Challenged recently to consider war from another’s perspective, I began searching for books translated into English from another nation’s veterans. One particular perspective, frankly, had been within arm’s reach but outside of my mind’s eye — the Australian war experience. Never was this more striking than when invited by the Aussie Chapter of the Military Writers Guild for afternoon tea at the Australian War Memorial.

Reflecting on my visit there, I remain in awe of the significance of such a memorial. Observing a vigil at the Tomb of the Unknown Australian Soldier in the Hall of Memory and a Last Post Ceremony is a humbling experience. The heroics of a 14-years young Digger at Gallipoli read aloud by a serving member of Australian Defense Force reinforces a national war narrative in your presence. A sole piper playing a lament and a bugler playing Last Post provide chilling farewells. In the presence of the names of every servicemember who died in every campaign and operation, this shrine to their sacrifice is a tremendous reflection of the Australian character.

The experience ensured a place of honor in my personal library for the Australian war experience. On the sixteen-hour flight home, I read Major General John Cantwell’s Exit Wounds stopping often to reflect on his candid account of war and its lasting effects. I now wonder what other accounts are waiting to be written. Yet having met up with the Guild’s Aussie Chapter, I know these stories are in good hands.

As I previously interviewed @clausewitzrocks from afar, I jumped at the chance while in Canberra to interview Guild member Natalie Sambhi. As the Managing Editor of The Strategist, she lives the #ThinkTankThugLife at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute where she sips Earl Grey tea and listens to the Wu-Tang Clan. She is currently writing about Female Engagement Teams which should be a worthy addition to the legacy of women in combat. At a break in her busy schedule, we caught up to discover her daily rituals of reading, writing, and creativity.

[John DeRosa] What time do you typically wake up? What does the first hour of your day look like?

[Natalie Sambhi] I usually get up at 4:55 in the morning and I will always check social media [laughing]. It is a terrible habit, but I do it because I always like to see what has happened overnight on Twitter. Then I work out for at least a half hour to get my brain going — I believe, healthy body, healthy mind.

From there it depends. I spend my time writing for a couple hours and reading for a couple hours before I go to work which means “the blog” for the rest of the day.

[JD] Is there anything that you do, a ritual, which gets you into writing?

[NS] Absolutely. I am a massive tea drinker. I can’t read or write without tea ready. I also picked up a habit from a friend of mine at the Lowy Institute, Dr. Merriden Varrall. She said to me, “work for forty-five minutes, straight, and then take a break for fifteen.” I have found that method for the last couple of months is absolutely fool-proof for me. It has been wonderful. I have managed to write a paper on Indonesian maritime security issues with that method. I will always use that from now on.

[JD] I have a personal goal of writing 500 words a day. Do you have a similar goal in your writing?

[NS] For me it is making sure I get a couple of those good forty-five minutes blocks. For instance, last night I was writing my total word count didn’t change. I went over parts of the paper and I re-wrote sections of it. While it wasn’t a net increase of words, I felt like I worked solidly for a couple of hours, i.e. two sessions, and the work was improved overall. So, if I do that every day, even if it is just one block, I feel as though I am moving forward. As long as I feel as though I am moving forward, I can do a project.

[JD] Weekdays and Weekends?

[NS] Yes! At the moment, I have the luxury of a bit more time. My family is overseas. So I am trying to use that time to read and write. Certainly at least something every day.

[JD] When your family returns, does that routine change for the weekend?

[NS] Hopefully not. Writing for me and being plugged into what I like to call the “online strategic community” is very much who I am personally and also professionally. I love what I do. So for me, writing is like a hobby as well as a profession.

[JD] Describe for me your writing space.

[NS] I have to have my tea and then I just punch to it. No music. I have to have my work space set up with my papers and my books.

[JD] Do you have an office? Do you write at the kitchen table?

[NS] I write at the dining table, at home where I feel productive. I don’t like to write at the office because we’re often focused on the immediate demands of the blog so it makes thinking and writing challenging at times.

If I want to read and take notes, I love to do that at a café. I am always on the scout out for cafés that have nice working environments.

I will always set my iPhone to “do not disturb.” I say to myself: this is important that I need to read or write, so I disconnect from social media for at least forty-five-minute blocks.

[JD] How you determine what you are writing about?

[NS] At the moment, I am writing to a couple of events. One of my projects on Female Engagement Teams is in preparation for a presentation I will be delivering in October in Hyderabad, India. That is a project that has a genesis on my personal interest Female Engagement Teams. Then I was invited to speak at a conference on women in security. I thought this was a perfect time to resurrect my interest and channel it towards a research paper at the presentation.

[JD] …and it gives you a deadline.

[NS] Yes! Absolutely! I absolutely need deadlines. In the last couple of months, it has been where people have requested papers. Every now and then I will blog. Most Fridays, I will write ASPI Suggests, which is a roundup of good reads, podcasts, and videos. It is a Friday discipline unto itself.

I write ASPI Suggests in entirety on Friday. I collect things during the week and save them into a folder. Then on Friday everyone in the office knows to leave me alone because I am going to write. I get into my writing space. I love it because it is my chance to be more relaxed with our readership and connect by sharing things that I or others editors have read, seen, or I think is informative for our online strategic community. I like to make it really accessible in language so I will add bits of humor. I might draw from the DuffleBlog or I might put something in my author byline. Recently I reviewed Emma Sky’s book [Unravelling]. So I wrote, “Natalie Sambhi is the managing editor of The Strategist, an analyst at ASPI, and is about to order a copy of Emma Sky’s book or is looking forward to living on Mars.” Something like that. It is a nice time where I think Strategist editors get to be a little more like themselves, but do something that is both productive and edgy. The field can get a bit too stiff and formal sometimes!

[JD] How do you choose what you are writing about?

[NS] At this point in time, my focus has been on Indonesia. I have always been interested in Indonesian strategic and defense issues. Sometimes it is shaped by particular projects that come up. I will keep my eye out for developments. I will keep a Google Docs folder of these developments.

[JD] …the follow up questions will be how do you keep notes for your writing? What does your note taking system look like?

[NS] I have set up a system where I was using my Twitter feed as sort of a library for links. I realized that was too hard to search. So I set up a Google Document for myself where I title a file, for example, Indonesian defense and security. I have headings and anytime where I will come across a news article or data point I find interesting I will put the date, a one-line summary, and the hyperlink.

[JD] You’ve created a running online annotated bibliography.

[NS] Yes. It is a little bit time consuming. I have set up Google Alerts for things so I find if I spend a few minutes every day, I can manage it effectively.

[JD] You have mentioned previously your handwritten notes…

[NS] Sometimes, to organize my thoughts, I have little black notebooks where I take notes, sometimes from reports and books, which I find stick better than if I take notes on a screen. I get really hung up on the structure. Does this make sense logically, from the introduction to the body paragraphs, to the conclusion? If I walk you through from A to Z, will it make sense? I have found that process of handwriting that is a really good way of organizing my thoughts and actually seeing it on paper rather than seeing it on the computer.

[JD] What are you reading lately?

[NS] What am I reading? So many things right now. For this Indonesian paper, I am reading predominantly on Indonesian counter-terrorism and a couple of Indonesian military biographies. It is really nice to think and understand how Indonesian military officers see themselves.

I am also reading a couple of biographies of American female soldiers which relates to my FET project. I recently bought former Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s autobiography and another on traveling in Paris. I am always interested in reading how women in leadership positions have fared. I also have my assortment of ‘military porn’: books on the bin Laden raid, military fiction, things like that.

[JD] How do you choose the books you read?

[NS] I am the worst. You cannot leave me in a bookstore with a credit card. I will buy anything and everything from books on philosophy to fashion. But I am especially interested in international security issues, military cultures, special forces, Indonesia, and female soldiers. I have shelves of books that have yet to be read.

[JD] Most people do.

[NS] I feel more like a book collector than a reader right now. If you look at the book stacks about my desk, you’ll find books by Robert Gates and David Kilcullen that I still haven’t read yet.

[JD] Are you getting recommendations from other people?

[NS] Yes, I see what others have read, either on Facebook or Twitter. Or sometimes I will go straight to the military section in a bookstore and check out the new books. There is a recent book After the Blast by Garth Callendar, who wrote about his experience recovering from being blown up in Iraq. That was a book recommendation I got from James Brown on Twitter. So I went and did some background investigation and decided that, as an Australia-based defense analyst, I should read it.

[JD] Is there a book you have given as a gift most often?

[NS] There’s one book I have in recent times given both as a gift and encouraged others to read. It is called The Crossroad by our Victoria Cross recipient and [Special Air Services] Trooper Mark Donaldson. People might think it is a cliché to read a book about an SAS Trooper and VC recipient. To be honest, I found it a really frank, candid, and really gritty two-part of who he was as a person and his personal journey in the first half and his time with the SAS in Afghanistan and his experience of war in the second. I really thought his voice throughout the book really connected the reader with what he was trying to convey rather than thinking it was just a bit of SAS storytelling. It was just a compelling read from start to finish.

[JD] What’s your drink of choice (other than tea)?

[NS] Single Malt Scotch. When I finished that paper on Indonesian maritime security, I saw that Talisker distillery had the words ‘by the seas’ on the bottle — so being in a maritime headspace, it’s Talisker right now. But I am open to any suggestions.

[JD] Nate Finney must have given you a lot of suggestions.

[ND] Yes, of course, but I am afraid I am always out of D.C. when he hosts Cigars, Scotch, and Strategy nights! I will definitely need to make a few in the future.

[JD] Where’s the most adventurous place(s) you have been?

[NS] One of the most memorable adventures was when I took two months off in 2011 to live in Bali. I got to do a lot of interesting stuff. Not least of all was meeting Prime Minister Julia Gillard in my [pajamas]. I also saw a different side of Bali and some of my best memories including hanging out with my friends at the time who were rappers and skaters. We’d sit on the balcony of their skate shop and listen to Wu-Tang Clan’s “C.R.E.A.M” and watch people on the streets below. I did not realize that every day I was actually looking at ground zero of the 2002 Bali bombing. Life had just kind of gone on. What I had thought was just an empty parking lot opposite the street, was actually the site of those horrific acts. That really kind of gave me an odd feeling of respecting the site and needing to understand that life has to go on.

[JD] When did you realize that was the site?

[NS] Actually it wasn’t until at least a month in. I had assumed it was at the site of the memorials which was just around the corner. One of the guys said, “No, that is where it happened. That is where the Sari Club was.”

When I had walked into one of the bars not too far from that site, I asked the bartender how did the bombing affect him. He ran out back and came back with a photo album. I was not expecting this at all; I was expecting a short conversation. He had taken all these photographs in the immediate aftermath of the bombing. It was not recognizable. It was a real privilege to see those photographs and listen to him share what he was thinking at the time. That was an unexpected experience.

[JD] What bold steps would you like to see the MWG take?

[NS] I would like to see us write more together. We have a great mix of civilians and military. One of my bugbears is that we have a different public debate culture here when compared to the US; our military is far less able to participate in open debates. I would like, at least in the Australian Chapter of the Guild, to find creative ways to facilitate our military colleagues sharing their voices and experiences to improve the quality of public discussion. At least as we as a nation come to terms with what our military was asked to do in Afghanistan. Some of our military colleagues have said, “I wish there were more ways to share our stories. We never had a film like Restrepo. We never had an Armadillo.” Is there a need for that? Is there an opportunity for that? What are the things we should debate about going to war? Where the Guild could facilitate that — especially from the Australian military context? Watch this space!