Military writer Robert F. Dorr meets a lot of people who ask what they need to write a book.
No matter who’s asking, his advice is always the same: “You need a posterior and you need to plant it in a chair and you need to spend long hours alone with your keyboard or quill or whatever you use and you need to do it instead of talking about it.”
I met Dorr while visiting the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center during a trip to Washington D.C. last month. An Air Force veteran and career diplomat, Dorr was at the hangar-sized museum signing copies of Hell Hawks (2008, Zenith Press), a Band of Brothers-style yarn of an American fighter group in combat in World War II he co-authored with ex-astronaut Thomas D. Jones.
Dorr, who turns 71 this week, has a follow up book on World War II B-17 bomber crews due out in March. In addition to books, the Oakton, Virginia, resident also writes a weekly commentary for Air Force Times newspaper and a monthly feature for Aerospace America magazine.
I followed up with Dorr last week by phone to learn more about his advice for would-be non-fiction writers, what it’s like to work with a co-author and the non-fiction market. Our interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What’s your answer to people who ask how to write a book?
I once tried to explain to a guy how if he reorganized his life slightly he could probably find one hour a day to work on the book he wanted to write.
Did he do it?
No, because most people who talk about writing aren’t serious. Most people I encounter don’t get that writing for a living is a job just like driving a taxi cab or whatever. When they walk up to me at a book signing event and look at my book, which is about pilots, they want to assume I’m a pilot and want to talk to me about being a pilot. It doesn’t occur to them that being a writer is a separate thing that requires a whole separate bunch of skills.
How did Hell Hawks come about?
My co-author Thomas D. Jones attended the Air Force Academy and at the academy one of his roommates was the son of one of the pilots in the Hell Hawks fighter group. The son and later the father told Tom many stories about their part of World War II, which had not previously been publicized very much. Tom got the idea that this was a story and wanted to tell it some day. When he and I met each other at the beginning of this decade we talked about doing it together. At that time, I had published a lot more than he had and he thought I had a lot to offer even though the original idea was his. We did it together and it turned out to be a very successful partnership.
Is this the only time you’ve co-authored a book?
I’ve done it before, but this was the only time it was a real 50/50 partnership with each of us doing an equal amount of work. I’ve done other books where I’ve brought someone else on board for some reason because I felt there was something additional that needed to be contributed. I’ve also been the co-author of books where I never spoke with the other author at all, a situation where a publisher felt they wanted to expand something and found somebody else to participate and the book came out with two names on it.
What working arrangement did you have on Hell Hawks?
Each of us interviewed the people we were most likely to be closest to geographically. He was doing more traveling so he interviewed people that lived the farthest away. At the time he and I lived within about a mile of each other in Oakton, so we divided interviews. We met with each other every few days to discuss the story we wanted to tell, how to tell it, what we needed to gather to put it all together. In the initial stage of this, our primary function was to sell the idea to a publisher, so we worked on getting an agent and the advance we wanted.
How long did it take?
We worked on it from 2001 to 2008, but both of us were doing many other things at the same time. People ask me, how long did it take to write? I don’t know, I spend every day writing articles, newspaper columns and other things and I don’t attempt to measure how much of each day is spent working on a book. There’s no easy answer. When we finished our research, interviews, and in Tom’s case, travel to some battlefields in Europe, we felt it was time to sit down and write. We had an outline, and one of us wrote the first draft of all the even numbered chapters and the other the odd numbered chapters. Then we swapped drafts and worked on each other’s material, so we ended up with what we have today, and it’s all but impossible to know who wrote a particular sentence in the book.
How many copies have sold?
Close to 34,000, about fives times the average book in the United States, but about 10 percent of what we wanted. We were hoping to hit the really big time.
It seems like the kind of book that could get made into a movie. Are you talking to anyone?
We are talking with a production company about a movie. Nothing’s been decided yet and that’s about all I can say.
Would you work with a co-author again?
Even though Tom and I had a very successful partnership on this book, I’m quite happy to do it alone. I’m writing my next book by myself. The title is Mission to Berlin. It’s about American B-17 bomber crews in World War II and going to be published in March 2011 by Zenith Press.
That’s right around the corner. Are you finished?
If I don’t send them a finished book a week from now they’re going to come here and beat me over the head. It’s really not quite finished yet but I’m getting close. I’ve worked on it off and on for several years along with other projects. I also have a book out called Air Force One that’s been in print for eight years. We’ve updated it, and it keeps selling.
Besides taking the time to write, what other advice to you have for beginning authors?
I’m going to make certain assumptions up front that they already know how to write without making spelling or grammatical mistakes and so the writing can be understood by the reader. If they’re not at that point I don’t have a solution. But let’s assume they have those fundamental skills. Having a good idea is essential. A lot of people think they have a good idea when they really don’t. Unless you’re doing this only to entertain your grandchildren, it needs to be something in which there is an interest out there in the world.
But you write about a pretty niche subject, so an idea could be appealing, but on a very narrow subject, right?
World War II is pretty universal. I don’t think that’s a narrowly defined subject. An extremely wide variety of people have purchased our book. If someone wanted told me they wanted to write a book about the Vietnam or Korean War, I’d say to think about it, because I don’t think there’s a market for it.
Any parting thoughts?
This is a skill like being a pilot or driving a bus. It’s not just something you can do because you’ve decided you can do it. You can learn how to do it, you can teach yourself how, but it is a skill in itself. If you’re really seriously interested in writing something, you need to educate yourself on how writing and publishing works and go ahead and give it a try.