DATELINE: on the kitchen island, catching up on the blog, Indy, 4 October 2006

Got home last night around midnight and spent an hour scouring my book shelves for all the books I want to read or reread as I gear up for Vol. III. The impetus? BFA the paperback came out yesterday. Got my free copies from Berkeley and the last of my advance checks late last week. Just feel like it's time to move on. Already plotting with Warren, including the pieces to be written for Esquire across the next year (I will appear one more time before year's end).

So there I am after midnight, pulling out about two dozen books and reports. My wife is already reading books on the American West, highlighting for me. I can feel the big creative period looming on the horizon, and it's exciting. Got a white board now in the office, plus wooden boxes into which I toss articles for future reference (system, state, individual). Find myself staring out of windows a lot more. Just the way it's gotta be, apparently. Not sure Putnam will be interested in Vol. III (BFA didn't match PNM's sales, although it's selling at about 4X the rate I had originally hoped to achieve with PNM--back when I was a humble civil servant, so clearly expectations change with success), but strong interest expressed from other very prominent quarters makes me feel confident Mark and I can market this one effectively through our agent Jennifer Gates. No surprise on what I'm going to do with Vol. III: this one is focused on training up the next generation of thinkers while telling many stories of individual-led change within the ongoing evolution that is the Long War. My new working title is "Strategy Compass: Locating Leadership for the Long War." The main title is still designed to sit under the PNM brand name (like BFA, it lacks an indefinite or definite article in front). I toy with "A Citizen's Strategy Compass" and also consider "Developing Leadership for the Long War." All of that cogitating on titles means almost nothing this far in advance (publishers pick titles, typically). I'm just getting the concept down in my head and I look ahead, thus it only needs to work for me at this point.

Spent a lot of time on this week's column (which I am assuming is the first of the weekly columns for the Knoxville News Sentinel that will now be considered for distribution by Howard Scripps, but that is yet to be confirmed from Tennessee). Had first draft done by Monday, so plenty of time to fiddle with it. Original title was stupid, as many commenters rightfully pointed out. I felt that almost the minute I typed it into the Monday post. So I spent a lot of time rereading the piece (maybe 50 times) to discover the real essence of what I was saying, and that led me to swap out about 200 words in text and replace with points I really felt were missing (you always leave out loads in a 720-word piece, but sometimes that definition of what's expendable changes dramatically as you edit the piece over time). The new title is "Which way to the front in the Long War?" Why? I think the general difficulty of defining a true "central front" in such an asymmetrical, fourth-generation warfare conflict as the Long War is exactly what needs to be discussed right now in response to the NIE. Plus, I like the notion of writing lotsa columns on the Long War concept over a long stretch of time (this is number five with the phrase in the title, but arguably I mention the concept almost every other column), because I feel like educating the reader on this notion is really crucial--something I was predestined to do. I mean, everyone contributes in the way they know best, whether it's critical or supportive or both simultaneously (as I often try to be).

Anyway, I finally got happy on the piece and sent it off.

And yes, I do confess to being a Jerry Lewis fan--big time. But don't read too much into that one.

Now, to attack the pile of articles collected...