Odd Times
Odd Times by Warren Bull
Today in Christchurch the weather was cold and dreary. My wife spent the day preparing for the class she is teaching. I had no particular plans. The prospect of wandering through the Canterbury University campus or the neighborhoods to see emerging flowers was not appealing.
After some purposeless activities, I sat down and reconstructed a short story that somehow got lost. I think the computer ate it. I wrote it for an anthology that I expected, but it never came into being. I have started and stopped the recovery effort a number of times with quite limited success. So that was how I spent a satisfying and useful day.
I was reminded of the time when I was traveling with my mother and our flight got delayed for six hours. We were in the airport where we could take care of necessities as they occurred. With nothing planned I wrote a short story by analyzing and then stealing some of the techniques of Iain Pears, who wrote an absolutely great novel, An Instance of the Fingerpost. It was unlike anything I’ve written before or after. It was a challenge I had set for myself before and was never able to meet until then.
I am not going to share my analysis. It wasn’t based on that novel anyway but on two other wonderful novels of his. Grab a couple of his novels, take six hours and figure it out for yourself, if you like.
My point is that being a writer allows me to take advantage of unexpectedly free periods of time when I might be bored or think about what I can learn from my failures or ponder the meaning of life. I find that, although I can squeeze writing into brief interludes, I like to have enough time to thoroughly work on a project that does not resolve itself easily. Years ago I wrote my dissertation in large chunks of time. There are advantages to being somewhere where you are basically unknown and uninterrupted.
What situations help you write?
Today in Christchurch the weather was cold and dreary. My wife spent the day preparing for the class she is teaching. I had no particular plans. The prospect of wandering through the Canterbury University campus or the neighborhoods to see emerging flowers was not appealing.
After some purposeless activities, I sat down and reconstructed a short story that somehow got lost. I think the computer ate it. I wrote it for an anthology that I expected, but it never came into being. I have started and stopped the recovery effort a number of times with quite limited success. So that was how I spent a satisfying and useful day.
I was reminded of the time when I was traveling with my mother and our flight got delayed for six hours. We were in the airport where we could take care of necessities as they occurred. With nothing planned I wrote a short story by analyzing and then stealing some of the techniques of Iain Pears, who wrote an absolutely great novel, An Instance of the Fingerpost. It was unlike anything I’ve written before or after. It was a challenge I had set for myself before and was never able to meet until then.
I am not going to share my analysis. It wasn’t based on that novel anyway but on two other wonderful novels of his. Grab a couple of his novels, take six hours and figure it out for yourself, if you like.
My point is that being a writer allows me to take advantage of unexpectedly free periods of time when I might be bored or think about what I can learn from my failures or ponder the meaning of life. I find that, although I can squeeze writing into brief interludes, I like to have enough time to thoroughly work on a project that does not resolve itself easily. Years ago I wrote my dissertation in large chunks of time. There are advantages to being somewhere where you are basically unknown and uninterrupted.
What situations help you write?
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