Scott Oden, author of The Lion of Cairo

Hailing from the hills of rural North Alabama, Scott Oden’s fascination with far-off places began when his oldest brother introduced him to the staggering and savage vistas of Robert E. Howard and Harold Lamb. Though Oden started writing his own tales at the age of fourteen, it would be many years before anything would come of it. In the meantime, he had a brief and tempestuous fling with academia before retiring to the private sector, where he worked the usual roster of odd jobs—from delivering pizza to stacking paper in the bindery of a printing company to clerking at a video store. Nowadays, Oden writes full-time from his family home near Somerville. The Lion of Cairo is his third novel.

Scott, you and I are both writers of historical fiction but you seem to be drawn, particularly, to doomed figures, fading empires and lost causes. I can relate to that, but I’d love to hear your thinking on the subject. You’ve written about Egypt’s 26th dynasty in Men of Bronze, the life of Memnon of Rhodes (a fascinating character) in Memnon and now you’ve tackled the declining years of the Fatimid Caliphate in The Lion of Cairo. What is it about these time periods that captures your imagination?

The people, mostly. That’s what the study of history is to me: discovering people no different than you or I, who were born, played, learned lessons, fell in and out of love, gave birth, laughed, cried, worked, slept, dreamed, lived, and died. I look for moments of what Robert E. Howard called “blood and thunder”: moments when peace and good order have broken down . . . moments that inspire ordinary men to undertake the extraordinary. When things are at their most grim, when the veneer of civilization is stripped away and we have no recourse save to fight or die, here one finds the very essence of blood and thunder—and it stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the essence of a good story.

You often mention the influence Robert E. Howard had over you, first as a reader then as a young writer. I love him too. Can you tell our readers who he was, and what it is about his work that moves you so much?

Robert E. Howard, or REH as his fans call him, came out of rural Texas during the Depression, to become a premier writer of pulp adventure, poetry, weird horror, historical, and sports tales. Though his professional career spanned a little over a decade (from 1925 till his untimely death in 1936), he wrote by conservative estimate some three million words of material—a good bit of it is more readable today than what sits on bookstore shelves. Without a doubt, REH’s most famous creation is a barbarian adventurer who flourished in the time before recorded history, Conan of Cimmeria. If you’re only familiar with Conan through movies or comics, you’re missing out on a spectacularly well-drawn figure of Byronic proportions. At his best, he is part brooding anti-hero, part laughing rogue, and part cunning predator.

REH’s style of writing paired economy with passion. He was a visual writer. He could set a scene with as few words as Hemingway, but his passion lent it a savage and visceral life. Nor was his prose without a sense of beauty—though much of it was the primal beauty of the wild. I can read a passage from REH (and I prefer either his historical tales or those of Conan) and feel the doom of mankind pressing in upon me, but rather than be depressed by this, Howard’s writing imparts a sense of glory not unlike what is found among the Viking sagas: death is inescapable; it’s how we die that measures us for immortality. This is a sentiment I’ve tried long and hard to infuse into my own writing, with varying degrees of success.

Is that what inspires you to create characters who are doomed or who face impossible odds?

While I can give a measure of the credit for that to REH, a great deal of it is also a reflection of my own world-view. Like my characters, I am a staunch pessimist but I don’t allow myself to get depressed about it. Like them, I take no comfort from religion nor do I pin my hopes for immortality on an afterlife. Fate has allotted us a measure of time on this Earth, and in that time we must strive to make our mark, to have our voices heard, our names remembered. Some do this through public service, others through the acquisition of temporal wealth or power, still others through the auspices of the Arts—for what is the desire to write and be published if not a bid for immortality? Of course, some people—most people—will live and die without generating even the smallest ripple in history. Don’t get me wrong . . . none of us will make it out of here alive, but I want what my characters want: to leave something of myself behind, some hint that I was upon this Earth. But what I attempt with the pen, my characters attempt with the sword.

As for impossible odds, is that not required for the hero in us all to shine forth?

Speaking of impossible odds, let’s get down to the subject of artistic Resistance. Can you describe your creative process? How do you get ideas and what do you do with them once you’ve got them? Do you work from an outline or are you a “seat of your pants” style of writer?

More often than not, I find my ideas in the pages of whatever I happen to be reading at the time. A passage from The Histories of Herodotus (III.4) gave me the idea for Men of Bronze; Harold Lamb’s Alexander of Macedon sparked my curiosity for Memnon of Rhodes. The Lion of Cairo came about from a conversation I had with my friend, and now my editor, Pete Wolverton, who wondered how cool the Assassins might be if paired with a 30’s pulp sensibility in the style of REH. I found inspiration for the forthcoming Serpent of Hellas (Medallion Press, 2012) in the pages of Barry Strauss’ excellent The Battle of Salamis.

Once I have an idea, I write down the principal themes and characters and then let it simmer. I putter around, gathering research materials I expect I might need. Then, when I feel it has percolated enough, I sit down and write an outline. With Men of Bronze, this outline occupied a dozen note cards. With The Lion of Cairo, it was essentially a rough draft clocking in at 37 single-spaced pages, replete with action and snippets of dialogue. The outlines for Memnon and Serpent of Hellas were somewhere in the middle.

Composition follows. I try to write 1000–1500 words a day, time permitting (I also have a full-time job as primary caretaker for my aging parents). The way I compose is, readers tell me, fairly odd. I’ve written about it to a greater degree here. I’m also a firm believer in seeding my workspace with totems, little fetishes that help channel creative energy (if you believe that sort of thing). Some are pictures clipped from books or magazines; some are postcards or gewgaws picked up by tourists. For Men of Bronze, it was a little stone skull (representing mortality), a picture of an Eye of Horus amulet, and a Corinthian helmet. For Memnon, a vial of sand from a beach on Rhodes, a postcard of Santorini at twilight, a replica coin of Alexander, and a copy of an Egyptian wall fragment depicting Alexander as pharaoh. With The Lion of Cairo, I added an Afghan salawar (not a replica, but the real thing), a watercolor postcard showing a desert oasis, and a David Roberts print (‘Boulak’). These things give me something tangible to focus on, a link to the worlds I write about.

I do that too. I’ve got superstitious talismans all over the place. Which brings me to the big question: how do you overcome Resistance (procrastination, self-doubt, etc.)? Does it manifest itself in a particular way to you, and are there any specific techniques you employ to encourage, inspire, or otherwise fortify yourself against it?

Resistance is the howling terror in the night; the Grendel-creature who becomes enraged by the sense of creative progress, steals into my subconscious, and tries to slaughter my self-confidence. His favorite tactic is to whisper in my ear that this novel is the one that will prove to the world I am nothing but a no-talent hack. It tells me my characters are ludicrous, my scenes are pointless, and my dialogue is riddled with cliché. Resistance tells me to quit and take up a new career, something more fitting to my lack of creative acumen. And some days, to my everlasting shame, I listen to Resistance; I spiral off into a funk and accomplish nothing, sometimes for days on end.

But then, invariably, with my finger hovering over the ‘Delete’ key, I receive a swift kick in the subconscious from the opposite of Resistance—from that inner voice for which I have no name. It is cold, hard, and tells me in no uncertain terms that I must get back to work and ignore the creatures clawing at my mind. Perhaps it is Determination or perhaps it is my guardian Muse. Whatever its source, the force and clarity of its presence silences the inner critic and allows me to resume the thread of my story.

Between these bouts, I reread The War of Art or Betsy Lerner’s The Forest for the Trees for inspiration, reassurance, and guidance.

Assad, the protagonist in The Lion of Cairo, is a hard fellow to root for, what with him being a fanatical member of the order of Assassins. How did you manage to make a cold-blooded killer at least marginally sympathetic, if not likeable?

I wouldn’t call Assad likeable, and you’re right: he is only marginally sympathetic. Though I don’t particularly care for him myself—I wouldn’t invite him over for a drink or anything—I do respect Assad. He is a type of Assassin that did not historically exist: a mastermind, as adept at planning as he is at execution, who did not engage in suicide missions. There’s a quote on page 151 that sums up Assad’s nature quite well: “Imagine a lion—cold and predatory, a man killer possessed of speed and strength. Now imagine that lion acquiring a man’s intellect, a saint’s patience, and a conqueror’s drive.” His fanaticism is less ardent than some, but he makes up for it through sheer determination: given a task, someone to kill or a message to deliver, he will see it done or die in the attempt. And if it should come to blows . . . well, he is a good man to have at your side. Perhaps it speaks volumes about me, but I don’t consider Assad’s propensity for violence or his casual willingness to take a human life to be character flaws; rather, they are indicators of the times in which he lives.

Ultimately, I think the trick to making a man like Assad even remotely sympathetic to modern readers is to present him with a foe even less palatable than he is. Assad might be a killer, but Ibn Sharr is a killer who also defiles the dead. That renders him irredeemably vile in my opinion.

Speaking of Ibn Sharr, your ill-famed necromancer: with The Lion of Cairo you’ve added the existence of sorcery to the framework of the historical novel. Was mixing history and fantasy a difficult balance to achieve? Did one threaten to overwhelm the other? And how do you think readers of historical fiction will react to the addition of magic?

Hopefully, readers won’t bat an eye at the presence of sorcery alongside the historical. Fantasy has always sat cheek-by-jowl with history, both in literature and in practice. Our ancestors believed magic to be a valid—if somewhat sinister—force of nature, a gift from the gods. Their songs and tales brimmed over with sorcerers and witches and monsters and all manner of things that could turn a stout man’s heart to ice. But, there was also sympathetic magic in the form of things: rings, swords, helmets shields, sandals . . . the list goes on. Bringing sorcery to 12th century Egypt came rather easily, as the former already existed in the minds of most people of that era, and the latter has always been a land steeped in the supernatural. They just seemed to arrive at a natural balance.

It was proportion, rather, that worried me. How much mummery was too much? For aesthetic reasons I tried to keep the sorcerous elements of the story as discrete as possible. During composition my personal edict was nothing flashy, and when in doubt I studied over and again the Biblical episode of the Witch of Endor (I Samuel 28:7) or Herodotus’ description of the Oracle at Delphi. I wanted that same niggling sense of ambiguity, the question of is it real or not, to overtake the reader regardless of what the characters might believe.

Scott, thanks for sharing so much of your process here. I’m sure it helped a lot of people. The Lion of Cairo hit the streets on December 7th; where can readers find you, both online and in person?

Though I’m not very fond of self-promo (I blame my parents’ admonitions that talking about ones self equals boasting), I nevertheless maintain a decent web presence, with a blog, a website, and two Facebook pages: Scott Oden, Author and Scott Oden.

I have a few readings/signings planned for the North Alabama area—check the blog for the most current details.

Today through Friday, you can sign up to win one of fifteen copies of The Lion of Cairo here.

Read an excerpt for The Lion of Cairo here.

I know how a writer experiences Resistance. How does a musician experience it? What form(s) does it take for you? When does it hit you?  How powerful is it?

The only time I’m not hindered by Resistance is when I’m dead asleep. The second I start to wake up, there it is, almost uglier than the night before. I think it’s the same tempest a writer, comedian, or any artist deals with.

One difference for me is that as a singer, when I write, there’s a certain physical feeling I like to create in order for me to perform my ideas. I’m not as cerebral as an author, and melodies come from something like a vibration. I’m an anxious person, so it’s probably not as hard for me to reach that state as it may be for others. Every day, I prefer to kick off by finding something to resonate in me. Whether it’s a song I love, coffee, a great conversation, a fight . . . anything can be useful. I guess it’s sorta like pulling a cord on a lawn mower.

The transition from writer to singer is the point where I collide with resistance head on. It’s one hell of an impact because writing is my true passion, and I sometimes feel that singing is like a job. It takes a clash of the two for me to effectively do what I do. If I just wrote all day and I never sang the melodies, I’d be in my room the rest of my life. Unheard. It takes discipline to create a “space” for writing and performing to occupy. When the ring is only occupied by one, there’s no fight, and no song. So I win the battle just by fighting. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Did it require a leap of faith for you to decide, “I’m gonna quit my day job and play rock n’ roll full-time?” Did you have to go through a process to get to that place?

Yes, a three year process . . . and it’s a process I’m going to have to go through again. These days, with the lucrative music recording business of yore coming apart at the seams, bands are actually having to work to make their money! And we do it by being on the road. Nobody buys music anymore . . . which in some respect is an inspiring change. If you want to support an act, see them live every time they’re in town. With this mentality, there’s a pressure to keep creating and improving the live act, or you will have to settle for a career in dreaming.

We spent about half of this year on the road touring, and now we’re home. So the day jobs are back. But I’m still a professional by way of virtue. I have an important record to write, so it’s my priority! I have a job serving coffee. It pays the bills, the people I work for are great about keeping the door open whenever I’m in town. I work strictly to make ends meet so I have time to make what really matters.

What was your darkest moment, your moment of most supreme self-doubt so far?  Was there an “All Is Lost” moment for you on your evolution to being where you are right now?

You’re asking me about “The Dip!”

Seth Godin defined this in his book by that title. That dude nailed it. As a writer, I’m digging my way out of a pretty musty trench, where I sat for a while feeling sorry for myself for not being as successful as I felt I deserved. I was lucky because I got over myself pretty quickly. I adapted to the mentality that accepting a role as an artist is like enrolling in an endless (and often frustrating) education, and not about the financial pay off, which may or may never come. This is a difficult thing to accept, but it was extremely liberating when I was able to sort of shed the shackles anchoring me to concerns about success. When you’re free, you can start getting good at what you do. You have to make the choice to be ruthlessly devoted to your work.

I’m unapologetically ruthless now, and when you’re ruthless you’re without pity. So, while you’re still weary towards the struggle to get there, you don’t pity yourself, and you learn how to skillfully attack in your art.

Do you still experience doubts that you’ve chosen the right path?

I’d lie if I said absolutely not. I fall on my face sometimes. The music world can be overwhelming. But I used to grapple with doubt much more frequently than I do now. I’ve reached a point where I can answer the “deathbed” question. If I were on it now, I think I’d go easier than if I were on a different path. I feel that I’m in the midst of an important mission. If I’m delusional, then delusion’s a gift. I’m madly in love with what I do.

Where does yourself-and-the-band exist in the overall contour of your life?  Is there your “real life”—and the band is on the side? Or is this adventure central to your life?

Writing music will always be at the center of my life. It’s how I critique, understand, and ultimately enjoy this world. Right now, the band is a vehicle for all involved. Maybe the end result is a career with one another. I can’t be sure yet. All I know is that we’re working our asses off, and there’s a lot to be said for it. Evolving in a band that I strongly care about has been challenging, but it’s also been the most rewarding endeavor of my life. It continues to take me over in new ways. I’ve learned from one of my bandmates that if you ever have a back up plan, you will never make it. I believe this. I’ve developed tunnel vision as a result. I’ve been through school, and now that I understand my passion, I’ve been heading down a path where all my previous education is simply a foundation under who I am, and not the building blocks to my future.

I have a life outside of music for those I love, but I will say . . . they are the most understanding people on earth.

Do you see yourself as on a journey? If so, from what to what?

The BIG journey I think will always be a mystery to me. I know in The War of Art, you refer to inspiration as a gift from “The Muse.” I completely accept that. I feel I only have power over my day to day journey, which is one filled with a ton of work, and if I’m fortunate, a little inspiration to boot . . .

The music industry is changing. How much of that played into your release of your first album as a free download? How are you reaching out to fans outside traditional channels?

The music industry has completely crumbled. In 2007, the band Radiohead released an album called “In Rainbows” in an industry-shattering way. Their longstanding record deal was up so they digitally self-released the album via their website. The kicker was the “pay what you want” option when purchasing the album, allowing people to put a price on the record.

As an utterly unknown band, using the Radiohead platform, we threw our first record, “Howl” up for free in 2008. For our band, it was a decision influenced by our guitar player, Tom Conrad, who was avidly keeping up with the tumultuous roller coaster ride the industry was on at that time. The result has been over 70,000 downloads worldwide to date. We were (and still are) shocked to say the least.

The Internet gives you the opportunity these days to be omnipresent. If you have a stellar product, it’s a great thing. One of the most exciting things about the music business right now is the amount of music that’s out there. The internet has invited an over-saturation to occur. What this has done is taken mediocrity out of the race toward success. People have the power to choose the music kingdom. Only great music gets to the top and stays there. This only pushes me harder. If something’s good, people will talk. The business now thrives on what people are saying. The industry once had an almighty voice, but it’s gone hoarse.

How do your songs come to you?

I’ve gotten better and better at stumbling onto something over the years. And that’s all I really know. I put my time in, and slowly ideas accumulate and start connecting. I wish I was some sort of mysterious songwriting machine like some of the greats appear to be, but I’m not. Far from it, actually. I can give you a little insight as to the process I went through for our song “Spit the Dark”, which is one of my most vivid writing memories:

The song was written in the midst of my biggest single attack on Resistance yet. I hunkered down in my brutally cold (literally heatless), rat-infested apartment in the middle of winter, and set out to finish a record’s worth of material before I left my room . . . even for a damn sandwich. I was high on the inspiration of heartbreak, and infused with an understanding on artistic endeavor from my first read through of The War of Art. I went at it with the blind fury of something new and passionate. And, are you ready? One song survived! And it’s “Spit the Dark.” So that one’s special to me.

I actually snagged my process from yours in WOA. I wake up, drink coffee, and “clock in.” I try not to drag ass into “the office.” I’ve got my laptop, recorders, pens and paper. My phone is a huge source of Resistance for me. If I’m disciplined enough I can turn it off. Although I usually rationalize it into the equation somehow. And I work. If I told people how much time I put into this, they would listen to the songs and shake their head. The product is evolving into proof. It’s just not there yet. I’m not a natural artist by any means, but I work my ass off. And that’s my process.

Last night I was talking to my good buddy about a recent problem I realized I have. I’m becoming too time conscious as if this were a real “9-to-5er.” I take breaks and after 30 minutes I head back to work like there would be a repercussion if I didn’t. If I start to stall at 7 hrs and 15 min, I sit there day dreaming until it’s time to “go home.” Maybe it’s an addiction to discipline, however in every other area of life, I suffer from not enough.

If you were advising a young, aspiring musician and could only tell him one thing to help him out, what would that one thing be?

Write for yourself, get damn good at it, and the hell with what anyone thinks. That’s the only way to be authentic. I think it’s a blessing to develop in obscurity. The truth is, I am only just now learning that myself . . . Stay in the game, kids.

You started your film career in distribution, when you and your mentor, actor/writer/director John Cassavetes distributed his 1974 film A Woman Under the Influence—”the first time an independent film was distributed without the use of a nationwide system of sub-distributors.” Since then, you’ve shepherded over 200 films into the marketplace. How do you know what will work? What audiences will respond to?

Justin Kirk and Julianne Nicholson in Jeff Lipsky's Flannel Pajamas

The worst kept secret in the film business, even on the independent side of the business, is that no one knows what will work, myself included. There certainly are no thematic sure things, although in the past, under duress, I used to suggest that sex sells a film (sex, lies & videotape), food sells a film (Big Night), sex enmeshed with food (Like Water for Chocolate), British costume dramas are a lead pipe cinch, even when they’re not very good (Young Victoria), and classical music stories (Tous les matins du monde) can’t miss. But now that everyone gets a daily dose of porn on line, their food fix on a plethora of cable television shows, and Tower Records closed up shop, there are no sure things. The only thing we know for certain is that films, be they dramas or docs, whose backdrops are of the wars we’re currently fighting in the Middle East, will fail at the box office, even if they win the Best Picture Oscar (The Hurt Locker). And this isn’t strictly as a consequence of the “too soon” factor. WWII was a “popular” war. The films that emerged during and just after that conflict reflected that patriotic popularity. And the war wasn’t fought on television. Vietnam tinged films that were successful traded on explicit sexuality (Coming Home) and drugs, sex, rock and roll, and classic novels (Apocalypse Now) or were three-hour epics, half of which weren’t even set ‘in country’ (The Deer Hunter).

Another fact is that $50 million in advertising and marketing money will sell anything (yes, even The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, when ancillary and international revenues are folded in. It never fails to amaze how often veteran pundits declare this or that studio film a write-off on the basis of domestic theatrical box office numbers. I suppose that’s because those are the only real numbers readily available to them. The other revenue results are better protected by the studios than government state secrets).

But I feel all of this is good news for independents. Who would have predicted that the year’s highest-grossing, pure independent film to date would be Winter’s Bone, a star-less drama about a young mother in hillbilly country, trying to locate her abusive, criminal husband so she doesn’t lose her home, a glorified shack in the Appalachian Mountains? It also just happens to be the best film to have been released this year. Look at how a documentary whose star never even appears on screen is one of the highest-grossing non-fiction films of the year (Exit Through the Gift Shop).

As an executive, I can only ask myself three questions in determining whether a film merits a year of my professional life bringing it into market. One: Do I love the film, am I passionate about it? Two: Do I feel I know how to market it? Three: Will the deal to acquire the distribution rights put my company at risk if it fails? If the answer to any one of these questions is unacceptable, then I can only assume that audiences won’t respond to the movie (or at least I hope they won’t, otherwise I could have made a killing!).

You have a track record for identifying and working with unknown film makers (Wayne Wang, Mike Leigh, Guillermo del Toro,) actors and actresses (Sam Trammel, Julianne Nicholson, Jonathan Groff), when they were still developing their “voices.” How do you know what—and who—has “it.”

The independent moviegoing audience has also been enamored of discovering new stylists, new modes of using style to tell a story, much more than they ever have been enraptured by brilliant classical filmmakers and filmmaking (see: John Cassavetes, Ingmar Bergman, Eric Rohmer). But young filmmakers often are tripped up by repeated revolutionary styles; what was once original, merely becomes eccentric and rote, whereas great classical filmmaker endures.

Look at the first film of Jim Jarmusch, Stranger Than Paradise. Critics still love his newer films, not so much audiences. Or Hal Hartley’s bracing, brilliant The Unbelievable Truth. Even the critics turned against him when he made his next equally wonderful film Trust in the same loopy fashion, using much of the same uniquely daffy cast (Adrienne Shelley). Steven Soderbergh has never been able to repeat the theatrical success of his very stylish sex, lies & videotape, even though he never used to repeat himself— even though his early works were always marked by distinctive cinematic flair (The Limey). And where is Whit Stillman anyway (Metropolitan)? So, for this reason and many more, a great young director’s first film is like manna from heaven for independent distributors (and for the purpose of this dialog, I don’t consider major studio “boutique” divisions, like Fox Searchlight, independent distributors). The films are audience discoveries, critics choices, inexpensive to make, and even less expensive for independent distributors to acquire. Some examples of the first films that I’ve been fortunate enough to shepherd into the marketplace are Chan Is Missing (Wayne Wang), High Hopes (Mike Leigh), The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (Fred Schepisi), Newsfront (Phillip Noyce), Cronos (Guillermo del Toro), The War Zone (Tim Roth), and L.I.E. (Michael Cuesta).

In film distribution, you’re known for untraditional approaches, but with your own screenplays, your themes are traditional—family, relationships, love . . . What draws you to them?

It’s quite simple, actually, and to put it properly, my recurring themes are love, family, and sexuality. These are the three phases, or transitions, in life that every human being on the planet shares. We are not all hit men, gang members, aliens (undocumented or from another planet), presidents, or dictators—so we can’t as readily identify. As much as Bonnie & Clyde is a love story, about relationships and family and sexuality, those identifiers, in this case, are tempered by the fact that the “plot” story is about cold-blooded killers (or tragic, desperate victims of a terrible time in our country’s history). Perhaps that’s why I prefer plotless, dialogue-driven stories. I find they endure and that, incorporating my three themes, a character, a situation, a moment, or that character’s entire arc, should be identifiable to everyone, in a kind of you-are there, or you-were-there, or I-get-it-that’s-me, I-know-how-to-solve-that-person’s-problem, I-know-what’s-going-to-happen-to-her-and-I’m-going-to-start-to-cry-because-it-happened-to-me, but-it-doesn’t-and-you-cry-anyway, but-they-are-tears-of-joy kind of way.

Anyone can write, take a picture, or shoot a scene. But only a few do it well. What’s the difference? Is it born talent? Practice? Mix? How has your own writing developed?

I write and direct films. I can’t load film into a camera, I can’t properly read the wave forms of a high-def camera, I can’t record sound on a DAT, I can’t erect a china ball if a gaffer demands it. I didn’t attend film school, in any formal way. Writing and directing good films I firmly believe are organic, genetic or, if you will, God-given skills. But there must be some linchpin or catalyst that comes into play for every artist (excuse the pompous designation) to allow those intuitive skills to emerge. So, I suppose, in a sense, it did require attending film school. My film school began by spending countless hours in movie theatres growing up rather than doing my homework. Graduate school was opting to become a film distributor and work alongside not just Cassavetes and Leigh but nearby Fassbinder, Godard, Herzog, Hallström, and Louis Malle, some of whose films I got to work on, all of whom I spent some or a great deal of time with. I strongly feel that every film I make (but not every script I wrote) is better than my previous film, and that with each film I become a better filmmaker. It sounds a bit twee, but I would never want to make a perfect film because then there would be nothing left to learn. And, believe me, I’ve never made a perfect film.

When you’re pushing through a project, how do you focus, what helps you move through it?

The most daunting thing I face during the writing process is that my most-inspired ideas come when I’m in motion—walking down the street, riding on the subway, sweating on the Stairmaster, never while I’m inert, sitting at a word processor, constipated fingers poised over a keyboard. Honestly, my best and most fluid writing tends to happen without thinking about it. That is to say, when I awaken at 5:00 AM, I will make a concerted effort to take a seat at my computer desk literally by 5:01 AM. Over-analyzing, over-thinking, self-doubts . . . they don’t have time to sink in, to tether my imagination, to kill my spirit. When I begin writing at 5:01 AM, I can generate ten new script pages in an hour. When I take a seat after lunch, I belch writer’s block.

Practically speaking, I never show unfinished scripts to friends, colleagues, family, or any of the other trusted believers in my life. Much like I prefer not having a monitor on set when I’m shooting (I’ve been lucky to have shot three of my four features on film, not digital), I don’t want a filter or feedback while something is still in utero, as to speak. Even words of (faint?) praise can stop a story in its tracks when it is leavened with an entirely different perspective, a new perspective, a second subjective perspective. My scripts are for me, my films are for everyone.

In your own writing, how do you know when you’ve hit that “it” moment, when you can stop editing, when you’re done?

When I finish a script, and I tend to write eccentrically but using a linear outline from the get-go, I read it and know immediately that it can be made into a good film. I seldom write entire revisions or drafts. I will add scenes, delete scenes, add lines of dialog, or delete them, but if you look at the first draft of any film I actually make, it will bear a striking similarity to the first draft of the screenplay. That said, changes are made, I’d say, up to two days before the start of principal photography. Often those changes result in hearing professional actors, during the audition process, speaking my words for the first time, out loud. Even at this early stage I’ll see a side of a character I didn’t realize even existed and requires a bit of amplification, shading, or further developing. Or I’ll hear a line that in my head, a hundred times, sounded legendary, but that now rings hollow, clunky, or inchoate. I don’t think my writing is finished until the film is finished, but in broad strokes, it’s finished the very first time I read the words THE END.

Writer and director Jeff Lipsky

You’re known for your dialogue. In fact, you collect dialogue—as lines come to you, you write them down for future use. How do you track the material you’ve collected, and pull it together?

True, I wind up with hundreds or a thousand scraps of people filled with random lines of dialog before I enter them on my hard drive. I don’t track the material in any way until the linear outline of the film, until the scene-by-scene structure is completed (even if the script, like Flannel Pajamas, contains one hundred and seventy one scenes). Once the outline is complete, a very logical process seems to take over; a fragment of dialog that might have lost all of its meaning to me weeks after it had first popped into my head now absolutely seems to be appropriate for this or that turning point in the story structure. So that ragged slice of paper gets put into the scene seven pile, and once every last line has been “organized,” and I begin to transcribe the scribbled musings onto the page, what should come before and what should come after, out of the mouths of my characters becomes evident, and if it’s 5:01 or 5:02 in the morning, the balance of the words flow like fast, hot lava. (I promise I’ll never write those words into one of my scripts.)

What film makers have most inspired your work and why?

John Cassavetes, for his effortless dialog, for the love with which he imbues his characters, for making it easy for a 17-year-old viewer to understand the first taste of mortality in a 40-year-old.

Mike Leigh, for his weird, delicious clashing of causticity and lovable oddballs, for not profaning the English language, for devising some of the most loving couples I’ve ever seen on screen.

Ingmar Bergman, for redefining the absolute and essential need for family, for his use of color, for his use of black and white, for his woman, for his island.

Woody Allen, for being perhaps the greatest American filmmaker ever. That’s a bold statement, but if you review his entire body of work, while some other great directors can rival him for ten or fifteen years, he’s been doing it for five decades and, in the process, has created over a dozen masterpieces and a dozen other near masterpieces.

You’ve dedicated your new film, Twelve Thirty, to Simon Channing-Williams, who was another of your mentors. How did he and Cassavetes inspire your film making?

I met John while I was in college. His film Husbands, which I’d seen when I was 17, changed my life and altered the way I looked at film, forever. Had another filmmaker’s work so enraptured, affected, and transformed me, what would the odds have been that I would have even had the opportunity to meet him or her? Or that it would have been an American filmmaker? Or that the filmmaker would have been uncompromising with their art, and so full of zest and so optimistic about humanity? But John was unique. He was a real friend, at once generous with his time, his talent, his money. He became my mentor. I worked for him for six years and remained a friend, and acolyte, for the last 18 years of his life. He literally taught me how to write dialog. Personally, I feel that that particular skill came so naturally to him because he was such an extraordinary and intuitive actor. He was always on but his heart was always present. John’s films were love stories and he was one of the few filmmakers, be they men or women, in history who consistently created vibrant, three-dimensional, multi-layered parts for women. His muse was his wife so that likely also made it a bit easier to conjure up such indelible, fictional women. But John was a sponge. I’m sure there is some of me in Opening Night, in Love Streams, in Gloria, just as there is some of everyone John ever befriended in so many of his beloved characters. John made his movies in his own house; I maintain he didn’t do it out of laziness or penury but because it was a comfortable environment for his stock cast and his stock crew and it allowed him one, two more hours each day to shoot, every minute of which was precious.

Simon passed away last year; even now I don’t deserve to walk on the same planet on which he lived. He was bigger than life, he was singularly responsible for the existence of my first distribution company, October Films. He volunteers help while other people run around begging for favors. He anticipates the needs of his friends and then, surprisingly, he trumps those needs with offers of even more assistance. He did for me. He made me feel like family, like I could and would achieve anything. At his memorial service, more a lively celebration of his life of his life and career than a wake, so many elegant, gracious speakers, family and friends, shared disparate stories about Simon, but they all contained commonalities. Every story, every anecdote, at some juncture, was adorned, punctuated, sweetened with tales of drinking wine and much, much laughter. An hour-long montage of clips from the films Simon produced was prepared and screened, and my film Flannel Pajamas, which Simon executive produced, was included. Definitely one of the greatest, and most humbling moments of my life. There are dozens of artists qualified to write Simon’s biography. Each would be startlingly different and each would be shockingly similar, and each would be a Valentine to a man whose abilities were limitless, who could put his rivals, colleagues, contemporaries to shame but never would, and a man who balanced his oversized life with the delicacy of a ballerina. How can one’s work not be inspired by having known two such men as John and Simon?

******

Twelve Thirty is being presented at the Salem (Oregon) Film Festival, October 14th and 15th. Jeff Lipsky will attend to introduce the film and host a Q&A.

The film will open in New York City January 14th  at the Angelika Film Center, following a sneak preview at Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater on January 10th.

You’ve identified three “buckets” of work. Please talk a little more about the bad, the good, and the great.

Sure—and we can be quick with this.

Bad Work: Let us not mince words here—it’s no time to be polite. This is the work that is mind-numbing, soul-sucking, life-draining. It’s bureaucracy, paperwork and endless meetings. It’s the work that, if it was up to you, you’d never do again. And, sadly, we all find ourselves doing Bad Work some of the time.

Good Work: What we do most of our days, most of the time. It’s most neatly summed up as “your job description.” So nothing wrong with it: it’s work that you probably enjoy, that keeps you busy, and that uses your skills and training and experience. But it’s also work that is never-ending (do you know anyone with a “zero inbox”?) and keeps us stuck in a comfortable rut. When we’re doing Good Work, we’re no longer exploring the edges of who we are and what impact we might have in the world.

Great Work: This is the work you do that has meaning and has impact. The work that you’re proud of and that you wish you had more of. The challenge of course, is that it’s the work that both excites you and scares you a little. It challenges you and pushes you.

So you can see, this isn’t a measure of the quality of the work you do. In fact, it’s one of the bitter ironies of life that most of us deliver our Bad Work at a high level of excellence—a singular definition of Extreme Pointless.

And the bottom line in all of this? We’ve all got not quite enough Great Work and too much of the other stuff. I’m trying to change that.

(You can see a brief movie that sums this up with animation.)

You’ve helped thousands around the world go from bad or good work, to great work. How did you get to great yourself? What were you doing before Box of Crayons, and how did you identify your own great work?

Have you ever noticed that when someone explains how they got to where they were, it sounds like a planned journey? We all know the reality is something different, more like a lucky stumble here and a fortunate right turn there. In fact, one of my favorite sayings is that “inspiration is when your past suddenly makes sense.”

So welcome to a quick tour of my accidental past:

I grew up in Australia and studied Literature and Law. Two important moments: being told by my Latin teacher when I was 14 that if I wanted to go to Oxford University—like my Dad, who was a local Oxford boy—I needed to win a Rhodes Scholarship. And being sued for defamation by one of my law lecturers.

I won a Rhodes Scholarship (on the second try. On the first try, I didn’t even get an interview) and did a Masters degree in literature at Oxford University. Key moments were:

—falling in love with the Canadian who’s now my wife;

—living in a house with 16 people doing PhDs and realizing that that clearly wasn’t the path for me (it became clear that doing a PhD required expertise and grit, neither things I specialize in);

—and, by studying literature rather than law at Oxford, being plucked off the path that would have led to me becoming a largely useless and certainly unhappy lawyer.

My first job after university was with an innovation and creativity company. They were “Fast Company” before Fast Company existed. They encouraged my long hair, earrings and home-made clothing and taught me something of innovation, branding and what it means to have a job. Most importantly, they managed to do all of this without crushing my spirit in a “regular” job and by encouraging me to assume the rules are there to be broken.

My next job was with a change management consultancy and I learned (again) that you can never tell what sticks. I spent 30 minutes jotting down the global vision for GlaxoSmithKline, and 11 years later it’s still the guiding philosophy of the company. I spent months on a large-scale organizational change program and made exactly no impact.

With this company I moved to Boston, where we failed to set up a new office, but learned where to find the best pizza in the universe (Pizzeria Regina, Little Italy. The Pomodore and Spinaci pizza is the bomb).

My wife and I decided Boston wasn’t for us, went to the local pub, drank some beer, each wrote the name of three cities on a beer coaster, and on the count of three turned the two coasters upward. Toronto made both lists, so we made plans to move and bought tickets to fly out—on September 11, 2001.

The consulting job I had lined up disappeared into the ashes of the Twin Towers, so after six months failing (again) in a change management role, I got my papers to work in Canada, got fired the same week, and started the company that would become Box of Crayons.

I spent the first four years saying, “yes, of course I can do that” to any request made of me. But then a friend, Kate, sent me a photocopied page of Milton Glaser’s book Art is Work. It was the seed for Bad Work, Good Work and Great Work—the foundation for the work I now do.

And since then, I’ve been getting clearer on how to best help people in organizations do Less Good Work and More Great Work—which we do at Box of Crayons through training programs, facilitation and consulting, through a couple of books and through the short movies you talk about below.

I’ve enjoyed watching the shorts you’ve created. My favorites are The 5.75 Questions You’ve Been Avoiding and The Eight Irresistible Principles of Fun. In addition to being creative and fun to watch, they provide a feast of food for thought. Where do you come up with your ideas and how did you figure out the approach that works for you (style, tone, and so on)?

The first movie I created was The Eight Irresistible Principles of Fun, and it’s been the movie that’s been most popular—it’s been seen by about a gajillion people since we put it on-line four or five years ago. It came about because I was giving a workshop to some coaches about the importance of creating Intellectual Property as a way of building a business—and realized that I’d not actually done that myself. So I spend an hour or so crafting the Principles, and got a friend to design them as a small poster. They were largely ignored by everyone, but at least I didn’t look a total fool in the workshop.

Later, Scott Stratten (who just released a great book, Un-Marketing) created one of the first viral movies on Time. I saw the movie and immediately saw the possibilities with the Eight Principles. Through our web designer we found a brilliant animator—Robert Kwabe in Montreal—and he turned my thoughts on design into something compelling.

And that’s how it goes. I tend to script something and sketch out some broad design idea, and Robert takes it over and turns it into something better than I could ever have imagined.

What are the common ties that bind people to bad or good work? And, is there something that you have to work at avoiding as you do your own great work?

Habit.

Comfort.

Tolerance.

Busy-ness.

Lack of time to reflect

Lack of focus

Lack of courage

Lack of resilience.

I know these are no small things. And, they’re all within our control.

For me, one of the biggest blocks is focus, or rather a lack of it. I suffer from something someone once called SOS—Shiny Object Syndrome. I’ve got various tricks to get me through this, including defining the “one plus two” at the start of each day. Before I do anything, I write down the one Most Valuable Action I’m definitely going to get done today, and I know how it relates to a Great Work Project. I also write down two other tasks I hope to get done—but there’s no guilt or recrimination if I don’t get to them. They’re gravy.

On the other end, what are the springboards that propel people out of bad or good work, and into great work? And, is there something specific that inspires you?

Sometimes it’s a spark of something that will kick you into doing more Great Work. If that happens, that’s fantastic. To have Great Work thrust upon you is a luxury.

But I don’t think you need to—or should—wait for inspiration. Anyone who knows Steven’s work knows exactly what I mean by this. It’s the difference between being an amateur and a professional, right?

One thing that helps is having a bigger “this is what I’m trying to do in the world” to keep pulling you forward when you want to give up. The way I frame it is, “infecting a billion people with the possibility virus.” So it gives me both a goal to aim for and a measure to weigh up my choices.

For instance, I now do very little individual coaching. It’s a tough thing to give up, because having someone break though on some challenge because of your help is a very rewarding experience. But when weighed against the other ways I can support people, then it’s one of the least scalable. So I say No to it, knowing that the “prize” I get for focusing on other Great Work is bigger than the “punishment” of giving up the coaching experience.

You’ve said that even great work is in danger of become good or bad after a few years. How do you keep your own work great? How do you change things up?

I think there are three strategies that are crucial.

The first is giving yourself time to reflect on yourself and your life, so you can get clear on what’s currently Bad, Good and Great for you—and whether that’s the best possible mix for you. It helps to have someone to support you on this. A friend. A coach. A mastermind group. Personally, I use all three of those to help me stay the course.

The second is getting practiced at saying No. Until you start mastering saying No to Good Work, then it will be next to impossible to say Yes to Great Work.

As someone who runs his own small business, I am constantly faced with the dilemma of saying No to client work that’s offered, so that I have time to write and create and build and do the other things that help my business flourish. It’s tough, because I’m turning away cash—but again, it’s a case of prizes vs punishment.

And finally, embrace the project-ization of things. I’ve found that when you create a Great Work Project for yourself, you define a start point, an end point and a sense of what success is. And when one project is done, it’s natural to look for what’s next.

In The Art of Non-Conformity you talk about your one-time job “slinging boxes” at FedEx at 3 AM in the morning. How did you go from there to developing a business and then being a volunteer working with refugees, warlords and presidents in West Africa?

I’ve never been a good employee, so part of my early motivation was very simple: to find a way to support myself without working for someone else. Over the years it became more strategic; I came to see entrepreneurship as a real way to change the world and so on—but in the beginning, I was mostly trying to avoid the dreaded “real job.” I learned how to sell coffee on eBay, then I learned to do web design, then business consulting, affiliate marketing, and so on.

After 9/11, I was depressed like everyone else and pondering the meaning of life. I read about a medical charity in West Africa that needed volunteers. I talked with Jolie, my wife, and we applied for a two-year commitment that eventually turned into four years overseas. The culmination of these experiences—living in post-conflict Africa, working as an entrepreneur, travel, and challenging authority in general—led to the founding of The Art of Non-Conformity network in 2008.

How do you generate ideas? And, once you have an idea, how do you decide whether it is worth pursuing?

Ideas are rarely the problem. My impression is that most writers, entrepreneurs, and other creative people have no shortage of ideas. What we sometimes lack is a) the ability to take the first steps, and b) the ability to keep executing to finish the project spawned by the idea.

I think I’ve always been an idea generator but not always an idea executor. A big part of execution lies in overcoming fear, and for a long time I suffered from fear of execution—or something like that.

Now, my perspective most of the time is “Why not say yes?” I don’t pursue everything, of course, but I try to do as much as possible. We tend to regret the things we don’t do much more than what we actually do. And besides, I would rather attempt something and fail than attempt so little that success is always guaranteed.

You’ve traveled all over the world, and have met so many different people. Have you been able to identify why some people jump toward new opportunities, while others remain blind to them? And, what makes you take action? What makes you jump?

Good question. I think that internal obstacles—fear, insecurity, and so on—are more inhibiting than external ones. So the people who jump have somehow been able to overcome the internal obstacles, at least enough to take the jump and see where it leads. It isn’t about being fearless (I’m not sure that anyone is truly fearless) but rather about engaging with your fear and refusing to allow fear to make the decisions.

I jump when something sounds exciting and different. I want to live a life of grateful adventure. If something sounds like an adventure, especially if it involves some kind of challenge, I’m usually up for it.

You’ve written about living a “life of gratitude.” What led you to this? Why is it important? How do you incorporate this into your work?

The most obvious source would be the four years I spent in West Africa, especially Liberia and Sierra Leone. It was as transformative an experience as you might expect. If I wasn’t previously aware of how privileged my upbringing was as a middle-class American, I was certainly aware after that. Those of us who have the liberty to spend our time thinking about travel, writing, and all things unconventional are really in the minority. So it’s not like we should deny ourselves these things or take on a vow of austerity—but I do think the value of gratitude should be front-and-center in our work. To me, gratitude means being aware of this reality, and also trying to do something suitably unique and audacious that makes the world a better place.

In 279 Days to Overnight Success (page 55), you included a quote from the artist Soniei:

“I wake up every day and I work on whatever it is I feel like working on that day,” she told me. “I love working at home, drinking tea and watching my auctions. I just love it. Passion comes first.”

How do you ensure that happiness and passion remain touchstones in your life?

Part of the trick lies in constructing a life where we do what we are motivated to do instead of trying to motivate ourselves into doing something we think we should do. The difference is critical. There is certainly a case for “sucking it up and getting it done” at times, but I think we’ll have a better life overall if we work to minimize those times.  Again, many people around the world don’t have the ability to make these kinds of choices, but because we do, we should treat it with the respect it deserves.

How do you overcome Resistance (meaning self-sabotage, procrastination, self-doubt, etc.)? Do you have a specific technique or metaphor that you employ to fortify, encourage or inspire yourself? Is there an example of Resistance that you can share—how it presented itself and how you overcame it?

Resistance, that beast! Well, to start with I re-read The War of Art, which has been as helpful to me as it has to so many other creatives all over the world. It’s on my desk as I write this right now.

I also have a “1,000 words” personal standard, which basically says that my job as a writer is to crank out 1,000 words a day no matter what else is going on. The standard is kind of like exercise—I can miss a day and still feel fine, but if I miss several days, I get irritable and discouraged. It’s important to note that not all 1,000 words are good; like most writers I edit and discard much more than I use. But the discipline of putting words on paper or a computer screen, just like The War of Art tells us so well, is important on its own.

Here’s another quote from 279 Days to Overnight Success:

“You can be writing about how to plant flowers for world peace, and once your site becomes popular, the vampires will find you.”

This one made me laugh:

“Remember, no statues are erected to critics. There may be a statue erected to a vampire somewhere, but after visiting 107 countries, I haven’t seen one yet.”

How do you avoid Resistance Vampires—people who love to criticize, tell you what you are doing is wrong, and try to shut you down (usually under anonymous/fake names)?

First, a quick side note: As soon as I wrote the line about a vampire statue, I knew that someone would write in to tell me about various vampire statues around the world—and indeed, several people did.

Now to the point at hand. I’m certainly not immune to Resistance Vampires. I can hear 99 nice things and one negative thing on a particular day, and for the rest of the afternoon I’ll be thinking about the negative thing. I’d love to change that, but haven’t figured out how to do so yet. I don’t think the answer is to shut ourselves off from the world completely as some people do. For me, one of the most gratifying things about my whole project is the direct interaction with readers. It helps to keep a few things in mind: the vast majority of people are far more supportive than critical, some other people become vampires simply because they are envious or otherwise threatened by success, and it’s much easier to be a cynic of any kind than a believer of any kind. Since I’m not in the business of writing for cynics, I try to tune them out as much as possible.

I asked Barbara Winter , another travel-bug-bitten writer, if there’s a question she’d like to ask. Barbara has already read your new book, The Art of Non-Conformity, and delivered a great question:

Does being a traveler teach us anything that is useful to being self-employed?

I love Barbara Winter. Her book Making a Living Without a Job is fantastic.

I think that traveling and self-employment do go hand-in-hand, especially if your travel is independent or otherwise unconventional. For example, I experience loneliness a number of places around the world, particularly when I’m by myself somewhere and don’t speak the language. The same kind of feeling can sometimes come up when you’re self-employed. In both cases, loneliness isn’t always a bad thing. You can channel it for creativity. You can look forward to times when you won’t be lonely or uncertain. Or, of course, you can just appreciate what you have as part of the grateful adventure.

The Art of Non-Conformity pubs Sept. 7th. You have a non-conforming book tour, too. Please share a little more about what you are doing, why, and where readers can catch up with you in person.

Yep, my first print book! I’m excited. And I wanted to do something big and fun to celebrate, so I put together what I call an Unconventional Book Tour. I’ll be visiting all 50 states and 10 Canadian provinces. The tour is self-funded and collectively-organized by my readers, with the goal of meeting everyone who reads AONC in North America. We’ll see how that goes.

I know that publishers (and some authors) have largely turned their back on book tours, but my sense is that they’ve been doing it wrong. I understand that it might be more efficient to only visit major markets or do some kind of online event. But I also don’t think that’s very interesting, and as mentioned above, I’m attracted to doing things that are adventurous or different. So ready or not, I’m heading out to see all of the U.S. and Canada this fall.

Oh, and people can sign up to come out at unconventionalbooktour.com, or follow me at twitter.com/chrisguillebeau.

Erik Proulx: Filmmaker, Writer, Speaker, Change-Maker Extraordinaire. Photo Credit: Courtney Perkins.

The film “Lemonade” was my introduction to Erik Proulx. It is inspiring, uplifting, motivating—all the good stuff—and is a strong reminder of our abilities to reinvent ourselves—hard-charge our dreams, at any moment. A 15-year veteran of the advertising industry, Erik created commercials for brands like Volvo, Fidelity Investments, GMC Trucks, and Perdue Chicken. Then, two days after being offered a raise and a promotion, his agency laid him off without ceremony. He responded by creating “Lemonade” and the blog Please Feed The Animals. His experience, combined with the collective experience of the hundreds of people he’s interviewed for Lemonade (the book), has made him an insightful speaker, author, and advocate for personal and professional reinvention. He has appeared on CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, NPR’s On Point, ABC News with Tory Johnson, and several other national print and broadcast media to discuss his front-line exposure to the shifting attitude around work and careers. Erik has been a contributing writer to Advertising Age, Adweek, and Creativity Magazine, and his “Dads Without Dads” column is a regular feature in The Good Men Project Magazine. Erik is currently filming “Lemonade: Detroit” about the reinvention of a city trying to redefine itself after the collapse of the auto industry.

When you decided to make “Lemonade,” you had just been laid off, and said “not doing it wasn’t an option.” What drove you to knock down Resistance, leave your safety zone, and go after something that wasn’t a sure thing?

Catholic guilt. Let me explain.

I’m not a very devout churchman these days. As an adult, I’ve either come to question most of what I learned in Catholic school or simply dismissed it outright. But there was one lesson that always stuck with me, and it was when Sister Claire told our 4th grade class that we were all endowed with unique talents, and that wasting them was a sin in the eyes of God.

Making “Lemonade” was the first time in my career that I felt like I was doing something bigger than myself. I spent most of my 15 years in advertising trying to please bosses or clients or award-show judges. But helping people see that they could turn a seemingly tragic event into something life-changing and positive was supremely motivating. It felt right, as if I was being absolved for the sin of misappropriated talent. Finally, I was honoring my responsibility to myself.

Secondly, it became clear to me after three layoffs that there is no sure thing. You can turn your life over to your employer, give them your nights and weekends and holidays, win them clients and awards, do your time sheets on time and abide the employee manual, and even then your job is not safe. Making “Lemonade” was as much about survival as anything. The worst thing any unemployed person can do is camouflage themselves into the wallpaper of resumes and job fairs. I needed to make a movie if for no other reason than to stand out.

“It’s not a pink slip, it’s a blank page” is a stand-out from “Lemonade.” How have you found the ideas to fill your slate? And, how do you decide which to juice?

Advertising creatives are always looking outward for inspiration. We tend to ingest lots of film and museum art, and articles in Rolling Stone, in order to feed our brains with the necessary creative soup, so that one day it will all be reassembled into something original. That’s important.

But there’s another important element in idea generation, and it’s looking beyond the information in your brain, past cerebral conscious and unconscious thought, down deep into what is primal and idealistic. This place exists somewhere in your stomach. It’s fed by oxygen and is predetermined by genetics. The best ideas live there. They are the really important ones that cannot be ignored. Those are the ideas I’m trying to pay attention to. And they’re not always easy to find.

Once you find the idea, how do you move forward? In what form does your personal kick in the butt arrive?

My friend Adam Kuhr told me about a JFK quote, and it pretty much sums up how I confront the Resistance:

“The Irish writer Frank O’Connor wrote how, as a boy, he and his friends would make their way across the countryside. When they came to an orchard wall that seemed too high and too doubtful to try and too difficult to permit their voyage to continue, they took off their hats and tossed them over the wall—and then they had no choice but to follow them.”

Kennedy concluded,

“This nation has tossed its cap over the wall of space, and we have no choice but to follow it.”

If I have an idea that I want to execute—I mean, really, really want to see through to completion—then I announce it. I blog about it. I tweet about it. I get my bullhorn and a microphone, and make my intentions known to anyone who will listen. I don’t try to keep it to myself so no one else steals the idea, because that would be a guarantee that it would just stay in my notebook. Basically, I paint myself in a corner, so the only way out is to do what I said I would.

You’ve said that your mother, a single mom, is your inspiration—she’s the first person you saw create lemonade. When you’ve faced roadblocks in your own life, is there any one experience in particular that you remember her going through, which helps you move forward?

About 15 years ago, my mom had risen to become the executive director of the very same non-profit organization that provided the clerical training she needed to get off of welfare. On her desk, she had a picture of the two of us. I was 23 at the time and looked older. She was 42 at the time and looked younger. When one of her colleagues saw the picture, they asked her, “Is that your boyfriend?”

She laughed, and politely told this person, “No. That’s my son. We’re best friends, because we grew up together.”

In many ways, my mom and I are still growing up together. At any given time, we can share just-learned life lessons with each other, and know that the other is going through the exact same period of growth.

It taught me that no matter what we achieve or what obstacles we overcome, we’re always still growing up.

Your hope is that more people will choose to “do what we are,” rather than define themselves by the job they perform. In your case, as an example, you realized:

“I didn’t want to get into advertising per se. What I wanted to do was tell stories. I wanted to connect with people emotionally, and help them overcome this fear of their circumstances—the same way my mom did back in 1971. It took lots of relocating and a few layoffs to realize this, but, advertising for me is just one way to do what I love. I can have a moviemaking career, I can have a blogging career—pleasefeedtheanimals.com—I can have a book-writing career, I can write grants, I can speak . . . I can blog, I can do all this, and it all adds up to a much more worthwhile career than the single definition of advertising copywriter.”

What’s the next step for you? How will you continue to evolve? The next time someone asks what you do, how will you answer?

You had to ask me this question. The elevator speech is the bane of my existence. As I mentioned, even though I still write television commercials, copywriting is just one way to do what I love. I’m also making a second film called “Lemonade: Detroit.” But does that make me a filmmaker? I blog, but I’m not just a blogger. I’m writing a book, but I’m not just an author. The best summation I can give is that I’m trying to use my storytelling powers for good. But just try telling that to someone who asks what you do for a living. I can already picture the 10-minute explanation that ensues.

The biggest push in my life right now is “Lemonade: Detroit.” I’m applying the same theory to a whole city that I did to laid-off individuals: that when circumstances reach their low point, possibilities suddenly become infinite. People—and cities—with nothing to lose can do anything. Despite everything you see and read about Detroit, there is still this incredible optimism and confidence.

I went out to Detroit last December to screen “Lemonade” to a group of about 400 advertising industry professionals. It was right when one of the city’s biggest agencies (BBDO) had announced it was going to close.

I was petrified. I thought, this crowd is too raw. This movie is too Pollyanna. They’re gonna think it’s bullshit. I’m going to get stuff thrown at me.

But, they were inspired and motivated to move beyond. To them, a shuttered ad agency was just another temporary setback.  I was taken aback by the optimism and resilience in that room.  And the more I asked around, the more people I talked to, the more I realized that it’s in the culture. The people who are left in Detroit are the one’s who are going to reinvent it, and it’s already happening.

You’ve given a lot back via the creation and distribution of “Lemonade.” How would you like the giving to move forward?

I want what I do to resonate with people, to help them in some way. As much as I love coming up with advertising ideas, very little of what I did motivated anyone to do anything except buy something they probably didn’t need. The best way I can continue giving is to do work that gets people off their asses, motivates them to make good use of their God-given talents, and frees them from the wrath of Sister Claire.

What sparked your interest in history? Was it your teenage years growing up in India? A teacher? A specific historical figure who grabbed your attention?

I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t interested in history. During my Indian years I became fascinated with Partition, which had taken place just a few years before I got there as a  teenager, and one of my current projects is a book for Alfred Knopf on that topic.

Award-winning historian, screenwriter and author Geoffrey C Ward.

How have you picked the topics about which you’ve written screenplays, books and articles? You’ve said that the personal experience of “having survived polio myself certainly added to my interest in trying to solve the riddle of Roosevelt.” How much does personal interest play in your other projects? And, if you’ve ever found yourself writing about a topic for which you have little personal interest, how do you move through it?

Most of the film topics were picked by Ken or one or another of the film-makers with whom I’ve worked.  All of them have proved fascinating, including baseball which didn’t interest me much before I started writing about it—and doesn’t interest me much now, I’m afraid. Everything seems to have a history in which I’m happy to get lost, at least for a time.

In a recent Creative Process interview, Sebastian Junger was asked how he evaluates the commercial prospects of future projects. He replied:

“I think it all depends on the execution. In the 90’s, a book by Dava Sobel, about longitude, was a bestseller.”

You’ve achieved success with all of your projects. When faced with a new one, how do decide upon the execution? What will it look like? How will it be braided together? What will make the person, people or historical events stand out for readers?

Some projects have done far better than others. I write about what interests me and hope readers will grow interested, too. I really can’t explain the “braiding” process except that it’s the best way I know to spin out the stories of several people simultaneously.

What’s your process for moving forward with a new project? As an example, someone sitting down to write about WWII, could start almost anywhere. How do you begin?

Our story of The War was woven around the memories of forty-odd people from four towns—with a few ringers from elsewhere thrown in. Their memories provided our framework. Each project has its own challenges. That’s the fun of what I’ve been lucky enough to do over the years.

How do you decide what to include? It is impossible to include every moment of the histories of jazz, baseball, and the Civil War within one documentary, book or article. How do you decide what to include, and then how do you tighten from there?

For The War, you said:

“No one can capture it all in a single volume. Certainly, I can’t. What we’ve tried to do, instead—on-screen as well as in the book—is to capture something of what the war felt like for some 40 people from four representative American towns: Luverne, Minnesota; Sacramento, California; Waterbury, Connecticut; and Mobile, Alabama. Their stories are braided together chronologically, with the outcome always in doubt. If we learned anything, it was that in extraordinary times there turn out to be no ordinary lives.”

Though the companion books for the documentaries allow for more information, how do you decide what makes the cut in all of your books? How have you pulled out different themes, emotions, and people to focus on for your other projects?

Story-telling demands selectivity. I wish everyone understood there isn’t room for everything in any history project. I don’t resent critics—I used to be one myself—and I don’t mind being criticized for anything we’ve done onscreen or that I’ve written in a book. But I do get annoyed when critics think it their job to list everything not included rather than discuss what was.

Outside the historical figures you’ve written about, is there one person who continues to inspire your work as an historian and writer?

I admire too many historians to list them all here. But I was especially fond of the late Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. who seemed to combine everything I admire: vivid writing, broad research and public engagement. He was also extraordinarily generous and warmly welcomed me to the Roosevelt field at a time in my life when I badly needed encouragement.

What’s next for you? Is there a new book or documentary being researched?

I’m at work with Ken on a series of seven films about Theodore, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. I’m also writing books about India’s Partition and my own great grandfather, a nineteenth century swindler named Ferdinand Ward. And I believe there’s a series on Vietnam on the not-too-distant horizon.

Sebastian Junger in the Korengal Valley, in Afghanistan.

First, Sebastian, let me congratulate you and Tim Hetherington on an amazing double-whammy, WAR and the documentary, Restrepo. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like them, separately and collectively. Great, great stuff that puts the reader and viewer right in the lap of some pretty hairy shit. Tremendous work.

Now my first question: How did the idea for War and Restrepo originate? I know you and Tim did it initially on assignment for Vanity Fair, but what was its genesis before that? You and Tim? An editor? How did the project evolve once you got into it? Did your original concept hold steady all the way—or did you have to re-evaluate and reshape the material once you realized what you actually had?

I decided to write a book and shoot a documentary about one platoon, after an embed with a battle company (same unit) in Zabul Province, in 2005. The Vanity Fair assignment was simply a way to pay for it. When Tim came on board on my second trip (September ’07), the documentary became a realistic possibility. Tim and I were continually shaping the film but always had in mind to only show the soldiers’ perspectives.

How did the shape of WAR evolve? As a writer of fiction, I can control the material because I’m making it up. But what you were doing with WAR came directly from real life and couldn’t be laid out in advance (or could it?). When you finally sat down to put it all together, how exactly did the book reach its final shape? What was the process?

A strictly linear narrative was not going work, so I decided to organize the material by theme—what I understood to be the primary emotional experiences of combat.

Are there any themes that you’ve seen throughout your Afghanistan reporting, since 1996? If yes, which ones?

No that structure really was just for the book.

How do you decide what project you’ll tackle next? Your books—The Perfect Storm, Fire, A Death in Belmont—show a broad range, but yet they’re tied together, too. Is there an ongoing theme or arc that unifies your work? Are you pursuing something specific, according to a vision or plan, or does the next project just pop up and seize you?

Frankly, I’m not sure exactly what it is about a project that makes me devote several years to it. All three “real” books had a personal relevance, though. In this case, Afghanistan was a country I’d been reporting on since 1996.

Why did you first choose to start reporting about Afghanistan in 1996, before we sent troops there post-September 11, 2001, and well-before more mainstream news outlets started putting more of a focus on it?

I wanted to write about the terrorist training camps in the Tora Bora mountains. They were sending fighters into Kashmir and Chechnya, and I thought it was the beginning of a larger problem.

Here’s a real writer’s question: what weight do you give to commercial considerations when you’re deciding what book to do next? Do you have a sit-down with your agent and editor? Do you talk hardball on the subject of, “Is this sucker gonna sell?” Or do you follow your heart and go with what grabs you? Is there a balance you try to strike?

Almost zero. The war in Afghanistan was definitely not a hot topic, commercially, but it meant a lot to me personally

Why?

I’ve just found myself affected by the experience and moved by the struggles of that country. Massoud was a very inspiring figure to me a well.

When you evaluate the commercial prospects of a project-in-waiting, what criteria do you use? (For me it’s total guesswork.) Do you have a sense, before you tackle a new book or film, of whether it will appeal to your audience?

I think it all depends on the execution. In the 90’s, a book by Dava Sobel, about longitude, was a bestseller.

Who is your audience? Do you have a sense of your own readership—and your own “brand?” If so, how did you evolve this? Do you think about it at all?

'Restrepo' film directors Sebastian Junger (left) and Tim Hetherington (right) at the Restrepo outpost in the Korengal Valley, Afghanistan. Junger and Hetherington jointly directed, filmed and produced the movie 'Restrepo' from June 2007 to January 2010. Korengal Valley, Afghanistan. September 2007. Photo credit: ©Tim Hetherington, www.timhetherington.com

I try to have as wide an audience as possible. I assume that if I do my job well, every person is a potential reader.

One of the qualities I love about your writing style is that, though it seems journalistic and fact-based (as opposed to novelistic or polemic), it’s capable of producing not just tremendous emotion but of expressing a very strong point of view without overtly “delivering a message.” This is a real art. Can you speak for a minute about your style. Have you deliberately evolved it over time? What inner criteria are you applying when you self-evaluate a page or a chapter? When a piece is really cooking, what exactly is working?

I’m a professional observer. I try to understand how things work and what they feel like to experience. Then I take those ideas home and try to turn them into words. Each sentence and paragraph has to have the right rhythm, word choices must be original and metaphors must be exactly right. I know I’ve done it right when I pick up something I’ve written and can’t stop reading it. That’s the same criterion I use, obviously, with other peoples’ writing as well.

Sebastian, you’ve already produced a terrific body of work and I’m sure that, by the time you’re done, you’ll have left us with a powerful shelf-ful of books and films. How do you view your work—and yourself as a writer and filmmaker—over the long haul? If we look at Bruce Springsteen, say, or Bob Dylan, we can see careers that have great variety but also are unified by powerful themes, even obsessions. Does one specific theme drive you? What do you hope to accomplish as an artist by the time you hang up your spikes?

I want to amaze people with the lives of others. I want to promote a broad sense of human equality. And, I want to communicate the idea that the experiences of all people have value and can be learned from.

What’s next? Will you blab—or are you superstitious?

No idea. I haven’t thought that far ahead.

SP: Of all the people I’ve had the honor to meet, you are without a doubt the one who knows the most about thinking creatively under fire—literally. Many of the readers of this series are artists and entrepreneurs, who are fighting their own wars every day. Bullets and bombs might not be flying, but the enemy (usually interior) can be pretty real just the same. That’s one reason why I wanted to talk to you, Gen. Moore—to see if we can cross-pollinate a little, from real war to the “war of art.”

One of the axioms you’re famous for is this:

“There is always one more thing you can do to increase your odds of success.”

Colonel Hal Moore

What would you share with civilians (and active-duty service members) about increasing success? In your years of service, what was it that you did to increase the odds?

HM: I learned early on there’s always one more thing an officer can do to increase the chances of accomplishing his mission and getting his men back alive. In fact, it’s incumbent upon any commander leading men into harm’s way to beat his brains out, ahead of time, to figure out that one thing—and every other element he can come up with, too. I instinctively think ahead. I run scenarios before things happen. I plan ahead for things I know are coming—and, more important, for what I don’t know is coming. Surprises. When you’ve rehearsed for multiple contingencies, even if it’s only in your imagination, you can deal with crises when they happen (and they always do) with a higher degree of calm, which in turn keeps everyone around you in a problem-solving mode and not a panic mode. I’m a great believer in reading. A military commander should know as much of the history of warfare as he can, so sudden reversals don’t catch him by surprise. There’s nothing new under the sun. Everything that happens to you and me under fire has happened already to Hannibal, Napoleon, Alexander, you name it.

Photo Credit: Chuck Kennedy/McClatchy. Joe Galloway and General Hal Moore at McClatchy Newspapers Washington, D.C. Bureau, 2008.

SP: I watched a Pritzker Military Library Interview with you and Joe Galloway—your co-writer of We Were Soldiers Once . . .  And Young—during which you said:

“As was my practice in battle, I was the first man to set foot on the ground, leading my troops—not to be a hero, not to get a medal, but because it made a lot of sense.”

Being the first “in” is always frightening, whether you’re an artist or a warrior. In your case, at Ia Drang, you were the first on the ground—and you were testing an experimental tactic: the use of helicopters, leading the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, the same unit General George Custer led in his notorious last stand. At what point it your career did you start “going in” first? Aside from it “making a lot of sense,” how did you know that was where you needed to be in order for you and your men to succeed?

HM: A leader leads. Setting the example is the best example. I believe I started “going in first” when I was in circumstances where I knew what to do and how to do it. There is the head part of leadership that comes from being fully prepared, and then there is the heart part that instinctively knows when to lead and how to do it. With me, I always felt I needed to do exactly what I expected others to do—and I do that by being the first boots on the ground and the last boots off. This makes sense to me. Plutarch wrote somewhere that there’s something in the human soul that, when it witnesses an act of courage or of integrity performed by another, is inspired to emulate that act. That’s why officers in the First World War would sometimes charge the enemy carrying nothing but a swagger stick. The act of courage itself inspired their men to follow. I guess I was never very good at fighting battles from the rear or from the air. It’s just my nature to be a warrior. I was born to lead, but I was not a born leader. That’s a tricky distinction. I had to be trained to lead. My young life consisted of reading every book I could put into my hands, praying with my family, and learning how to be obedient. When I finally got into West Point in 1942, the Academy put it all in perspective for me—duty, honor, country. In June 1945, I was ready “go in first” as many times as needed for the rest of my life. This too became second nature to me.

SP: You wrote:

“Some things happen in life that are a result of one’s total being responding to the moment for others. You do not think. You do not analyze. You do not measure. You act! Pure and simple. All the things you are trained to do come together as one.”

Artists and entrepreneurs can certainly relate to that (even though they may be physically safe in an office or a studio) because they often have to act in the face of what are, to them, overwhelming fears. How do you do this, Gen. Moore? Where does the strength come from? And how would you advise today’s service members in particular about acting in the moment—not overthinking or analyzing, but just doing?

HM: Two things: instinct and training. You have to trust your instincts. Don’t second-guess. But at the same time, proper preparations—mental as well as physical—makes all the difference because in the moment of fear you often can’t think, you can’t reason. You have to fall back on something and that something is training. If a soldier is poorly trained, having to act in the moment can be overwhelming, paralyzing. With me, training is everything—for myself and for those I have the privilege to lead. I never asked anything of a man under my command that I could not or would not do myself. You might find yourself in the thick of things you’ve never done before, but if you are well-trained, you’ll bring a level of confidence that can turn the moment in your favor. Training is the secret to just doing it.”

SP: When you and Joe Galloway wrote We Were Soldiers Once . . . And Young, how did you reconstruct everything that happened? Everyone involved was in the moment and there were so many people wounded and killed. How did you go back, years later, and manage to tell the story? And what was your goal in writing it?

General Hal Moore and Joe Galloway at Stetson University

HM: Our goal was simple: to tell the story of my great and courageous troopers—those that came home alive and those who came home dead. Every second of those three days in Landing Zone X-RAY—14–16 November, 1965—is engraved upon my heart. Time does not allow war to fade away. In writing the after-action report after it was all over, every single detail was clearly spelled out for others to learn from. That exercise in 1965 was the beginning of a book. But it took the wonderful passion, gifts and knowledge of Joe Galloway to make it happen. He was a 22-year-old reporter who showed tremendous guts. When we later talked about a book, we both saw in one another’s eyes the courage and sacrifice we had witnessed first-hand. No explanations needed. Reconstructing the training period, the battle and the aftermath of war was a long process, but it was not discovering new information. It was all about getting it right! Joe is a wordsmith and that is his business. Tactics and leadership are my business. We came together. In looking back, the book and the movie give credit to where all wars are won—to those who gave their all. Never a day goes by where I do not think and pray for my men and one day I will be with them again.

SP: Your granddaughter wrote a blog post about you. As I read it, I enjoyed her focus on your sense of humor:

“When I was little, Grandaddy wasn’t some hero soldier. He was just my silly grandfather, who made me laugh by sending me postcards with pictures of girls in bikinis sitting next to crocodiles. He’d send us Babar the Elephant books and as we read them, we realized he’d drawn pictures on some of the pages. He would have Babar smoking a cigarette, for instance. Little things to make us laugh. Grandaddy is always all about the little things.”

How do you balance the serious side of work with the not-so-serious side of being a grandfather, a father, a husband, and a friend? If you find yourself becoming too serious about something, what brings you back to center?

HM: I am naturally a very serious person. Humor and fun required work on my part. I could drill, work, fight, train 24/7. Often in my life, I have had to do just that. But the secret to my growing and developing balance in my life was the influence of my wife, Julie, and my children. They became my “vacation moments.” I needed them and I guess they needed me. Julie was the real general in our family. Another thing was our mutual love of the outdoors and recreation. We used this outlet to grow as a family. As to “Captain Fun,” I would put on that hat quickly and enjoy doing it. Just as quickly, I would take that hat off, put on my helmet—and enjoy doing that. I was made to soldier!

SP: No man, however gifted or driven, ever accomplishes anything by himself. Can you speak for a minute (don’t, if it’s too painful) about your late wife Julie—whom I was fortunate enough to meet at the premiere of We Were Soldiers in Los Angeles—and what that bond of love has meant to you over the years?

HM: Our bond of love was the coming together of two souls that God put together. When we were married, we became one. There was never a doubt in my mind that I had married up! She was an amazing woman. I always considered just how grateful I was to have married her. I never took her for granted—ever. She was my rock and my fortress. When she died after 54 years of marriage, I felt like someone had ripped by body into two parts. She died and half of me died with her. But God has other plans and I am ready to be with her again in eternity.

What has our bond of love meant to me over the years, you ask? Her love for me has meant the difference in life and death. In the worst of moments, when death was all around me, I saw God and Julie. I was ready to be killed or be given the blessing of returning home one more time for the love of my life. I can’t speak for others, but for me, yelling out when entering our home, “Julie, I’m home,” was a homecoming like no other. Her spirit remains with me in this house and I will die here. Every star I ever wore on a uniform was worn for my Julie!

SP: One of the questions that I’ve been asked as a writer, and which I’ve asked others is: Where do your ideas come from? Often, people say that their ideas come via experiences leading them to a certain point, or a Muse or other source. When I read about your career—that you joined the military at 16, and that you were teaching counter-insurgency by 19, I wondered about where your ideas came from. A hallmark of your career, indeed your life, is outside-the-box thinking. How did a 16 year-old, three years later, find himself creating and teaching strategies with which today’s senior leaders still struggle?

SW: The most important influence on my thinking processes came from my parents during my growing up period. I was born and raised on a 150 acre farm—tobacco, corn, wheat—in Southside Virginia (hard by the Saylers Creek Battleground, where the Army of Northern fought its last fight.) My parents were readers, and they imbued us Wilson children with a deep love of books. My mother had been a public school teacher, and she saw to it that I—along with my older sister and three brothers—took the business of learning seriously, including what we learned in Sunday school and church, where she was my first Sunday school teacher. She taught us Wilson children discipline, self-control and how to think logically.

My father, on the other hand, fired our imaginations with his stories, songs and poetry, and helped us see things in life and in our environment in general that we otherwise would surely have missed. From an early age, we worked with him in the fields and woods, and around the farmyard, and he kept our morale up and our spirits high with his jingles and stories, many of them made up on the spot right out of the thin air. In a draft for my memoirs, titled Galahad II: A Country Boy Goes to War, I wrote:

“His mastery of ad-lib storytelling was legendary around the community. Boys from the neighborhood would frequently drop in for free haircuts—he was an expert barber. As often as not, they would be accompanied by buddies who had come along for the tale telling that came with the shearing. The whole group would sit there open-mouthed, mesmerized by the colorful nature tales of foxes, ‘possums, coon dogs, stories of hunting and fishing, of goblins and ‘hants, watermelon heists, red-tailed hawks, and river owls calling at night along the Appomattox. He gave distinct personalities to birds and animals and made them come alive. He could create more tension and drama than anyone I have ever listened to out of such subjects as a creaking door in an abandoned old farm house or strange footprints on a river sandbar in the pre-dawn mist. We would sit entranced for hours on the front porch on moonlit summer nights or by a glowing fireside during the cold of winter, listening as he spun yarn after yarn, making up his stories as he went along…”

There is no question but that my own ability, such as it is, to see things that are not there and then picture them for others to see is greatly aided by the heritage of my father.

SP: I watched the introduction you did for the film Merrill’s Marauders. At one point, in the trailer, you say:

“This was a job they said we couldn’t do. They called it impossible.”

Later, there’s a scene in the trailer, where “Stock” says:

“My man can’t make it. It’s not that they don’t want to fight, it’s that they can’t fight. They just can’t physically fight anymore.”

What inspired you and kept you motivated through your almost 40 years in the Army—much of which required accomplishing the impossible, and stretching your physical and mental limits?

SW: On motivation:

In addition to their providing a sound moral and philosophical foundation on the things that count—including love of country, I also had some appreciation from my parents—and from my own reading—for what was going on in the world of the 1930’s, and had some glimmer as to what the stakes were for the United States in the arena of U.S. foreign policy and national security. By the time I was 16, I was fired up and ready to go slay dragons. In my 1994 commencement speech at Hampden-Sydney College, I said:

“And so, let an old soldier of 3 1/2 wars, and over fifty years of public service, who has seen many men die—some, unfortunately, at his own hand, who has roamed the five continents and the seven seas, strolled in the market places from Marrakech to Baghdad to Samarkand and Ulan Bator, browsed in the book stalls of Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Peking and Tokyo, watched the sun rise out of the South China Sea and set in the Indian Ocean, the moon come up over the snows of the Himalayas and the lightning play in the peaks of the Andes, who has missed setting foot in or at least seeing only two places—Albania and the South Pole—tell you this:

“It is now your world, it is not mine anymore. And it’s a beautiful, blue jewel . . . a shining sphere. Love it, cherish it, protect it and keep it.”

And from my 1997 commencement speech at Hampden-Sydney College:

“I reach for language these old oaks have heard before and know very well. Let an old soldier who has run with the wolves and flown with the eagles tell you this: ‘Love your country. Don’t ever, ever stop loving your country. In the whole wide world we’ve got the best system there is for a man to work out his own destiny. But the system is not on automatic pilot. We have to work to make it work. Don’t forget that . . . We count on you as young men of awesome promise to do what is necessary and what is right to keep us strong and keep us free.”

On hanging in there when the going gets tough:

I felt that I could never falter or let up in front of the troops. I would sooner perish.

All my life (until now) I have always been the youngest and the least formally educated in whatever outfit I belonged to. Result: I was almost always running scared (even when I may have lapped the field—without really knowing it.) For me failure was never an option. In the draft of my memoirs, I also wrote:

“What calls forward this little vignette I have no idea. I haven’t thought of it in years. For some reason I was musing at breakfast this morning, almost in my subconscious mind, about the midnight ride to Merrill. That led to memories of Pride-and-Joy, which led in turn to recollections of Big Red.

“I recall that Big Red was almost as fast as Pride-and-Joy. When we raced the horses in the corral back in India, in the fall of 1943, to pick out the fastest one, Big Red came in second. (Lt Col Still never knew his horse placed third; Sergeant Knapp never told him, thank goodness, or Still would have taken Pride-and-Joy away from me.)

“Pride-and-Joy had a smooth, fluid motion when he ran; the sensation was one of floating along, even in full stride. But Big Red seemed to exert himself mightily, thundering along with great wheezing gasps, almost jarring the ground with the impact of his hooves. The ride was so rough that at times it was hard to stay in the saddle, especially since Big Red would go kind of crazy when you let him run full out. It would become almost impossible to rein him in.

“We were about midway of the march from Assam into North Burma over the Ledo Road. It was a mid-morning in January 1944, pushing on towards noon. The column had fallen out for a rest break, and as usual I was taking advantage of the chance to unlimber the horses a bit. This time it was Big Red’s turn, and as he began to gallop down the road along the column of resting soldiers, I decided to let him have his head.

“And he ran away with me.

“I guess nobody but me knew that I was in trouble, barely hanging on and about to be tossed at any second. We came careening around a bend in the road, and right in front of me was the command group with General Merrill, standing there with his clipboard. I can still see the pleased grin on his face as he took off his helmet and waved it as I came thundering by. Little did he know that I was running scared, not knowing how the thing was going to turn out.

“Running scared. That’s an ironic and typical commentary on the life of one SVW, hanging grimly on with a silly grin disguising his terror and wondering how he got himself into such mess.

“Running scared…Big Red becomes a metaphor for my entire life.”

In almost all my varied assignments (the majority of which I volunteered for), I was blessed with a mission, a goal that I could believe in deeply. And more often than not I had this funny feeling that I had something to offer. That made it easier, sometimes even fun, to hang on and work very hard for a successful outcome.

SP: I read the following quote from you and was reminded of the many of us who think they need to be James Bond to accomplish something special:

“Ninety percent of intelligence comes from open sources. The other ten percent, the clandestine work, is just the more dramatic. The real intelligence hero is Sherlock Holmes not James Bond.”

And in an interview with Dr. J.W. Partin, when speaking about your time training with Major General Wingate in India, you said:

” . . . we began to pick up some things from the British and their way of doing things. They were much leaner, more conservative in what they carried and in what kinds of external support they expected. In fact, we were sort of, by nature, a little spoiled. They tried to do more with less, so that was a good lesson for us.”

As you rose within the military and then became a leader helping those coming up in the ranks, how did you drive home the notion that more can be done with less—Sherlock Holmes v. James Bond—whether related to clandestine work or freshman studies in college? What did you do yourself, and what did you encourage other to do, to live the importance of being able to do more with less?

SW: Growing up on a Southside Virginia farm where we lived on things that came out of the soil, directly or indirectly, I learned early on that one not only can survive but actually thrive on very little. This lesson was confirmed emphatically in the North Burma campaign of 1944, when I came to realize that I could get by if three simple needs or conditions could be met: if I had enough to eat to keep going, if I could have a place and a chance to rest and recoup my energy, and if I could gain respite from enemy guns, especially artillery fire. I figured that if I had these three things, I could make it the rest of the way on my own. Later, I had occasion to check these observations with some of Wingate’s Chindits, and I found them in full agreement.

From another angle, as a soldier starting out in a rifle company in 1940, I was almost amazed at how little in the way of trappings and paraphernalia I really had to have in order to do my job effectively, how relatively easy it was to simplify things and get down to basics. When we would break camp in the early mornings while on maneuvers, and I would sling my pack and march away, all I owned or needed was on my back, and there was nothing left behind to show where I had slept the night before. A wonderful liberating feeling.

That conviction, arrived at early on, has been with me ever since. You can do more with less, and you really don’t need most of the things you think you do. Seeing how the British-Indian Army put this principle into practice was a revelation… And you get these points across to the troops by personal example.

The primary lesson in the Holmes-Bond analogy is not so much “doing more with less” as it is knowing in depth what your intelligence priorities are and then knowing what (and how) to look for the answers. Sometimes the critical key to unlock the whole conundrum is right there under your nose. Remember Poe’s The Purloined Letter? You have to know what to look for and how to recognize it when you see it.

SP: Two weeks ago, I did an interview with General Hal Moore. I asked him the following, and wanted to ask the same of you:

As a writer, I’ve found myself doing the same, but on an individual basis. For me, it might be that an idea comes along, and I don’t think about it or analyze it. I just act. I often attribute this to the Muse, who inspires writers. But in the military, lives are at stake. While a writer might battle over a main character’s actions, you battle in real time, pulling everything together while you are in the moment. From where do you pull this strength? And how would you advise today’s service members in particular about acting in the moment, and not overthinking and analyzing—just doing?

SW: If you have studied and trained and know your job and its requirements thoroughly, then in a fast-moving crisis when you don’t have time to think, your instincts take over and you act practically without conscious thought.

You are going along a jungle trail in North Burma when suddenly a voice in your head says, “Duck Sam, Duck Sam, Duck!” And a Jap Nambu light machine gun cuts the empty air where you had been standing. Premonition? Hardly. The almost unnoticed odor of fish heads and rice and the slight discoloration in the leaves of the branches camouflaging the enemy machine gun telegraphed danger to you without your being fully conscious of it. Trust your instincts.

SP: I asked Joe Galloway the following questions last week:

You’ve been a leader within the journalism and military community, and you’ve known legendary leaders in the military community as they’ve risen—such as General Norman Schwarzkopf, whom you met in Vietnam, and then went on to cover, and embed with during Desert Storm. Most recently, General McChrystal has been in the news, with people questioning his leadership skills. What’s your advice to our next generation of leaders, both civilian and military? What is it that has worked for you and for others?

You have a tradition of outstanding leadership yourself, and you’ve worked with, and have helped nurture future leaders. What’s your advice for military leaders in particular today?

SW: It is not easy for me to answer this question. I have been giving lectures on leadership and teaching leadership courses off and on ever since the fall of 1945, when I was involved in establishing a post-war course on the subject at Fort Benning’s infantry school. In this light, I have great difficulty responding to you in a couple of short paragraphs. Among the suggestions I might offer would be included the following:

Always strive to develop and communicate a clear-cut statement of the mission.

Stress the sharing of information, especially down the chain of command, as well as laterally.

Once you are satisfied that your subordinates know their jobs, give them their marching orders and get out of the way, while supporting them in every way you can.

Remember, take care of the troops and the troops will take care of you.

Don’t let your superiors get caught by surprise.

Study the lives of successful leaders, but at the same time don’t neglect to learn from the mistakes of those who failed.

There is so much more to be said, but this gets us started.

SP: We’ve all seen our ideas adapted by others for their own use. And during that process, our definitions are dropped/altered by those handling them. You coined the term “counter-insurgency.” I read a column that Joe Galloway wrote about you in 2004, in which he recalled:

“Samuel Vaughan Wilson stares intently at the television news from Iraq. American infantrymen are kicking in a Sunni Muslim family’s front door, yelling and screaming and manhandling the father. Wilson grimaces. “This isn’t counter-insurgency,” he says. “This is not the right way to do this.”

And in the summary of Rand’s 1962 Counterinsurgency Symposium, there is a point where it states:

“Col. Wilson emphasized the distinction—thus far inadequately stressed in our service schools—between two entirely different situations in which the Communists initiate guerilla war. In the first they will seize on existing resentment (people’s hatred of an oppressor, or their desire to recover lost privileges or property) and capture an independent movement already under way. The second is the culmination of years of communist planning an organization, as in the case of Central Vietnam . . .”

You wrote the Army’s first manual on how to do counterinsurgency. How have you felt about how something you worked on for so many years has evolved, and has been changed by others? Do you think counterinsurgency is being done right today? Or is what we’re seeing today something different, which should be titled with a different term?

SW: While serving as the director of instruction of the U.S. Army Special Warfare School (Fort Bragg), during 1959-61, and with the capable assistance of several bright, forward-looking officers, I worked to develop a program of instruction (not a manual) on counter-insurgency operations. As the subject was relatively new, this in a sense was a foundational effort, which attracted unusual attention at the time from policy levels in Washington. While trying to figure out what to call our undertaking, we settled on counter-insurgency (coin, for short), as noted above. Three years later, in the summer of 1964, I was assigned to South Vietnam where I had the opportunity to try putting into practice some of the principles we had identified at Fort Bragg. In a word, they worked. Others have been applying lessons learned since then to update, modify and improve basic coin doctrine. In this sense, General Petraeus and his warrior intellectuals have taken COIN to new levels, and I have no doubt that someone else will carry it further along in the future. To your question as to my feelings on how a subject into which I poured so much time and energy continues to evolve, I have no sense of proprietorship; this process simply reflects the dynamic nature of doctrinal development in the military world.