12 Questions for a Writer: John Dailey

John Dailey is a retired Marine and writer. His new book, Tough Rugged Bastards tells his story and that of the Marine Corps' first contribution to Special Ops Command, Marine Corps SOCOM Det One.

1.   Who are you, what have you written, and why?

I'm John Dailey. I am a retired Marine Corps Master Sergeant. In my twenty-plus years on active duty, I had a bunch of amazing opportunities. One of the most amazing was to have been selected to serve as a Team Leader for the first USMC unit assigned to USSOCOM. I've written about that experience in my memoir, Tough Rugged Bastards which will be released in August.

Since my retirement, I have been blessed with the opportunity to continue to work with Marine Raiders and one of the best parts of my job is when I get the chance to just talk with them and tell them stories about the early days of Marine Corps Special Operations, so they are a huge reason that I wrote my book. But I also wanted to take the opportunity to try to explain what it is like to live in this world, especially at a time in our history when many citizens haven't served in the military. I feel a lot of GWOT memoirs tend toward being written for a military audience and wanted to write something that would be accessible to everyone.

2.   What is it that draws you to writing?

I've always been a reader. My father had a big collection of books--history and fiction. Books by Zane Gray, and Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Hardy Boy series, and a collection of children's historical fiction called 'We Were There' that told the story of children involved in events of historical significance. He read them to me until I was old enough to read and then I took over.

Almost as soon as I started reading, I started wanting to write my own stories. I loved their power to transport me from the bedroom I shared with my younger brother to any place or time. For me, that has always been the benchmark of good writing, does it take you somewhere else?

I also feel that writing, especially non-fiction, gives us the ability to get things out of our heads and onto paper. Often, I find that once I do, the experience loses much of its power to gnaw at me or keep me up at night.

3.   Tell us about the process you undertook to write this book.

This book started as an essay titled Death Letter. It was the first time I had written about my experiences in combat. I wrote it for a college class I was taking, and I knew as soon as I started writing it that it was going to be special. However, I had trouble getting other people to see it that way. I submitted Death Letter twenty times to twenty different outlets and received twenty very politely worded rejection letters over several years. In that time, I edited, reviewed, cut, and added to the essay and it was eventually selected for publication in Consequence magazine. That was my first literary publication and the first time I was paid to write.

One of the most valuable pieces of advice very early on was to not try to think of the whole book at first. It's just too much. I had never used an outline in writing, but I think that for a book-length project, you must. One of the best things I did was to sit down with a stack of index cards and make one per chapter. I listed the opening event and closing event for the chapter then filled in bullets for what I planned to cover in between. From there I just used that outline to fill in the blanks.

4.   What did you learn in the process and what surprised you?

I'm not sure why I found it surprising, but writing a book is hard. I had previously written a novel that is still unpublished, but in many ways, the memoir was more challenging. I have never been good about keeping a journal, so I spent a lot of time trying to remember key events or reaching out to guys who were there with me.

I was clueless about how to find an agent and publisher. I was fortunate to have friends that helped me through the process.

5. Would you do it again?

Absolutely. I'll write more books, and I'll hope that they will be published. I don't know if I will write more memoir, although I feel I still have a ton of stories to tell. Once the floodgates opened, I had a hard time limiting myself to the stories in Tough Rugged Bastards. I've found that once I opened the door to the past a ton of forgotten memories returned. Some great, others not so, but the act of being open to them seems to, for me at least, to invite them in, and I feel I am much better off having explored them. It's pointless to try to live in the past, but it can be a useful place to visit from time to time.

6. What do you want people to take away from this book?

There are a few different takeaways for the different groups of people I hope will read this.

For the young service members, or those who want to join the military, I think there are some good lessons, but first among them should be that if you want to do something, be willing to put in the work.

For those who have made it to the special operations world, I hope they take away the idea that you can never let yourself believe that you have made it, or that you are too good or too special to do the little things that lead to success.

For the Marines and sailors of Det One, I hope it brings back some memories and makes you proud.

And for the family members or civilians who read it, I hope they get a better understanding of what those who have committed to serving their country go through. My experience is not necessarily typical, but then again, I don't think anyone is. We are all unique and this is just one guy's story. I hope I told it well, and I hope people enjoy it.

7. What advice do you have for aspiring authors?

If you want to be a writer you not only have to write, but you have to let people read it. That is daunting. It's scary, but if you don't share it, you're just journaling. There is nothing wrong with journaling, but it doesn't make you a writer, any more than plunging your toilet makes you a plumber.

You don't have to write every day or meet anyone else's expectation of wordcount or content, but if you want to be a writer you have to start thinking of yourself as a writer and treating yourself like a writer and that means you have to do the things that writers do: read, write, submit, get rejected, and repeat that process until someone wants to print the words you've written. Learning to think of myself as a writer was one of the biggest challenges I faced.

Another piece of advice would be to join a writer's group whether virtually or in person. It's so helpful to surround yourself with like-minded people with similar goals.

8. What is your favorite book and why?

This is such a hard question for me to answer. If you were to ask me this question every day you would be likely to get a different answer each time. It depends so much on the mood I am in or what I recently read.

The act of writing this memoir has led me back to some of the early writing about combat that fueled my desire to join the Marines, become a sniper, and get into Force Recon. Charles Henderson's Marine Sniper about Carlos Hathcock came out just before I went to boot camp. It was incredibly influential. I have a copy that Carlos Hathcock signed for me which is one of my prized possessions.

Bruce Norton's Force Recon Diary, 1969, and Force Recon Diary, 1970 came out when I was a young Marine and drove me to get into Force Recon. But then again, the earliest book I loved and the book that prompted me to write my first story, which, if I remember correctly, was almost completely plagiarized, was Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth.

I am fortunate that I love to read. I have my father to thank for that. And I know I'm not the first person to say it, but if you want to be a writer, you really need to be a reader.

9. This book offers some hard insights about combat. Was that difficult to put out there for the world to read?

Honestly, I expected it to be more difficult than it was. Fortunately, I got the hardest part, the essay 'Death Letter' knocked out first. That was the hardest part for me to mull over and put onto the page. There are a few stories I tell about a decision I made or almost made that changed me or would have changed me as a person. These were hard to tell, but that is what a memoir is all about, digging in and taking an unflinching look at yourself, and then sharing that. If you aren't willing to do that then I don't feel the writing will resonate with a reader.

There must be a level of vulnerability in writing that is often hard for military folks to commit to. It was hard and still is hard for me, but when you realize that you are facing that difficulty you also know that you are getting close to an important truth.

10.   You were actually drafted onto a special operations dream team, like in a movie. Did you realize the unique nature of that at the time and what does that feel like twenty years later?

I talk about this quite a bit in the book, but for me, I felt that I was living under the sword of Damocles, expecting any minute for everyone to realize that a mistake had been made and that I didn't belong among that group of men. At the time I thought I was the only one who felt that way and while I'm sure some didn't, most of the guys I talked to did have some twinge of imposter syndrome. I have lived with it my whole life, but because of that, I have made friends with it. But that constant self-induced pressure pushed me to perform at my best, and I know I wouldn't have been able to accomplish the things I did without it.

Of course, on the other hand, it was the experience of a lifetime. The opportunity to be on a hand-picked team of absolute professionals given free rein to run around Baghdad hunting bad guys is the kind of thing that Marines dream about, and I got to be a part of that. It was a special and amazing time, and I will always be hugely honored that I was able to be a part of it.

11.   You've been in and around units filled with Tough Rugged Bastards for almost forty years now. What advice do you have for aspirants to that life?

Be very clear and honest with yourself about why you want to do this. Make a list of all of the reasons. There are probably dozens. Sure, you are a patriot and want to serve your country, but there needs to be more than that. You want to work with like-minded people, you want to do missions that matter, and almost certainly you just want to prove to yourself that you can. Maybe you are looking for adventure. Whatever those reasons are, they will need to be enough to sustain you when you are cold, tired, sore, wet, and don't want to do it anymore.

You also need to be very clear and honest with those close to you. It isn't always an easy life, and your family, especially a spouse and children will shoulder a large share of the burden for something that you wanted to do.

Is it worth it? Fuck yes. I'd start all over again if I could.

12.   What have I not asked that I should have?

Well, there's the obvious, When and where can we pick up a copy of Tough Rugged Bastards? To which I would reply: you can preorder it right now on Amazon or wherever you buy your books. It will be released on 13 August 2024. If you'd like to check out more of my writing you can find info on the book and my substacks at jadailey.com

But other than that, I think I would have asked "Why should veterans consider writing their own stories?"

I think we all have a unique perspective of our time in the service, the things we did and saw, and although you may not feel that your stories deserve to be told I suspect that someone would love to hear them. And I think you will discover that the act of putting them down on paper or a computer file does a few things. It makes our stories real, it helps us process them, and it lets us get them out of our heads and onto something that can be filed and saved or deleted. There are plenty of great outlets for veteran writing, like this one, so consider giving it a shot.

You can buy Tough Rugged Bastards here.