Shifting Time

I must admit that yesterday I cheated. Or I could say that today I cheated.

The posting that appears in my blog today, Friday, wasn't actually posted today. It was written yesterday and I arranged for it to be posted automatically on Friday using a special new feature of Blogspot that allows you to schedule postings for future dates.

But because I'm doing the same thing today, Friday, you won't be able to read this posting until at least Saturday. So when I called today 'Friday', that wasn't strictly accurate, as today is now Saturday. And yesterday isn't really yesterday, it's Friday. Or is that today?

Confused? You're not the only one!

I've been playing tricks with time. But then, isn't that what writers often do?

Take Vanishing Acts, for example, the book I was discussing yesterday - or was it two days ago.....? The central character, Delia, thinks she can make sense of her life so far until one day the police turn up at her house and arrest her father. What she learns after that completely turns her family history upside down. History is, in effect, rewritten, as far as she is concerned. The life that she thought she had is overwritten by another version, like a new version of a computer file replacing an existing one.

Then there's the way that Audrey Niffenegger played with time in her magnificent Richard and Judy Book Club read, The Time Traveler's Wife. The central character of the book, Henry, has a disorder which causes him to time-travel, spontaneously, against his will. It brings a new meaning to the phrase, 'If I knew then what I know now'. Would we want to know what the future had in store for us, for example, that this is the last time you and your wife will ever be together?

Then, of course, there are the usual sci-fi time travel adventures, including Dr. Who. I was particularly moved by an episode in an earlier series in which the adult Rose finds herself at the moment in her childhood when her father is about to be killed in a road accident. She is tortured by the inevitability of what is going to happen to him and her desire to prevent his death, even though saving him would mean her changing the course of history.

In real life, our future unfolds second by second, minute by minute, day by day. We don't have the luxury of knowing what the future will hold for us. Sometimes this is frustrating, when it means we have to wait and see how things will turn out. If we've lost our job, it would be nice to know that we won't be unemployed forever - this is just a little break, some time off before we get an even better job. It would be nice to know that our dad will recover from his heart attack, even though he's in Intensive Care and it's touch and go. It would be nice to know that the two-year old who is driving us mad with her temper tantrums will eventually turn into a pleasant, calm grown-up.

But if we did know everything that lay in store for us, all the downs as well as the ups, the things that don't turn out the way we hoped, we would find that knowledge unbearable. Like drivers on a dark night, we see just as far as the headlight beam allows us to. We can plan, we can hope, but we can never know exactly what the future has in store for us.

Perhaps that's one of the attractions of being a writer. The future of our characters is in our hands. We can know every detail of it, plan every detail of it, as well as every moment of their past. Talk about being a control freak!

Some writers carry this to the nth degree, planning every twist and turn of their plot before they write a single word. Others prefer to let their characters surprise them. I was amazed when one of my characters, a feisty shock-jock, ended up having a baby. When I started writing the play I never for one moment imagined that she would. But then I didn't know her so well in those days...

We have other brushes with time in our working life. Perhaps we are doing the sort of writing where we are assailed by deadlines at every turn, shooting schedules, rewrites, producers yelling for redrafts. Perhaps time is dragging for us because we have writer's block and can't motivate ourselves. But then there are other moments when we are 'in the zone', when time becomes irrelevant and we appear to be outside of it because we are so lost in the creative process.

For some of us, these occasions are few and far between, unexpected, uncontrollable gifts. Others have managed to develop the knack of creating this sort of 'flow', creating our own timelessness within time. Susan K. Perry's 'Writing in Flow' is a fascinating look at how some writers manage to make this happen with many suggestions to help us acquire this emotionally satisfying state.

It's great when you are so absorbed in your writing so much that you completely lose track of how long you've been working. In fact, I think it's just happened to me. Is it that time already?

It's later than I thought, but there's no need to worry. You're not reading this in real time, so I'm ahead of myself. At least I think I am! How did that time shift work again....?