Welcome back to the Time Travel Writing Lab. If you’ve seen The Matrix trilogy, this room will look very familiar to you. It is a replica of the space where Neo met the Architect. We’ve also used this space within the context of this column as a thematic point of refuge and self-observation. It’s fitting that we should meet here today. You’ll notice that all the screens around us are dark. It’s with both a heavy heart and an excited soul that I need to tell you about some changes on the horizon.
My friend and time dilation engineer, Ada Lovelace and I are planning an extended time travel excursion. I’ll go into that more next month. Consequently, I will be ending my monthly recurring Time Travel Wordcraft column after my December 2019 edition. In 2020, I hope to be able to transmit a few posts—provided publishing space is available on Time Travel Nexus—so I can keep you apprised of our time travel adventures.
In the meantime, I wanted to take a moment to reflect. It’s in moments like these—as we prepare to close out one endeavor and begin another—that I think it’s wise to look back on what our efforts have rendered. In my final column in December, I will elaborate on that reflection, along with some observations I have on writing, and writing time travel specifically.
Today, I wanted to share with you what I feel is the most meaningful column I’ve written for Time Travel Nexus. In February 2018, I used the Stuttgart City Library in Germany as my canvas.
There, I drew on the story of Wagner’s Ring. As the story goes, the physical ring forged from the gold of the Rhinemaidens would give its wearer the power to rule the world.
My February 2018 column [Cultivating Your Creative Spark] was one of my favorites because it afforded me the opportunity to write an orchestrated descent of Valkyries through the ceiling and down to the lab floor. It was pure creative joy.
There are two reasons I think this column was my most meaningful. First, I feel I was able to provide writers with some real world ideas for developing their craft. Second—and maybe most important—the whole premise of the post was centered on the idea that as creative people, we have been gifted with an imagination that sparkles and shines. Our imaginations produce gold and it’s our task to mine that gold. In this column, I showed writers how they could do that. And I firmly believe that mining the gold locked within your imagination is still the most important thing a creative person can aspire to accomplish.
[The following is a repost of that column…]
Time Travel Wordcraft: Cultivating Your Creative Spark
Welcome back to the Time Travel Writing Lab. I’ve changed up the look and feel of the place today. The writing lab is now a replica of the stunning Stuttgart City Library in Germany, and I’ve opened up the ceiling to make the night sky visible.
Tonight, we will explore how to be a time travel writer.
If you’ve played with the idea of writing time travel, then it’s important we identify precisely what we’re doing here. Make no mistake about it. We are in a battle to save the world that’s locked inside your head.
People have flashes of creativity all the time. You may even have the perfect idea for a time machine. Sometimes an idea for a story will come to you out of thin air, feeling almost magical in its genesis. Other times, you might have a story idea you’ve germinated for so long—an idea that feels so thought-out and detailed, so developed in your head—that you don’t bother to write it down. This wonderful flow of creativity is imagination gold. It’s an exciting and necessary first step, but it’s a far distance from storytelling.
Listen…. Do you hear that music? I have Wagner’s Ring playing. To refresh your memory, in the four operas that comprise The Ring (De Ring des Nibelungen) the physical ring is forged from the gold of the Rhinemaidens, and the wearer of the ring has the power to rule the world. As I said, we’re locked in a battle to save the world that’s locked inside your head. We’ll be using this music as our soundtrack as we look at ways we can transform the raw gold you mine from your imagination into a time travel world you can share with readers.
Let’s walk over to my worktable. Last month, I had my computer set up here with newspapers, books and general clutter covering the surface. Looks very different today. This exquisite table—three feet wide by six feet long—is crafted from a solid piece of alabaster and perfectly matches the esthetic of the library. As you can see, the only thing I’ve placed on it today—the only thing that will save the world locked inside your head—is an hourglass. It’s that simple and that complex.
Writing is all about time! You can measure it in hours spent at your computer, outlining, story plotting, writing drafts, editing and rewriting. You can measure it in word count. Whichever way you measure it, you have to find a place in your schedule to craft stories, to understand your characters, to research science. Writing must become a part of your everyday life.
Let’s pull up a couple of chairs in front of the hourglass.
Once you’ve identified someplace in your schedule where you can write, you want to make the most of that time. I’ve found a writing tool that—for me—has been transformative: a writing sprint. If you’re not familiar with the concept of a sprint, let me break it down for you. A sprint is a series of writing sessions bound by time and quantified by words. To help you visualize how this could be structured, here’s an example of a typical sprint.
[First Sprint] Start your writing session at the top of the hour. Write for 30 minutes. Stop and record your word count. Take a 10 to 15-minute break before starting your next sprint.
[Second Sprint] After your break, write for another 30 minutes. Stop and record your word count. Take another break.
You decide how many writing sessions to string together. You can do just one sprint and call it a day, or decide to do multiple sprints over the course of several hours.
The rules of a sprint are simple. During the time when you’re to be writing, you write. You don’t think about writing; you don’t imagine yourself writing. You put down actual real words in a continuous flow. If you feel stuck, write about the kind of time travel you’d like to write about—going back to the past, or going into the future. You could write dialogue in the voice of one of your characters. You could describe the intricate textural details of a location or setting where your story takes place. Sprinting offers the perfect way to empty your head of all the half-baked story ideas that pop in and out of your imagination. If you have a working outline for your time travel epic, use the sprint to help drive your storytelling.
Where a Sprint Can Take You
When you commit to a sprint and follow the simple rules, magical things can happen. When you write—without thinking too much about writing—a different kind of creative flow can emerge. You suddenly manifest ideas you didn’t know you had, or find yourself taking a story path you hadn’t considered—making the sprint an excellent tool for capturing your time travel visions. If you want to write time travel, but feel at a loss to come up with any good ideas, sprints are a great way to disengage with your rational mind and force your imagination to take over the keys on your computer. Then, you can explore what the world of the future will be like, or what the world of the past was like, without embracing the annoying reality that—well, at this point in time—time travel doesn’t yet exist.
Community
There is a community of writers on Twitter, ready to offer you support, encouragement and a sense of shared purpose. Separate from sprinting, Writerschallenge.org is a wonderful online community where you can connect with other writers around the shared goal of writing 500 words per day. You can find other communities offering moderated real-time sprints where writers sprint together, reporting their word counts and sharing their accomplishments and struggles. Some sprints are organized and scheduled ahead of time, and others happen spontaneously when someone feels the need for some shared creative motivation. You can find them on Twitter by searching hashtags like #amwriting #amediting #SciFi #writingsprint #writeclub #writerslife ….
OH, WAIT!!! – The music. Listen. The first opera has ended. Do you hear the music? The second opera is starting. Yes, we’re ready!
I want you to look up. I’ve moved the ceiling out of the way. The night is cold so I’m going to increase the temperature of the floor in the lab. Soon, you’ll be seeing steam rising up under our feet. Don’t be alarmed. I want you to focus your attention on the night sky. It’s so clear. The moon is full and casting her light directly into the lab. Now, look carefully. This is the only place you’re able to see Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn with a naked eye, in the late February sky. Let your eyes dart between the planets.
See that? Do you see that? Something, fluttering…traversing across the path of the moonlight. See them? Winged horses with Valkyries. They’re riding toward us. The Valkyries are here to help you in your battle to save the world that’s locked inside your head. They’re coming closer. They come in equal numbers of white and black-winged horses. LOOK! The sky is full of Valkyries! They’re coming single file through the open ceiling, into the Time Travel Writing Lab and onto the warm floor of my laboratory. A hundred winged horses take their place in the lab. Listen! Do you hear the heavy breathing of the horses, and the fluttering as they tuck their wings close to their bodies? Nordic maidens on top of the horses seem to be turning their gaze to the open ceiling—to the sky.
There it is! Falling. I caught a glimpse of it in the moonlight. GOLD! A pure piece of gold. There it is again, falling from…falling from your imagination, taking shape in the atmosphere, forming a ring.
PUT YOUR HAND OUT!
There it comes through the open ceiling and down to rest in your hand.
[Ada opens the Writing Lab door]
“Oh, I thought you were done in here for today—sorry, my mistake.”
[Ada shuts the door]
Do you hear that? It’s the sound of the horses rustling their wings, readying themselves for flight. How quickly and orderly they take to the air, flying around the inside of the lab and then out through the opened ceiling, all of them gone—within two minutes.
Cloud cover seems to be moving in—blocking the planets. I think I’ll close up the ceiling now.
Wow! Well…I feel it’s been a very eventful evening here in the Time Travel Writing Lab! With that ring you now hold in your hand, you are the ruler of any world you dare to dream—past, present or future. It’s late, and I’m afraid our time is up for now.
I hope to see you next month in the Time Travel Writing Lab. Have a lovely evening. Ada will show you out.
There you have it…. I hope you enjoyed traveling back to my February 2018 column [Cultivating Your Creative Spark]. May you always keep your creative spark alive.
Now, don’t forget we still have two more regular columns yet to go. Next month, I’ll tell you all about the amazing adventures Ada and I will be undertaking. So, I hope to see you back next month in the Time Travel Writing Lab.
Latest posts by Julie Rodelli (see all)
- Time Travel Wordcraft: Finding Your Focus - June 15, 2020
- Time Travel Wordcraft: Some of My Favorite Things - December 16, 2019
- Time Travel Wordcraft: Daughter of My House and Heart - November 18, 2019