Well, I suppose that just about qualifies me for a short break. After finishing my first book in about a month and a half back in November 2005 (woot!), I then took the next ten months to write the second book, though technically I took almost three months off for various employment reasons. Now, at least, I no longer have to wallow in the shame of having to say “It’s almost done,” which, if I had a crest, would be labeled in a fine Roman script across the bottom, guilded letters of Latin writ large: “Fere Est Perfectus.”
Nevertheless, just because I’m “finished” doesn’t mean I’m done. I still have the editing, which is a painful process because I never know what’s worth keeping and what needs to be stripped away like old paint until about a month after it’s been written. Which explains every single blog post I’ve ever put online. I also have a tiny…tiny scene I’m considering writing…not because it’s a necessary addition, but because I’m wondering if the obscure reference I leave in the very last line of the book will give readers the necessary clue to deduce the ending to one story thread that seems to be left hanging. If not, it makes readers mad to think I’ve cheated them of a resolution. Though thinking about it, I’d rather commit the sin of omission than to give too much away in a reckless narrative denouement.
The bizarre thing is, I was entirely unprepared for today. I woke up at approximately six in the AM, right arm asleep, drool leaking from my lips, having just emerged from a horrific dream in which I burned down my apartment by cooking for a bunch of guests, only to leave the gas stove burning whilst I cavorted over to a friend’s house to watch the telly. Everything I’d ever left in my apartment whooshed through my mind as I realized that for the moment, my life was slam-bang screwed. No more independent feature film. No more novel. No more screenplays. It’s funny. Of all my “possessions”, the ones I value the most are the ones that don’t really exist in physical form. The possibly thousand or more dollars of DVDs and CDs, my clothes, my camera, my cereal…I didn’t even consider them in my dream. Which makes me realize that what I truly hold dear in my daily grind of work is my writing and film editing–all electronically accomplished, all vaguely transient in their existence. What is written on the screen isn’t really there. It doesn’t actually exist. That’s the great illusion of our time, that what we see for much of our lives is tantamount to magic. This word, this period, this sentence. This blog. All imaginary. Even my decreased hits aren’t really there. Which somehow makes it all either more or less depressing, I’m not sure which.
But once these things make it past your cornea, past the blood-brain barrier that separates the thing from the thingness, this all becomes infinite in its existence. Moreover, it’s a copy of the original, yet isn’t stored exactly as a copy, but a reasonable facsimile thereof. You read, you comprehend, you store the vague memory of the thing, and it is carried along until discarded by the next image, the next visual that takes precedence in the neural binding. We don’t think about it, but the whole world is like this.
What it says to me is that I better back up my shite before my apartment burns down. Not even renter’s insurance is security for the imaginary words that exist only on a microdot. But yay for me, I finished! I’m happy and exhausted, and so very ready for bed. So tomorrow I begin again. Hopefully with better results. Because I always strive for that higher goal.
Perhaps “Fere Est Perfectus” is not a bad motto after all.