Dateline: above the garage in Portsmouth RI, 8 January 2005
Yesterday was a marathon. Went to bed about 12:30 am Thursday night because I was working the intro (coming up with the "headlines from the future," which was half the battle, I discovered).
Friday I just woke up around 5:30, so ready to write I just couldn't stand it. So quick shower and off I go. I'm through 3,000 words before I take my kids to school.
At work, lots of emails and phone-calls to turn off the great flow of government/military briefings. Some I will continue to do for free because of the access they offer. Others will soon involve contractual relations. All in all, though, more complicated. But I think it will work out okay, because the programs and offices that really want you will pay, and the rest are probably ones I need to stop doing.
Much like the second book, I want this part of my career to be about a "blueprint for action," meaning I'm happy to do "the brief," but many of these invitations need to be turned into consultancies. I need to do more with people than just give them the brief.
Agreed to go on NPR's "Morning Edition" next week with Steve Inskeep. Will tape next Wednesday and it will probably air Thursday or Friday. College is trying to decide guidelines. If they want firm disassociation, then I just do it on my own time, eat the mileage and parking, and go with my identification as a former OSD and the author of …. I'm going on to talk about PNM, but Esquire will seek to get the article over there beforehand. It'll be 30 minutes to tape. Not sure if segment goes that long or they'll edit.
Some possibility of something on a national network news channel on Monday. Lots of back and forth on that. If I do it as planned, it will taped Monday afternoon and go on that night. Question of whether the network will fly me to DC to do it in studio or whether I go to local station for a remote. I'm a bit ambivalent on this: all that travel is a bitch, but so are remotes. This is all part of Putnam's grand plan to get me to be a regular talking head, although the invite came strictly from the network side. The Ignatius piece, I believe, is what has triggered so much of this. I mean, why would a book released last spring be getting this sort of press attention? It's like a movie released in April and the stars are still doing morning talk shows (which I can now claim to have done with "Fox & Friends" after Xmas).
Last night was all writing until about 1:30 am. I kept feeling a bit out of it, and wondered what was going on. This morning it is clear to me: I have a sinus infection. So it's off to the docs for some antibiotics before Kevin's first YMCA basketball game at 12:30. I'm looking forward to that. Practice last Monday was good. We've got two solid ball handlers/passers, two outside shooters, two maniac rebounders, and one serious inside player, plus Kevin—my all-around disruptive force on defense. I think we're going to do well. I'm assistant coaching with a serious BB player who's a good two inches above my 6'2". Bill is excellent with the kids (just retired from Navy), and he's available for all games/practices except one set when I know I'll be around, so we'll cover each other well.
Got through all 36 "headlines from the future," with the text on most averaging about 175 words. Very bang, bang in style, like the original Esquire country run-down. Didn't speak in some weird future tense, but rather did the director's commentary style of speaking from today and just running through this long list of things/events/milestones. Biggest problem is Russia, because Putin's gone so dark recently. But Ukraine gave a lot of reasons for optimism with that election—or should I say, "elections"?
With a 700-word intro that I liked, although it’s a bit too earnest and I can already see Mark toughening it up a bit, I got to the end of the list at about 6,400 total. I then added a short bit that's kind of rare for me: a quote from a famous person. I got it in an email from a reader. Not sure it will last, but I think it ties off the Intro rather well.
Finishing up last night was hard, but I kept plugging, and it was very exciting in that regard—I am now seriously in the writing mode. I made some references in the Intro to the first book, which surprised me, but I felt it had to be done. Mark and I will have to work out a rule set about such self-referencing. But hell, we're repeating the title, so obviously we're acknowledging the first book.
Outside of the headlines stuff, which, when I reread this morning, I think is fairly exciting, the up-front and ending of the Intro were surprising direct in their tone. If I spoke right to the reader using the first person in PNM, it's going to be an even more direct relationship in the second, although the career narrative stuff will be—naturally—more sprinkled and less driving. Two reasons: not that much career between PNM and sequel; and I don't need to make all that effort at introducing myself now. So the tone feels like I've decided to walk away from the screen and come sit down right next to you, the reader, in the audience. It's like we're deciding to go one-on-one for further discussion.
That more direct and intellectually intimate tone is probably the result of the blog, but it also just makes sense given PNM's original impact and the fact that this is a sequel. Again, it's like you sat through the entire brief, and now you and I are going to go off and get some coffee and spend a couple of hours really going over the big ideas and discussing how we'd take them forward in action.
So, as usual, when I write something like this, I now go back and forth and back and forth between "that's brilliant!' and "that's just crap!" I await the judgments of my proxy reader, my brother-in-law Steve Meussling and—of course—my cigar-chomping writing coach and editor, Mark Warren. I know this much: there is definitely 4k of great material in there, and in my initial nervousness I cranked 6,500 just to make sure. This way, though, Mark can cull the best entries and sentences.
If, in the end, the whole concept doesn't work, then I got a great workout yesterday, and I jump back to the writing tomorrow. Mark is right, as always. I easily will top 100,000 in the text. No question of material, just ones of how much we want to neck down that flow and set the right tone of the book.
Off to the doc . . ..
| Permalink |
