there is separation that exists in all writing. the writer knows it is there. tries to ignore. pretend it doesn’t exist never existed shouldn’t exist must not exist does not deserve to exist but nevertheless persists in its existence. it hangs there. on the edge. like a small snag of fingernail that catches on a jumper as you pull it on and with a sudden sharp pain makes you aware.
a writer sets out when writing a piece in a belief a commitment a fallacy that what they imagine to be what they can imagine to be will come to be. will exist. once they have put pen to paper. drafted. edited. rewritten. checked. line-edited. drafted again. but it is not there. the thing they imagined does not exist. their writing cannot not create it. even if they were to train a million apes brought up on shakespeare how to type and gave them their work to work on for a million years the problem wouldn’t be solved. the final draft would exist but be lacking. would have a distance between the imagined and the reality of the word.
this distance is what writers have to live with. each time they put pen to page. make their plans. start to write. they know they will not achieve the story they set out to do. that there will be a piece lacking. a slither where their skill was just not enough. but they lie to themselves that this time it will be different this time they will be better and sometimes they are and this time they will put their all to it and pull each and every imaginative writing sinew to the creation of their work. but they know they tell themselves a lie. that it is a lie to get them started. else they would never begin or go mad during the writing process.
that is why all writers are great liars. they tell themselves most fundamental untruth to themselves and their reader. they see this is what i had planned this is what i intended now buy my perfect book. but we know this to be untrue. and the reader and writer join in with this lie. form a bond in untruth. until the next time.
SLAMFitzsimons 