Rain
2 July 2007
A couple of months ago, a neighbour who keeps horses said to Greg:
'You know it hasn't rained for 37 days.'
I suppose he must have looked dubious because our friend quickly qualified his answer:
'On my field.'
Well, we thought, that's quite site specific. But, of course, it's something our neighbour pays attention to every day - the pasture, the feed, the iron-hard hoofprints in the baked mud by the gate, the condition of the horses' coats.
Since then, the weather has turned and it now seems round our way that it has been raining for at least 40 days and 40 nights. Our neighbour has had to rent a higher field with a substantial slope to give his horses some reasonably dry turf.
But I have seen almost nothing of these changes in the weather. Because there is something remorseless and - for me - all-consuming about the end of a writing project. I have the whole novel - Sepulchre - in my head. And yet, if a good idea strikes me for a tweak to the text, I can't remember in which chapter exactly it occurs.
The odd thing is - and I am not sure that this is the case for all fiction writers - when I get to this stage, it is as if all the events of the story were happening simultaneously, jostling for attention.
And that is why, as author, you have to give your work over to an editor at last.
But, like my neighbour's eye on the weather, I will still have my characters in my mind. They are just there. They are what I think about. They occupy me.
Ils m'occupent et je m'occupe d'eux.
Until I publish, that is. Then, it's yours - not mine any longer at all.
I think that the doors to the Sepulchre are ajar.
