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desperanceWords, thoughts: they are as slippery as olive oil, and as fugitive.
I had this lovely literary figure last night, that I wrote into the book - and then hesitated, because it was based on a falsehood. Which the character would likely have believed, but the intelligent reader would not; and you always hesitate before putting in a line which you know a reader will trip over, however appropriate and measured and beautiful it may be in situ.
So I hesitated, and wrote it at the bottom of the page, out of place, to come back to in the morning. Which is now. And I have come back, firm of purpose, it shall go in: and now I can't quite remember how the figure would have worked, what it was meant to express. Damn.
The line?
The dead will always outnumber the living.
It's not true, we know that now - but they didn't necessarily know it in mediaeval dynastic China, and she's not the kind of girl to sit down and figure it out, if it's swelling in her mind like an eternal truth.
But. That's no bloody use, if I can't remember what I was going to do with it...
I had this lovely literary figure last night, that I wrote into the book - and then hesitated, because it was based on a falsehood. Which the character would likely have believed, but the intelligent reader would not; and you always hesitate before putting in a line which you know a reader will trip over, however appropriate and measured and beautiful it may be in situ.
So I hesitated, and wrote it at the bottom of the page, out of place, to come back to in the morning. Which is now. And I have come back, firm of purpose, it shall go in: and now I can't quite remember how the figure would have worked, what it was meant to express. Damn.
The line?
The dead will always outnumber the living.
It's not true, we know that now - but they didn't necessarily know it in mediaeval dynastic China, and she's not the kind of girl to sit down and figure it out, if it's swelling in her mind like an eternal truth.
But. That's no bloody use, if I can't remember what I was going to do with it...