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Saturday 18 December 2010

Future Me

There is a website called FutureMe, where you can write an email to be sent to yourself at a date chosen by you in the future.

I've got one in their system awaiting its moment, though I can't now remember what my concerns were at the time of writing or when it will arrive. It's interesting, because it gives you a way to juggle time.

On FutureMe's site, you can read a selection of anonymous emails, and they make poignant reading, like this one:

stop it
Lyss,
Stop thinking about him.
-Lyss
written Apr 11th, 2005, sent 1 year into the future, to Apr 13th, 2006

Did she manage to stop thinking about him? Or perhaps they got back together...

Writers are no more bound by chronology than God; we can nip back in the novel's time and change things just like a Time Lord (how handy that would be in real life). So much power confuses me, particularly with the current book, where alternating chapters deal with each heroine. It's hard to ensure one of them doesn't get to Thursday while her alter ego hasn't moved beyond Wednesday morning.

8 comments:

  1. I've tried out FutureMe but I haven't had an email from the future yet. Maybe I'll do a short term one to wish myself a Merry Christmas! What I'd really like is for a future me to write to me but that isn't going to happen.

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  2. Now I can't stop thinking about Lyss!

    I once attended a course where during the closing session we wrote postcards to ourselves. The course leader took these and posted them to us a few months later. Of course they were meant to contain reminders of what we'd learnt and a pep talk to refresh us. Sadly mine smacked of someone who'd been keen to get home...

    K

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  3. FH, I sometimes wonder, entirely pointlessly, what advice I would give myself if allowed to go back in time. Even a small change would risk my not having the rather satisfactory offspring, so I conclude it's lucky time only works one way.

    K, you made me laugh with your postcard. I hope the course leader read it.

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  4. I'm assuming I"ll be wiser in the future, and it's the past me who really needed the help.

    I'm not sure I'd have anything to say to the future me at all....

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  5. I knew I should have sent my question to futureme and not to the psychic! Darn!!

    :-)

    Take care
    x

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  6. Grace, give it a go; it does give you an interesting snapshot of past concerns.

    Kitty, now I'm all curious about your Question...

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  7. I agree about the timeline problem when writing. I have always assumed that there must be some software out there somewhere that makes keeping tack of multiple time lines possible. It's probably to be found in project management or something like that. Getting the foundations done before the roof can't be much different to getting Jack and Jill to the top of the hill at the same time.

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  8. Rod, there is novel writing software, and I took a look at several recently. I actually downloaded Storybook (http://storybook.intertec.ch/joomla/) but felt I'd use up too much time familiarizing myself with its little ways before it became useful.

    Pen, A4 and a ruler can work pretty well :o)

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