Early writing career interview
Prince, Adam

ADAM: Well I guess my writing interest started in the eleventh grade at Little Rock Central High School with Dr. Fawcett. He was big on the three point numeration which was kind of easy to follow, easy to get a good grade in his class; it was just kind of summary of three points and summarize it again. I got a good grade in the class and it's kind of sparked an interest in writing. I never thought about it between eleventh grade and when I started my college/military career. I got to the military, went to Iraq a couple of times and that really kind of sparked an interest of maybe a possible journalism career or just something in that area. I thought about being a combat correspondent from my place in the army but I, like an idiot, went to the infantry instead. I took a bunch of notes; my dad told me, "Son, you'll want to record this and document it because whether you realize it or not it's a pretty big adventure in your life." So I took his word for it, took thousands of pictures and pages and pages of notes and now I'm thinking I'm at a point in my life where I would kind of like to share my experiences. I don't really want to get back in the military but I find it important - I feel the need to bring all these pictures and notes and experiences I've had and maybe just kind of let people know what the American soldier goes through on his daily mission in Iraq. I've come up with a couple ideas, I don't really want to spill them on camera because I'm trying to maybe make a dollar off of it someday. But I just kind of want to collaborate all these pictures and notes and things that I've got and try to maybe write a story some day and I don't think my writing is at the point it needs to be to write a book or an autobiography or something of that nature but I think where I'm really going to - all my water is being held in my photography that I had. I've been kind of thinking about some ways in which I could collaborate it all and just kind of tell a story through pictures and a little narrative caption at the bottom of each picture. I've never done anything like this; I'm trying to just figure out a way to put it all together and present it to a publisher who might be interested with the help of Dr. Hugh Chris, he's kind of going to mentor me through this deal. He and his wife are really good motivators and keep me - I think they see maybe a little spark that they're trying to ignite into a flame. I guess that's where I am now in my writing career. I'm a biology major and professional technical writing minor and I'm thinking I might switch it around because I'm really leaning towards writing. It's really where my desires are. I was at work the other morning and we got to talking about, strangely enough, port-o-potty graffiti and I brought a story to mind of some port-o-potty graffiti that on my first tour in Iraq, I was on my way in Kuwait fixing to roll back to the states and I was sitting there doing business in the latrine and looked up and read this funny caption and I started taking pictures of all these graffiti and this GI graffiti. I went back to Iraq a time or two and kind of started taking pictures of all this graffiti and I've collected them all and I think that's kind of the meat and potatoes of what I'm trying to do with this. Hopefully picture a coffee table book someday; I don't know, it's just in the planning stages now but I'm looking forward to it. With the help of the writing department here I think it can be done, and that's where I am. I also have an interest in outdoor writing; I'm a big-time hunter, fisherman, outdoors person. I love "Field and Stream" and I've been reading all those articles in magazines all my life and hopefully I can find a way into doing that as a career someday. I'm just now breaking the surface so that's where I'd like to be in my writing career. It's where I envision myself kind of doing freelance type stuff. That's about it. 

SPEAKER: Cool.