Having written

Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker once said that she hated writing but she liked having written. I'm the opposite. I love writing, especially re-writing. But having written is always a letdown. First, you lost the present-tense intensity of day-to-day work, polishing a manuscript. Then the immediate rewards are almost totally solipsistic. You get no strokes at the moment you most would like to have them. By the time strokes come, if they come at all, you're out of the zone and someone else than the creator of the work. It's like you have great personal pleasure and intensity working, you finish, and you find yourself in a vacuum. No wonder writers become serial monogamists.

But I don't even get to do that any more. This is the end of the trajectory The whole cloth has been folded and put away. It's a whole new ball game.

It's going to take me a while to get used to it.