Before Time Lies
Before time lies
and says you died
and that maybe you never were
find the sun
and get things done
stroke a cat and feel a purr
look into yourself
for what you want to be
and how you want to live
before time lies
and says time to die
and you find that it’s the end
Time Conundrum
I have to get out of here so I can get done so I can get back and get going and finish before I have to go and get started.
The Time Thing
Holy moly, writers, do you grok that it’s already April? March flashed by like the Flash (copyright DC Comics) in a super hurry, which sums up how 2018 is speeding by for me.
I know some of this phenomena of time speeding past is because I keep busy, writing and editing every day. A full schedule keeps me from contemplating too much of the present. Compounding this is how I live in my novels. I’m much more aware of my characters’ timelines and how they’re living their lives than my timeline and how I’m living my own.
That doesn’t bother me. I come up for a daily gulp of reality. Reality is not as much fun as fiction. Then, who said life is about being fun, right? Life is about surviving and procreating, right?
No, life is what you make it. I’m making mine into a writer’s life. I’ll probably pause someday, many books written, and wonder, what happened to the time? I’ll know, but I’ll still present the rhetorical query to myself, because that’s my mental and emotional construction.
Then again, this could be one of many universes where I exist, and when I die, all my selves will come together (cue the Beatles tune, or the Aerosmith cover, if that’s more to your taste) and compare notes. Maybe my other selves will hear about my writing life, and tell me how much they envy me, because I chose to live my life as I wanted. Others will probably chastise me for being selfish. Oh, well, you can’t please all your selves all the time. Best to quickly accept that and move on.
Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.
Monthly Changeover
A new month has arrived. Hello? February, already? No way. Time continues to accelerate in an unseemly manner with months passing like weeks and hours flashing by like minutes.
I hypothesize that we each have time particles at a sub-atomic level in ourselves. Their interaction with others’ time particles and those embedded in other matter form how we perceive and use time, and how time treats us. We adhere to agreed standards for simplicity’s sake, but time is more personalized than realized. That’s my theory, and I’m sticking to it, at least for today. Someday, someone a lot smarter than me will figure all this out, and our thinking about time will undergo a monumental shift. For now, it’s one of those, we can’t make out the forest for the trees sort of perspective.
With the new month comes chores that rotate around the month’s arrival. Besides flipping over calendar pages, reviewing business plans, goals, and dreams, I also back up my writing work on something external that’s placed somewhere safe. While floppies of the five and a quarter and three and a half-inch varieties were used in the past, I moved on to zip drives, CDs, and now, flash drives.
Reviewing the month, I’m pleased with my writing progress, but I’m astonished that it’s taking so long to finish this quadrilogy, Incomplete States. I seem to be adding a new volume every few months; this week I was contemplating a fifth book in the series. Reining myself in, I sought ways to incorporate these new ideas into the fourth book being written. We’ll see how it goes. It’s not like the series is a raised garden bed, where everything must be contained. My motto is generally, write like crazy, and let the words go where they flow. I’m a trifled concerned; if I keep adding volumes like this, I’ll end up with something that rivals the Wheel of Time for the series’ length.
Now it’s time to write like crazy, at least one more time.
Friday’s Theme Music
“Time,” by Pink Floyd, was one of those songs that I liked to listen to while laying flat on my back in the dark with headphones on. I did that with of the entire album, Dark Side of the Moon.
The discordant beginning of alarm clocks and bells ringing that starts “Time” is a satisfying, *ahem* wake up call. Then the heartbeats begin….
Later in life, I often streamed it in my mind as I awaited events, made plans, or traveled.
And you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it’s sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you’re older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death
Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I’d something more to say
Of course, I always continue listening (or streaming) on through the next two songs.
Novel Day
Ever think about how novel this day is? Similar to other days, it’s influenced by where you’re at on the planet.
The planet is stable but dynamic. Its core is changing, and cooling, affecting the mantle, crust and atmosphere.
The Earth is spinning, and the spin slows every day. Days are longer by 1.7 millisecond over last century. Innit that somethin’?
North of the Equator, the length of our daylight is increasing for the middle latitudes, like these “temperate” areas of Europe and North America where people are freezing their asses off. Sunrise is earlier, and sunset comes later.
While I know that we’re continuing a revolution around the sun, and the change in light is affected by the revolution, rotation, and earth’s axis, I think of the planet as being attached to a rubber band. The planet reached winter solstice. That’s as far as the rubber band stretches, with the rubber band’s stored energy. Then, snap, we head back the other way.
Oh, yeah, and did I mention that our planet’s orbit is decaying, and we’re a little closer to the sun, and the sun is cooling, and will eventually do us in?
Put all these things together, and you see how unique this day is. That’s why you should make it special. There will never be another day exactly like today.
Baby Steps
If she could just make it through this meeting, she could make it through the morning. Then she’d just need to make it through the afternoon and the drive home. Then, she just had to make it through the party tonight, and the family dinner tomorrow, and the celebrations the day after that. If she could just make it through all those things, she could make it to the end of the week, and get some time for herself.
But first, she had to make it through this meeting.
Winter Solstice’s Bumper Sticker
This one cracked me up, with echoes of “Red Dwarf” to it. I can imagine Kryten saying, “The future is now. No, wait, now that’s the past. Now it’s the future. Darn, missed it again. You’ve got to be quicker, sir.”

Writing Time
I became a little distracted while ordering my coffee. That trite statement is an understatement. I didn’t know Sam was speaking to me. Looking inward, listening to other voices, I was experiencing the bloom of another writing concept in my head.
After ordering my coffee and paying, I drifted off with an internal sigh. This concept, too, needed to be kneed aside. I’m on the third book of a trilogy. Need to get it done, and then on to the etcetera of publishing. Once the trilogy is done, it’s back to the third of a novel in a series that’s already published. There are many more novels loaded in my mind in that series to pursue. There are finished drafts that require editing and publishing, and there are marketing needs.
Seems like no matter how much coffee I drink, there’s not enough time to write. Bummer, as I think “Mrs. Elf” could be a fun write.
Ah. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.