02 December 1996
The third story will not end where I told it to. I had arranged a clean final paragraph, very grave, very balanced, almost certainly dead on arrival. The story has rejected it with admirable insolence.
It is about a woman keeping books for a failing theatre, which sounds dull until one remembers that every theatre is a factory for sanctioned lying. I thought the last movement would be forgiveness. It is not. Forgiveness, in this case, is merely tidying the room before the corpse has been examined.
What she wants is not mercy but evidence. That changes the final third. It means the quiet scene in the office must become an interrogation, and the harmless prop ledger must become an accusation. I am annoyed because this will require work. I am pleased because the story is right.
Publication has made me no wiser at the desk. If anything, it has made the desk more severe. Once there is a printed thing with one's name beside it, the next false sentence looks not merely false but professionally embarrassing.
Good. Let the story be difficult. Difficulty is at least a form of respect.