A new year allows for some new beginnings. Let’s reboot this HFCN newsletter and see where 2024 takes us. Also, I share some thoughts on time in historical fiction, including what Joan Silber and Carlo Rovelli have to say about it.
Hello, Again
A very happy New Year to all of you. I hope that 2024 will bring you all that you wish for . . . and then some.
My apologies for the two multi-month breaks in 2023. Things got rather busy work-wise and study-wise, and I needed to redistribute my energies. I have certainly missed doing my newsletters and interacting with some of you through them.
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2024 Word of the Year: Health
If you’ve been a newsletter subscriber for over a year, you might know about my word-of-the-year practice. More recently, I discussed this with another writer, Nupur Roopa, who wrote a lovely piece about it.
As I mentioned to her, I do not discuss this practice quite as much publicly as I did before (read her article if you would like to know why.) So I’ll say this in brief: 2024’s word-of-the-year for me is “health” in every possible sense of the word—emotional, physical, intellectual, spiritual, and more. This will, I hope, reflect in all my work, including this newsletter.
New to my work? Check out my books and publications.
Time Is Both a Natural Occurrence and a Social Construct
Recently, I read a work of historical fiction where the characters dealt with time in, well, rather anachronistic ways. I could not finish the novel, I must admit, because of this problem. It also got me thinking deeper about the concept of time and how it has both natural and social aspects.
Natural time, like the passing of days or the Earth’s rotation, is a fundamental aspect of the universe. How we measure, perceive, and organize time—dividing it into units, creating calendars, and assigning meanings to those divisions—is a social construct. Hours, days, weeks, months, and years are all social constructs to help us organize and make sense of natural rhythms.
There are cultural differences, too, in how time is perceived and organized.
Monochronic cultures, like those in the Western world, emphasize linear time by focusing on schedules, punctuality, and completing tasks in a sequence. Time is seen as a limited resource, and there’s a strong emphasis on sticking to schedules, deadlines, and appointments.
Conversely, in polychronic cultures, time is perceived as more fluid and less rigidly structured. Here, relationships and events sometimes take precedence over specific schedules. Interruptions during meetings or delays in appointments are generally more acceptable and considered a natural part of the flow of events. Certain African, Latin American, Asian, and Middle Eastern cultures exhibit polychronic time orientations. These differences may be barely noticeable nowadays, but their traces remain strong and inevitably influence various aspects of life, including communication styles, business practices, and social interactions.
Social influences also shape our understanding of time in various contexts. For example, societal norms, 9-to-5 work schedules, and the pace of life can impact how individuals experience and prioritize time. We all know how technology has enabled immediacy of communication, the speed of information exchange, and the ability to multitask. All of these, in turn, have altered how we manage our time.
Generational shifts create another kind of social influence: older generations prioritize face-to-face interactions and have different perspectives on the pace of life compared to younger generations, who are more accustomed to digital communication and a faster-paced lifestyle.
Our geographical locations also make a difference. Urban areas have a faster pace of life due to factors like commute times, a higher number of activities, and more structured schedules. In contrast, rural communities often have a more relaxed or season-based approach to time, influenced by agricultural cycles or a closer connection to natural rhythms.
A Couple More Fascinating Ways to Think About Time in Fiction
Joan Silber gives us a singular set of approaches to think about time in fiction. In her book The Art of Time in Fiction, she writes:
“[S]torytelling, in ancient and modern practice, is always a contemplation of the experience of time passing. A story depends on things not standing still, on the built-in condition of impermanence. All the emotions that attach to the passage of time—regret, impatience, anticipation, mourning, the longing for what’s past, the desire for recurrence, the dread of recurrence—are the fuel of plots.”
Silber, Joan. The Art of Time in Fiction: As Long as It Takes. United States, Graywolf Press, 2009.
She begins by describing five kinds of time: classic time, long time, switchback time, slowed time, and fabulous time. There are several notable examples in the book to illustrate these types of time as well. The most interesting to me is when she discusses time as the primary subject of a story. The above quote is from the beginning of that chapter. She goes on to discuss different plots related to stories where characters engage in particular struggles with time: the plot of remembering, the plot of forgetting, the plot of revised time, the plot of unused time, and the plot of the metaphysics of time.
Speaking of metaphysics, here’s an interesting approach to thinking about past and present, cause and effect, etc. In his book, The Order of Time, the physicist Carlo Rovelli discusses a radical way to think about time as a perspective rather than a universal truth.
He believes that there are no “things” and that the universe is made up of countless events or processes. A stone, for example, is an event taking place at a much slower rate than we humans can comprehend. It is in a continual state of transformation and will, eventually, take on some other form. So everything, he says, is undergoing some process of transformation—even an ancient object buried deep somewhere for centuries—and we break that up into chronological units of time because it is one way of trying to understand and order the world.
If you are new to Rovelli, try this one-minute video with Benedict Cumberbatch sharing a snippet of Rovelli’s ideas.
Yes, this might be a more tricky way to think about time when writing fiction. Rovelli is an accessible and engaging writer, though. And there is already a movie based on his book. So, certainly, these concepts apply well to fiction.
Food for Thought?
Time is the one commodity that our fictional characters, much like us, cannot avoid and have no control over. And this is exactly why it can be a terrific plot device if used carefully. It can allow us to add more complex layers to our characters’ traits, too.
Let’s consider how we are managing time in your current historical fiction project. How do our characters approach and process time? How does that affect their interaction and communication with each other, their experiences of moments and memories, and their planning and plotting of their own actions and behaviors?
Looking for book recommendations? Check out my ongoing book lists.
Some Quick Literary Updates
In October 2023, I presented seminars on historical fiction and magical realism each at the Dallas Fort Worth Writer’s Conference. And I was pleasantly surprised that the actor and writer Evangeline Lilly, attended one of those sessions. As it turns out, she was also the keynote speaker that afternoon, and she announced to a hall full of conference attendees that she changed her entire speech because of something I discussed.
There is no recording that I can share with you, but I am always grateful when my words and ideas move others to rethink or revisit their own. What changed her mind? See the first slide below. Though this focuses on magical realism, much of this line of argument applies to historical fiction, too, as you can see from the second slide below.
In August 2023, I wrote my last book review for the foreseeable future. Jamila Ahmed’s debut historical novel, Every Rising Sun, is a retelling or adaptation of The Arabian Nights. Naturally, I found a way to work in references to some of the English translations of this classic as well. Note: While I will not be pitching book reviews for publication, I will certainly continue sharing books in these newsletters.
Please share your thoughts in the comments below, and I will respond.
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