By Rick Blechta
No, this week’s post title is not a reference to the 1969 song by Jethro Tull but I suppose it could act as a musical background, I suppose. Not familiar with this song? Click HERE to listen to it.
In my post two weeks ago now — more on that later —I spoke of coming to the realization that my current work in progress should not be set in the present but maybe as much as 35 years ago.
Since then I’ve been cogitating on when that when should be. My characters seem comfortable with somewhere between 1975 and 1980. That choice would necessitate a huge change in the crime that drives the story, but I have a few ideas how that might work out okay.
If, however, I went with the later ’80s and 1990, I would have to change the original storyline less.
So that’s one conundrum I’m facing, the one that will have to be solved first.
The other issue is how much I don’t remember the ’70s, ’80s, or even the ’90s. I mean, come on, Blechta, you lived through it, didn’t you? I’m beginning to think I sleepwalked through it, though. There is just so much I don’t remember.
I’ve taken to reading about it as if the whole era took place before I was born. It’s the only way to refresh my memory enough that I can write about it authoritatively. How weird is that?
I’m currently on 1983 and looking at what changes to technology took place that year, and it’s astonishing to me how long some of the electronics that are so much a part of our lives has been around, even though much of it was pretty crude at the time.
I’d like to say as I research it’s all coming back to me, but it’s not. I feel as if I’m an archeologist of my own life. I could blame it on having a young family at the time, working far too hard for too many hours, or just not paying attention, but I lived through this stuff! It seems so foreign to me.
So I hope to nail down my time period and get back to work. I’ve written a few experimental scenes based on how I’m leaning towards changing the plot, and while it’s been elucidating in some regards, it’s hardly providing any forward motion.
We’ll get back to this in next week’s post.
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As for last week’s non-post, I was under the weather with a dizzy spell, something I’ve suffered with the past three years right around this time and continuing into June, then disappearing. Apparently I have loose crystals in my right inner ear. It’s all very boring, but the doctors are working towards a solution. However, when one of these spells occur, I’m laid flat out until it subsides, and last Tuesday was a bad one. Sorry ’bout that!
