After getting 2,500 words into chapter four on Friday, I started late and slow on Saturday and made only 3,500 more happen. In theory, that was smashing, because I figured only 4,500 words total for the chapter, going in, and hey! I was already up to 6,000!
Problem is, I had only covered the two opening sections of the chapter and not what I considered to be most of the "meat."
Today I ate that meat to the tune of 6,600 additional words, and it tasted great (some fat), but it left me with the indigestion of 12,600 words in a chapter I envisioned at only 4,500 words.
Sigh.
This always happens to me.
The good news is this: it's not like every damn word I pen in the first draft is book-worthy, so generating lots of gross wheat allows Mark to cut down the chaff. In the end, this is a much better problem than not having enough to say.
I am beginning to feel, in this chapter on the Bush years, that I really understand what I'm trying to do in this book and what I'm not trying to do. What I'm not trying to do is generate a vast summary of other people's writing (although I do expect to cite all the 100-plus books I've read), the bulk of which is historical narrative. Instead, even in the historical parts I'm pulling a Walter Russell Mead, meaning I'm writing about History more than of history.
Hmmm. Didn't say that particularly good. Must have used up all my grammar in the 6600!
My point is this: using the concept of grand strategy throughout the book keeps it at the level I'm comfortable arguing at: high, broad, and deep (going either backwards or forward in time). What I seek to avoid is a lot of listing, as in, here's a list of capabilities, or events, or mistakes, or positions, or whatever. I want to give the reader a book on grand strategy for this age that puts Bush in clear context and empowers people to both interpret what comes next and demand what should come next.
As such, it comes off much more like a one-on-one tutorial than the other two books did--very direct, it feels.
Hmm. I feel my inner Yoda seeping out.
Exercise I will! Martini I drink! Movie we watch!
Goodbye I bid . . .
Oh, for the record: first draft now sits at 35,246--in the black box.
Comments (3)
Much anticipating, I am.
Posted by JK | February 18, 2008 9:48 PM
About the CIA??
The CIA is not discussed in any of your books or your latest brief I read online. How can the CIA be omitted from your presentation of national security??
Posted by michael scher | February 19, 2008 7:12 AM
Because they're almost completely irrelevant to U.S. national security. They accomplish little, and they discover even less.
Fascinating for scandals, yes, but even in their ops they're largely duplicative.
I don't argue to get rid of them. They do their thing. They fill their hole.
But they are only one of among many sources of intell nowadays. Not even in the top twenty.
Posted by Tom Barnett | February 19, 2008 10:06 AM