It looks like the WGA strike has claimed its most significant victim yet. Nikki Finke, the uber-blogger who has consistently stitched together the most complete picture of the WGA/AMPTP battle available anywhere, thus acting as an informational lifeline for both looky-loos like you and actual striking writers, is taking a week off. In a post timestamped 03:36AM PST, Nikki writes:

I’m exhausted. I’m not feeling well. I’m overwhelmed. I need a week away from the emails and the comments and the phone calls and the rumors. Most of all, I just need to rest since I’ve been going, going, going, since the strike started. I look forward to coming back on January 22nd and finding it settled (?).

I have to say, this comes as a surprise.

Everyone needs to take a personal week now and then I suppose, but Nikki has had such an aggressive presence throughout the whole of the strike that’s it’s hard to imagine her actually putting her pencil down (nevermind her phone) for a full seven days. And considering that Sundance starts on Thursday, and many are expecting an extremely aggressive, strike-fueled buying climate through the festival’s first weekend, this seems like an odd time for a warrior like Nikki to throw her hands up.

And it’s possible that she won’t actually go through with it. According to my feed reader, Nikki announced a temporary hiatus on Saturday, in a post that no longer exists. Perhaps the 3Am missive excerpted above was just a late-night exhale, and Nikki will be back at the keys by West Coast business hours. But if she’s not, there’s going to be a lot of out of work writers suddenly out of a confidante.