Bloody real life

Some of the greatest artists will tell you that a movie, painting, novel, script or any other creative endeavour is never finished, just abandoned.

What they mean by that is that there’s a publication or release date (if you’re lucky), so whereas you could keep making tweaks and changes until the end of time, constantly chasing perfection, at some point you have to hand it over as it is to someone (a distributor or publisher, etc) to get it in front of an audience as it is.

If you worked on it another few days or six months, it might be better. But because we as human beings can never reach perfection (and it’s so subjective in art anyway), when we got there we might well need just another few hours, another few days, and we’d be perfectly happy with it.

That point came for me in early 2019 when I clicked the final button to upload Falling to the various sales platforms after months of design, typesetting, art direction and marketing.

I resolved at the time that was it. Falling was finished and I’d never revisit it or rework it. People would read it in time for the date of October 2019 when – in the world of the book – the Sydney Harbour Bridge collapses, ultimately prompting the highest profile instance of paranormal phenomena in history.

And I might have stuck to that resolution if it suddenly wasn’t July 2020, I can count the number of people who’ve read Falling on one hand and the world hadn’t got batshit crazy in the ensuing period. I might have left well enough alone, but now it’s like there are two mosquitoes crawling around on me where I can’t reach, driving me mad to scratch. Those mosquitoes are the knowledge that even though Falling is set between 2019 and 2037, there’s mention of the most devastating bushfires in a generation and the small matter of a global pandemic and the economic collapse it’s precipitated.

I never intended Falling to be political or global. World and local events are mentioned for context and to ground you about where you are in history, and considering I started writing the book in 1991 and have reworked it from top to bottom three times it’s taken quite a lot of retconning.

At various times throughout the rewriting I’ve included reference to the Sydney Harbour Tunnel (opened a year after I started and quite pivotal considering the story deals with the road and rail thoroughfare above it), the September 11 terrorist attacks and I think there’s even a mention of Y2K in there somewhere.

As anchors to a sense of history none of that stuff affects the plot directly, so you can pick and choose what newsworthy or impactful events you include in a novel. But the thing about the apocalyptic bushfires that scoured the east coast of Australia over the 2020 new years period or COVID-19 is that they’ll be affecting every story that’s set right now. And because we’re still in COVID-19’s grip as I write these words, we have no idea what will happen.

Will the economy recover in time to depict the society I describe in ensuing years (including the amazing technologies that emerge)? Will humanity even survive to investigate ghosts and hauntings, or will we be too concerned with fighting off bat soup-eating zombie hordes?

In Falling‘s world, the bridge came down about nine months ago and it’s in the middle of being constructed right now. But in a world where every industry from construction to entertainment has either ground to a halt or is still practising social distancing, a civil project of such a scale would probably be on hold.

All of which means every reference to the year the new bridge was completed, the number of years since it’s been operating or any other passing reference to 2019 or 2020 is now hopelessly out of date. It’s a bit like the way every sci-fi story set in the 21st century that was written prior to the digital age is missing the existence of the internet and how transformative it’s been to human life.

So it’s not going to be an exhaustive rewrite, but I can’t let it go. I think I’ve decided to go through Falling again and move everything forward another handful of years. Possibly more, owing to the amount of time it’s taking me to convince anyone to read it or for people to buy it (link to last week). After that, all that’s left to do is hope we bring this health crisi under control in time for the ensuing narrative to make sense.

If not and we’re reduced to fighting over food scraps in deserted streets with sticks and rocks, the internet will be a memory and nobody will be too concerned with buying ebooks anyway.

Which reminds me – you can buy Falling in print form! Just head to https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07PKP4PMH