Friday, March 7, 2014

Time in Slo-Mo

March 7th, 2014



Maths was never a subject I excelled at in school, or even liked, but I am pretty sure if you take 7 from 11, you get 4, which is how many more days until my book launch. Time passes. That's about the only thing anyone knows with any certainty about time. There isn't a philosopher or a physicist out there who can tell you more. One thing I have learned about the workings of the universe is that it pays no heed whatever to time, and why should it since time is a human construct and everything else on earth and beyond does very well without it? Better, in fact. Right now, time for me is in that kind of elongated, slow zone, the kind of slo-mo you experience right before your life flashes in front of your eyes.



When I was five years old, I had a flash of certainty one day in a park in Manchester, England, that one day I was going to take centre stage. How could I know that more years than I care to calculate (let's blame my bad maths) would ensue before this particular premonition came true? Who knows how long my spot in the lime light will last? If the book does a nose dive, then not long. My father died in middle age, and here I am in middle age embarking on a whole new world. So not only does the universe have no time for time, it makes little sense into the bargain.
Somewhere in me a tiny urge is making itself felt to get back to writing. But I can't because I am filling out interviews and writing guest blogs and trying to prepare for the talk at the book launch and the talk at Dan Brown's local bookstore in New Hampshire, and the talk on creativity and Jung I am giving in Boston in May. My editor just found out that Veil Of Time is to be included in an Amazon “time travel” multi-book promotion in May. This will involve a carousel ad on the literature/fiction page, among other spots on the site. Yikes!


You might think this picture is just a metaphor for how my life feels right now, but I actually mistakenly went on this ride a few years ago when I was trying to keep my son company on what he claimed was "easy ride." What the picture doesn't show, and what I didn't see,  is that beneath that cliff is a 1450 foot drop. I think it is the closest thing I have ever come to utter panic. I didn't realise the contraption was going to swing out into empty space. My son was doubled over with laughter, and I was doubled over, too, but nothing at the moment seemed very funny. When you are suspended over a 1450 foot drop, everything gets very slow. Time disappears.
So you live through all kinds of things.  One of the interviews I filled out this week asked me when I feel most like a writer. I don't know. I haven't felt like a writer in a while. There's a good reason writers often choose to write in small windowless spaces, like my closet under the stairs. That's where we feel most like writers, and not in a small capsule suspended over a death defying drop.

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