I have been tinkering around with a couple of different means to achieve this goal, and I haven’t found something that I am particularly proficient in yet. At some level, I think that I have spread myself too thin – pursuing writing, guitar and even pencil drawing from square one all at the same time, moving from one to another as I realize that it’s not living up to the idealized vision I had in my mind.

For example, I got this great idea that I wanted to learn guitar. I purchased the equipment, bought the books and tinkered around with the guitar for about 3-5 days total, and then gave up. I still haven’t figured out why I haven’t tried harder – perhaps it is is because I had unrealistic, almost romantic thoughts that I would be a rock star within a matter of days and when that didn’t happen I became extremely frustrated.

It’s hard to stay motivated in the learning of an art such as music when starting out is so much about failure. You can’t put your fingers in the right place, can’t read the music and simply can’t make the instrument sound the way it should. To be completely honest, I thought that there was something wrong with my guitar until a friend came who had been playing for years. He picked it up, and within seconds it sounded amazing. If anything, this only made me more intimidated to really put the work in because it turns out that I was the problem.

As I get the ball rolling on learning learning the ‘art’ of creative writing, I am really reminded of these sorts of failtures. I must realize that I am not going to put a story down off the top of my head and win a Hugo Award. I have to try, and I have to fail before I can succeed.

I think that Geoffrey Ballard summed this up the best- “Failure is the mechanism of learning”.

What fascinates me in particular is the point of divergence between recorded history and this timeline, which is outlined in the prelude of the book which surrounds General Lee’s Special Order 191 which outlined plans for an invasion of the north.

• In recorded history a Confederate messenger lost the order, The orders were found by Union soldiers, and was key to the Union victory at the Battle of Antietam.
• In How Few Remain, the orders are instead recovered by another Confederate soldier. McClellan is caught by surprise, enabling Lee to achieve victory and eventual independence from the United States.

This seemingly inconsequential event in the course of history has drastic consequences to all the history after it. Abraham Lincoln lives and is a professional orator expounding the writings of Karl Marx, the French and English are strong allies of the Confederates, George Custer and John Pope are almost demonized as they lead a US mission to quell a Mormon rebellion in Utah, among other important changes to history.

I find it fascinating that such a small event could have such an incredibly large impact. It seems similar to stories (does anyone know one in particular?) of a time traveller going back in time, only to swat a fly that is pestering him without thinking twice. When he returns to his own time, he finds it drastically different from when he left. The fact that something so small can have such far reaching effects really makes one think about how the drastically our future could be changed by a minor decision or action that we wouldn’t even think twice about.

Turtledove is able to make this alternate history incredibly believable If you’re not too caught up in the individual actions and personalities of these historical figures, the characters as they are laid out in the book operate in a very logical manner. All the historical figures used as characters are key to the plot – avoiding the common pitfall of alternate history novels interspersing cameos for the sake of setting the historical scene. The reader is left believing that this is exactly what would have happened had the Civil War ended in this way.

I look forward to seeing how this timeline progresses in Turtledove’s Great War Trilogy which shows the alternate history of World War I. I will post my thoughts on those other novels as I finish them.

In order to help me get on the right track, I have signed up for a creative writing course at a local college. I haven’t written any fiction seriously since high school (7 years ago) and even then it always seemed like a chore to me. I hope that this will help me with the structure to create an interesting story. Also, it has been a good 3 years since I have learned in any sort of ’school’ setting and I am hoping that learning in a more structured environment will help me succeed and help prevent this writing bug as another failed creative effort.

I’m going to try my best to share some of my journey on here – win, lose or draw!