Raven's View

Distracted again, via a non-stop Doctor Who channel. A little ironic, given that my last check in was about making time. Luckily I have an understanding boss if I need to sleep in half the morning. I've made mostly good progress the last few days, hope I can keep it up.

• Writing
  • This check in, a day late.
  • I DID do a Flash, on Time Travel. Twice. Wrote it using Simplenote on my iPad, while relaxing in one of my offices wih a beer. When I was finished, I did a select all then hit the delete key. No undelete. So. I wrote it again the next day, and I think it was even better! 
• Publishing/editing
  • Have been doing some every morning. Except when I sleep in after watching Doctor Who until 4:39 am. Good to see some progress.
  • Did another critique for critters.orh. Time to start sending my own stories in too.
• Other
  • Nice lunch with a friend/story consultant. 
  • Yoga/core exercises happening, not daily though. Could be a bad thing.
  • Courses - Modern World - did a test for last week, forging ahead. Philosophy and Astrobiology - just started this week's videos.
  • Off for a grandchild visit again today.

Here's this week's prompt from Flash Fiction Friday.

Time is a resource and a thief. It takes us off to do other things, flies by, drags. Sometimes we try to kill it, sometimes bottle it. What would you do if you could control it? Why don’t you show us?

Your prompt is to write a story with a time machine. Will you go forward? Backward? Do you want to prevent something or perpetrate something? We want to know.

Allons-y!

Prompt: Write a story about a time machine
Word Limit: 1,300

I wrote this story yesterday, did a 'select all' to copy for an email to a friend, then hit the delete key in Evernote. No – on an iPad they don't have an undelete. So, I wrote it again today, carefully, and liked it even better. It doesn't in fact talk about a time machine, just some consequences of time travel – close enough for me. Came in at 896 words.

Note- 7/16/2013 - edited

Of course we don't actually make time, we just change how we use it. What if we could move back and forth - would we get more done? Or would we get lost down some path and never find our way back? 

My future depends on choices made by myself and others, in the context of a changing physical environment. So, at any instant, an almost infinite set of futures lies ahead of me, some more likely than others mind you, but still shows that planning is mostly a matter of being optimistic about probabilities.
A time machine could trace the thread of my life backwards, but how would it choose a forward path? What if more than one of us wanted to go to the same future? Would there always be a thread where we did meet up? 

But - for now - we can't bounce around the timeline. Time is something some have to much of, but most not enough of. Some like to think they are busier than others as they use up time, meaning they think whatever they are doing is much more important to the welfare of humankind and the ongoing rotation of the earth - but that's not usually true. We are all busy-busy-busy doing something - even if it's gazing out a window or sleeping, or, at the end, busy being dead. All we can really do is adjust priorities and pick a task - or pretend multi-tasking actually works. Right - as if our brain were actually a set of parallel processors!

As you can guess, still battling with priorities here. Top of the list is still editing my novels. Not a favorite task, so I keep thinking of new things that need to be done to procrastinate doing that. Not always that bad, as I did get the Christmas decorations put away today. 

Thursday here. I could blame the cold weather for slowing me down - -40C last night with the wind chill - but I think it's fear of editing. Or at least a lack of enthusiasm over it. Maybe because it lacks the creativity of writing, maybe because it's not as easy to measure as creating 500 or 5000 new words. Although, if that were the case, you'd think I'd be spending my time instead doing Flash Fiction.

Nope. 

Some reading, for sure, as well as watching videos for courses. Also visited grandkids, took videos, edited and uploaded them. Doing some cooking, and contemplating the still-up Christmas decorations. Laundry and vacuuming are moving up the list too. 

Maybe I just need a few non-scheduled days to do my thing.