatever.

With a month remaining until the show, I’m all set in regards to blog posts. Everything’s written for the rest of June and the two weeks we’ll have in July. (Okay, I still have to schedule the July posts and there will be editing passes right up to the minute something gets published, but basically everything’s written.) I’m looking forward to being able to take my break.

But it’s going to be a long break.

Once Season Seven concludes at the end of September, if I were to continue to follow my usual blogging pattern for the show I’d be obligated to write six posts for the remainder of 2017, and would possibly be writing 52 weekly posts in 2018.

Season Eight, the final season, might not come back until late 2018, or early 2019.

I’ve decided that I’m not going to commit to any kind of regular schedule for future Game of Thrones posts.

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At the moment, I have no Game of Thrones topics to flesh out, no character defenses I’m burning to write about, nothing on my to-do list. I assume that if the spirit moves me then I’ll write, but anything Westeros-related that I publish will be few and far between.

I wanted to give regular readers who followed me originally for Game of Thrones content the heads up. I won’t be going away, just easing up on this one particular source of entertainment.

Thanks everyone who enjoys my posts, who reads and leaves comments. I’ve made some nice friends thanks to my writing about the show (or at least by writing amusing captions for images from the show) and I’ve gotten a modest amount of recognition. I’m very grateful for both of those things.

If anyone is going to Con of Thrones, the Game of Thrones convention happening at the end of June in Nashville, Tennessee, you will have the opportunity to hear me on a panel about the Night’s Watch. (That panel will be happening Sunday, at 10 a.m.) I was fortunate to be invited as a panelist, entirely due to my corpus of work about the show. (I’m not kidding. The convention’s programming team solicited for panel suggestions and presentations, and I sent them nine of my blog posts. I think I was rewarded for enthusiasm, rather than for scholastic merit.)

So if you’re at the convention, please swing by and introduce yourself. (Or not. I’m not the boss of you.)

It’ll be strange when the television series ends. Of course, it’s practically guaranteed that A Dream of Spring, allegedly the final book in A Song of Ice and Fire, won’t be out before Season Eight. I’ll be looking forward to reading the conclusion of the series, and I’m fine if GRRM takes his time polishing the capstone to this great work.

And we’ll have more Westeros-related content on our TVs going forward. HBO is brainstorming some spin-offs, so I am looking forward to that. I am sure I’ll be able to write a few posts about whatever series they put out. But it won’t be with the same volume that I’ve achieved in the past.

Like Jon Snow’s watch, my blogging (about the show) is nearly at an end.

But not quite yet. Ahead I have posts scheduled (or soon to be scheduled) to take us through mid-July. Posts on fools, magic, magical walls, and for some reason a long post on copper and iron alloys. Hopefully that last one will make sense when it’s read.

Everyone take care and be safe. And I hope we all enjoy Season Seven of Game of Thrones.

Thank you again.

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(Comments are always welcome. Super welcome! But if you want to talk spoilery Game of Thrones talk with me (also welcome) I’d invite you to visit my Safe Spoilers page on my backup blog. That way my non-book-reading friends won’t be shocked with foreknowledge.)

Images from HBO’s Game of Thrones (obviously.)

I make no claim to the images, but some claims to the text. So there.

If you are new here, and wondered about my earlier postings about the show, I have all of my Game of Thrones related articles on my handy-dandy Game of Thrones page should you want to read more but don’t want to navigate around my site.

© Patrick Sponaugle 2017 Some Rights Reserved