How the Army helped me become a better writer.

(growing uni-brows, wearing protective cups for parts I don’t have, and more!)

Question: You’ve dropped Basic Trainees for grass drills and donned a steel jockstrap during pugil stick training in the U.S. Army. Any connection between the Army and your writing career now?

Answer: The mandatory jockstrap to protect nuts and berries I don’t have (on the outside) acted as a springboard for my writing brain. I was on active duty in AIT (Advanced Individual Training) and my company, which was comprised of roughly 300 males and 7 females, was engaging in combat readiness training which included being put in pairs and fighting with pugil sticks (big-ass sticks that look like giant Q-tips). It sounds weird, but fighting with pugil sticks is actually kind of fun and a great stress reliever. I’ve often considered keeping a pair of pugil sticks in our bedroom just for kicks, but that’s another story and a whole different kind of newsletter. Back to Army days…before pugil fighting, my male counterparts donned steel jockstraps on the outsides of their uniforms to, obviously, protect their goodies. When it was my turn to fight, the sergeant (male) handed me a jockstrap and I said something along the lines of, “I’m designed better than y’all. My sensitive parts are neatly protected inside my body, so, yeah, I don’t need that thing.” That cost me A LOT of push-ups and I still ended up having to wear it, and you’re probably wondering how any of that helped my writing? Well, I realized that the situation was so ridiculous that it was funny. The absurdity of it all intrigued me and my brain went on a high alert watch for life’s absurdities which are everywhere and oftentimes end up in my writing.

Then, later, with time, promotion, and graduation from the Drill Sergeant Academy, I was in situations where I called cadence while moving troops. The palpable rhythm of calling cadence as our platoon marched in step became ingrained in me. I loved the rhythmic beat of the marching paired with the calling out of cadence and the sounding off of troops in response. Calling cadence was one of my greatest pleasures as a drill sergeant and, as a writer, playing with the rhythm of words in a sentence and sentences in a paragraph is one of my greatest pleasures in the writing process.

Finally, the Army helped me be a better writer by instilling discipline (I’m often up at 0400 hours writing) and, maybe more importantly, by dishing up and serving me a deep-ass bowl of humility. I enlisted in the Army after watching a television commercial that caught my attention. “Be all that you can be...” a background chorus sang as athletic young men wearing military camouflage proudly parachuted out of a perfectly good airplane. “…in the Army.” Be all that you can be. At the time, I was a 20-year-old office worker with chin acne earning twenty-five cents above minimum wage. I had the nagging suspicion that I needed to be more than I was. Then I went to basic training where an Army barber with pruning shears gave me a chin-length blunt cut and, since no tweezers were allowed in Basic, I grew a uni-brow the size of a baby weasel. Yes, it all sucked, but it put things in perspective. Now, when I’m feeling self-conscious about my writing being out in the world, concerned about what people might think, how something I’ve written might make me look, I can think back to my 20-year-old self with Army hair, chin acne, and a tubelike carnivore for eyebrows and say with conviction, “I’ve looked worse.”

Book Hugs

Happy Holidays!

Exciting News!

My travel memoir, Unsettled, is available for pre-order on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Pre-order at Amazon here!

Pre-order at Barnes & Noble here!

If you don’t want to wait until January 2nd to read it and you’re interested in being a reviewer, the ARC (Advanced Reader Copy) is available here:

Read and Review Unsettled here!

My romcom, Anita Farleigh Unpacks, is in its final publication stage (copy edits are finalized and it’s headed to formatting) and my publisher promises a release date soon!

Thank you so much for reading my Substack! I mean, really, you deserve fairy dust and Cool Whip and all other good things in the world. Wishing everyone a beautiful holiday season!