Never Enough Time
You are reading this post--and thank you for that!-- on the 23rd rather than the 7th because, ironically for the month in which 'time' is our topic, I ran out of time to write it! Even more ironically, Soho Press and I just revealed the cover for next year's IT WASN'T ALWAYS LIKE THIS, which is about a boy and girl who have nothing but time, once they accidentally become immortal. Here's the cover:
You can read more about the book HERE . It will be here 5/17/16!! A sort of Tuck Everlasting meets Veronica Mars… Plus see that watch face behind Emma's head on the cover??
I pondered the idea of time every second I wrote this book. If you could live forever, how long would you want to live? At what point would it get tedious? Would you ever know everything you needed to know? How many times would you make the same stupid mistakes? And a million other questions after that. We often see eternal life through the supernatural perspective--ie, vampires. But what if you were basically an ordinary mortal girl and boy who somehow ended up drinking from a sort of Fountain of Youth? What then? What if you lost each other along the way? How long would you look for each other?
Oh I LOVED writing this novel!
Because I think about time, well, all the time. I have never stopped feeling like there is SO MUCH I want to do and see and read and accomplish and learn. Sometimes that's a good thing. Motivating. Sometimes, it's crazy making. Sometimes, I have to remind myself that it's okay to miss blog post deadlines. Sometimes it's okay just to breathe. Turn off the screens. Just be.
You know what the hardest part of yoga always is for me? Okay besides standing on my head which simply freaks me out. It's the last five minutes where we do what is called 'corpse pose.' Where we lie absolutely still. Most of us make it about 2-3 minutes. The first time I made it all five, truly emptied my mind, I actually started crying. It was that shocking and emotionally moving. Which says a lot, I know, although right now I have to go pick up my dry cleaning and so I don't have time to elaborate. (Yes, that was supposed to be funny.)
My favorite day of the year? When we add back that hour of daylight savings time. (If you live in AZ or parts of Indiana, ignore this.)
Okay. Time to go!
I pondered the idea of time every second I wrote this book. If you could live forever, how long would you want to live? At what point would it get tedious? Would you ever know everything you needed to know? How many times would you make the same stupid mistakes? And a million other questions after that. We often see eternal life through the supernatural perspective--ie, vampires. But what if you were basically an ordinary mortal girl and boy who somehow ended up drinking from a sort of Fountain of Youth? What then? What if you lost each other along the way? How long would you look for each other?
Oh I LOVED writing this novel!
Because I think about time, well, all the time. I have never stopped feeling like there is SO MUCH I want to do and see and read and accomplish and learn. Sometimes that's a good thing. Motivating. Sometimes, it's crazy making. Sometimes, I have to remind myself that it's okay to miss blog post deadlines. Sometimes it's okay just to breathe. Turn off the screens. Just be.
You know what the hardest part of yoga always is for me? Okay besides standing on my head which simply freaks me out. It's the last five minutes where we do what is called 'corpse pose.' Where we lie absolutely still. Most of us make it about 2-3 minutes. The first time I made it all five, truly emptied my mind, I actually started crying. It was that shocking and emotionally moving. Which says a lot, I know, although right now I have to go pick up my dry cleaning and so I don't have time to elaborate. (Yes, that was supposed to be funny.)
My favorite day of the year? When we add back that hour of daylight savings time. (If you live in AZ or parts of Indiana, ignore this.)
Okay. Time to go!
LOVE that cover! (And I know EXACTLY what you mean about corpse pose!)
ReplyDeleteI LOVE that cover, too! The cover artist is Christian Fuenfhausen, who has done so many amazing YA and other covers, including 13Reasons and Paper Towns. I was just blown away by how clearly he 'got' the book and made it come alive.
DeleteA key question about immortality: would you continue to age, or freeze at one age and state of health?
ReplyDeleteOne of the many questions I had to ponder! Actually, editor and I had months of back and forth conversations building all the rules and loopholes. In the case of IWALT's characters, they freeze as they are. So Emma and Charlie are forever 17, all the good and bad of it. And their families freeze at their respective ages and state of health. They can be killed by 'unnatural' causes but they won't age or die naturally.
Delete