What Is It About Time?

by | Apr 28, 2008 | Uncategorized | 5 comments

I was late.  I was always late. And I only noticed the time just then because I was wrangling with a cufflink that happened to be stuck under my watch.  Let’s face it; time is one of my big issues.  On the one hand, you could say it’s my life’s work.  I spend most of my days peering at it, poking it and wondering about its existence.  I even calculate it on wall-length blackboards.  But none of that ever matters because, in the end, I can’t control it.  If anything, time usually controls me.

So says John in the beginning of Tangled Roots.  Time is a big issue for him, and actually, for all of us, and the more I wrote this book the more I came to realize that time itself had become one of the main characters.  Over the course of some 350 pages, it gets investigated, torn apart, worried about, loved, longed for, hated and, in some ways, changed.  That’s kind of a strange idea, isn’t it — that time can change, that we can affect it as much as it affects us?  But that’s what I found myself writing about, and even believing, throughout the development of this novel.  So I decided to come clean.  I had said a few blogs ago that the book has two main characters.  But actually, it has three.  And perhaps, of the three, the most compelling one is time itself.

I’m happy to say that I’m not the only writer who has found herself turning concepts or things into beings.  Emma Darwin in her excellent blog, “This Itch of Writing,”  has also recently talked about it. When thinking about writing her new novel, A Secret Alchemy, she said “…it’s as if we co-existed for a while, but soon our existences will separate.”
Giving life to what is not alive — a bit like Dr. Frankenstein, but certainly one of the great joys and prerogatives of writing.  So truth be told, Tangled Roots is about John, Grace and Time, but not necessarily in that order.  And the answer to the question above?  Of course it can only be one thing — “It flies.”

5 Comments

  1. HelenMH
    HelenMH on 28th April 2008 at 4:24 pm

    Some interesting ideas there! I like the concept that we can affect time as much as it affects us.

  2. Lane
    Lane on 28th April 2008 at 5:47 pm

    Interesting Sue and once again I can’t wait to read it.

    I’ve often wondered what it be like to live totally free of ‘the enemy’, just for a while. I wonder if it would make you feel free or more encumbered? Hhmmm:-)

  3. Carol and Chris
    Carol and Chris on 29th April 2008 at 7:34 am

    These are very tantalising snippets you are giving us!! I can’t wait to read it either!!

    C x

  4. kate
    kate on 29th April 2008 at 9:37 am

    fascinating thing, time. When it speeds up, when it slows down – sometimes a day is more that a day, sometimes less. Does it have to do with how fully we are in the present moment, rather than the past or future? Someone said that all fiction is about time. Or: ‘Mortality is the true subject of fiction.’

  5. DJ Kirkby
    DJ Kirkby on 29th April 2008 at 10:09 am

    I am very much looking forward to reading this book, even more so now after reading this post!