It's now in Mark's hands
Thursday, December 29, 2005 at 5:57AM DATELINE: Twin Cities, MN, 28 December 2005
Got up this morn and wrote from 0800 until 1430, adding 6k to the already large Esquire article's text. In the end, I pass 13.5k to Warren.
I hope he was joking when he said space for only 4k was reserved. There was an amazing amount of material (500 pages of notes and transcripts) I did not use, writing only what I felt was essential to cover the five main characters of the piece (Abizaid, Schoomaker, Wallace, Mattis and Petraeus). In the end, I feel I have a unique piece that no one else has written.
If I had turned it over to anyone but Warren, I'd be freaked right now, but he is a very special talent.
Still, great to have that monkey off my back. Once first draft is out of me, I consider hard work done. Fiddling on text is, to me, just plain fun when the editor is as super as Mark.
Now several days of family time.
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