How I Came Up With the Ideas for my Novel The Soldier's Journal

The Soldier's Journal

My original plan for writing a novel was to capture the events from my combat deployments in order to make sure they weren't lost over time.  These were events of courage that I felt if I didn't write them down, no one would remember the brave men that died or risked their lives.  With this as a goal, before I had learned about writing, I intended on writing a true story, maybe a memoir.  But I heard others tell stories that I wanted to capture as well, and these stories weren't mine to tell so I discarded the memoir idea in favor of a book of short stories.

When I began writing this book, I realized I didn't know a lot of the information, the details, to make it an engaging book, especially for the events that I heard third hand, and I didn't always have access to those that had witnessed the events.  It was about this time that I read Tim O'Brien's books and realized that I could write the stories as fiction by using the facts that I knew and the other details that I knew from my experiences to fill in the blanks, which ultimately wouldn't be true stories but probably better told stories.

My original manuscript was called The Soldier's Notebook.  My intention with this book was to present the Afghan War from multiple perspectives, American and Afghan.  This proved too difficult given my work schedule and access to individuals with the experience I needed to know about in order to write the book the way I wanted.  I still might write this book, but at the time it didn't seem possible.

At about this time, the U.S. Congress approved women for service in combat arms and special operations.  Simultaneously, I was reading a book on writing that suggested if you wanted to give your plot a face lift, then change the sexes of your protagonist or major characters.  The Soldier's Notebook had primarily been told from a male point of view, the only view I knew, and at the time the war was primarily fought with men as women weren't permitted in combat roles.

All of this combined into an idea that would tell a story from the point of view of the first female Green Beret to serve in Afghanistan.  I combined this with her father's journal that described the war in 2006 as opposed to her version of the war in 2019, which gave to stark comparisons of how the war had changed and yet how many of the elements had remained the same.

I divided up my true war stories between the female protagonist and her father and I also inserted scenes where she faces sexism from soldiers and officers.  I interviewed a number of women about their experiences in the Army and in elite positions in order to get a flavor for the type of situation she would face.

It took me a year and a half to finish my first draft, which I used as my thesis for my MFA in Creative Writing.  I've spent the last six months editing and redrafting and submitting to agents.  No luck so far.

In future posts, I'll outline my new strategies for getting my book published and tell you what is working and not working.  If I can't find an agent to represent me, I'll self-publish.  that means I'll have to figure out how to market my novel, I'll probably use Kindle Publishing, and I'll have to find a cover.  More to follow.  Wish me luck.

RR

Resources:

Five Reasons How and Why Veterans Should Write a Book

Current Writing Status November 10, 2018

Here’s my current status with writing.

I’m not retired yet, so I’m trying to work on some things and get some other works in the oven to see if I can make any money.

When I finished my MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Texas in El Paso (UTEP), my thesis was a 400 page novel called The Soldier’s Journal.  I had to defend my thesis before a panel of professors, and I passed and received my degree.  Afterwords, took a month off and re-looked at the novel, and rewrote another draft.  I then wrote a couple drafts of a query letter and sent them to some agents attempting to get representation.  I sent two query letters nine weeks ago and one responded with a no.  I sent six more about six weeks ago, and one replied with a no, but most said on their web-page that they were busy and if I hadn’t heard back in six weeks then I should assume its a no.  So, I’m 0 for 8.  Since, then I paid a service to look at my query letter and rewrote it, I think it is a lot better now.  I also, sent my novel to a structure editor and am currently waiting for it to be returned to me with her edits and recommendations.

I have had 4 short stories published, two on line and two in a compilation book.  I didn’t get paid for any of these though, so, of course my goal is to get paid for my stories.  But at least I have some published for my resume.

So, while I’m waiting for my editor to get back to me, I’m working on a couple non-fiction works that I hope to have the first draft finished of one by the end of the year, and the second by February 2019.  I’m not really looking for representation for these books, I plan on using Kindle Publishing to get them on the market.  It will be my first time, so a learning process, and I’ll tell you all about it in case you are interested in doing the same.

So this is where I’m at in my writing career.  In future posts, I’ll keep you updated on my progress with my novel, non-fiction books, and short story publishing.  I also want to track the money I’m making to give new authors some realistic tracking and financial planning for themselves.  I’m fortunate to have a military retirement paycheck coming in when I finally retire next month, but I know a lot writers don’t have the safety net.  I also want to review some of the things I mentioned in this post such as: my MFA experience, my short story publication experience, my query letter, and my novel writing experience.

I look forward to sharing my writing experience with you guys, and I hope you find some information you can use.

RR

Now What? Retiring after 31 years, what's the next step?

Thirty-one years of working for the Army.  Thirty-one years of doing what the Army told me to do, and letting the Army take care of my health care, take care of my family, give me direction, pay my salary, having my back.  And now what?

I have all these veterans benefits that I have to figure out: health insurance, life insurance, education benefits.  They aren't black and white, and there seem to be a lot of decisions to make.  Thousands of veterans have done it already, so I thought it would be clear and easy, but it sure doesn't seem like that.  So, one of the things I want to do in this blog is clarify these benefits and the steps I went through to retire and receive these benefits.

So this is my blog.  It’s about the things that affect my current life.

Retirement.  After 31 years in the Army, my retirement was a little scary.  There were a lot of unanswered questions that I ‘googled’ and ‘yahooed’ and asked and searched for and never got complete and accurate answers.  So, for this part of my blog, I’m trying to keep my fellow soldiers informed.  Trying to pass on the information that I wanted when I was getting ready to retire.  Things I could have used, such as my finances during the first 6 months of my retirement, using the VA health system, using education benefits, and a myriad of other things that I don’t even know now to list here.

Writing.  I acquired my MFA in Creative Writing about 6 months before I retired.  Instead of working, my goal was to make up the difference in my salary by writing after I retired.  So the other half of this blog will be how I worked through the ins and outs of writing a novel, starting a platform, and making money and learning about writing.  Hopefully, this will help some other wayward writer or retiree to have realistic goals and aspirations.  I don’t intend to destroy dreams, rather, share my experience so they are better prepared.

Job hunting.  I'll have to search for another job in the mean time, until the writing money comes in, so I'll also discuss the ups and downs of that process.

I hope that the information here is helpful, for ultimately I hope to write something useful and if one person uses this information, then I will have succeeded.

For those of you who may not know, a PACE plan is a contingency plan.  PACE stands for Primary, Alternate, Contingency, and Emergency.  It's usually attributed to ways to communicate, four methods in case one or two don't work.  Here, I want to discuss the plans I made for my retirement and how my plans worked, or didn't work.

Thanks for joining me here on the blog, I hope the information is useful to you.

RS