With the looming threat of the show surpassing the books, George R.R. Martin seems to be cracking down on his writing of The Winds of Winter, devoting all his upcoming writing time to finishing the book. Now we're finding out he won't be working on an episode for season six.

In an interview with Access Hollywood, George R.R. Martin confirmed he will not write an episode for Game of Thrones' sixth season. Prior to this, Martin traditionally always wrote one episode for each season of the show, in the past having penned the episodes "The Pointy End," ""Blackwater," "The Bear and the Maiden Fair" and "The Lion and the Rose."

However, when asked if he would continue this trend for season six, Martin said he's currently writing The Winds of Winter and that's all he'll be writing for now. He said that he has a lot of pages left to write, but that he also has a lot of pages written. He later confirmed on his Live Journal that writing an episode for the show would take roughly a month of work, and he can't afford losing that much writing time.

For fans, seeing Martin really cracking down here is great news. He also wrote on his Live Journal that he would not be attending Comic-Con or the World Fantasy Convention this year, as he wanted to focus on his writing. He did say though that The Winds of Winter isn't the only thing he's working on, also editing a new Wild Cards book and developing three TV concepts with HBO among a few other projects.

We previously reported that the Game of Thrones TV series will begin spoiling the books, and so Martin is experiencing more and more pressure to get the final book out before the show's last season. But although the author appears to be doing as much as he can to finish the book as soon as possible, he said that at the end of the day he tries not to worry about things like that, just focusing on writing the scene he has to write on any given day.

Game of Thrones returns for its fifth season on April 12.

image courtesy of Roger Wong/INFphoto.com