This book gets written one way or the other™

The defiance, and the honest completion standing right under it. Three hiding places, named: capital, paycheck, ethos. You can hide behind your money, behind your salary, behind a stated set of values you invoke to explain why you can't help; and the sharpest of the three is the last one, ethos as a shield, "my ethos won't let me," values worn as a costume to sit behind. This house wears its ethos the other way, as the ground it stands on in the open, the pants the joke wears; the thing that explains why it can't stop, never why it won't start. And the line that answers all three: this book gets written one way or the other. The writing was never up for a vote. Funding would spread it, not permit it; a co-laborer would carry the other end of the rope, not grant the right to lift. So the defiance and the ask stand together, both true in one breath: it gets written broke if it has to, and the builder still deserves the hand that makes it reach (fit, not desire; we're just trying to be found). Needing backing was never a retreat from the resolve; the resolve is exactly what makes the backing worth giving. Hide behind whatever you like; the book gets written anyway, because an argument kept going outlives the arguer. (His coin; machine's read, refine to his.)