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Introduction > writing the book
Next I want to describe the process of writing the book, and the
special role played by Mark Warren, who signed on to become my
personal editor.
March 2004
A picture worth 150,000 words
Coming out of the Demoral haze that was my recovery from
surgery, I was almost clinically depressed. I guess the older
you get, the less you are able to handle such strong drugs. But
in the end, it was a nice clearing of the deck. It really was a
mental reboot of sorts: two weeks of almost complete downtime in
terms of thinking about the book. Plus I got to watch entire
gigantic miniseries like Pride and Prejudice, Ken Burns’ Civil
War, HBO’s Band of Brothers and From the Earth to the Moon, plus
every really long Bible movie I own on DVD.
All this movie watching left me with a strong sense of
narrative, however, and a strong desire to express not just my
search for the map, as Neil Nyren would later dub it, but how my
entire career led up to this point—to this book. I must admit,
the way the book turned out (half high-concept book, half-career
narrative) was not at all what I had in mind when I wrote the
proposal with Jennifer, and yet, as Mark Warren likes to point
out, the
proposal certainly promised a book very much like the one we
produced—but at roughly twice the size.
So between 21 July and 2 August I came up with a map of the
Pentagon’s New Map, or an Excel spreadsheet in which I plotted
out 75 “beats,” as I called them, or op-ed sized essays. There
would be six substantive chapters and a conclusion, with the 75
beats spread across them. My plan was as rigid and Procrustean
as ever (I like rule sets): I would begin each chapter with one
beat that was autobiographical. These would move chronologically
through my career. The following beats in each chapter would
present high-concept material, and then each chapter would end
with a beat that I called the “myth busters,” or common myths
about the world and U.S. national security that I would
summarily demolish. 75 beats = 75k. It was that mathematical. I
would write the book in 75 days. Boom, boom, boom.
Mark Warren was happy too. He liked how it was turning out.
“Don’t worry about the length,” he kept saying. “That’s my
problem. All you need to do is whatever it takes to get it out
the way you want it—whatever feels good.” He noted along the way
that I tended to do a lot of what he called “pre-writing” each
morning, meaning I would meander around for about 1k before
settling down on the theme and then somewhere around 2k I would
kick it into overdrive, whipping out the last 3k like hell on
wheels. I knew already, even as I wrote, that big chunks would
disappear under Mark’s knife, but as instructed, I did not care
one bit. The key was keeping up the incredible pace of getting
all this material out. “No one writes 5,000 words a day!” said
Mark. “That’s simply insane.”
I ended up cranking roughly 160,000 words stretching over
exactly 40 days and nights, or 5k a day when the Lambeau
pilgrimages are factored in. Five thousand words is more than
the entire Esquire article plus all the verbiage in the List.
It’s a serious thematic essay every day—day after day. When I
first wrote the preface (6k that day), I wrote “This book took
only 40 days to write but 14 years to imagine.” Neil cut that
line in his first edit. He said, “No one wants to hear you wrote
a book really fast—sounds sloppy.”
But it wasn’t. It was a maniacal dream. It was the most
magical creative period I have ever known. The only thing it
trails is great sex with my wife, with a Brett Favre TD pass (in
person) and anything my kids ever do to amuse me coming in tied
for third.
Alright, Brett is fourth and should stay there.
It was really fantastic, though. About 4 hours a day of
writing and about 4 hours a day of editing, writing in the very
early morning hours and edit after work. An insane pace, but I
loved it.
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