The editorial team for From the Green Notebook (FTGN) recently hosted a webinar for prospective writers. Our purpose was to engage potential writers, to generate interest in writing for us. To do this, we provided background information on our outlet and our writing process, hosted an open Q&A, and conducted a practical pre-writing exercise. It seemed that most of our 15 attendees—including captains, colonels, and civilians—left the webinar with increased confidence and fresh tools for contributing to the written conversation about leadership and the military profession. And we, the editorial team, learned a lot hosting the discussion.
Here we present a couple takeaways, for both future webinar hosts and prospective writers.
1) Writers must understand their audience. Webinars can help with that.
Writing successfully requires that writers know their audience. But understanding a publication’s audience can be difficult, especially for new writers. From the Green Notebook, for example, publishes book reviews, think-pieces, op-eds, and fitness recommendations, and many other types of pieces. Based on this variety of subjects, new authors sometimes struggle to discern the common audience, and we recognize that. Providing audience context for prospective authors was a key purpose of the webinar.
We started the webinar with an overview of our publication, our leadership, and our motto: lead with the best version of yourself. We shared our aim to combine elements of Harvard Business Review, War on the Rocks, and a self-development blog. Most importantly, we presented a slide depicting our three audience archetypes: junior officers/NCOs, senior field grade officers, and veterans working as managers and leaders in the private sector. Our pieces need not address all three audiences simultaneously, but many of the best ones do. For example, this short piece published in 2017, The Janitor Who Helped Put a Man on the Moon, still receives over 10,000 views/year on our site.
2) Nearly everyone can write something—they just may not know it.
From the Green Notebook believes that nearly everyone has something worth saying. But service members routinely erect barriers and obstacles around themselves. For example, you may tell yourself you’re not good at writing. Maybe you don’t consider writing as worth your time, or that reading your writing is not worth your audience’s time. Perhaps your boss or peers would not like you to write. Whatever the reason, we challenged our participants to remind themselves that “I have something worth saying.”
We want to help others see that they have something beneficial to share, and that the act of writing in itself is worthwhile for one’s own development. By bringing prospective writers together, with their wide range of jobs and experiences, the webinar helped to show that From the Green Notebook authors are stronger because of their ranges of training and employment, and life’s highs and lows.
3) The first draft’s never pretty—but you have to start writing somewhere.
Good writing is hard for even professional writers, not to mention for the average American service member. Maybe this is because, as LTG Beagle said, “good writing is disciplined thinking.” And we know, in the military, that disciplined thinking can be hard to come by.
Writing, therefore, requires an iterative process. That daunting venture requires a starting point. To provide a potential starting point in our webinar, we conducted this pre-writing brainstorming exercise that took about 10 minutes:
Write down three obstacles you’ve overcome, personal and/or professional, in the past five years. Take a minute to choose one of the three obstacles that you would potentially be comfortable sharing publicly, audience non-specific. Jot down five takeaways or insights gained from overcoming that obstacle and take a few minutes to chew on these. Now, consider the audience. Choose a top couple takeaways you assess would benefit FTGN readers, our three audience ‘archetypes’ listed above. Finally (and most importantly) pull out your calendars to schedule a time—only one hour!—to free-write about your ideas. You now have a seed of an article, and a plan.
After completing this exercise, three participants volunteered their brainstorming outcomes. Their stories were truly inspiring. For example, one participant from the Department of State shared lessons learned from planning last year’s Fourth of July party for a large U.S. embassy. Another participant spoke about career transition, and shared metaphors helpful for communicating with those anxious about life’s next steps. Another participant shared a more personal story regarding his health journey since retiring. And let us just say this—we hope we’ll publish his story for you to read next month!
A Webinar Helps “Develop the Situation Rapidly”
One of the fundamentals of reconnaissance is to develop the situation rapidly. This year, our team plans to double our number of published articles, from around 75 per year to 150. To accomplish this, we hope to publish 100 first-time authors—Army lieutenants and command sergeants major, Air Force colonels, military bloggers, and even civilian management experts. To encourage our crowd-sourced writing community, a webinar was an effective tool for developing the situation.
Start writing. Develop the situation rapidly. Whether published or not, the very act of writing unlocks thoughts, feelings, ideas we often didn't know we had until we put pen to paper. Webinars can help editorial teams build trust with prospective writers, and give curious writers a chance to develop their own situation more rapidly.
Jack Hadley is a military intelligence officer in 5th Special Forces Group and the editor-in-chief for From The Green Notebook.
Rebecca Segal is a field artillery officer, a graduate of Amherst College, an editor for From The Green Notebook, and a member of the Harding Project team.