1. Short thread on how a writer failed to file his @TheAtlantic story by the assigned deadline, and we all ended up with “Mutiny on the Bounty."

2. In 1916, @TheAtlantic sent a young James Norman Hall across, well, the Atlantic to write a story on the brave American volunteers flying for France. But Hall was swept up in the romance of it all, and decided to join the Lafayette Escadrille himself.

3. Hall proved an exceptional aviator; he won the Médaille Militaire and the Croix de Guerre with five palms. Writers, it turns out, will do almost anything to avoid a deadline—even take to the sky and fight a world war. Meanwhile, his @TheAtlantic editors were forced to wait.

4. Hall’s exploits were serialized in @TheAtlantic as “High Aventure." That literary success won him an assignment, with Charles Nordhoff, to write a history of the Lafayette Flying Corps. https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2020/04/10-ideas-for-a-weekend-in-quarantine/609478/

5. The two men moved to Tahiti, where both wrote regulary for @TheAtlantic. And in 1932, the Atlantic Monthly Press brought out “Mutiny on the Bounty,” the first volume of their trilogy, based on the real-life story.

6. The moral of this story, obviously, is that writers should always file by their assigned deadlines. (But if you’re going to miss your deadline, a chestful of medals is an acceptable excuse.)