Write About What you Know

Writing a novel is hard work! First you have to come up with a good idea, the a plot, characters, setting and then the real work begins. Most works of fiction have to be a minimum of 50,000 to 60,000 words. Believe me that's a lot of words. Remember when you were in school and the teacher assigned a 250 word essay? I hated those essay. Usually my first question was doe "The End" count towards the 250 word minimum?

I envy those writers who can write about strange beast and distance planets. I pretty sure they never visited any of these faraway worlds. I found writing about something I know and/or experience makes the job of writing a lot easier.

My book "Da Nang Damned!" is about a group of Seabees deployed to Vietnam. I did serve with a Seabee Battalion MCB 53 and I was deployed to 'Nam' from January 1968 to September 1968. I also live four years in Conway, NH, the setting of the second half of my book. So writing from my own experiences helped me create a book that I hope is authentic. I can still close my eyes and see the camp outside of Da Nang. I can smell the air, taste the girt and feel the heat and humidity.

I hope I was able to create a book that will help my readers experience in some small way what it was like being deployed to 'Nam'. As important growing up in New England, living at the base of Mount Washington in Conway, NH I now winter all to well. I've fished the Saco River and hiked the mountains. I've crossed country skied when the temperatures were well below zero. My very special friend Bill Pike has a cabin in a remote part of Vermont and I used it for the final showdown. So in many ways writing this book was easy.