Tristram says specifically that there is no predictable end to his history of himself; he will simply keep writing until he dies. One reason is that as he writes, he is constantly reminded of other related matters that he ought to tell about. This is the "Psychology of the train of ideas," or stream-of-consciousness, which is the common property everyone; one thing reminds him of another, and that reminds him of something else, and so on. (This stream-of-consciousness is not to be confused with the Associationism mentioned earlier, John Locke's name for what he considered a kind of madness.)
All of these related ideas are legitimate material for a complete history of an individual, the kind he intends to write. Needless to say, the "story" seems to suffer, but we notice that he always comes around to the point sooner or later. It seems that the writer is deliberately frustrating us, and perhaps he is. But the picture of the writer himself gets clearer and clearer in the meantime, and that is apparently just as important to him.
The author reminds us of what he is doing in case we don't get the point. Theoretically, he is describing his birth, but after six weeks of writing he is still far from it. The story is kept from advancing not only by such things as the marriage articles and Mrs. Shandy's insistence on the midwife, but also by Tristram's presentation of the man holding the pen: he plans so many books, he has other stories to tell, he knows a girl named Jenny, he tells the reader that a Platonic relationship is possible between himself and Jenny, and so on. He gives specific dates (for example, he is writing Book 1 on March 9, 1759) that are real only for himself; all the other characters are dead by then.
