Time Stops for No Writer

I have a love/hate relationship with time. Mostly, HATE. My least favorite thing to do as a writer is struggle with the timeline of a story. I want to cram more hours in a character's day than is possible. I want some weeks to have at least nine or ten days. And then, when I need the story to get to the Next Big Event, I want months to speed by without attracting the attention of the Time Police. Yes, I know, as Writer Goddess of the story, I can manipulate the passage of time in my own telling of it. But there are limits to what I can do. The sun must rise, for instance. (I think that's known as the Hemingway rule.) Seasons must follow each other in order. If the characters go to school, I must keep track of the days of the week, and not send them to class on a Sunday.

I would really stink at a farm story, like Charlotte's Web, which demands that the writer pay strict attention to time and season, like how many hours of daylight there are in a early winter's day, the warming and cooling of the earth, and the lifespan of a spider. How did E.B. keep up with all that?

For Letters From Rapunzel, I tried to duck the whole issue of time in my rough draft by telling myself the story should have a "once upon a time" feel to it. My editor thought NOT. She said I should consider letting the reader know at least how much time passes between each letter. As I revised along those lines, I suddenly realized that I had made a major mistake in not dealing with time.

Of course, someone who feels as trapped as Rapunzel does in her tower would think about the passage of time! They would probably, in fact, obsess over it. Don't prisoners mark the days of their captivity on their cell walls? So I began adding, at the top of each letter, not only which day it was, but also which minute it was. I discovered that a letter written at 2:02 in the morning under your bedcovers with a flashlight has a completely different feel to it than one written at 3:02 in the afternoon in the boring confines of Homework Club.

I don't think authors should detail the passing of every second in their books, any more than they should dwell too much on descriptions of the weather. But this weekend, I made sure that the characters in my next book aren't showing up at school on a Saturday morning. They go to bed after enough hours have passed (if their parents make them) and if they don't, there's a mention of why not. I put a clock in their classroom, and the teacher looks at it (unhappily, I might add) and I even---this is a triple back flip---mention a time zone difference between one character and another.

What about you? Do you notice what an author does with time in her story? Or is it one of those things we writers slave over, give minutes---no, hours---no, days!---of our lives to that, when done well, is not marked by readers at all?

It's just a step to the right...

Have you seen the "top 100 songs for the year you graduated" meme that's going around? I was so relieved when Kelly didn't tag me. Oh yes, I had fun looking at her list, and I knew almost all of the songs. But the truth is, there was only one gut level check I had for each song:

Does it have a good beat and can you dance (or work out) to it?
---American Bandstand

From Kelly's year:

#51. Raspberry Beret, Prince (Just typing that makes me break out in a dance sweat.)

#38. Neutron Dance, Pointer Sisters (Come on, it has DANCE in the title!)

#43 Freeway of Love, Aretha Franklin (Even an idiot can groove to this one. Just imagine you're in that pink Cadillac and careen on down the dance floor.)

From my year:

#57. De Do Do Do, De Da Da, The Police (What can I say? The title IS a dance beat.)

#94. Whip It, Devo (I can feel my head starting to bang already)

#68. While You See A Chance, Steve Winwood (Imagine me doing an embarrassing interpretive dance. Or running. Or cranking out pushups. Hey! Bonus! The YouTube video has Muppet commentary at the end!)

So there you have it. I'm a dunce, musically. My whole family discusses bass lines, chord progressions, and the histories of individual musicians in various, ever-shifting band incarnations. Yesterday, my husband helped my son re-build his guitar so the strings wouldn't buzz against the neck. My daughter sang a Latin mass last year. Me? I jokingly tell people that I'm "the audience." I absolutely adore music, but I can't discuss it intelligently at all. The only way I can express what I think about a song is to move to it. Which might explain why I've always wanted to learn how to...

Oh, yeah!

(link found courtesy of BB-Blog)