Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

A Warriors/ Writers Mind

A Writers/Warrior’s Mind

A writer needs to connect with a reader or audience at a visceral level. It isn’t enough to just make some sort of abstract intellectual statement.

I come from a family of academic pontificators who have spent their lives trying to impress each other with how smart they are. These are people who honestly believe that Socialism and Mao are the only way to go. I won’t go off on that tangent but only say that as a nation we have forgotten what discipline is. It used to be that most everyone had a remedial understanding of what this concept was and some actually learned to apply it to themselves. This was called self-discipline. It began as an externally imposed set of values learned in the home, church, school and finally the graduate course in the military. In the process people learned something of what it was and seeing the benefits, applied it to themselves. It was good that they did because self discipline in a free society is essential to preserving a Democracy. The Greeks who “thought up” Democracy were not overly optimistic about its utility as a system of government and the ability of its advocates to discipline themselves and give the public good the same attention as their self interest. Indeed the term Idiot derives from the Greek word “idios” which was applied to those who refused to accept a role in dispensing the public good. However, for all its warts it is way better than option number 2.

Sorry, You must hate it when I go off on one of my inane digressions… Please be nice and don’t hold it against me. I can’t help being a nerd.

Last night I dreamed I was back in the Military and was on the verge of retirement. I was being tasked to show someone how to write an Operations Order. You think writing a novel is hard….There is a huge gulf between theory and practice in both undertakings.

The military version is a process of gaining an edge on your enemy and it begins with the Commander’s Estimate of the Situation. The term Staff Study has evolved from this step which boils down to deciding the best thing to do. The operative word is “Best” which means, to a military mind, the optimal solution. Good is coming up with something better than doing nothing at all…Better is a choice between two goods and best is the optimal solution, considering all the possible good options. (Maybe even a couple of bad ones. )

So the process starts when the commander and staff, examine the problem and independently decide the best way to solve it. The staff working diligently in a tent and the General off scratching his ass somewhere, probably talking to one of his dick-head Brigade Commanders.

Now peeling back the next layer of the onion the General and his staff must first define what the problem is. This is a huge task… A hundred people can look at the same set of circumstances and come up with a hundred different definitions of what the problem is. (Does this help explain why the world is so screwed up?)

So to make it easier the “Brain Trust” focus on the situation and says….The problem is to determine the best way to….Screw the enemy.” “Save my ass” perhaps “rape, plunder and pillage,” whatever it is that they have percolating in their seedy brains... Don’t forget that there are armies representing states out there that have radically different points of view on what constitutes “Best.” The above boilerplate, The Problem is…to determine the best way to…. also insures there are several distinct and discreet possibilities and not a single two pole switch with a “go/nogo” position.

So after defining the problem, and choosing an appropriate course of action the General Staff writes the Operations Order which is the plan for the Division (Corp…Army)implementing the chosen course. This is the document I was being asked to write in my dream. And here is the interesting part…Like at WDC some writers are better at writing than others….Some have more experience and talent and then there is the time and urgency factor. If you want it bad you get it bad. This used to be an axiom in planning circles and it contains more than a germ of truth.…Usually it translates to, if you want it fast… there’s going to be some quality tradeoffs. So the process gets abbreviated and is expanded or contracted to fit the time available.

You might get a full blown set of documents or you might get a hip shot vision of the first thing that pops into some high paid moron’s brain. I won’t take this discussion any further…. I don’t want to sound like too much of a partisan. You don’t have to have a military mind to grasp what I’m trying to say. Anybody who writes quality stuff, does not need to be schooled by Percy Goodfellow….Who the FRACK is he anyway and….? (What a GAY sounding name!)