In the Zone

" It always seems impossible until its done."

-Nelson Mandela

So despite my awesome and peculiar idea for a short story, I failed to enter the NPR Fiction Writing Contest. I know, I know cue the "awwww" sound.

It was those dreaded sirens YouTube and Facebook, I swear! I could not resist!

Actually, it was also that I went out of town and did not bring a laptop with me so I was disconnected from the world for a few days. It was quite frightening, I tell you. I didn't realize how much my life revolves around Internet, email, online news and such. It's nice to just get away from it all and get back to basics.

The reason I went out of town was to attend a school trip to Oklahoma City to visit the National Memorial Museum where the 1995 Oklahoma City bombings happened. We were learning about terrorism and the press, how the media covers it as well as what is terrorism really. 

It was so fascinating to see the museum and learn about a domestic terror event that I don't even remember because I was only four at the time. The museum was incredibly well done and hit the perfect tone of solemnness, hope and courage for the survivors and the whole community. 

We also got to talk to an amazing man, Mike Boettcher, a former CNN correspondent and veteran in covering global terrorism. We met lots of really interesting people thanks to our professor and being a part of the Cronkite school. Everyone knows us so we get a lot of priveleges:)

But it wasn't all work. One evening we got to watch The Green Zone, starring Matt Damon as Officer Roy Miller. The movie although very fictionalized is an account of a soldier in Iraq who uncovers the conspiracy over the lack of WMDs and how America knew that and still went in, fabricating information in order to have authority to create a democracy in the country. It's "inspired" by a non-fiction book by a Washington Post reporter Raji Chandresekaren called  Imperial Life in the Emerald City. 

It looks like the only things the movie and book have in common are the setting and theme, otherwise the whole character of Matt Damon finding out about the nonexistent WMDs isn't true. But I guess that's Hollywood. The movie was really good though and I'm not really into pointless action movies. I don't flinch at blown up cars and shaky camera scenes. Well I do, but not in a good way.

I watched the movie not just from an average viewer but as a writer which made me notice several things:

• This movie had a compelling plot, although pretty simple, and made you follow the mystery the whole way through as you yearned to find out why the soldiers were being sent to sites that didn't have anything there and no one would listen to Matt Damon. Everyone should listen to Matt Damon! If it was over complicated then I would have lost interest. War and politics are already so confusing and complex that people don't want to have anything to do with it. You don't want readers to think that about your writing.

• It's possible to draw people into a story that they might not know anything about by adding human interest and emotional conflict because that's what everyone relates to and will be thinking about as the story goes on. I loved the character of Freddi, an Iraqi citizen with one leg, that just wants to do what's best for his country even it means helping the American invaders. What would I do? Would I trust that guy when everyone says not to? Do I do the right thing or the easy thing?

So I'm not really sure how they were able to craft this implausible story out of Chandresekaren's book, but it's definetly going to make people want to read it now. I sure do. But it's going to be a looong time before I get to it. I have a list of about 50 books I want/need to read and I've barely made a mark on it.

This is my current read for one of my classes, but it's one that I'm enjoying a lot because I love Nelson Mandela and am very interested in the history of South Africa's apartheid.