To the budding author,

Meet the Weekly Interceptor

— Harding Announcement: Our Deputy Director, SFC Marcel Blood, will be coming to an installation near you! Next Tuesday, January 14, SFC Blood will be hosting a mixer from 1700-1800 at the Sasquatch Saloon on JBLM. We hope to see you there! —

As the Army continues to build out Line of Departure as a professional forum, we may need to ask where the “water cooler” is? Where can less developed writers go to have conversations that contribute to the professional dialogue in a less formal way? One answer could be the informal (or less formal) branch newsletters scattered across the Army.

Created in 2017 as an Air Defense Early Bird, the Weekly Interceptor publishes a tailored buffet of air and missile defense-focused news articles, leadership development, and commentary on open-source threat events. This plain text email with PDF attachment increases ease of viewing, regardless of device, e.g., government phone in the airport or laptop. In 2022, the Weekly Interceptor pivoted to include professional writing. The pivot partially focused on addressing gaps the Harding Project fills today.

Below, we share our experience helping authors bridge the idea to article gap.

Photo courtesy of Josh Urness

Three-foot walls

We frequently faced challenges converting writing interest to Interceptor submissions, generally due to some mixture of the following concerns:

• Impact skepticism. Authors questioned whether the piece would be read and whether their idea would make an impact.

• Perceived inexperience. The potential writer’s self-imposed belief that they were “too inexperienced” or lacked credibility, especially due to rank.

• Retribution concerns. The potential writer’s concern about challenging narratives or stepping “outside the lines” on a topic.

• Embarrassment concerns. The potential writer’s concern about looking “stupid” or writing something that could result in professional embarrassment.

• Perfectionism. Too often, writers fought their introduction, constantly rewriting and rewickering toward the perfect opening, without getting into the meat.

While each of these concerns have some merit, we found a solution that could build confidence in our authors.

Solution: the dirty-nasty-draft

The “dirty-nasty-draft” gets authors moving—and converted more ideas into articles. Critically, this approach challenges authors to put something (anything!) on paper, with promises to assist in refinement and no judgment. This drafting process has three stages: the pitch, the dirty-nasty-draft, and the article.

First, we asked potential authors for a pitch: a couple sentences on their ideas or concepts. The initial submission essentially soft-launched the writing process, but also helped commit the author to finishing. This non-binding pitch helps the author get more comfortable with their idea—and provides us an opportunity to help the author assess any career “risk” before they publish. As good teammates, we’d never let an author walk blind into a minefield.

Following these pitches, we found potential writers could tell you exactly what they wanted to say in their article with their words, but got wrapped around the axle when they had to put it on paper. As a result, the request for a dirty draft neutralized the preoccupation with structure and pomp. We frequently cap our word count requests to reduce complexity for writers because it seems more achievable to “put together a few hundred words” than write an “article.” (We also now direct authors towards the special issue’s tools for writing).

Finally, we work with the authors to convert their drafts into articles; we’ve seen success here with an increase in converting interest to submissions from previously about 20% to 75%. Most recently, we hosted a Summer 2024 op-ed writing contest and finished with twice as many submissions as expected. Writers ranged in rank from Sergeant First Class to Major. While many of these articles may not be ready for prime time on the big blogs or journals, we published eight writers over the course of ten weeks in the fall. The increased frequency of writer publications to our audience seems to increase social proof because we see increased writing interest.

More articles

Through this transformation, we continue learning the significance of reducing barriers to contribution to professional dialogue. “Water cooler” forums complement official and more formal mediums in a way that was not described in Fractured Branch Publications: by serving as developmental steppingstones for writers. The return on investment is there: one of our articles (also published in the Air Defense Artillery Journal) was featured as one of the Chief of the Army’s three recommended articles in December 2024. That article was written by Second Lieutenant Ian Murren, who, since the publication of the article in 2023, joined the Weekly Interceptor staff.