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Told you so
16 September 2005
...Which I did, I told you I would. Not that the story is finished yet (I must by now have introduced you to Brenchley’s First Law of Everything, which is that Everything Takes Longer), but I’ve written near enough three thousand words today, and barring interruptions or other calamity, I really ought to finish it tomorrow. That’s ‘finish’ in the sense of ‘getting the first draft to the end thereof,’ of course. While I love this endgame, the final sprint to the line and the sense of achievement after, there is also a great comfort in the certain knowledge that no work is truly finished, it’s only ever abandoned. I could go on fiddling forever; these days, I do go on fiddling for as long as I’m allowed. Used not to be so: partly the impatience of youth (he sighed, romantically), wanting always to be throwing this one out into the world and getting on with the next; partly the technological change that has overcome us. I’ve been doing this job so long, I started on typewriters, where rewrites were a very literal and physical pain, because everything had to be typed again, and again, and again. I grew up in a world where change was difficult, time-consuming, costly; now it’s cheap and easy. Text has gone from solid to liquid, and that’s not just in a reproductive sense, getting the words down; it’s in our heads too, a major change in the relationship between the artist and the work. That’s fascinating, and I can watch it happening inside my own head.
Anyway, tired now. All worded out. Going to bed, with small loud but thankfully incomprehensible cat. I suppose something must happen inside her head too, but I’ve never figured it out yet.
© Chaz Brenchley 2005
Reproduced here by permission of Chaz Brenchley, who asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of this work.