Tag: time in the novel

 I’m a writer, and I’m a fan of time—but sometimes it stumps me. Kicks me in the butt. Gives me a hard… time. 

For one thing, time in stories is a major factor. How long will the story go on? How old is the protagonist, and will they age much in it? 

And what is the time when the story takes place: contemporary times? Historical?  Sometime in the future?

And then there’s my own time. I’m good at fulfilling deadlines, but sometimes I really have to work at it. 

In fact, one of the reasons  I swapped the date for my post this month is because I was determined to finish a first draft of a novel I’m currently working in, with a deadline approaching, and I was focusing mainly on that. 

But I’m generally used to dealing with time and finding ways to handle it. For example, years ago when my kids were young and I was practicing law, I got up an hour earlier than the others in my household and wrote then. And a while later, when I wound up having to commute for more than an hour each way every day for my law job, I’d already started getting published, so I’d head very early to my job and hide in my office for an hour before starting to work—and everyone knew I was writing then and left me alone. 

And now? Hey, I’ll stop writing this soon and get into the edits of that manuscript I mentioned. I did finish a very rough first draft, but there’s lots more work to do. 

How about you? How do you deal with time in your life and writing or other work?