more advice from mailer
“Norman Mailer has writerly advice for would-be war novelists on active duty in Iraq: Write home. Write detailed, descriptive letters, as he did from the Philippines in World War II. He says he knows there could be problems with military censors. But he recalls a chaplain who was supposed to review the mail from Mailer’s platoon. “He never read it a most Christian act.”
When Mailer came home from war at the age of 23, about 50 of his letters had been saved. “Those were my notes for The Naked and The Dead,” his debut novel that became a best seller in 1948 and launched his career.”
Read on.