One of the biggest joys of living in today’s world for an author it the ability to communicate directly with audiences through blogs, social media and mailing lists, not to mention the occasional book signing. Except for the book signings and such events, it’s something authors didn’t have in the past, and it’s a huge boon. It’s also a huge problem.
Blog posts, social media and mailing lists take time, and time is most important and limited resource we all have. Once you spend it, it’s gone. If you spend it well, it’s gone. If you don’t spend it well, it’s still gone.
No matter what, you don’t get it back, and you can’t get more. Take this blog post for instance. I could be writing or editing a new story. I’m not.
I’ve been mildly obsessed with time for as long as I can remember, and the concept influences a lot of my stories – many of my characters are immortal, for instance, as that’s the simplest way of giving them more time to experience their changing story worlds. Time gives them a perspective we regular humans can only glimpse.
An archaeologist sees time through the bones of ancient civilisations, long-dead creatures, and geology. Astronomers see the universe as it was millions and even billions of years ago. Their perspective allows them to see time differently to the child chasing a butterfly, for instance. Talking of different perspectives, as Google informs me, Albert Einstein wrote: “The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
In high school I figured out how we can move backwards in time, though I’m probably not the first person to ‘discover’ it, and in all likelihood I’m completely wrong. It’s a theory requiring the ability to move ‘at’ the speed of time (which is ‘fast’, to understate it). To put it another way, If we could move fast enough we could move backwards through time at will, and not be dragged from moment to moment like we’ve bobbed up in a ship’s wake and been pulled along for a few precious years.
Conversely, if you stop moving entirely – say you were frozen in cryosleep – you’d move forward in time while remaining as you are, unchanged.
It makes sense then, that to move backwards in time you need to do the opposite: go really, really fast. Imagine being able to cross the universe in a fraction of a second. Now image being able to go a fraction of a second faster. You’d get there AS you left – you’d be moving at the speed of time. You could go anywhere, be everywhere, all at once.
So let’s take that a step further. What if you could go a fraction of a second faster than that? You’d arrive before you left. Time travel – backwards in time.
It’s a nice theory and maybe someone already thought of it. I’m not a physicist and I’ve never asked the question, mostly because I like to think it’s all mine.
Either way, time still remains the most precious thing we have, and the thing we waste the most of.
Today I’ll be going to work and doing something like spending around eight hours or so writing part of a business proposal so the company I work for can have a shot at winning a government contract. That’s time spent doing something I’m only doing for the immediate benefits (money).
I can think of many better ways to spend my time, especially considering it’s such a limited resrouce. Sitting on a beach sipping Pina Coladas, for instance.
Writing at work is still important for me because it means I get to keep money rolling in – money that allows me to afford writing tools like computers and electricity, and the time to snatch a few precious moments outside of work creating stories I hope will entertain people.
The dream, of course, is to write a book that’s successful enough that I can buy back the writing time I devote to work, and apply it to stories instead. How many years do I have left to be able to do that, even if I live to be a hundred?
It’s no wonder I dream of immortal characters.
