“I understood that living itself had a deadline – like the book I’d been working on. How sheepish I would feel if I couldn’t finish it. I had promised it to myself and to my friends. Though I wouldn’t say this out loud, I had promised it to the world. All writers privately think this way.” Anatole Broyard

‘allo!
I’ve been intending to post things-other-than-exchange-letters here for a while nao, especially since that horrid person is slowly killing the Blue Bird (Twitter), but I haven’t, because I’m not sure what to say.

Then, in my ‘Write Now’ writing group today-as-I-write-this, I read something that DID give me something to say.

So here it is.

My complicated friend and I met through fandom – Witchblade (the live-action tv show), in this case. So perhaps it is not altogether a surprise that they came to like one of my more fandom-y original-fic Universes – a Universe with its beginnings as a ‘Beauty and the Beast’ tale.

Over the years and the drama and the betrayals, they remained in support of it – demands to read it, finished, even.

One of their most reasonable.

But life went on and choices were made, and they died before I could finish it.

The fact the work will now be dedicated to them does not change the fact that they did not get to read it in their lifetime.

And it reminds me how short life can be.

How we never really know from day to day what will happen.

What can happen.

Until it does and we are left with the aftermath.

With regrets for things undone.

Which can now never be done ‘in time.

Life itself has a deadline, as the quote says, and one we can never know  when, exactly, it is. (Or at least not yet, and even then, if we could – would we?)

It makes me think, it does. About things done and undone and left for a tomorrow that may never come.

Does it make you think too?

Chirp, chirp!
Birdy