As I approached the end of my one-year tour as commanding officer of Loran station Iwo Jima, Japan, I told myself that the past year was so unusual and challenging it would make a good book. I wrote notes in a notebook to use when writing the book. Shortly after returning to the United States, I started writing the book. I always liked to write but I had no idea where to start when writing a novel. I thought about a funny incident that happened and I wrote about it. Over the next few months, I wrote ten chapters. When I looked at what I had written it was unrelated stories, full of inconsistencies and looked nothing like a novel. In one chapter my protagonist was 26 years old and further into the book he was 25. I realized that writing a novel was a difficult task. I put everything in a box and put it on a shelf.
I purchased and read a few books of “how to write a book”. I attended a night class by an author explaining his approach to writing a book. Over the years I attempted a few times to write more of the book. I did not make significant progress. In the summer of 2021 the lockdown for the pandemic, was severe and I decided it was a good time to re-visit the book.To my surprise I found the words were flowing. I spent much of the day in front of the computer. In just three months I had written another forty chapters. I forgot about Covid-19. Everyday was a new adventure as the story unfolded. Writing a novel was no longer a burden. It was fun.
Daniel M. White 