Why I Write

It is all about the reader

A year ago, in early April 2021, I was at work where I was a technician on fighter aircraft flight simulators. I finished my immediate tasks, which involved setting up the simulator for pilot training, and returned to the ‘ready room.’ As I took a break from the action, my mind began to wander. I sat there and remembered a student fighter pilot who came through our schoolhouse a dozen years earlier. She had made a mistake in the simulator which made all of us shake our heads and laugh as we watched her mission unfold on the big screen. “Why on Earth would she do that?” became the discussion of the day. Anyway, her mistake came to my mind again that morning and I began thinking, how can I make this into a story?

I began thinking about how the Iranians managed their fleet of F-14 Tomcats while enduring the embargo placed upon them by the United States. If you do some quick research, you will find that Iran has been struggling to keep their Tomcats flying due to a lack of available spare parts. When the Shah of Iran was deposed in 1979 by the Iranian Revolution, the U.S. acted quickly to stop the flow of all weapons to the country. Iran has persevered, however, and is still flying their few remaining Tomcats to this day, 43 years later. Oh, and another reason I built the story around the F-14 was that it is such a gorgeous aircraft. I struggle between that jet and my beloved F-16 as to my favorite.

As I sat, deep in thought, my first novel, Persian Tomcats was born in my mind. Truth be told, I had the entire story written inside my mind, within a half-hour. Once I had this thought out, I grabbed a ruler and flipped my training schedule over. The training schedule was what we technicians used to keep up with the pilot training throughout the day. So, I flipped it over so it was positioned in ‘landscape’ mode and drew a horizontal line from end to end. On the left, I wrote ‘Prologue,’ and on the right, ‘Epilogue.’ Then I began making a series of straight lines extending out along the horizontal line. On these extensions, I scribbled notes on the story. This ‘fishbone diagram’ was completed in twenty minutes, and served as the outline for my debut novel.

On April 17, 2021, I sat down at the computer in my man cave and wrote the first words. I kept at it until November 17, 2021, when I wrote the last words of my novel. It turned out to be 509 pages! I had thought it would be around 350 pages but decided to keep it at its ‘epic’ length. The next three months were filled with editing, rewrites, marketing, and the whole gamut of getting a book ready to release.

It was released on March 1, 2022. I’m super proud of how it turned out, especially the cover. An aviation artist named Peter Chilelli created the artwork, and I felt good shivers down my back when I saw the finished product. It looked so good. The book has sold a moderate number of copies over the past three months since its release. Not a ton of copies, mind you, but this is to be expected from self-published work. That’s just the way it is; a fact of life in this business. But if I’m not selling very many books, then why do it? Why do I write? Please read on, and I’ll tell you.

I wrote my first story when I was a pre-teen. I think it was about a page and a half, and it was about adventurers running away from dinosaurs. Some of them were eaten. I tired of it because I came to realize it was very similar to the Saturday Matinee, which I had watched the prior weekend. I think it was an exact regurgitation of that B-movie I had watched. But whatever, and oh, it was hard work, writing! So, I forgot all about it.

The next time I remember sitting down to write a story was in 1994. I was a USAF Staff Sergeant, stationed in Korea when I decided to return to school. I hadn’t been in a classroom since I had dropped out of college almost twelve years earlier, so it was a big decision for me to go back to school. My first college course was English 101.

In this class, I was assigned to write several short stories in various styles. These would be in formats like creative, technical, contrast and comparison, etcetera. One of the first stories I wrote was called “The World’s Greatest Roller Coaster.” It was about the experience I had when I was very fortunate to go for a flight in an F-16 Fighting Falcon. I liked telling the story so much, that a revamped version of it became the opening chapter in my very first book, Leadership: A View from the Middle, which was released in April 2019.

I wrote several other papers in that class, and I enjoyed it well enough. I found that I liked to write, and I received some very helpful feedback from the professor. He gave me high marks on all of my papers, as well as some very encouraging comments. I still have these stories, printed by a dot-matrix printer, at my house.

I enjoyed writing, but really, I didn’t act upon it until much later in my life. I had since completed a 25-year career in the U.S. Air Force and went on to the private sector. It was while there, working as a flight simulator technician that I began thinking about writing. But it was still something that seemed out of reach. I knew it would be difficult, so I decided to not do it just yet.

During this time frame, I decided to return to school again, this time for a master’s degree. It was here, in an MBA program, that I got back into writing. Anybody who has been through a master’s program knows that all they do is write, so I was kind of forced into it. I labored for 28 months in the program while working full time and going to school at night and on the weekends.

It was tough, but I enjoyed the experience and it kept my mind engaged. I learned a lot about business, and I vastly improved my writing skills. Each of the 14 courses in which I was enrolled required a weekly 5-10-page paper, and a minimum 25-page paper as a final.

As I went through the program, I decided to take every course on leadership that was offered. It kind of became my ‘minor,’ although not officially. Due to my experiences in the Air Force, my passion had always been leadership. After I went through one particular leadership course, I became convinced that I could write a book on the subject.

Here’s an excerpt from the intro to my book, Leadership: A View from the Middle:

I related very well to their writing style. I thought that I could do something like this, and I even figured out a hook—why not, something written by a ‘non-expert.’ My initial research into the subject revealed that thousands of books have been written on the subject of leadership. These books are written by renowned experts, CEOs, and professors of the subject. However, I found it very difficult to find one written by a normal person. Well, that’s me! I’m nobody special, just an everyday person, but I felt like I could contribute to the leadership sector. I felt that I could help someone, who maybe was like me. Maybe someone who found themselves stuck ‘in the weeds,’ or unable to climb out of the middle levels of their career path.

My slogan became, “Leaders are found at every level of every organization, worldwide.” This is the truth, and as a matter of fact, “there are more of us than there are of you.” Everyone, every single person, in any profession, must traverse through the middle before they are able to make it to the top. I felt my experiences, told in the technique of storytelling similar to Kouzes and Posner, could be helpful.

So, why did I write this book? I wrote it, simply because I wanted to help people. I wanted to help those who found themselves in a similar situation to me and assist them as they navigated their way up and out of the middle.

But why write? Why didn’t I make YouTube videos or become a college professor and teach night school? Why write? Well, it’s like this: I’ve always wanted to write a book, I think going back to my time in that English 101 course. So, the way I explain it is like this: I thought about it for 20 years and then sat down and wrote it in two and a half. It took me that long to produce the book.

But I didn’t know what I was doing, as far as getting it published. I submitted numerous manuscripts to traditional publishing houses but kept getting kicked to the curb. I knew nothing about self-publishing, so I eventually went with a vanity press. While they were able to make me a ‘published author,’ it cost me. What I’ll say about this to aspiring authors out there, is to never pay someone to publish your book for you. I’ll just leave it at that.

I parted ways with the publisher this year and now, my first book Leadership: A View from the Middle, (2^nd Ed.) is available as a self-published work after some major rewrites and error corrections. I was able to do this after I learned how to self-publish when I wrote my second book, Leading from the Middle: Teachers and Coaches.

I decided to write the second book for the same reasons as the first one, and I also wanted to dive into self-publishing. I knew about the trials and tribulations of teachers and coaches during the COVID-19 debacle that our country went through. We all knew about how the teachers and coaches struggled to deliver the education required for our children during this national (worldwide) crisis. So, I wrote the book as an homage to them and their profession. Teachers and coaches everywhere are leaders, plain and simple. I salute them!

Teachers and Coaches was quick work for me. It only took me a few months to get it put together and self-published. It is a series of short stories, under 120 pages, with a leadership component at the end of each. It is necessary reading for anyone who loves their teacher or coach and includes testimonials from actual teachers who described their experiences teaching through COVID-19. That was my favorite part of the book by far.

Writing both of these books made me feel like I had accomplished something. That’s what writing does for me. While the act of writing is very time-consuming and sometimes mentally dragging, when a chapter or story is complete, I feel utter satisfaction. In fact, the act of writing has been very therapeutic for me. Writing keeps my mind active, and once I get through a chapter or story, I feel that sense of accomplishment that drives me to the next chapter. Maybe it’s kind of a drug, a pull of endorphins or something. But all I know is that I feel good once I am finished with a write. It is a very satisfying feeling, indeed.

Another thing that drives me is the feedback! All authors think that their work is the best that has ever been done. If they say otherwise, they’re lying. It’s because of how we read it to ourselves, that makes it feel that way. But it feels even better when positive feedback is received. This is why all authors constantly push for reviews; also, reviews sell books. I actually dislike pushing it all the time but is it a part of the marketing that must be done to be successful.

With regard to feedback, even receiving not-so-good feedback is a good thing, as long as it’s constructive. In fact, it’s what we need! I’ve had a few negative feedback comments on my books, and all it did was make me go back and make improvements.

But the positive reviews…I guess the positive reviews also stoke an author’s massive ego! While it does feel good to receive the feedback, ego is just a small part of it. The positive feedback tells me that what I’ve done (write and sell the book) has had the intended result for the reader. If the reader enjoyed it, then “my work here is done,” right? Maybe so. After all, the reader is the most important part of this endeavor called writing. When the reader is happy, it makes the author want to keep going. At least in my case, that’s how I feel. This is one reason why I wrote a third book, Persian Tomcats.

Persian Tomcats is my third book, but my first novel. The reason why I wrote it was really because of my mother-in-law. She told me that she really enjoyed my other two books, but the leadership stuff just kind of flew over her head. She said she thoroughly enjoyed the stories though. She kept telling me that I should write a novel. Well, I did, and it was probably the most satisfying accomplishment of the three. This is partly because I had such a blast writing this novel!

One thing I learned about the difference between non-fiction and fiction, is that with fiction, the author has some leeway to make the story more interesting. It’s called creative license. With the non-fiction books, I had to tell the story the way I experienced it and follow it up with a lesson about leadership. With the novel, I stayed the course with technical accuracy, but the story just kind of bloomed in my mind as I wrote it. I was able to make changes to the plot line on the fly, and it was just a whole bunch of fun to do so. Writing this novel was such an incredible feeling. It played in my mind like a movie, which made it very fun to write.

One of the aspects that also made it fun was that I patterned some of the characters after my friends and family. While these folks had no actual personal attachment or storylines in the book, their characters were more of a shout-out to those people in my life who were important to me. So, some personal attributes of these characters will be evident only to them or their close friends and family.

I mentioned that I played it in my mind like a movie as I wrote it. Going on that same line of thought, whenever I wrote about a certain character, I had a picture in my mind’s eye of what actor or actress seemed to fit the role (pay attention, Hollywood!). The main character, U.S. Air Force First Lieutenant Victoria “Shirley” MacMillan, is played in my mind by Scarlett Johansson. The character she played in Marvel’s Black Widow, with the short red hair is who was stuck in my mind as I wrote her parts. Captain Marie “Lamb” Petersen reminded me of Charlize Theron.

The male characters were more fluid, as I’m not really sure who would be best for them. But I did think about Staff Sergeant Christopher Gray being Chris Pratt, and Iranian Lieutenant Colonel Moein “Mad Dog” Mahmoudi being Omar Sharif. But I digress.

The bottom line was that I felt so satisfied when it was done, that I couldn’t wait to see how the characters would progress down the road. Yes, I felt a sequel coming. In fact, when I was about three-quarters done with the book, I had an idea for a sequel and had to go backward in the book and create hooks for later.

After I finished writing my first book, Leadership: A View from the Middle, I felt I was mentally spent in the writing department. I thought I had said all I wanted to say. But here I am two books later, and yes, I am building a sequel to Persian Tomcats in my mind…as well as an additional sequel to make it a trilogy! The storylines are already in my head, so all I have to do is get busy and write them down. I think I’ll go and make a fishbone diagram, first.

And for those who may say, “Hey wait a minute, why are you writing a sequel for a book that has had minimal sales?” My answer to you is that every reader is important to me. When someone uses their hard-earned money to buy my books and spends their valuable time reading them, I am humbled. I feel that I owe it to them to give them the best experience I can. So, whether I have one reader or one million (I wish), I feel that I owe it to them. If they’re interested in learning more about leadership or if they simply want to escape into a military thriller novel for a while, I feel privileged to give that experience to them.