Pearl Harbor - Sunday, December 7, 1941

At 7:48 AM Hawaiian time, the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked the United States Navy docked in Pearl Harbor.

Please take a moment to remember those who died.

Here are some good links:

President Roosevelt's speech - youtube

http://www.nps.gov/valr/index.htm

http://www.history.com/topics/pearl-harbor

http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/events/wwii-pac/pearlhbr/pearlhbr.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Pearl_Harbor

A worthwhile movie. Some criticize it for the love story, but it's a good depiction of the events leading up to and then the attack itself.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0213149/

Happy Thanksgiving!

Wishing you and your family a safe and Happy Thanksgiving.

Ronn

Research for WWII novels

In his book On Writing, Stephen King talks about how irritating it is when someone says they want to be a writer and when he asks what they read, they reply something like, "Oh, I don't have time to read!"

Really? You want to write, but you can't be bothered with reading? Wait, you want to be a physics teacher, but you don't want to study physics?

Therefore, the same is true with writing novels about a historic period. I wanted to write WWII novels, so I read more and more about WWII to increase my store of knowledge picked up over my lifetime. The reading of WWII non fiction books and researching on the web was crucial to a having a deeper understanding of what happened. I think of myself as a student of WWII.

In a previous post, I listed some of the WWII non-fiction books I've read http://ronnonwriting.blogspot.com/2013/10/journey-to-publishing-update-13.html.

Weaving a story around real events requires paying attention to the little details like dates and locations, as well as troop disposition, for both sides. Finding accurate military maps just comes down to Google searches. The best site I've found so far is, perhaps naturally, West Point.

I write my stories around actual events, but typically haven't thrown the characters into an event. For example, in the first book, Operation Devil's Fire, the timeline is from 25 May 1944 to 19 June 1944. This time frame includes D-Day, which I'm sure you know was 6 June. However, my characters are not involved in the invasion itself. They have other missions and I wasn't about to try to squeeze in D-Day as part of the story--it's been done many times--because it was NOT directly part of the story.

I am a novelist, not a historian, so I sometimes have to take some liberties, but when I do, it's always for the sake of the story. However, whenever possible, I do stick to the known facts.

In addition to all of these important things, the weaponry has to be accurate. For example, I'm not about to give my main character, Sgt. Dunn, an M-16! Any student of WWII history or reader of military fiction / non-fiction would immediately think I have no idea what I'm talking about.

Here are some of the weapons and equipment I had to research to make sure I knew what I was talking about. I invite you to read about them yourself, just copy paste into Google.

• 1911 Colt .45
• Luger
• Thompson .45 submachinegun
• STEN submachinegun and sound suppressor
• M1 Garand 
• 1903 Springfield with Unertl sight (also needed muzzle velocity to calculate time to target).
• MP40 submachinegun
• MG42 machine gun
• Panzerfaust
• Explosives
• Grenades, U.S. pineapple, German potato masher
• parachutes - static line, also very low altitude drops
• The Horten 18
• P-51 Mustang
• ME109
• B-17
• C-47 Goony Bird 
• Heinkel 177 Greif
• Tiger Tank
• T-34
• Sherman tank
• German armor attack formations

Writer's tip

When I'm writing and discover I need information on something, instead of stopping the writing and hitting Google, I type in an asterisk and short description of what I need: "*nameofweapon." The purpose here is to prevent myself of falling into surfing mode because one thing leads to another and you can suddenly lose a half hour of writing time. Do your research between writing times, not during. Then go back into the document and search for the *.

Thanks for stopping by today.

Please feel free to leave a comment.

John F. Kennedy - 11/22/63

Fifty years ago today, at about 1:00 PM CST, President Kennedy died. Please consider taking a moment of silence today.

I was in the 6th grade and we all had just came back from the cafeteria, except for one girl, Alicia (I can still remember her name and appearance) who had gone home for lunch. She ran into the room and told us what had happened. After school, I turned on the TV and watched and watched.

If you want to watch that same coverage you can, starting today at 12:38 PM CST:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/schedule-of-cbsnewscoms-live-stream-of-jfk-assassination-broadcast-coverage/

Veterans Day 2013

Please take a moment to remember.

Writing (with) Discipline

Talent. Discipline. Which of these is more important to a writer?


I once read a great quote about this topic. Regrettably, I can't find it again, and I don't want to incorrectly attribute it, so as a compromise, I'll paraphrase it: There are plenty of very talented writers with little discipline who aren't published because they have drawers full of partial manuscripts, while there are lots of "less" talented writers who have discipline and are published.

If you have the ability to string words together to form good sentences, then paragraphs, then pages, then chapters, and you can construct a story that grabs a reader's attention, getting their buy in, then you can probably say you have some talent in writing. But are you writing enough to make progress toward a completed manuscript?

When I first started writing Operation Devil's Fire (ODF)  in January of 2004, I was an undisciplined writer. There were times I would go days and weeks without writing a single word. A year and three months later (15 months), I was just a little over a third the way done. 

Then, I started writing a new novel, a modern day thriller. I applied a new energy and discipline to the writing of that book, which I finished in just 10 months. Not bad for guy with a full time day job.

Fast forward and return to writing ODF on 1 June 2006. By 7 October 2006, only four months later, the first draft was completed (128 days). What was different? How could I write the remaining 2/3 of the book in 25% of the time? Wait for it. Yes, discipline.

Writing the modern day thriller, which was never published and just sits on my computer, taught me how to apply discipline.

But then the question arises, what the heck do you mean by that? I mean writing when you don't feel like it. Writing every day, or at least on a schedule. I use a daily word count goal of 700 words (about two book pages), with the latitude of just making sure I hit 4,200 for the week (six days). Sometimes it's already 9:00 PM and I haven't started for the day. I don't want to write. I'd rather watch some more TV. But at 9:05 PM I start to write and the next thing I know it's 10:15 and I've written my 700 words.

I use Excel to track my word count and my progress toward the final goal of about 100,000 words

You'll be surprised at what you can accomplish if you apply discipline and set goals.

Best of luck.

New book update - thank you to my readers! FIRST READERS discussion.

Thank you to my readers!

Behind German Lines made it into the top 100 in the Military category last Sunday, 11/3. Last night it broke into the top 50! Today it's sitting at #37. My first book, Operation Devil's Fire broke back into the top 100 this week due to the renewed exposure and the discovery by readers that there are now two Sgt. Dunn novels.

Writer's Advice

As I've written in earlier posts, some of my readers sent me emails about Operation Devil's Fire and I discovered that folks from all over the world were reading my book. If you receive emails, answer them promptly and be sure to personalize your response. Take the time to engage the person who took the time to write you about your book.

FIRST READERS

I always capitalize these two words because that's how important they are to me. There's a lot of writer's advice on the internet, and when it comes to finding people to read your work and give feedback, most advice says you can't trust your family and friends because they'll sugar coat anything they say.

Well, I'm here to tell you, those advice givers don't know my FIRST READERS! They are all excellent editors and telling me something doesn't work or is just plain wrong is no problem for them. Each of them looks for different things: some are grammarians and others are fact checkers, others tell me how different chapters make them feel. One prints the manuscript, writes all over it, then scans it into a pdf file and ships it back to me! 

Only a few of my FIRST READERS know each other, I am the only commonality between most of them. They reside all over the world: Arizona, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, and Cairo, Egypt.

If you're fortunate, you'll find FIRST READERS as awesome as mine.

Thanks for spending time with me today.

Tomorrow: Writing with discipline.