Guest Post: Striving to Achieve the Ideal (Part Four)

Image: anankkml

Welcome to Part Four, the resounding conclusion of April's guest post series! Part One is available here. Enjoy!

Likewise Colonel Tom Kratman, who co-authored "Watch On The Rhine" with John Ringo, one of the most controversial (if not the most controversial, outright) modern science fiction stories yet conceived.

He continues to write, unapologetic works which not only examine in minute detail the philosophical guides of our day and how they could affect the future our great-grandchildren will inherit, but does so with a sense of humor.

There are those who like to lambast him and what he says. Google "Tom Kratman, Space Marine" and you'll find plenty of material. I would have been one of those critics, but for the fact that I have been on the front lines and have experienced what he talks about.

Had I not spent months on the gun line of a Marine artillery battery I would never have believed the humor we find in everything. Even death. Or the music we sing and play to pass the while. John Ringo has single-handedly introduced me to more music than MTV and VH1 combined! Never mind my love for Kipling.

Guest Post: Military Writers Humanize Soliders (Part Three)

David Drake

Welcome to Part Three of April's guest post! Part One is available here. Part Four will be posted tomorrow at 9:00 AM PST. Enjoy!

Author David Drake understands the internal workings of the military mind better than most would at first glance realize. He is a graduate of Duke University and its law school, an accomplished lawyer and prolific, well-published writer in the science fiction community.

He is also a veteran of the Vietnam war, having seen service in Laos and Cambodia as an interrogator with the Blackhorse Cavalry. He was drafted, he served, and at the end of his enlistment, he returned to the civilian life he'd left behind.

But the war, the men he lived and fought alongside, those remained. Eventually, he quit practicing law and drove a bus part-time till writing began to pay, and pay enough that it became his stand-alone income.

Wordsmith at Work: Sample Critique Process

To give you all a break from the military strategy being discussed, I thought I would provide a short example of one of my critiques. This exchange was conducted in real time with my friend Micosil from DeviantArt on his story Deathbound.

(Note: Deathbound was written in ten minutes at four in the morning and I didn't exactly do a full edit. For a real sample of Micosil’s talent, I would read the short story Solitude, which, unlike Deathbound, does not need a few more chapters that will never be written to be fully understood.)

Wordsmith: As I said, that is the worst first sentence I've ever read from you.

Micosil: Why, and how'd you fix it?

I tend to be a horribly awfully evil proofreader. For a paying customer, I will write a critique and then edit it so that I’m not being excessively evil, but rather offering helpful, creative advice to build his confidence and self-knowledge.

For my best friend whose work I am editing because it’s fun and I want to? He gets the full brunt of my cruelty. But that’s not what I want to draw attention to- rather, I would like to point out his response. Not offended or hurt, not necessarily agreeing with me, but asking why I think that and how to improve. That’s what I like to hear!

Guest Post: Breaking Down the Idealization of War (Part Two)

The idealization of war, personified.

Welcome to Part Two of April's guest post! Part One is available here. Part Three and Four, respectively, will be posted Thursday and Friday at 9:00 AM PST. Tomorrow will be a Wordsmith at Work day, as usual. Enjoy!

For centuries, war was idealized. The image of young men going off to fight and die in bloody combat was romanticized and sung about, and the true horror of war was ignored.

During the medieval era, knightly virtues were considered to be the best, chivalry the manner in which the greatest men in western (or eastern) civilization conducted themselves. Europe had paladins, the Persian Empire it's deghans and Mamelukes, Japan the samurai. They were mimicked and copied (or parodied as the case may be) over and over again.

Beowulf, the Song of Roland, Le Morte De'Artur, the 47 Ronin, the legends of Rustam, these are chronicles detailing the ideals which their respective people sought to be most like. Though the records we have now have been glossed over and prettied up by courtiers who never saw a battlefield, at the core they are the after-action reports of men who went to war, and, surviving its horrors, returned home.

Guest Post: Military Writers Teach Far More Than Strategy (Part One)

Hadrian's column, Rome

After a short, unavoidable delay, April’s Guest Post is ready. However, it cannot be posted all at once, so instead I will be posting a new section at 9:00 AM PST on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday until it is complete.


Wednesday will be reserved for the regular Wordsmith at Work days. I hope these posts on the history of military writers will be edifying to those who are interested, and if you’re not, feel free to come back on Wednesday or next week.

For now, this is Part One of Four. Enjoy.

There is much made today of military men who write. They are criticized and reviled at all levels. And yet, it is the memoirs and written accounts made by military men which have given us the clearest history of the world.

It is an odd dichotomy of our human existence that these who have caused chaos in greater way than any others provide the most illustrative and concise knowledge of how people from their time lived and thought and believed and acted. We may wish to decry them, for personal, moral or philosophical reasons, but theirs is the records we have and it behooves us to study them diligently.

Why Are You Standing There?

All the world's a stage, and all the
men and women merely players.
~Shakespeare

Before we get into the topic for today, I have to announce that today's guest blog post has been unavoidably delayed. The Marine who is writing it got called on suddenly and has to go fulfill his duty to our country. I think that's an excellent reason for it to be late. It will probably be up Monday.

Now! For the past few months, I have been trying to teach a friend of mine all about how to be more dominant, mostly for our mutual amusement. The first few "lessons" focused on the idea of making use of the space around you to take more control in relationships.

This is one of my pet theories: how people stand in relation to each other and to the objects in the room says a lot about them, and about their relationships with the other people in the room.

Wordsmith at Work: Major Changes

(Slightly) unrelated: an open gate like my open opportunities?

I have to say, I'm slightly nervous about the subject of today's blog post. So many things are still up in the air, and I keep wanting to cancel it altogether. I don't know if it's going to work and I don't know if you will support me in this endeavor.

But enough beating around the bushes (yes, those ones over there). The next step on my journey to creating a cohesive online web presence is this: change my website! Don't worry, I'm not going to make the switch tomorrow. I just wanted to announce it as I started the process so you know what I'm working on.

Let me break it down a bit. I'm still trying to figure everything out--maybe then it will make sense to both of us.