The struggle with time

„Time can bring me closer but also push me further from one thing“, I tell my witch.
„Especially the one thing we are missing and yearning and feeling like we live for“, my witch agreed.
„We never know.“

While writing my witching novel, I discovered a struggle with time.
Or, with timing.
With the time structure in my novel.
It can be technical questions, just as: How long a period of time does fit into one chapter? This leads to the question of how long one chapter has to be.
I admire authors who write long chapters and really have me sink into it.
But this again leads to questions about how the period of time should be placed into these chapters. Are those chapters short stories with their own introduction and ending? Or does each chapter tell a particular scene and only the novel itself can make a bigger sense of all these little scenes?
I have read novels that were built scene by scene with each of them carefully planned out, painting detailed images of characters and places in my head. I admire that skill. I have also read novels without this, were each chapter resembled a short story and I sank into another rhythm of storytelling. Then again, I have also read novels where after a while I have felt a bit blind. The images were blurry, because telling the story in too long periods of time had undermined details which I apparently would have needed to really sink into the world.
I am not writing this as a writing tip. I think that each of these decision have to be made according to the project one is working on and each of them can work out just fine. The most important thing is to make a decision at all.

„Time is constant but vague“, I mumble into the cup of coffee Layla and I are enjoying on a rainy day in the witching garden.
„And cruel“, my witch adds.

The first thing I did to figure out the timing question for my witching novel was writing the first chapter. I felt as if I had gathered a lot of information and could picture the life in early modern, European cities, and I just began to scribble a first chapter into my witching journal. It introduced my witch as a child, and also her family and the city. I was describing places that would be constant throughout all her childhood and dynamics of characters, which would define her most early experiences.
In the end, this draft of a chapter more or less covered the first 10-12 years of her life.
It introduced the world how my witch experienced it in general, but also included two scenes going into more detail.

Will I keep writing the novel in long periods of time with only few scenes?

I am not sure about this. The young woman facing natural disasters in the 17th century and losing her social status up to being trialed as a potential witch is such an emotional and intense topic, I do want the reader the feel close to her and her world.
So, to figure this question out better, I started another document. One, in which I plan the novel chapter by chapter to get a clearer picture of it.

I have not yet settled for a solution. The latest document I started showed me that there are big incidents in her life which can function as a long scene and tell a lot about the world and the characters in general, as for example her wedding. Then again, I have months which can be told in one chapter, in which I will work on including scenes to give the reader clear images of certain aspects.

Maybe, in the end I will have long chapters which each can function as a short story, including long and complex narration as well as planned out scenes.

Could I write a novel made of short stories that each tell a year of her life?
Short stories with (working) titles such as “The upbringing of a witch” or “a witch attempts to love” or even “system failure”.
Or will there be a lot more problems with his kind of novel?

I will work this out soon.

„As soon as we don‘t plead with the night to never end“, my witch giggled into my ear while I type this.
And yes, that is another struggle with time I am having at the moment.
I am still working on finishing my university degree, and every new day means opening and responding to E-Mails that scare me, because now I have to organize a lot of things which got lost in the pandemic chaos of the past 18 months and very often I stay awake for too long to push the next productive morning further into the future.

Time is difficult!

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Once again, if you have any thoughts on this, please comment and let us connect!