I\u2019d like to know when things stop. The moment when something is done. I\u2019m struggling to explain this but it\u2019s on my mind a lot and I want to try. Let me have a go with an example.<\/p>\n
If you write a book then at some point the manuscript is with the publisher and you\u2019re done. You don\u2019t know which point that is, though, or at least you don\u2019t at the time because there\u2019s always a chance you\u2019ll have to do something more to it before it finally comes out.<\/p>\n
Maybe publication is the moment. I\u2019ve commissioned writers who wouldn\u2019t respond to any request after they\u2019d been paid and it happened enough that now I tell each new editor who hires me that I ain\u2019t done until the piece is online or on the newsstand. Don\u2019t wait to pay me, but I\u2019m not leaving until we both know you don\u2019t need me any more.<\/p>\n
Except a piece of mine was published this week and I think it\u2019s a good sample for another thing I\u2019m pitching for. So as soon as it was out, I was pointing people to my new article.<\/p>\n
Perhaps what I\u2019m wondering is when new becomes old.<\/p>\n
For instance, someone like Dar Williams<\/a> releases a new album and at some point it stops being the new one. Long before her next is announced, you stop saying Emerald<\/a> is new, you start calling it her latest. Then some day, somehow, you and I imagine she just thinks of it as one of her many releases.<\/p>\n It\u2019s still a superb album but the heat of creation is over for her and the energy of discovering each track is over for me. I\u2019m picking on her album because I like it so, because I\u2019m listening to it again but also because I just went to check and it came out in 2015. What have I done since 2015?<\/p>\n Whether it\u2019s an album or it\u2019s the book she\u2019s written since, there is still this furnace when everything is being made and anything can change and every pixel of it all is in your head. And then all of it is encased in the plastic of a shiny disc or the digits of a digital download, and it\u2019s over. Except the singing of your song or the reading of your book until then that\u2019s over too.<\/p>\n There must be a day, there must be a moment, when this happens.<\/p>\n In thinking about saying all this to you, wondering what you thought, I had the flippant idea that maybe the only absolute definite end to anything is death. But no, apparently not.<\/p>\n As ever, I don\u2019t expect you or anyone to remember me past the end of this sentence but even when I die, my books will survive. I remember thinking this of the very first one, how BFI Television Classics: The Beiderbecke Affair<\/a> will outlive me. At the very least, if some other author ever wants to write about Beiderbecke, their first job is prove to a publisher why their book is needed when someone has already covered the topic.<\/p>\n My name will at most live on in a muttered curse by that future author but the book itself will persist. Who knows, one day it might even start earning back the advance I got.<\/p>\n I framed the cover of that book and it\u2019s on my wall with the date racing further into the past every second. It was published in 2012 and I think my second book would\u2019ve been 2013 so clearly by then, Beiderbecke was no longer either new or my latest. But there is a day, an hour, an instant when it ceased to be either and I wish I knew when.<\/p>\n I wish I could work it out but I also wish I could\u2019ve been conscious of the moment as it happened.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019d like to know when things stop. The moment when something is done. I\u2019m struggling to explain this but it\u2019s … Continue reading