No Plan Survives First Contact...

...or 'the Enemy gets his vote', or 'Murphy was a Soldier.' These are all variations of Murphy's pretty well known law, 'If Anything Can Go Wrong, It Will.' But I digress. Point is, during my 15 years in the military, I've learned some good lessons, and some of them even transfer over to the writing world. One of the most important of them is at the top of the post: No plan survives first contact.

In the military, we plan operations days, weeks, even months in advance. We slave over maps, statistics, and manuals, arguing and screaming back and forth over the table, eventually arriving at a hard earned consensus on how to move forward to engage the enemy.

Sounds a little like writing? Yeah, it kind of does.

We brief the plan, rehearsed it to death, prepared, and prepared. Then comes the execution, the part where we jump into our armored death machines and move forward to engage the enemy. Modern nights donned with Kevlar-armor, 21st century optics, and weapons that would make Napoleon himself run in terror. There is no second place in war. We are confident that:

We. Cannot. Lose.

Writing is the same. We plan. We plot. For hours, we march back and forth in front of whiteboard full of plot diagrams and flow charts. The rooms are filled with heat from the multiple computers burning their CPUs day and night collecting the research and background data that provide a solid foundation for our story. When it's all done, we outline, building the ladder that's going to take us from Act I up to the top of our Climax.

Then there's the other guy. That dude on the other side of the map with his own death machines and a hard-worked campaign plan. That's the Enemy. And guess what? He gets a vote too. When those armored warriors make contact and the steel starts flying, guess what happens to our plan. It goes right out the window.

Same thing in writing. In our writing cave, chapter summaries and character outlines get taped up next to the monitor and whiteboard. Then we move out, punishing keyboards to put words on the screen. (Frankly, I missed the days when I was whacking away on my IBM Selectric. It had a certain rhythm to it that was just awesome). As we roll out and start giving our characters bona fide opinions and that all-important snappy dialogue, something occurs to us: The story doesn't make any sense; it's going in a different direction. The plan was great; the outline, bulletproof. But it all changed. So what the heck happened?

At this point, you have a few choices. You can scratch your head, back away from the keyboard, pull down the outlines and rework your plot-equations until the math makes sense. After all, your intended story was g-e-n-i-u-s. It will work-- it has to work.

Okay, option two. Roll with it. Another military saying, 'An eighty percent plan executed violently is better than a perfect plan, poorly executed'. Be flexible, adapt. Let the narrative and dialogue lead you on their natural course until the muse decides it's time to hang it up. Every great military leader knows that momentum on the battlefield is critical to success. It's the same for writers. Keep that momentum; keep the words flowing left to right. Follow the plot rabbit down the hole until you've reached a natural stopping point.

The real Enemy here isn't the change in your outline; it's the break in momentum. In the end, the objective may not be the one you originally intended to conquer, but like on the battlefield, it may be the one that ultimately leads to that greater success. I will offer a few caveats:

No matter where the flow of the battle (story) takes you, don't lose sight of the desired endstate. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. It may be an ugly baby, but it's yours. (Like real life, some babies are genuinely ugly. Really) Also, your new story may not be better than the original. You may have had a bad batch of No-Doze and your new storyline is nothing more than a bizarre caffeine-influenced sidebar. Know the difference. There's no real formula for success here other than:

Be flexible and know when to exploit success.

Adventures of an Aspiring Author

It's Friday. Thankfully. It's been one of those weeks where the work/effort to payoff ratio has been skewed in the wrong direction. First, to the Texas Rangers. Boo. What the heck, guys? Score some freaking runs and try to get through the middle innings without getting shelled.

I'd thought I'd end the week with a quick play-by-play of a typical night in the life of an aspiring author. Let me rephrase, a typical night in the life of a working/parent-aspiring author. Sometimes I wonder how I ever finished a manuscript at all. Oh, wait, I was in Iraq!

5:00 pm - Horn blows, time to close up shop. Can't wait to get home and finish up the current chapter. I was on a wicked roll last night and there's some fresh ideas that need to be captured.

5:10 pm - Heading out door and phone rings. Higher ups want a copy of every purchase receipt going back to March. Wait, you need this today? Everone's already left... but I wasn't here in... I'm not... I... Oh, crap.

6:30 pm - Walked through the front door, threw stuff on the floor, kissed wife, and sat down for family dinner, a decent meal of leftover, then scolded son for playing with his during grace.

7:00 pm - Shower and change. Set up writing station. Open up Macbook Pro and launch Scrivener (if you don't have this you hurt). Review hand written notes from previous evening.

7:05 pm - Wife calls. My sh*t doesn't belong on the floor. Go and pick up. Assist with dinner clean up. Take out trash.

7:45 pm - Back to writing/man-cave. Put on headphones. I'm writing an action sequence, so I dial up assortment of Tool, Chevelle, Nickelback, and Three Days Grace. Focus Time.

7:55 pm - Tap on shoulder. It's the boy. He's holding a sheet of paper dated two weeks ago. Looks like its covered in dried juice and cracker crumbs. Apparently it's a reading project involving rote memorization, a substantial amount of illustrations, and a wing-board. It's due tomorrow.

9:00 pm - Homework completed thanks to parental intervention and large amount of yelling. Back in front of keyboard. Headphones on and tunes cranked. Another tap on shoulder. It's the daughter. Mommy requests my presence in the family room.

9:05 pm - Wife hasn't sat with me and watched TV all week. She'd like to watch some TV. Turn on TV and attempt to leave, but there's clarification. She doesn't want to watch TV, she wants to watch a movie WITH me. Power up BluRay player and sit.

11:00 pm - Wife is dowstairs getting ready for bed. Finally sit down and attempt to salvage some writing. Wait, I forgot something, something I wanted to do yesterday but didn't get around to accomplishing.

11:05 pm - Run down to garage and fire up irrigation system. I'm in the area, so pack up my sh*t and prepare clothes for next work day. While I'm in the area, trasfer wet clothes from washer to dryer, and fold batch of laundry while watching angry people on Fox News.

11:35 pm - Officially abandon writing/man-cave. Bring laptop downstairs to bedroom. Wife is already asleep. Conduct nightly hygiene regimen, then crawl into bed. Open laptop, review previous night writing.

11:50 pm - Correct numerous typos from previous session as well as some narration that made absolutely no sense whatsoever. Frantically type out cool new ideas (now a little stale) in bullet format so as not to forget them before next writing session. Hack through some awkward dialogue, then realize the entire bit is not germane to the plot. Shift-Fn-Up, Fn-Delete.

12:15 am - Word count for the day, 51 words. At least we have a few cool ideas for next time. Check alarm. Wake-up time is 4 hours and 15 minutes away. Run backup software (backups, people, BACKUPS!). Fold up Macbook. Go to bed.

Not every night is so crazy, but all have the potential. I wouldn't be able to write at all if it weren't for the support of my awesome wife, so I'll just take a moment to thank her for being amazing. As a working/parent/aspiring-author, I work when I have to, I parent always, and I write whenever I have the chance. Someday, I'll finish this damn rewrite, then reach for a glass of Scotch. A really tall glass.

Here's to you Mr. Reunion Name-Tag Reader

This weekend I paid $19 bucks for a glass of Scotch. It was a good single-malt, mind you, but I was a little chaffed that I paid for half the bottle with a single glass. A small glass. Of course, I had already ordered a second before I discovered the price. Caveat Emptor.

This weekend I had the privilege of attending my 20th reunion. My wife and I had a blast getting to re-know some of my oldest friends. My favorite part of the evening was some of the folks introducing themselves to my wife with something along the lines of:

(reading name-tag) 'Hey, *wife's name*, it's so good to see you again. You look great!' Yes, my wife looks great. I married a hottee. But dude, I'm the one in your class. Not my wife. And next time make sure you put some tanning lotion on the bleached wedding band line.

So yesterday I woke up with the flu. My voice is zero and my head is about to explode. For me, missing work is rare (like once every ten years rare), but this case was bad enough for the doc to order me home. I thought there would be a chance to work on my manuscript, but so far the only thing I've achieved is power-napping and stalking old classmates on Facebook.

I saw some interesting things this weekend. Some people who used to look great no longer do, while some people who used to not look great have matured into fabulous. Some people have done well for themselves, while others struggle with the rest of us. Not everyone marries their college sweetheart, gets the amazing job and the bulletproof 401k. We're human. Some folks wear their scars like a red badge of courage, others hide it amazingly well.

I wish the best to the class of 1990. We've come along way. For the folks who didn't go: Shame on you. It would have been nice to see you again. Several months ago, for a very brief moment, I debated attending. I had assumed that not all my close friends would be attending. I also assumed that my wife might not appreciate getting drug to an event that would be largely all about me.

That ended up being so-not the case. Everyone made her feel very welcome. Especially a couple dudes who mistook her for one of our class. And looked at her boobs. Several times.

WTF?