Forget Time Travel—Here’s Why You Should Write About Right Now
Okay, so we all love a little time-travel in our fiction. You crack open a book and BOOM—you’re in 1884, wearing a corset, hiding forbidden love letters in the cracks between your bedroom wall…
Or you’re zooming through a dystopian neon wasteland being chased by a malfunctioning AI toaster. You’re haunted by the technical glitch it’s experiencing, where it has to know “how burnt do you want your toast?! Answer me or I’ll self-destruct – and take your cat with me!” Classic Tuesday.
Historical fiction? Iconic. Sci-fi? Literally predictive. Literature has always been obsessed with the past and the future—and fair enough, those time zones slap. But can we talk about something that often gets overlooked?
The absolute ✨ magic ✨ of writing the present.
Not the past-past. Not the cyber-future. I’m talking right now. This messy, chaotic, over-caffeinated, doomscroll-y era we’re living in. There’s so much beauty here. And it deserves to be written down.
Why are we all collectively experiencing the same mental-illnesses and blaming it on Mercury going retrograde every 2 hours? How do we all have ADHD, paralyzed by capitalism, and crave the same flavor of bubble-tea every 3 PM? And the obsession with tattoos! What, when, where, how? (I’m guilty of this myself – I tattooed a wisdom tooth flipping the world off and showing us its sparkly butt. Wanna see, wanna see? I’ll show you)
1. The Cavemen Understood the Assignment
Even our prehistoric ancestors knew the power of the present. They drew stick-figure cows on cave walls like, “This cow killed Fred two hours ago. I debated whether to chase it down or just to take Fred and turn him into meat pie. But I decided I’d go after the cow. And turn them both into pie because we like a good BOGO deal.”
These doodles? Literal day-in-the-life journals. The OG slice-of-life genre. They didn’t wait until the invention of the wheel to start documenting their world—they just went for it. With rocks.
Sure, they only had grunts and moans (get your mind out of the gutter, we’re in history class), but those sketches were the start of something bigger: human storytelling.
Thousands of years later, we are dissecting every line stroke on the walls, studying our ancestors. What their days were like, what values they had(or lack thereof. RIP, Fred), and what challenges they overcame for us to get to where we are.
2. Slice-of-Life Isn’t Boring—It’s a Time Capsule
Let’s give slice-of-life some respect. It’s the udon noodles of fiction: warm, soft, simple, but somehow makes you cry halfway through.
The genre is often underrated because it doesn’t have sword fights or alien invasions. But writing about everyday life is revolutionary.
When you write about now—the awkward dates, the family group chats, the weird feeling of opening TikTok during a mental breakdown—you’re preserving this cultural moment. And that? Don’t you think that is magical? That your stories can transcend and live through time itself, and you never even had to go any farther than your present experiences.
One day, people will study our memes. Your descendents will overanalyze your use of the sparkly emoji ✨– and label it as therapy in a button. Because sarcasm dressed in glitter can cure depression… or mask it, at least… (Stop looking at me like that! 👀✨✨✨✨✨✨)
3. Now Is What We Know Best
No one can write about this era like we can. We’re in the thick of it. The rent crisis, the 3-in-1 coffee, the collective burnout, the weird little joys that keep us going. You don’t have to research the present—you just have to live it.
Your stories, however small they seem, are snapshots of this timeline. That morning commute. That grocery aisle existential crisis. That late-night walk that saved you a little.
These are not just anecdotes. They’re evidence. Of how we loved. Of what we feared. Of what made us human.
4. Fiction as Resistance and Record
Writing about your now can also be an act of resistance. Especially if you’re part of a community that’s often erased, ignored, or misrepresented.
Your stories are not just entertainment. They are archives. They say: “I was here. I mattered. My voice counts.”
Think about it. Future generations might learn more from a single present-day novella than from ten sanitized history textbooks. Especially if it talks about the stuff we’re too scared to put in headlines.
5. Your Legacy Is in Your Words
You, dear writer, are the scribe of this wild era. The poet of the group chat. The chronicler of lunch breaks and love songs and silent suffering.
Your work might one day be the reason someone in the future understands what it felt like to be alive right now. And whether they study it in classrooms or find it in the ruins of an abandoned Starbucks, it will matter.
You don’t need to invent a new world. This one’s already pretty weird and wonderful.
6. Your experience is a beacon of light for those in need.
You may feel isolated in your struggles. You may feel like not even your family understands why you write, or draw, or paint, or sing, or dance.
But many others will.
Not everyone is a writer. And not everyone has the resources, the courage, and the voice that you have. You are the lighthouse that will help people like you find their community. And there’s statistics to prove it.
You’re a dancer, and you don’t know anybody else that loves dancing as much as you? I can bet you my left butt cheek a million other people who dance are also looking for people like you on Google, in Facebook groups, Tiktok.
You have undiagnosed Autism you didn’t know you had and the whole of your existence suddenly makes perfect sense, but now you have no one to talk to about it? My butt cheek is still up for grabs – you will find people instantly that are exactly the same as you, just waiting to be heard.
You’re a writer whose stories are unconventional and you don’t know which publishers accept stories that are not “commercially flavorful”? Surprise! Welcome to AlònTala. That is our niche. You just found your people. I bet you my left butt cheek.
Disclaimer: This is by no means an offer I hand out just because I want my butt cheek grabbed. This is purely to state a point.
Final Thoughts (With Jazz Hands)
Time travel is cute. But the present? The present is personal. It’s emotional. It’s relatable. And in a hundred years, it might just be the most fascinating fiction of all.
So pick up the pen. Open the doc. Be the reason someone in 2124 says, “Wow. That’s what life was like back then? They had avocado toast and anxiety?”
Yes, we did. And we wrote about it.
Now go. Write your now.
Make the future grateful you existed.
Bonus exercise for you! (Because… my husband said I can’t just offer my butt cheeks to random online strangers 😞)
Write a breakup scene with modern slang. Describe a character doom scrolling at 3AM. Capture the quiet magic of a birthday party in a studio apartment.
Need help? Try these writing prompts:
- A character writes a love letter they never plan to send.
- Two strangers bond over a dead phone battery.
- Someone realizes they’ve forgotten how to rest.
- A roommate confrontation escalates over laundry and ends with catharsis.
Your present is your playground. Don’t ignore it.
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