Time can be a very stretchy thing, it seems. It is one thing to measure time on an instrument such as a clock or even a sundial. But human perception of time is less than accurate.
For hundreds of years scientists and philosophers have observed the conundrum of how time is perceived compared to how any society agrees to measure the passage of time.
Take, for example, the following:
- “…time and space are modes by which we think and not conditions in which we live.” Albert Einstein
- “According to the special theory of relativity nothing can travel faster than light, so that if light cannot escape, nothing else can either. The result would be a black hole: a region of space-time from which it is not possible to escape to infinity.” Stephen W. Hawking
- “In a world of light there are neither points nor moments of time; beings woven from light would live “nowhere” and “nowhen”; only poetry and mathematics are capable of speaking meaningfully about such things.” Yuri I. Manin
- “When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute—and it’s longer than any hour. That’s relativity.” Albert Einstein
Obviously Einstein is one of the most familiar of the scientists who studied time most assiduously, but it still comes down to the fact that time has always fascinated us.
For example we’ve all noticed how time seems to fly by when we’re really busy, especially with something we enjoy, but how it seems to drag on incredibly slowly when we are anticipating something or when we are doing a particularly unenjoyable task.
Writers deal with time in it’s oddest form. When we are lost in the worlds we design, engaging with the characters we have created and passing imagined time in that imagined world, our mortal time is obscured. Sometimes it feels like we have spent weeks in the course of a couple of hours, similar to the compressed time we experience while dreaming. Other times, when the words come more slowly when we are researching or editing or dealing with all of the bits and pieces that come with living in the authoring and publishing world, the there just doesn’t seem to be enough time.
So many of my author friends express frustration of finding that quiet time, the uninterrupted stretches that writing demands. I’ve found myself also in that dilemma. Writing time is precious, so precious that we can’t idly wait on the muse to light on our shoulder and begin dictating the perfect words into our waiting minds. No, we must use the time we have wisely, being entirely productive, writing something, even if the words aren’t specific enough or smooth enough to give grace to a paragraph or vibrant accent to the scene.
Which is one of the reasons why good writing is re-writing. You never get it completely right the first time through. Even when the muse is kind and the words seem to flow like an endless stream, when you go back through it, a lot of it was only imagined perfection needing to be revised, strengthened and most often shortened or completely trashed.
Time…tick, tick, tick. Speaking of which. I have a chapter to finish.