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Q: Did you read a lot growing up? Did you always want to be a writer?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n
A: <\/b>As a kid, I wouldn\u2019t call myself an avid reader. I really started reading in college. And I didn\u2019t really start writing until 21 or 22. I had gone to college and dropped out and was going back to college. My roommate and I didn\u2019t have a lot of money, maybe enough to shoot pool once a week. I would grab my mom\u2019s books on weekends and bring them back with me, trade in the ones I didn\u2019t like for ones I did like. One night I started messing around trying to write a novel. I\u2019d write maybe two or three paragraphs a week. Later I finished college and went on to graduate school for fiction writing, in 2001, 11 years after high school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Q: A lot of writers, and particularly veterans, have written memoirs, novels or journalistic accounts of their military experience. What drew you to the essay?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n
A: <\/b>In the second semester of grad school all fiction writers took a nonfiction class. Though I was still mainly a fiction writer, I started writing a few essays. My first essays were just very narrative-based. I have one essay that started as a short story, turned it into my fiction thesis adviser and he said, \u201cthis needs a murder in it.\u201d The short story was about 85 percent true anyway, so why not make it an essay instead? The essays I\u2019m writing are creative nonfiction, they use elements of fiction. Some now are more reflective, memoirish. That\u2019s how the process started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Q: How does an essay start for you? Where do you begin an idea?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n
A:<\/b> Something strikes me. The form strikes me, rather than this great idea for an essay. The form fits an essay, narrative in nature, with something to reflect on, figure out. A lot of \u201cThis We\u2019ll Defend,\u201d is figuring out how I felt about a lot of things. A lot of people who\u2019ve been in the military sort of have a conflict with what they\u2019re supposed to be doing and what they\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Q: Can you share an example of one of those conflicts that\u2019s military related?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n
A:<\/b> I was in Fort Jackson, South Carolina, when the troops started coming home from the Gulf. They had huge parade in downtown Columbia, South Carolina…<\/b> jets flying over, marching bands, tanks. A lot of returning soldiers didn\u2019t want to march in a parade. They wanted to go home to their families. So, we marched in the parade. We were wearing green camouflage, not desert camouflage. People kept thanking us for our service. We told them we weren\u2019t there. Some were offended, asking \u201cwhy are you marching in this parade, why are you here?\u201d I think one of the ideas I grappled with was why were soldiers after Vietnam treated so poorly, then after Desert Storm were hailed, given parades?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Q: What advice might you offer other military members or veterans who might want to write about their experiences?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n
A: <\/b>That\u2019s the most important thing I want veterans to do: Tell stories. Start with what happened, tell the narrative. Let the story grow out of that. Hopefully through telling the story, you\u2019ll figure it out. I\u2019ve met with groups of student veterans and talked about writing. One of my first essays, \u201cStorm Country\u201d was about growing up in Arkansas near tornadoes. I was driving to Washington DC with a friend who thought a storm we saw on the way could become a tornado. I explained why it wasn\u2019t. It dawned on me that most people didn\u2019t grow up in tornado alley. Veterans who read my essays, they\u2019ll identify with things, say \u201cyep, I know that.\u201d But to a lot of people, who don\u2019t know what the experience of basic training is like, drill sergeants, the mental exhaustion and camaraderie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Q: What do you get from writing these essays, many of them about experiences from decades ago?<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n
A:<\/b> There are ideas to explore through essays. That is what an essay is to me. How do I really feel about these things? That\u2019s exactly it. To reflect on past experience. I don\u2019t understand anything until 10 years later, if I understand anything at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This author served but never saw combat. His writing examines a culture immersed in military during both war and peace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":84763,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":70,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":{"2":{"categories":["your-military","news","middle-column","home"],"primary_category":"your-military"}}},"categories":[100,23,93,12,25,70],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3366],"class_list":["post-45513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news-roundup","category-home","category-middle-column","category-news","category-newsletters","category-your-army"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"FI7D4CZYWBCLJLLHMXWIET3Y5A","arc_canonical_url":"\/news\/your-army\/2020\/01\/20\/this-veteran-author-never-saw-combat-he-writes-to-comprehend-this-experience\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n