Articles

It was suggested to me that I write an article about writing the 400 page novel 
Semper-Fi-Do-Or-Die and I have decided to take up that challenge.

Semper-Fi was a story that I knew that I wanted to write and indeed felt I had 
to write, almost from the time I got out of the Marine Corps but it took me 
many, many years of writing poems and short stories before I felt I was ready 
to take on this task which I first approached in the early 1980's, and very 
hesitantly. I knew what I wanted to write and I knew exactly that it would be 
divided into four parts (books). A writer is lucky if he has this vision before 
he even begins writing. Some stories you just begin and the story progresses as 
you go, as in many of the poems and short stories I have written, but 
sometimes, as in this case, you have this vision, as I did. This is usually 
true for me when I have lived through either part or all, of the story  
personally, as I had in this case. But I had a dilemma and that dilemma was 
reality vs. research. 

What I mean by that is that I knew that I had to include the Vietnam War in a 
book about the Marine Corps set in the 60's and 70's and I hadn't served in 
Vietnam. I knew that anyone who read the book would take it for granted that 
the author had been in the Corps and had served in Vietnam. I was in the Corps, 
for 3 years, but never in Vietnam and so I knew that the first two parts 
(books) would be, and were, easier to write than the last two.

It took me twice as long to write Book Three and Four as it did to write Book 
One and Two and that was due primarily to research but a funny thing happened 
in my search for the truth, which, by the way, is what every writer is 
searching for when he writes anything, in my opinion. The funny thing that 
happened is that, after many, many months of research and many first drafts, I 
came to the conclusion that Book Three and  Book Four were going to be more 
fulfilling and maybe even more truthful than Book One and Book Two, even though 
I had lived through the first two books and did almost no research when I wrote 
them. How can this be then, if truth is, as they say, the daughter of Time. I 
think that is, indeed, exactly, why, because time not only reveals truth but 
blurs the mind to the exactness of it and so if we are all given but partial 
and fragmented glimpses of the truth, and not pure truth, then the more that 
one glimpses this truth the better a story can he write. And
 so saying this, I was only one who wrote Book One and Book Two, by his own 
recollections, but Book Three and Book Four were written by many, like my good 
friend Dennis Byrne, who served in Vietnam or his brothers Jackie and Jerry, or 
my neighbor Richard Anway, another Nam vet, along with dozens of others that I 
spoke with or whose story's I read in one book or another. Of course this is a 
novel and, I suppose you could  say that, because of that, I shouldn't worry 
about the truth of it but, on the contrary, I believe it is possible to 
actually get as much truth from a novel as it is from what claims to be a 
factual report because in a factual report everything has to usually be cleared 
by those in power and those in power very seldom wish to hear the truth and 
therefore, as Voltaire said, he who seeks truth should be of no country.And 
also, those factual reports are almost always written and/or reported by more 
than just one person. It is my belief that a writer can get
 more truth alone if he only owes his allegiance to the truth, which is to say 
to God. Just as daylight follows the night the light shall overcome the 
darkness in the end and truth shall prevail and, I believe, that when that 
truth concerns a war such as Vietnam, which is almost identical to Iraq in its 
absurdity, and who we're fighting and why we're there, than it is critical that 
the truth prevail if there is even a  smithereens of a chance that it could 
help to prevent an escalation in Iraq or another war, because, in the end, any 
novel, or factual book or report, on a war should be anti-war, because if it 
shows the reality of war then who could be in favor of that, more, war. 

And so, I believe I have written as fairly and truthfully this book that I call 
'Semper-Fi-Do-Or-Die'.

Yet the deepest truths are best read between the lines, and, for the most part, 
refuse to be written.---Amos Bronson Alcott, Concord Days: June.

But, I wish to contend that in Semper-Fi, the truth refused NOT to be written 
and was written as best that I could write it.

Pure truth hath no man seen nor e'er shall know.---Xenophanes, Fragments. No. 
34.

What shall I tell Xenophanes then? 

I shall tell him that even if he is right, that man still seeks this truth, and 
even if the light shines too brightly for us to see this truth, then we shall 
write it down, quickly, so  that we may know it when it does come and when we 
do see it. 

And, as long as we have a breath in our bodies we shall search for it and then 
have the guts and faith to proclaim it, whether it is popular or not and 
whether it hurts you or not.

I have found that the harder it is to write something the more a writer should 
attempt to write it and that's why I wrote this short piece that you have just 
read.