Newly married, Sellars was offered a job in 1938 at the University of Iowa by Herbert Feigl.  The department there was small, and Sellars took charge of teaching the history of philosophy courses, working out the view of the history of philosophy that informed his work thereafter.  But he never finished the dissertation at Harvard and was plagued for a number of years by an inability to get his thoughts down on paper.  World War II interrupted his career; he served in the Navy from 1943–46.  When the war ended, Sellars had no choice but to publish, and began a program of writing up to 10 hours a day, however much (or little) he produced.  Draft after draft of his first attempt slowly evolved into “Realism and the New Way of Words.” Once he established a writing process, Sellars began publishing steadily. For a thorough interpretation of Sellars’ earliest publications, see P. Olen (2016, 2016).