I have always wanted to be a time traveller and if you are where home is for me, in the UK, then I am writing this in your future. I am currently in New Zealand where it is presently Thursday afternoon but at home it is still Wednesday night.
Trying to communicate with people at home requires a certain amount of thought about time - what time it is here, and will anyone be awake there? There are also strange things that happen when you discover that you either lose of gain a day while flying across date lines. What day is it and what happened in that day that you lost?
When I am writing there is also a sense of being the master of time. Time, for your characters, can move slowly or incredibly fast. Those elongated moments during an accident when time seems to stand still, or while waiting for something momentous to happen when time crawls. There is the rush of time when so much is happening that time flies.
Time is fascinating - and that is without even beginning to consider science fiction time travel where paradoxes can abound.
Strangely, while I write this on the tv is a programme about time travel, a coincidence?
Dead Boy Talking by Linda Strachan
Spider by Linda Strachan -Winner of the Catalyst Teenage Book Award 2010
my website www.lindastrachan.com
My blog - Bookwords
Crime central Blog
4 comments:
Hello from a little to the north west of you. I deal with the "what time is it in the UK" problem all the time of course. Getting my head around "It is breakfast time up there and dinner time down here" and then vice-versa is always a challenge. It certainly makes me more conscious of time and how it is arranged!
Does anyone reading this remember Meriol Trevor's book, "Sun Slower Sun Faster". I think the time slips in that are extraordinarily well handled.
Yes, I remember 'Sun Slower' - it was my favourite book at one time when I was a child, and I've recently reread it. The children slip in and out of time, wearing the appropriate clothes and speaking the right language - I'm not sure they'd let a writer get awayy with that now! But it's a lovely book.
Me too! What a coincidence!
My kids are fascinated by the fact of time zones - they're always asking in wonder "is it really morning already in Australia?" or "Are they still sleeping in America?" - for them, time travel seems very real.
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