Fall Season Writing Opportunities

"Education is hanging around until you've caught on"

-Robert Frost

School just started last week and I'm already hitting myself on the head for my absence of productivity this summer. I was pretty much gone the entire time traveling in Europe and trying to find time to write or any alone time for that matter was extremely difficult. I did get some reflections and lines jotted down here and there, but nothing spectacular. So instead of being pessimistic, I'm looking ahead to the opportunities I have this fall to get my creative juices flowing.

-The Lux Undergraduate Creative Review is accepting submissions until Sept 1st. I sent in a short story last year that wasn't chosen (Lunch is Served) and I'd like to try again this year. Maybe a poem this time?

-Writer's Digest has its Popular Fiction contest and Short Story Contest due around November and December.

-Of course the biggie, NaNo. I actually did a TON of writing because of it last year and I'm psyched to do it again. Granted I haven't finished the story I started from last year but it really pushed me through my writer's block and inner critic and gave me good material that I'll keep for the second draft of the novel. I do have a new story for this year, so I'm working on background info, character sketches and whatnot so I'll be all set for that.

I really want to make an effort to go to more of the NaNo group writing events, because those really help me focus and set aside time. You'd think I could just write wherever and whenever since I have a laptop but I always end up doing something else online. Curse you distracting mind! No wonder writers go on retreats to an empty house somewhere off in the woods. I think if I had a typewriter I could crank out way more than I do now. There's something so sophisticated and pretentious about typewriters that would force me to pay attention to my writing haha. I do have some sweet journals to write in. All I need is the perfect pen....

-And then there's inkpop, which I have sadly neglected for several months. No one is reading my stuff and I haven't been exactly promoting or networking on the site either. It seems really hopeless because I've already asked all my friends on there to read my stuff and they've either picked or just commented on my pieces and that's it. No new people stop by to read so I don't do anything on there. I guess I don't have the major work that I want people to notice so I don't really care? I have a bunch of poems and a few short stories, but I think people care more about reading novels on inkpop. And guess what I haven't written yet? Sigh...

I always thought I would finish a novel sometime even if it was crap but my mind just doesn't want to do it. I'm way more interested in writing short stories, but then all the ideas I come up with are way too big for that length and then the ideas I come with for novels just don't seem deep or complex enough for me to write that much. I just...stop. I'm like stuck in this rut of collecting ideas but then not doing anything with them because I don't know if I should turn it into a novel or a short story... or an epic poem or a haiku or a ballad...

If I was really daring, I'd make myself just do a prompt each day and write until I felt like stopping. Maybe each day I'd write for longer unconsciously? Yeah I think I'm going to do that. Get ready for a barrage of posts every day of crap upon crap on anything and everything. Writer's Digest has good prompts each day on their website so I'm gonna copy and paste them from there. Here's the link so maybe you can write along with me!

http://blog.writersdigest.com/promptly/?p_PageAlias=promptly

Here's today's prompt: Write the tweets of your dead hero, a dead historical figure, or a long-passed literary great.

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.