Choices

One of the interesting things about writing is that you get to choose a whole lot of details to fit into the context that you are creating. I chose to use was a journal format for many of the segments, but then I had to figure out what to do about dating these journal entries. I decided not to include the year for a few reasons. The most obvious one was that I didn't want to date the story, out of concern that it may be perceived as less relevant say in 10 years. It may or may not be the case, but why take a chance.

Also for those who are into looking at these details, Oct. 2nd (the date of the first journal entry) fell on a Tuesday in 2001, which happened to be the year when I was setting the final format of the book. Well as we all know, the autumn of 2001 was an interesting season for most of Western civilization -- coming to terms as we were with 9/11. Although Starla often refers to what might be going on in the world around her, I didn't want to use 9/11 as a metaphor, or a backdrop for any part of the book and so I chose to ignore it all together by simply never referring to the year.

It does make one feel quite omnipotent, having all this choice at one's disposal.
Copyright 2007