Shoulda Coulda Woulda

One with Mars on it would just look red. With a few little robot dots on it. And a teeny tiny Matt Damon.

February 28, 2021

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If they gave out gold medals for neuroses, I once would have been the Jim Thorpe of the Second-Guess-Myself Decathlon - over the years, I’d become a master. 

It’s clear to me now precisely because I don’t participate much in that death sport anymore. It’s the current absence of it that makes its past presence so glaringly obvious — like waking up one day and discovering that there’s always been an elephant in the living room but you’ve always just sort of worked around it despite its size, aroma, and droppings.

Granted, I made enough boneheaded and self-destructive decisions in the past to warrant some healthy second-guessing, but some of those decisions I made so often that second-guessing never really changed anything. Rather than being my voice of reason, second-guessing became just one stage of my endless cycle: self-destructive decisions, second-guessing, shame, numbing, lather, rinse, repeat. And nothing changed.

Except the second-guessing.

I know I’m not alone in this. It’s a fine line between second-guessing yourself and learning from your mistakes. The latter, when done well, leads to self-improvement and growth. The former, I’ve learned, just keeps us stuck in our cycle of self-doubt, recrimination, fear, etc.

But that’s not very fun to read about on a Sunday morning, I make up. I don’t want you to waste your coffee and favorite breakfast on hearing (even more about) my past mistakes and the lessons I’ve learned.

Instead, I want to explore the good kind of second-guessing, one that can be fun and instructive and educational.

I call it the “Fun of the What If.” 

Or the Exploring of the Possible. To open up willingly to new ideas in anything — big life choices, hobbies, careers, relationships, beliefs.

Anything at all. 

For me, the biggest “What If” Question I’ve asked myself in the last handful of years is, “what if I tried to write an alternate history fiction novel?”

That’s right — a “what if” question about writing a “what if” story. 

Then, I wrote it. Took me about three years. It’s entitled Krelle’s Inferno. You may have heard me talk about it (insert your eye roll here).

The experience of writing it gave me more than anything else ever has, and that’s saying something. It taught me so much more about positive vs. negative “what iffing” than I’d ever thought possible. 

It was also the most fun I’ve ever had in my life. 

And, it was easy - and I don’t mean that snidely or arrogantly. It was a lot of work, yes, but it never really felt like work in the “daily grind” kind of way. Not once in the three years I was writing did I end up saying anything close to “this sucks, it will never work,” or “I have no idea how to solve this dilemma I just created,” or “I can’t go any further with this.” I never had classic “writer’s block,” though I did take time (days or weeks on occasion) to consider what paths to take / ideas to follow / details to check before diving back into writing. 

It all felt natural - this “what if” felt natural. That was new for me, and genuinely exciting because of it. 

Unlike when I wrote nonfiction history in grad school and after, where ascertaining every fact and sequence and consequence is of paramount importance, alternate history fiction allowed me to play around with the possibilities in a story rooted on a premise of a well-known historical event having a different outcome. Essentially, alternate history fiction explores the “Butterfly Effect” of how a change in a prominent historical event would create “ripples” outward that would change subsequent history’s unfolding in profound ways. 

In the case of Krelle’s Inferno, my chosen butterfly event was the famous Allied invasion of Normandy on “D-Day” - June 6, 1944. In actual history, that day produced one of the most important victories of the Second World War for the Allies, and one of the most important victories in all of history. 

In Krelle’s Inferno, however, I turned that day into the exact opposite - a calamitous defeat for the Allies and one of the most consequential defeats in history. 

Sounds sacrilegious, I know. It kinda felt that way to actually write, to be honest. And I ended up creating a pretty scary alternate world based on it. But it also became an excellent catalyst for exploring the possible outcomes of that defeat which could tell us a lot about our own actual time - and selves - in ways that nonfiction historical accounts can’t. 

To explain this idea a bit more, some other examples of alternate history fiction can be helpful. For example, in Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle - the 1962 work many consider to be the “first” alternate history novel, and written by the same guy that penned Blade Runner - its premise that Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan won the Second World War and divided America between them at the Rocky Mountains allowed for uncomfortable questions to be asked about race relations, sexism, and cultural imperialism in the American world-view at the time. The possibility of a future where such differences emerged in a fashion so starkly different from our own experience shines a bright light on our own reality, asking us to consider how the choices we make politically, socially, and even personally can shape subsequent events. The strong suggestion, of course, is that different choices can produce different outcomes - perhaps even more positive ones in the midst of calamity. The recent hit television series based on Dick’s novel went even further than the book in highlighting prejudices, cultural assumptions, and accepted racial / gender roles in not just the postwar era, but (even more so, as would be expected) our own time. 

Speaking of television shows, the first season of For All Mankind chooses a huge historical event - the first moon landing - as the basis of its Butterfly Effect story. Three weeks before Apollo 11 is scheduled to make Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin the first humans to walk on the moon, the Soviet Union surprises the world by beating them to it. Instead of Armstrong, the name that goes down in history is some Cosmonaut named Alexei Leonev. To say that America’s confidence is shaken to its core is an understatement. The series challenges America’s sense of self, its views of women and gender roles, race, the conduct of the Vietnam War, and even the outcome of presidential elections. It asks us to consider what might have been different - and maybe should have been - had we embraced different ideas. 

[Editor’s Note: Let’s be clear - JDK is beyond okay with Neil and Buzz getting there first in real history. Scoreboard, Brezhnev! All your heavy medals didn’t get you there first! Sorry - obscure Cold War history reference]

In writing Krelle’s Inferno, I confronted similar “what ifs” in composing a world in which the Allies lost D-Day but still won the Second World War over Nazi Germany. In real history, hundreds of thousands of American, British, and other soldiers advanced on Germany from the west after D-Day as the Soviet Union closed in from the east. In my story, however, the Soviet Union has to conquer nearly all of Europe to end the war. As a result, instead of the “battle lines” of the subsequent Cold War being drawn right down the middle of Germany and dividing Europe as a whole, the line is the English Channel. 

Yikes. 

The “what ifs” of this scenario came at me in waves (and, it’s worth noting, Dwight Eisenhower - who was in charge of Allied forces on D-Day - gave the invasion only a 50/50 shot of success). How would this have changed America’s confidence as a global leader after World War II? How would it have affected their relations with Britain? How would an explosion of communism’s global popularity have changed things like the end of European colonialism? How would the United States exert its influence without any troops in Europe? What would have been the ramifications in American society? 

I came up with possible answers to these and many more questions as I wrote. Women get to fly in the military much earlier. The Soviets surpass the US in developing technology that leads to jet aircraft and manned space flight. France makes no attempt to reconquer its empire in Indochina (thus, no basis for an eventual American war in Vietnam). The Soviet invasion of Japanese-held territory never happens, so no Soviet forces occupy the northern portion of the Korean peninsula - soooo no basis for the creation of North Korea or for a war there, either. Or the continued threat there in the decades to follow. In the US, there is no attempted reduction in military forces like there was in actual history, the wartime economy continues on unabated, and the Soviet’s constant propaganda about the US being an unequal society for women and ethnic minorities results in serious political and social upheavals and changes in America. 

Yikes again. D-Day sure is a big butterfly. 

Besides the fun playing with possibilities, writing an alternate history reinforced to me why our actual history is so valuable — by casting in sharp relief the potential effects and consequences of them not happening.

In that sense, alternate history fiction can teach history from another direction  - like peeking through its windows or entering it through a back door. Though not in a creepy way like that kinda sounds.

Never mind - you get the point. Moving on. 

The most significant influence on this element of my “what if” exploration has always been the novels of the English writer and journalist Robert Harris, whose alternate histories are frighteningly believable and deeply poignant. His 1992 novel, Fatherland, is my favorite alternate history novel by far, and one of my top 10 all-time favorite books. Its main character, an ordinary policeman named Xavier March, remains one of my favorite literary characters in any genre. The novel is set in Nazi Germany in 1964 (yup, you read that right), just before Hitler’s 75th birthday. In this alternate history, Nazi Germany also defeated the allies at D-Day, and managed to push back the Soviets in the East. As a result, in 1964, Nazi Germany occupies all of Europe from the English Channel to the Ural Mountains in Russia, the United States and Nazi Germany are involved in their own Cold War that is being fought around the globe, and the fate of all of Europe’s Jews remains unknown.

Serious yikes. It’s an astounding novel on every level.

I won’t give away the plot. You need to read it. Harris uses historical events masterfully to create tension and actual historical documents from the war as a key element to the story’s resolution. The book floored me. I re-read it twice immediately, and later assigned it in college classes I taught on the history of Nazi Germany to drive home the point that the Nazis intended to win the war and had horrific plans for afterwards. It’s easy to forget that. This novel, like so many alternate histories, makes clear that nothing is inevitable and that human agency has consequences far beyond their own time.

That makes these “what ifs” worth exploring. 

Inspired by writers like Harris and Dick (and more who are mentioned at the end of this post), I wanted to create a Cold War world quite different from the one of history, both plausible and vivid for the reader. I like to think I’ve succeeded. Finding out for sure is what constitutes my next set of “what ifs.”

Having turned the “what if” I wrote a novel into an “I did” led me to a new “what if” - what if I get it published?

Well, the short answer is it would be awesome and the realization of a lifelong dream. It would give me an opportunity to write more and, perhaps, do it exclusively; I have two more Krelle novels planned, and have already started on the second one, tentatively titled Krelle’s Archipelago. 

But who knows what specifics will happen? Those are the types of “what-ifs” that I cannot predict – specific outcomes. No one can. I could speculate, but not with any degree of confidence like I could with the consequences I altered in my story. So I really shouldn’t waste my energy on such fantasies, when all it does is kick me out of reality - which is that I have work to do to get the book published. 

And notice the “what if” question I ask myself is NOT “what if I don’t get it published?”

I don’t ask it (not very often at least) because the answer is obvious — it doesn’t get published. Any specific outcomes after that require new questions. Self-publish? One chapter at a time on the Internet for the hell of it? I don’t really know. 

But why worry about that? Especially if I, *ahem*, just keep working on getting it published? 

In the writing communities I am in and follow, this is the area where I see the most challenge for writers like me trying to get their first novels published - they stop trying. 

But not because they don’t want the book published anymore. 

Instead, it’s because the feeling of beating one’s head against the wall, getting rejection letter after rejection letter from agents or publishers, wears down confidence and will to keep going. Stamina certainly is required and tested in just getting the book written in the first place, and then more is demanded to attract it the attention it needs to get on an agent’s radar to then be put in front of potential publishers. 

I get it. It’s dispiriting to get rejections. I’ve gotten some.

It’s exhausting hearing conflicting advice and trying to decide which is best to follow. I’ve gotten plenty and have taken time to act.

It’s so hard to juggle a day job with the night job of prepping everything you need for submissions, identifying agents to query, getting materials out to them, then tracking which ones actually answer. 

Many don’t. It doesn’t feel good. 

Each author writes a book not only because it’s something they wanted to do, but because they decided it was important enough to them to write AND put out into the world. There’s heavy emotional investment and vulnerability in that.

And with rejection after rejection, silence after silence, the message can seem to be that the world doesn’t want it. And then it’s easy to go from “the world doesn’t want it / think it’s good enough” to “the world doesn’t want ME / I’m not good enough.”

Which is complete bullshit, of course, but it is nevertheless a slog to walk through that process, like trying to hike up a mountain in shin-high mud in a rainstorm. 

It’s a grind, to be sure - writing the book wasn’t for me, but this next step often is.

And yet, what I am also finding “easy” is not giving up. 

Yep, this “what if” isn’t a candidate for one of those old Second-Guess-Myself gold medals. If it had been, I honestly don’t think I ever would’ve finished the novel in the first place. 

I don’t know exactly why I feel that way, but I know better than to question it too deeply. I’m just happy that the idea of quitting hasn’t ever crossed my mind. 

“What If,” at some point, has to become “Just Do.” 

Because by doing so, I give myself more chances at getting “lucky” here. 

The great writer and philosopher, Joseph Campbell, wrote about this throughout his life — a point made over and over in the insightful documentary about the effects of his thought on modern artists, Finding Joe. We have to finally face and slay our Dragons - the beasts that keep us from realizing our dreams - in order to make them happen.

So what Campbell means for me is that the more I put out query letters, the more chances I give myself of someone taking interest in it and publishing it. 

In shorthand, we make our own luck. 

I don’t need fifty agents or publishers to want to publish Krelle’s Inferno - I need one. And I have a far better chance of finding that one if I send out three hundred or three thousand query letters than if I send out thirty.

Or three. 

Or none.

So I just need to keep doing it, the same way I “just did” the book. Keep going until it’s done. Make time every day and put more of it out there — instead of ruminating endlessly like I have about so many other things in the past. Or quit when the time frame I have decided is the “right one” doesn’t materialize. 

That would make me the problem, not the phantom agent or publisher out there that just doesn’t know that they need to publish me NOW.

The “what if” question — what if I keep putting out queries and never give up — will only be answered when I get an answer. 

I create more possibilities of an answer I like by doing more. 

Then continuing to do it. 

If this sounds like I’m talking myself into this, I get it. And if it somehow is (even though I don’t think it is), there is no hurt in giving myself a pep talk today.

Or every day. As long as I don’t quit.

Quitting is not a possibility I’m willing to consider. I’ve already earned a life-time achievement award for all the Second-Guessing gold medals I’ve won.  

Writing Krelle’s Inferno broke me of that habit, thank God. Most of the time….

Along the way I was surprised to learn how badly my old second-guessing had hurt me. By showing me what it felt like to never second-guess myself, I began to trust my intuition and my writing. 

It taught me that the answers to any day-in-day-out “what if” question can only focus on taking action, not trying to predict outcomes or calculate potential consequences. As with anything else, outcomes and consequences don’t lend themselves to easy prediction. If they did, we all would be millionaires.

And I’d be publishing Krelle’s Inferno’s seventeenth sequel in my own publishing house. From my private jet. Any of these.

A story that I created, that I sketched/scaffolded/experimented with/moved around/pitched to friends/made as realistic as possible taught me more about myself than practically anything else I’ve ever done — simply by doing it.

Sometimes — a lot of times, I’ve found  — that’s enough in any situation, at any time. Just doing something in the moment to further the process forward is digestible. It doesn’t need to be graphed or run through a computer to test outcomes or even be handed over to some deity, incantation, superstition, or therapist for help.  

Because doing something is just that. The rest, at least for me, has to do with trying to control the outcome and get it the way I want it. 

But by not focusing on that, I make the outcome I want far more likely. Because I’m keeping my shit out of my own way. Trying to anticipate all the outcomes or consequences is the equivalent of trying to eat another full meal on top of an immensely satisfying one. It just leads to stomach aches and no appreciation of either meal. Which defeats the purpose and destroys the joy of eating in the first place.

Even if you haven’t written a novel and tried to get it published, this still works. For anything, really. You already know what it is for you, I’d bet. What that Dragon of yours might be.

We don’t have to be blown around by the winds produced by some butterfly somewhere, asking ourselves why the wind is so strong or how we will survive it or where we will end up when the storm ends. 

We can just be the goddamned butterfly. 

So let’s get flapping. 

But finish your coffee first, or you’ll spill. 

Chins Up, Everyone. 

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The literary world of Alternate History Fiction is extraordinarily rich, and television / film media are noticing that there are audiences of all ages for it, as the successful television adaptations of Philp Dick’s “The Man in the High Castle” and Philip Roth’s “The Plot Against America” make clear.

For my money, anything by Robert Harris should be read and re-read. He started out by chronicling the true story of the so-called “Hitler Diaries” forgery back in the 1980s in his riveting book, Selling Hitler. In addition to his aforementioned novel, Fatherland, I also suggest his books Enigma and Archangel. His most recent standard historical fiction novels, Munich and V2, are both excellent as well.

And seriously - read Fatherland. Then read it again. Then give it to someone else to read.

Professional historians have also done work with alternate history, some of which has been quite influential for me with Krelle’s Inferno. In particular, the fantastic collection of essays, If the Allies Had Fallen, brings fine historians from around the world to consider a number of alternative scenarios within World War II. Denis Showalter’s piece on D-Day was a direct influence on the scenario I set up in my own novel to explain the D-Day defeat. The three volumes of “What If?” also feature historians exploring scenarios from throughout global history like “What if Pizarro Had Not Found Potatoes in Peru?” and “What if Martin Luther Had Been Burned at the Stake?” So much fascinating history to be learned this way - by seeing what might have happened instead of what DID.

Enjoy the possibilities.

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Thanks for reading My Sunday Post. Here are some important updates from my past week:

Soul Book of the Week: Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship by Gregory Boyle.

Book On My Nightstand: Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman. It’s a f#@%ing long book.

Best Show / Movie I Watched: For All Mankind, Season One (Apple TV)

Strongest Earworm Song: Roman Candles by Hard Working Americans

Longest Walk / Run of the Week: Four mile walk, 30 minutes on the stationary bike (Friday)

Coolest Experience of the Week: A friend giving me a Pop Tart as an (unnecessary but appreciated) apology - see last week’s post

Thing I Now Know That I Didn’t Before: That blue herons nest in trees, and often in groups.

Most Helpful Perspective / Advice of the Week: “Keeping things ‘Light’ doesn’t mean ‘Shallow’”

T-Shirt I Didn’t Want to Take Off / Wash: My old-school 1980 “Miracle On Ice” USA Hockey shirt