[Listen]
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[Woman’s Voice]
This is Behind the Cut with Christopher Gronlund. The companion show to Not About Lumberjacks.
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Christopher Gronlund:
Behind the Cut is an in-depth look at the latest episode of Not About Lumberjacks and often contains spoilers from the most recent story. You’ve been warned…
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Clearly, I have a thing for time travel stories.
An earlier Not About Lumberjacks story, “Standstill” deals with stopping time to spend more time with a dying loved one. “Calling Out of Time” is about someone who finds a payphone that allows him to call the past and change his life in another timeline. And the latest story, “It’s Never Too Late,” is about someone who builds a time machine, travels back to 1983, and breaks down.
Why the obsession?
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I could blame the movie Time Bandits, which I saw several times the weekend it came out. But really, what got me with Time Bandits was trying to figure out how one goes about writing a story and getting it on a big screen in a theater—not how to go about traveling through the ages. It was other movies that pulled me in.
When I used to visit my dad in Kansas each summer when I was younger, he had cable TV. I watched the movie Time After Time repeatedly, fascinated by H.G. Wells pursuing Jack the Ripper in modern times.
I can list a ton of other time travel movies I’ve loved over the years: Back to the Future, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Twelve Monkeys, Primer, Donnie Darko, Groundhog Day, the first two Terminator movies, Safety Not Guaranteed, and yeah, even Hot Tub Time Machine!
But what is it about time travel movies that hooks us?
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I think it’s two things:
- One: The intricacies of how time travel works in stories…and seeing if stories break their own rules. There’s often a cleverness involved in time travel tales many find appealing.
- And Two: This is the biggie—we tend to be obsessed with the possibilities offered to us by traveling into the past to “fix” things—or peeking into our futures.
I’ve talked about regret before, and how I’m not one to carry much in my life. Even the bad days and decisions got me to who I am today. But I know people who shoulder the past and would love nothing more than the chance to have a do-over and leave that weight behind.
And the future: who doesn’t want to see if we, as a species, get better…or worse? To see if who we are and what we struggle with today will not always be our story.
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Initially, “It’s Never Too Late” was going to be a bit wacky. Sentimental, but also ridiculous. Albert was going to travel back to 1983, break down, and end up teaching high school or something that put him in touch with his teenage self. He’d help himself navigate his awkward years while also navigating his awkward adult life, where shyness was still an issue. Eventually, he’d reveal to teen Albert that he was him, and somehow, the two would find answers that would better their lives.
But that’s a bit overdone…
Then I thought, “He’s just a guy who gets stuck, lives a different life, and dies.” But the time travel geek in me could not let go of the chance for Albert to meet himself!
Of course, because it’s not a time travel story where a new timeline is created, that meant paradoxes prevented that from happening. Unless…he met himself after he lived long enough to fix the machine and bring his middle-aged self back. (And even then, I’m sure there’s someone out there who would say, “Actually…that couldn’t have happened because…” and give me a list of reasons. (The least of which, creating two Alberts at different ages.)
That’s the thing about time travel stories, though: most don’t make sense under scrutiny. But they still work, and we still love them. The movie Looper’s like, “Yeah, this is just cool, so that’s what we’re gonna do,” putting story before mechanics.
Time travel stories are simply a fun mechanism to write very human stories using a very ridiculous premise.
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The human element in time travel stories is often going back to prevent a loved one from dying—or fixing a mistake in the past. Changing things so the “future” is better. It works because we all have loved ones we miss…and we all have things we’d likely do differently if given a second chance.
But I didn’t want Albert to get a second chance where he could change his past and affect his life back in the future. As appealing as it might sound, there’s something to the mistakes we’ve made along the way. We are who we are because of the paths we’ve been on—bad decisions included.
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When I was younger, I had a very impressive proposition made to me by a great aunt: she was willing to move me to New York City, put me up in an apartment she owned a couple blocks from Central Park for free, and introduce me to people in publishing. (She owned an art gallery in the city and knew a lot of cool people.) If I wanted to go to school, it was on her. When I told her I got terrible grades and was on academic probation from a community college, she said, “Well, I’ve donated quite a bit to several smaller liberal colleges on the East Coast, and if you promise you’ll improve your grades, I’m sure they’ll make an exception.”
When I’ve told this story to a couple people, they said I was nuts for turning down the offer. Their reasoning, in essence: “Think about how much better your life would be!”
But…would it really?
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I’d be lying if I said I never imagined “what might have been?” had I taken my great-aunt up on her generous offer, but when we think like that, we often think only of the good what-ifs. The realist in me also thinks, “Sure, maybe I would have been published by a prestigious house in my 20s, but I’d have probably also become a smug little shit, despite being a caring individual. Maybe I’d not worry about finances today, but I’d hate being one of those people who was given an opportunity by family and thought, ‘Well, if I could do it, so can those lowly poors!”
Given my nature, it’s more likely I’d have worked hard and had decent opportunities, but who can say I’d not have found someone, been in such a rush with a busy life pursuing my golden opportunities, and ended up divorced? Or…stressed to the point of worrying that my next book might be my last?
I know for certain: you would not be listening to this right now, and the stories I write would be nothing like those I share, here, for free. Many of the stories I write are rooted in working a day job while trying to find time for bigger things. They are based on things I know from the life I’ve lived. I think their appeal is they often touch on things we all think about.
I must believe, had a different past been handed to me, that my writing would be typical today. I would have likely focused on writing in college and—to be published at that time (at least through the people I’d likely have been introduced to)—meant writing certain kinds of books. I very well may have become that annoying young New Yorker who wrote about being a young, educated writer in New York City. Maybe I’d have moved on to writing the dreaded, “Oh, look…well off people in a wealthy suburb navigating a divorce and rediscovering who they are,” novel.
The counter argument of course is, “Maybe I’d have written incredible things—possibly full time.”
Living a life of “What Ifs” is not a life well-lived. Learning from mistakes we’d inevitably make, regardless of our experiences, and finding happiness is.
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I know this for certain: I’ve been fortunate to have friends and family who believed in me all these years—and today I have a decent day job that allows me to write whatever I want, with no thought about whether it will be “financially or critically successful” or not.
I’m writing this essay on my lunch break the day after releasing “It’s Never Too Late.” Already, I can tell people in the U.S., Canada, Germany, Romania (Hi, Allexia…I presume), Sweden (Hi, Hamish or Miro, I presume), and France have already listened. More countries will follow in the coming days.
That will always blow my mind!
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I’ve never held a hardback copy of something I’ve written in my hands, but I’ve been married for almost 32 years, have friends I know are my friends because of who I am and not what I might be able to offer them…and—even though editing drives me batty—I have this nifty little podcast I love. My life isn’t the one I imagined when I was younger, but few lives are. I’m happy and do things I love doing.
A time machine would only ruin a guaranteed good thing…
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Thank you for listening to Not About Lumberjacks and Behind the Cut. Theme music for Behind the Cut is a tune called “Reaper” by Razen. Visit nolumberjacks.com for information about the music, the episodes, and voice talent.
Also, for as little as a dollar a month, you can have access to a bigger behind-the-scenes look at Not About Lumberjacks on Patreon. Check out patreon.com/cgronlund if that sounds like your kinda thing.
In May, it’s a story about a mudlark who finds something very strange during low tide…
Until next time: be mighty, and keep your axes sharp!
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