A Timeline Is A Writer’s Friend
A Journalist’s Diary
Writing is all about taming the chaos in the mind, funneling countless ideas into a coherent string of events, people, and places that connect in a meaningful way and drive the plot from one logical point to the next.
I wrote about how I began to create that order out of the chaos my exploratory writing for my short story project delivered in the last post on writing.
That post highlighted sketching as a tool and hinted at another: the timeline. I’ll share more thoughts on its place and purpose in my routine today.
And I’ll send you back to your day with another observation journal entry.
Sorting the Chaos
I love B.S. Johnson’s novel approach to delivering a coherent story. One of his books — The Unfortunates, published in 1969 — strays from the linear structure we know. The first and the last chapter is all you get for structure. You read the other chapters in a random order.
I remember this fascinating reading experiment and experience. I was skeptical but soon conceded. It worked. And how it worked.
As thrilling as the reading was, I can’t imagine how he managed to weave a narrative so immaculate it allows for such flexibility in the arrangement of events. How could he keep track of all the information, the connections, and the causality?
I doubt I’ll ever accomplish such a feast. Taming the amalgamation of events, places, characters without names, characters with names, and possibilities to connect everything was already challenging enough. And I have yet to determine if I’ve concluded that task to my satisfaction.
Anyway. Going through all the writing I have done so far revealed a rough framework.
I explored enough of the backstory (the events that explain and lead to the plot I have in mind for the short stories) to know where I want to go with all of this.
And that’s the most important aspect of my personal writing: it’s an outlet where I can do what I want. I can wander, explore, discover, and write to keep my mind sound and safe.
Now, the work I described resulted in the timeline I showed at the beginning of the post. It’s not quite complete, but it helped me realize the five cornerstones of the foundation that I can use to build the short stories.
Arriving at that point was as nonlinear and random as The Unfortunates.
I started with the fourth event (the ominous B + E crisis), and while fleshing that out, I jumped back and forth between the other four highlight events. With each jump, I learned more about Jake and his relationships. I also learned more about what this crisis means for the mystery, which you can spot as the last point on the timeline. That’s where the short stories will hopefully take over one day.
I hope those unspecific ramblings about my writing process haven’t bored you too much. The ironic twist (as far as the process is concerned) is the happily chaotic mix of tools I’ve used and continue to rely on.
I started writing my early explorations by hand. Despite all its inefficiencies, I terribly enjoy the old-school writing process and want to use it wherever I can get away with it.
But, as I said last time, there’s a time and place for everything. Electronic writing instruments are not only more efficient, but they also allow more flexible editing, which makes it easier to find structure. That’s what I needed to see where my development work was at.
I then threw it back to the good old fountain pen, which helped me sketch the chronological connections and resulted in the timeline.
The next task reverses that once again. While I will fill the final gaps in that backstory, I will transfer that analog timeline into digital harmony or a more polished timeline. That allows me to add a few bullet points without exceeding the limits of an A4-sized sheet of paper.
Polished may be overselling what I have in mind. I am not worried about the structure or what the world tells us structure for stories needs to be. This is a timeline for an overall reference, not for a specific story. I want it to be messy. It is allowed to be complex. Hopefully, it will enable me to go to fascinating places with the project.
At the very least, I hope you enjoyed picking up a few details from the timeline, like Jake and Cas, the first names of what began as A and B, but that’s all the information I give for now.
The Swan Lady
A woman in her 70s sits on one of the foldable seats of the local commuter train that connects Oberhausen and Duisburg Ruhrort, the district sitting at the Rhine River embankment and once the heart of the Ruhr Valley’s steel production industries.
I had almost missed her, but that was before I noticed the buggy to her right. It is occupied by a swan.
The lady talks vividly with a young woman across the aisle. Another woman, about the same age, maybe mid-twenties, shares the three-seat compartment but hasn’t spoken a word so far.
The late afternoon lights the young conversationalist’s face. Her focused stare at her phone avoids direct eye contact with the sun.
I can’t understand much of the conversation. The engine noise overpowers most of the words exchanged.
Fragments reach my ears here and there.
“I don’t know, either,” the young woman says while the swan lady throws both hands up in the air. They seem to be debating the reliability of the public transport system. Or rather, the lack thereof.
Disruption. As the next stop approaches, a woman in her early twenties walks past the scene and stops opposite me, ready to plunge off the train as soon as the doors open.
While I scribble the last words about that distraction into my notebook, I detect a new voice. The young woman’s companion, whom I can’t see past the front parts of her shoes, puts in a word. The engine noise drowns her out. But it was only a short comment because she was already taking a sip from her water bottle.
The approaching stop continues to be a distraction. More passengers who plan on exiting the train shuffle to the doors, giving me little choice but to walk the two steps across the aisle.
A blessing in disguise?
I can see Swan Lady and her pet more clearly now. Fascinating: she produces a white mug, presumably filled with water, and feeds the surprisingly large animal. I say large, because it sits snuggly inside the retro-style buggy. Dark blue fabric, a roof that could be rolled down but isn’t, hiding two-thirds of the swan underneath its cover. The handle is a shiny silver color. I doubt it’s chrome. Lots of plastic bibs and bobs on the vehicle.
“Enough?” she asks with a caring look in her eyes. “Or do you want some more?”
The swan’s response must have been negative because she stashes the mug away and explains the animal’s behavior to her two interested fellow travelers.
While speaking, Swan Lady fingers her oversized smartphone out of her coat pocket, presses and swipes across the screen a few times, and proudly shows a photograph across the aisle.
I can’t see the picture, but I can see that she has dark, reddish hair. As I concentrate on her appearance, another passenger ends my observations abruptly by walking right in front of me. My stop is coming up.
I left that train with a big smile. Those 10 minutes of writing have lifted my mood from basement to rooftop, just in time for an early evening photowalk. The results of that walk can be viewed in last week’s Fun With Cameras if you’re interested.
I will leave it at that for today and this week. Next week’s posts include new reading material, another chapter of my Journalism Diary, and observations from my foray into nature photography.
