Novel / Literary fiction, time travel
When I Was Old
An old man who can visit his own past can't stop trying to fix it, and every fix costs more than the last.
- Status
- Planned. First chapter not started.
- Length
- Nothing drafted yet
- This draft
- First draft, June 2026
An older man can travel into his own past. At first he only watches the key moments of his younger life, sure that if he stepped in he could make it better. So he steps in, small things first: money left where his younger self will find it, fights headed off before they start. All the while he's losing his grip on the present he actually lives in.
On one of those trips he meets a woman who is kind, free-spirited and very much in the present, and she tells him plainly to stop rewriting history. He falls in love with her anyway, and he has to choose between staying with her in the past and going home.
- A prologue, five chapters and an epilogue, in four movements.
- The time travel is left unexplained on purpose. It's dreamlike, not technical.
- The one rule that matters: watching slides into meddling, and meddling ripples.
- Influences: The Time Traveler's Wife, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Butterfly Effect and Arrival.
- The four main characters still need names before the first page.
Nothing drafted yet. This is where they'll show up as I write them, so check back.
Version history1 draft
Current · June 2026
First draft
Not started yet. The plan is an outline, a character list and a story bible.