Flash Fiction DST

The Equation of Time **93 words

Moonlit fog roiled silently 'round the granite marker. The name furrowed on its face was unimportant. 'Twas the dates beneath that mattered. A strange custom had developed in this region and with innumerable participants, the people ripped Time from one chronology and reinserted it into the fabric of the universe later. The body six feet below the surface had ceased living in another season when Fate had slated a painful demise to begin, a finale unfinished because their ritual had interrupted. But the corpse was about to regain that hour. 

Three, two, one.... 

Controlling Time

Finally.

Don’t know if our ISP had a few too many yesterday, or what, but it fell down in the gutter. Probably barfed on its own shoes and got picked up on a drunk and disorderly. A night spent in the drunk tank hasn’t sobered it up any that I’ve noticed. Finding someplace unaffected has been a challenge.

But here I am. To tell you how I keep track of the time line(s) in my stories. Yeah. That sound you hear? That’s my local critique group laughing me off the internet. It is possible I’ve had some challenges on that front. The urban fantasies, especially, suffered a few temporal challenges . . .They may still. I mean, there are plenty of ways to increase tension in a story. Compressing the time during which the world must be saved, the ring tossed into an inconvenient volcano, or the murderer caught is an easy way for a writer to get a story screaming along.

Not all that effecting, however, if you’re writing something other than a heart-pounding thriller-y type story. Someone associated with your story, somewhere, had better be wearing a watch and counting the days on the calendar. I submit you’ll be happier if that someone is you and not your editor. Or worse. Your readers.

In an attempt to take my own advice, (stop rolling your eyes, your face will stick that way) I’ve started mapping out a rough timeline at the same time I try to map out the turning points of my story. It looks something like this:

Open (1st 10th of book)	1st Twist (1/4 through)	Midpoint	Climax (black moment)	Resolution
Hero starts here	No one saw this coming!	This is total surprise, too	Uh oh. Very bad, no good day	Hey. Not so bad, after all
June 5, 4pm	June 7, all day	June 15, (this date is immovable because plot point!)	June 20, 2AM	June 20, 6PM

No. They don’t really look like this. The 5 points I track usually have lots more detail than this – info for me about where characters start, notes about WHEN in the timeline each character enters the story. In truth, none of it fits in a neat table. I usually end up with pages. One for each twist point. I do try to keep my time line loose so there’s room to adjust as surprises crop up in the story, but usually, I find there is one point in time somewhere in the story that determines how the timing of all the other scenes falls out. It’s rarely at the beginning of my stories. Suppose in the example above the midpoint twist is the hero succeeding in convicting a killer, but it turns out nothing like he expects because a death sentence is handed down and the hero subsequently discovers he convicted the wrong person. Worse, back at the first twist point, he’d gotten the news that the cancer he’d thought cured three years ago is back. With a vengeance. The rest of the timeline is driven by his need to right the wrong he committed before he dies.

It’s not a perfect system, but it is better than some of the scenes I wrote for the urban fantasies where the only way my heroine could have done everything I had her doing in the timeframe I had her doing them – would have been if Star Trek were real and teleportation was a thing. New market. Scifi urban fantasy.

Perils of the Writer: The Passage of Time

Some time ago, I read a work-in-progress for critique which had some interesting problems with passage of time.  It would spend a few chapters focusing on the minutiae of a couple days, and then skim a few years, and then drop in on a random day or two over the course of those skimmed years.  However, those drop-in days were not particularly revelatory or relevant.  The end result was making those passing years feel like a slog.

Now, sometimes years have to pass in the story.  You set some stuff up in a character's youth, and then jump ahead to when those pay off.  But sometimes it's best to just skip those years cleanly, and assume your reader is smart enough to catch up.

Personally, I tend to write relatively fast paced.  The Thorn of Dentonhill's story covers about four days' worth of time. A Murder of Mages is three days.  The sequels to both, currently in draft stage, also cover about three or four days.  For me, this is a way to keep the springs coiled tight.  There's little chance to breathe and regroup.

Now, with the draft of Banshee, I built into the worldbuilding a bit of a challenge, as far as this goes.  Specifically, the way the FTL travel works, going from one star to another may be blazing fast in interstellar terms, but still take a bit of time.  The two weeks of routine as the ship goes from Point A to Point B isn't particularly dramatically interesting, but it needs to be addressed.

For me, moments like that are best done with the literary equivalent of a montage. Establish that routine with quick description, and move on to the ripe circumstances.  If it doesn't drive forward, cut it out.

Of course, the question is if what I'm doing on Banshee works. Time will tell.

Passing Time in 500 Pages

Ever get to the end of a book and feel breathless? Maybe even a little in awe of all that happened in 500 pages? Ever wander to the kitchen after finishing said book and realize everything happened in 3 days? Suddenly all the awesome adventures seem highly....suspect? Improbable? Somehow less satisfying?

I've been guilty of not paying attention to the passage of time when I write.

If aging my protagonist isn't pivotal to the plot, it's too easy to forget that time needs to pass off the page for certain motivations, emotions, and conflicts to realistically develop. And for learning to happen. And for healing to occur. I have one CP that lives to call me on Time Fails, and I absolutely deserve the ribbing that comes along with them.

"One does not find the obscure ancient spell hidden among stacks of books in three minutes.

Not even with Google."

Incorporating the passage of time into a story isn't hard, but it is necessary. Fortunately, alerting the reader to the passage of time can easily be done in an early editing round. Figuring out where to add off-page time is driven by logic. You know, things like:

• Maybe recovering from a spear in the shoulder ought to require two-to-three weeks instead of an overnight. 
• Maybe hiking across the desert ought to take three months instead of three days. 
• Maybe enlisting the aid of the assorted underground guilds takes years to negotiate not one pint at the local pub. 

Yep, logical things. By the time you add it all up, your protagonist has been working toward her goals for months if not years.

What do you do if you need to jump decades? How about generations? Dunno. Since I don't write sweeping epics, my stories don't span hundreds of years. I'm dealing with a handful of years at most. Many of my plots are quest or test driven, so the passage of time is deliberately limited. I like my stories to have a sense of urgency pushing the characters into situations and forcing questionable decisions. To do that, I employ the "If X isn't done by Y, then Z will happen" aka: The Call & The Consequence.

But how, oh how do I let the reader know that "stuff has happened for a specific time off the page"? Simple sentences. Usually just one line. Sometimes at the opening of a scene. Sometimes buried in the scene, particularly if the actions happening off page are repetitious.

Here are a few of my favorite Passage of Time statements:

• "After weeks of ..."
• "Hours became days that became months..."
• "And the ritual repeated for years."
• "Secondary Character had more grey/wrinkles/blubber/children since last they'd met..."

There you have it, dear reader, how to Pass Time in your novel. Do you have favorite (or least favorite) Passage of Time statements? Do share!


Image Source: http://fineartamerica.com/featured/vintage-antique-typewriter--the-passage-of-time-kathy-fornal.html

Time in a Novel: What Should Your Scale Be?

Tis the season to be gearing up for the RT Convention! This is just one of the fun reader parties I'm participating in.
So, our Bordello Topic of the Week is 3 Hours, 3 Days, or 300 Years: How Do You Choose & Use The Passage of Time?

As always, that "choose" word amuses me. I like it though. I envision myself gazing into a fire thoughtfully, perhaps wearing a cardigan with leather patches on the elbows and with a notepad on the table beside me, next to the snifter of brandy. I frown as I contemplate the timeline of the novel I'm working up, envisioning the sweep of the story, how many days or years it should take to play out and.... Who am I kidding?

This is so not me.

So far, every single time I thought I was going for a long timescale, it hasn't happened. For example, The on-screen events of the three Twelve Kingdoms books (so far) take place over the course of just over a year. A jam-packed year, for sure. When I proposed the books? I envisioned them being something like ten years maybe. Now I'm adding two more books to the series and I might make it another year into the arc. We'll see. But again - who am I kidding?

I'm a fine-scale writer. Probably because I'm a character-driven writer and I love to focus in on detailed conversations and slow-burn epiphanies. I love to have that stuff on the page and to linger over it. Because that's the trade-off - if you want a larger time-scale, more stuff has to happen off-screen. It's a necessary sacrifice. I recently read a book that I loved, loved, loved - and yet, a number of events happened off-screen that I felt cheated by missing. I *wanted* to live those moments. In that case, I think the author could have made the choice to include some and I'm not sure why she didn't.

In other cases, it's not so much of a sacrifice to lose the boring, daily stuff. Much as I love Jacqueline Carey, she once dragged me through innumerable pages of a long, excruciating journey through monsoon rains. Yes, she made me live the misery and it's obviously stamped indelibly into my brain. But... really, Jacqueline?

I suppose that timescale of the story is ultimately a tradeoff between velocity of the plot and believable character development. In romance, in particular, the worst transgression of this kind is the "insta-love." In fantasy... could be the too-easily resolved defeat of the hero? I dunno. What do you all think?

Why I'm Weird and Don't Like Games

This morning's sunrise, via my phone's panorama function that I didn't know I had!

Good to learn something new before the sun is even up.

This "random words for topics" theme this year will prove interesting. Especially when we have contrary Word Whores who chose words like this week's: Adz.

Kristine chose it apparently because it's great for word games. Which is really quite typical of her. She and her family like to play games of all sorts. My family? Not so much. Aside from a brief love-affair with Trivial Pursuit back in the 80s, we just never played that many games. Unless you count extended dinner debates as a game, which it virtually was for us - with a convoluted and equally debatable point system.

Thus, whether by nature or nurture, possibly a combination of both - I've never really liked playing games. Of any kind. Not board games, not video games, not role-playing games. I've never once played Angry Birds. They always feel kind of like a waste of time to me.

The one time I recall being interested in a video game was Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards, which a friend of friends had on his computer and no one knew how to play. (Note that this was also in the late 80s.) Oddly, I don't remember it being funny. I became obsessed with solving the mystery of it and played it non-stop for a weekend until I finished it. Then I was done and I had no desire to start anything else.

Something that makes me a strange creature to my friends.

The thing is - I didn't really enjoy being that obsessed. I felt drawn in to the point that I had to solve the game, but once I finished, I experienced a rush of relief at being free of the damn thing. (And possibly at being able to escape the friend of friends' house, who'd mistaken my fascination with the game with interest in him.) Afterwards, I felt empty and incomplete, too. No great satisfaction in accomplishment, just nothingness where the obsession had been.

Maybe it's not much that I don't like games, but that I resent the way they can hijack my attention. Especially when they deliver so little in the way of lasting satisfaction for me. In fact, they often leave me with the restless sensation that I need to find another game to fill that hole.

I probably experience the same arc with books, both in reading and writing them, but without that empty sense of having wasted the time.

All of this leaves me feeling like the odd-woman out, in a world of people who love games of all types. Alas.

Phenomenal Word Count Powers...

by Linda Robertson

Phenomenal Cosmic Word Count Powers....

...itty bitty time for a life.

I agree with pretty much all my fellow word-whores have given as advice this week. Setting priorities, breaking a contract down into daily word count goals with built-in time for revision at the end, and days where you're just off and not writing here and there. It's a very mature and professional manner of approaching the writing job.

It all means you're working. Your butt is in the chair. The magic of your creative mind is coalescing there on the screen-page.

But what if you do not have a contract?

The priority can seem less important. SEEM is the prime word of interest there.

Truth is: Life happens. There's work, there's parent-teacher conferences, the car is in the shop and you have to wait for the mechanic to get it done and bring the car to your workplace which threatens your chances to arrive on-time at the conference, and one of your best pals and her husband end up in the hospital...

That was truly my Tuesday.

Yeah. Not a single word on the WIP. But I wrote my blog. (hee hee... :-) )

Hell, major remodeling, shifting nearly everyone's life inside the house and painting, painting, painting, has kept me from being creative for a few weeks. It hurts. If you're a writer who goes off daily to play in your personal version of never-never land, you know how not being there can feel like you've missed something, that somehow you were transported to this "real world" without a Tardis or a Doctor to return you to the world you love...

Don't beat yourself up over it. BUT...Don't let it be the excuse, either. Attend to life. And get your ass back in the chair. No one but you can make it happen.

All I can say that perhaps hasn't been said already is that when you find yourself in the ring (why is a square boxing/wrestling area called a ring?) and you assess your opponent, Life, this hulking figure that seems to fill the space leaving you no room to move, no space to make your stand and take a swing, you have to fight. Fight for that time to write. Fight to follow the advice the other word-whores have provided. Fight to put/keep your butt in the chair with your blessed creativity flowing all over the scene, dripping in every paragraph. If you're a writer, that fight is worth every ounce of sweat and every sore muscle, because the reward of the finished story--of that whole new world that is yours--is more valuable to you than almost anything else.

Time Management Heresy

First, a very happy birthday to fellow Word Whore, Carolyn Crane! YAY! 

Then, Time Management Heresy:

Pst. Yeah, you. Come closer. Got a story and a bit of heresy for you.

First, the heresy.

Time management – don’t bother. It’s meaningless.

Second, the story.

There’s a thirteen year old girl. She wants to be a star. She’s got a crush on Justin Beiber. Cut her a break. She’s thirteen. She’s got a girl crush on Selena Gomez. Every time I see her, there’s angst about what can she do to get a video up on YouTube of her singing? How can she be discovered? How can she become a star?

Here’s the thing. She doesn’t practice unless she’s forced to do so and then she puts in the minimum. Piano, voice. It’s all the same. Yet she swears she loves music. Those of us who love her long ago realized she may love music, but only as audience, not as performer. She wants all the benefits with none of the work.

Writing is often the same way. Either you love writing enough that you write because you fucking love it, or you don’t write because what you love is *having* written. If storytelling is truly what lights you up, you’ll do it if only because it makes you happy and feeds something inside. It may be in the cracks of your day – jotting a few lines while in a waiting room, or while sitting on the ferry or the bus. You may dedicate two hours per day with no interruptions to your word count. Whichever it is, you do it because the writing is the icing holding the cake of your day together. Sure. Some days the cake is one of those lopsided, leaden flavors no one likes. The point is that writing is a means unto itself – or it should be – and that means is making you happy whether the words you got are brilliant or suck all the air out of a room.

If you’re like the thirteen year old in the story above? No amount of time management is going to matter. No amount of other people telling you, ‘practice!’, ‘I’ll take you to auditions, do you have a piece ready?’ will make any difference. You aren’t doing the work because you don’t want to do the work. It isn’t important enough to you. THAT’S OKAY! The world needs audiences.

The important thing is to consciously realize the disconnect between what you SAY you want and what you prioritize in your day to day life. Saying you want to write, but then not doing so indicates that your subconscious priorities do not match up with your conscious ones. You can overcome that. It takes work, but you can. I had to. There came a point wherein I realized I was acting just like the thirteen year old – saying one thing and doing another.

The first step is noticing that you say you want to write but you aren’t. Go ahead. Tell me why you aren’t. Give me all the reasons, all the excuses. But pay attention. Usually there’s an underlying theme to the excuses. Mine was family. I don’t know if it’s a southern thing or just the dynamic of my family, but family trumps everything. They come first. All of my non-writing excuses revolved around that fact.

Figure out what’s underneath your never writing excuses. Then address it. I made a deal with myself. Family comes first, but I’m part of the family, too and for part of each day, I get to come first briefly. My family will be happier if I’m happier. This doesn’t mean closing them out or ignoring their needs. But it does mean requiring that my family respect my needs, too. And one of those needs is word count.

Once you’ve figured out the why and come up with a compromise that makes sense to you, and assuming that you haven’t discovered that writing really isn’t anywhere on your priority list after all, it’s time to set up a routine – something that will become a habit. Doesn’t matter how. Doesn’t matter where. It only has to work for you and work repeatedly. Mess it up one day? So what? Go back to it the next day and the next. Write. Love it enough. Love yourself enough to bring what you say and what you do into alignment. Then time management takes care of itself. Even if it means you have to set an alarm so you know when to quite writing and start doing the dishes.

Time Warp

by Allison Pang

Honestly, this is the worst topic ever for me. I have no method. I'm crappy at managing anything, let alone time.

I suspect I'd be more productive if I could just figure it out...but I can't. Or really, every time I attempt a good, honest attempt at trying  to keep to a schedule, something *always* derails it. A kid gets sick. Something blows up at work. The DH calls and says he won't be home until 3 AM. There's a leak in my kitchen.

You name it.

Don't believe me? Go check out the awesome that was my week LAST week and you'll see what I mean. No good deed goes unpunished, as they say.

That being said, I *do* try to figure out ways around the chaos. I've learned to try to work wherever I have a moment. In the car. At the doctor's office. Small increments during lunch.

I've become a master at tuning things out. Kids. TV. Music. Doesn't matter. (Although, there's a big difference between tuning out your kids singing in the other room and actually *ignoring* their needs. I'm not *that* mom.) Though I have given up actually attempting to get anything done during the work week until the kids are in bed. Between homework and getting dinner made and general kid "stuff" and being a mostly single parent during the week, there just isn't any choice.

I had been  driving myself nuts trying to somehow write while the kids were still up, but it turned out to be a disaster. I tended to become a fairly snappish monster which wasn't doing anyone any good. (Yes, I can tune stuff out...but it's rather difficult to tune out a 5 year old who *really* wants to come sit in my lap. Or needs help getting a drink. Or just spilled cheerios all over the floor.)

So, I let everything slide until they're in bed and then I do the writing thing. It's an uphill battle some nights though - trying to crank out the words in the space of a few hours. I'm tired. I'm cranky. I'm usually in a ton of pain. I have more amusing distractions like Tumblr or Guild Wars dangling in front of me at all hours. It's hard to work all day and then do the family thing and then somehow have any focus left to write. (These are the moments when I want to hit people who insist they're gonna write that great American novel in their free time some day. There is no such thing. If you want it? You'll find a way to make it happen. Otherwise, you're just blowing smoke up your own ass to make yourself feel better.)

Sometimes I don't always manage the words. I used to be fairly stringent about it, but these days if I'm really that tired I just have to let it slide and hope for a better day tomorrow. I try not to let that happen too much, but if I'm literally passing out in front of the keyboard then I'm not really accomplishing much. Somewhere over the last few years I seem to have misplaced my ability to pull routine all nighters. Guess I'm old or something.

If I'm lucky enough to get a full day to myself, that's when I pull out the big guns and disconnect from the internet to avoid any distractions. Except for the music. There's always music. Usually it's just background noise as opposed to inspiration - I can't really work in a completely silent environment either, but TV is less productive for me, so music it is. I actually work better with headphones on than anything else - something about shutting out everything other than my thoughts works wonders. (Can't do that at home though - gotta be alert enough to hear the kids upstairs should something happen.)

So, no secrets to time management here. I just muddle through it and wish I had more time. Same as everyone else.

Relativity

How many kinds of time are there? We have watches and clocks all around us dividing our days and nights into rational bits. We speak of our calendars demarking the days, weeks, months and years. The span of our lives is measured by two dates: born/died. Scientists speak of geologic time, usually in association with some disaster we’re all supposed to prepare for and never quite manage to because our brains can’t wrap around something that might not happen. We just don’t seem to be adapted to be able to feel or experience the weight of any time longer than about a hundred years. From some of my science reading, I gather this frustrates scientists and insurance actuaries the world over. Then there’s time as described by the universe itself – defined by the expansion of space and time. Physicists have caught tantalizing glimpses at the possibility of another layer beyond even the universe – a local ‘bubble’ of universes. If it’s even remotely true, doesn’t mean that time is a moving target?

“Sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug” – Dire Straights

That certainly describes my relationship with time. It’s like the Disney joke in Aladdin, isn’t it? Time is this GREAT COSMIC thing and yet I can scrunch it down into an itty-bitty-I-can-barely-breathe prison. You’ve been there. If you have a doctor’s appointment at 3pm and the clock says 2:30pm, time is your pitiless dictator. Surely you’ve noticed that there are times when you have a long list of tasks to tick off for the day, yet it’s easy? Time rolls out before you, a rolling, endless plain of plenty. (Windshield)

Then there are days you’re lucky if a single damn thing actually gets crossed off your list – yet you spent the entire waking portion of your day running around like a mad thing? (Bug guts on the windshield of time.)

What changed? I’m going to hazard to say it wasn’t time or its passage. The earth’s rotational rate didn’t increase; the orbit around the sun remains more or less constant – or at least it’s changing at a predictable rate in tune with the expansion of the universe – which over the course of a human lifespan just isn’t worth calculating into the whole 365 and a quarter days per year. Though that begs a question. What’ll happen to calendars when expansion has shifted earth’s orbit to 365 and a third days? Oh. Never mind. The world ends next December 21^st anyway, according to the Mayan calendar. (Kidding! Of course it doesn’t – it’s merely the end of a Great Cycle on the Mayan calendar system. Sort of like throwing out your 2010 calendar and then pinning up your 2011 calendar. At least I hope. I have tickets to Africa for 2013.)

Ehem. My point being, that even if humans have imposed some rigid constructs – like hours, minutes and seconds - on time, our perception of it is malleable, flexible. Change your perception, change time.

While standing outside in the rain with my beloved felines this morning, it occurred to me, as I watched them lifting their faces to scent the breeze: This is the important stuff: My family’s happiness, my happiness (ergo my writing). If I focus on that, on what’s important to me, my perception changes. All the mindless things I’ve done to waste time without even realizing I’d been doing it fall away.

What matters to you? Figure that out and you’ll be the windshield more often.

And If Not Now, When?

To get to the Red Bull's chamber, you have to walk through time. A clock isn't time; it's just numbers and springs. Pay it no mind.


~ The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle

Time is a funny thing. A fourth dimension that either lasts for ages or speeds by us in a few twitches of a cat’s tail. We take it for granted when it’s plentiful and hoard it when it’s not, guarding each precious second like some tangible nugget that we can use to haggle with the gods.

“I’ll do this right now, and get it out of the way, and that way I’ll have more time to do something else, later on.” Of course, later on may never come. Or something else may happen and then all that careful planning goes out the window. Carpe diem, as they say.

According to Wikipedia:


In Horace, the phrase is part of the longer Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero – "Seize the Day, putting as little trust as possible in the future", and the ode says that the future is unforeseen, and that instead one should scale back one's hopes to a brief future, and drink one's wine. 


Such a fine line between living moment to moment and planning for the future.

I ran into this post from a fellow author yesterday and it struck me rather hard, hence the moroseness of this post. I have not read her work, though I will do so now. It seems the least I can do, after all.

I will admit I think about what it would be like for myself in this position sometimes. My mother died of cancer, as did her mother. (Both of them before age 55. Both of them from lung cancer.) This fact looms over me like some wretched pendulum. I feel like I'm just waiting for it to swing back one day with my own diagnosis of no return.

In this case, it seems as though time becomes a trickster, taunting us with a terrible choice of trying to hold on for every last second allowed to us in return for what might very well be a painful end. I watched it happen with my parents; all that careful planning they had mapped out for their future withered and died in a matter of months.

It shadows me and I can't help but wonder how terrible it must be to stare over the brink of the abyss and realize that time is up. There are no more bargains. As a writer, it's distressing on a completely different level. What would I do with all those stories I want to tell? Internally it's sort of incomprehensible to realize that I may not have the chance to get it all out there.

It's part of the reason why I write now, I think. Call it an urge to leave some facet of my existence behind. Photos and memories fade, but words stay the same, no matter how many times they are read.

I know for myself that the less concerned I am with time, the less it affects me. It’s actually sort of refreshing to have the battery in my watch die. For a few brief days I constantly find myself staring at my empty wrist and eventually I stop looking at it at all. And the days *do* seem to slow down for a bit, though eventually I’ll get a new battery and things start back up again.

I suppose I could just stop wearing one all together, but it is my mother’s watch and I’m not ready to give that up just yet, though the memories slide through my fingers like water through a sieve.

But that's all I've got.

Mandalas, Time, and Giant Turtles

By Laura Bickle


While doing research for another project, I happened across this image, which seemed to fit this weeks’ theme perfectly (I love synchronicity in action). It’s called “Stopwatch,” by James Koehnline. His work is all new to me, and I stumbled across his book while searching for information on mandalas.

The purpose of a mandala is to be a meditative focal point, to give the mind somewhere to quietly fix. This collage is nontraditional, if one’s accustomed to looking at Tibetan sand paintings of stylized lotus flowers in repeating geometric shapes. Usually, mandalas have a circular component, like Ourobouros devouring his own tail, shapes without end. The goal of meditation with a mandala is to lose time, to enter a state of no-mind that is nothing but an impeccable now.

And being present is difficult. I’m still learning to be wholly present when I meditate or when I write. It’s a challenge for me not to stare morosely at my calendar or jump ahead to an easier task on my to-do list.

But the world runs on time, on multi-tasking, on squeezing every last productive moment from every day. Or does it? At least, that’s what the collage suggests to me. There’s an old Iroquois creation myth about Turtle carrying the world on his back. In the collage, we don’t see the word – Turtle is carrying a stopwatch, instead. The world IS frozen time, and there’s a little mouse curled up inside the watch mechanism asleep. Or maybe he’s meditating.

The world may be ticking away at a feverish pace, but the mouse has stopped it. In the machine’s guts, he’s unaware of it. He’s achieved the no-mind suspension goal of meditation. He’s present in his own thoughts, existing in the now of his experience. No past. No future. Just stopped time.

And that’s where I strive to be when writing – to curl up and forget time. To exist moment by moment, forgetting past concerns and future plans, tasting one word on my tongue at a time.

*

All in Good Time

by Jeffe Kennedy

Sunrise on the morning of the Winter Solstice, after the long night of the full moon and lunar eclipse.

When the seven of us first planned how we'd do this blog, we decided to create some consistency with weekly themes. We each proposed a list of 8-10 possible themes, then voted on our favorites. KAK took the top 52 and put them in a Google calendar for us. 2011 is all mapped out.

Each of us posts on the same day each week. I asked for Sunday because I post to my own blog on Monday through Friday. We decided to start on January 1, which has a nice symmetry for me, since I started mine on January 1 also, two years ago. Allison would write a kick-off post, since this was all her idea.

Somehow, in all that deciding and wrangling, I ended up being the one to introduce the topic each week.

Erm.

Hi.

Welcome to Time week.

Have I ever mentioned I'm not very good at time?

I like things associated with time. I have some antique watches, some that work, some that don't. I like to track the full moons, the the solstices and the equinoxes, the rhythm of the seasons. Perhaps that's because time has always been just a little bit beyond me.

David gets annoyed with me if I wake in the middle of the night and want to look at the clock. I have to see, so I know if it's midnight or two or nearly time to get up. Sometimes I wake ten minutes before the alarm and, particularly on dark mornings, it feels just the same to me as two in the morning. Or midnight. He says if I just trust my internal clock, I'll know what time it is.

I picture my internal clock like something out of Willy Wonka, with the hands running madly in two different directions and brass coils springing out of it.

David now - we can be in the middle of the mountains and he'll squint at the sun, look at the shadow cast by his hand and estimate the time within 15 minutes.

I try not to hate him for this.

But really, I think it's a talent of mine, the losing of time. When I was a little kid, I worked on projects, oblivious to the passage of time, until my mother stood over me asking didn't I realize it was time for dinner, the movie, to open Christmas presents, what have you. Of course I didn't realize. Now, when I write, I reclaim some of that. I disappear from the world of ticking clocks and sink into the land that is whatever time I want it to be. When I'm watching the clock, the writing feels bad. When two hours have gone by without me noticing, then things have gone well.

Losing time has become not a handicap, but a gift. I keep my schedules and spreadsheets. I can time a fancy dinner so that all the dishes come out at exactly the right time, even if I'm cooking all day. I've never missed an airplane because I was late. I also check the time a lot. I'm the woman forever looking at my watch, not because I'm impatient or late, but to make sure nothing has slipped on me.

When I can let the time go and just write, or read, or watch the sunset, that's when I'm at my best.

Wacky internal clock and all.