Flying and Writing: Without Discipline, Expect a Crash Landing

Writer: Robert Young

When I decided to fly across America and record my journey in “Vagabond Pilot: A Journey of Discovery and Renewal”, I knew that I would need all the discipline my piloting skills had honed into me. But I had no idea that the same discipline for occupying the left seat in the cockpit would be the same needed to present my journey to readers in the written word.

I wrote, “Vagabond Pilot”, the story of my travels across America and back, to soothe the angst of the painful dilemma I found myself in after I lost my way. I had lost my home and la dolce vita after family business ruins brought on by my older brother brought me down also. Flying my plane and writing about my trip was a therapeutic exercise and my way to seek solace through my passion of flying, hoping to re-discover and renew my Self after so many difficulties had befallen me.

Flying an aircraft is never to be taken lightly. It takes years of skills and experiences learned and always requires a professional regimen when engaged in any of the multiple phases of the flight. Writing about the trip was the very same.

With each flying leg, I had to approach the day’s flights with meticulous care and planning.  After selecting a route to my destination, I had to review weather maps and forecasts, check the impact of any forecast upon my route of flight.  I would then plan the flight accordingly, enter my flight plan into my iPad and the wondrous Foreflight App. That was the night before. Next day, another call was made to Flight Service to verify my own review of the weather and filing my flight plan. Before boarding my aircraft, before engine start, I would do the reverent walk-around that every pilot does, get settled aboard, hook up all the electronic devices, start the engine, taxi out, check out the plane and its engine parameters in a run-up, then off we would go after clearance by the tower.   Everything in its sequence and time, reading it all off on the checklist and the routine to which I religiously adhered

And so it was, when after each leg and spending some time at my destination, I would bring that same discipline to my writing.  I wrote as I went to get a more accurate accounting of my trip, rather than later, trying vainly to recall those feelings months later from scribbled notes. That strict discipline of doing so within 24 hours of arrival at a new locale would enable me to re-live the flight and my many encounters with my fellow Americans far more freshly than I could have ever done had I not kept at my writing.

I kept my story defined. Besides sharing my personal feelings in this therapeutic exercise turning into a book, as I had set specific goals of telling the story: the flying and my friends. It was important to me to share the passion of flying — explaining all that a pilot does and encounters mastering his world — but it was also just as important to share the nourishment this vagabond who had lost his way received from those friends he chose to visit to seek their love and support. Each chapter was thusly set up with the “Leg” and “Friends”, where I was able to make the trip not only about the passion and art of flying, but about the writer and so many of us.

And just as a good pilot goes through a post-landing check, so did I do so with the many edits and re-reads of “Vagabond Pilot.” It was arduous, but I applied the same strict discipline defining my story as I wrote, to now bring that professionalism and right stuff working with my publisher’s editor.  I responded to a different “Air Traffic Control’s” commands, as she barked and urged and edited along with me so that we could bring our book to press.  Mission accomplished. It reminded me of on an instrument flight, when following the assigned routing and rules of the road, all the while having your hand held by Air Traffic Control to get you to your destination safely.

It’s all about bringing that discipline and focus to whatever the task at hand

Robert J. Young grew up in Rockville Centre, New York. He was educated at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and thereafter earned his law degree at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He continues to practice law in Los Angeles, California, living on the west side pursuing his entrepreneurial dreams, flying his beloved Two Niner Lima about the West, passionately celebrating life with his friends and writing about the next adventures of Captain Bob.