3 Chapters, 4 Days

I'll celebrate my 50th post with a challenge: Write 3 chapters in 4 days. Don't have much planned the next few days and since I've already apportioned bits of Chapter 3 into 4, 5 and 6, why not bang 'em out?

It's on.

3 = 3 + 4 + 5 + 6

What up?

Lots here. I finished the third draft of chapter three! I effectively doubled the chapter's length then annexed parts of it for future chapters (4, 5 & 6 which have now been started).

I also attended a wedding in Columbus, Ohio where I met a couple living in Michigan who I hope to reconnect with next month when I visit. We talked about Michigan, its troubles and they alerted me to the state's meth, obesity and teen pregnancy problems. Good times!

I also dug up a piece in the NY Times from a couple years ago about a refugee community outside of Atlanta. Thanks to a great coach, they formed a youth soccer team which rubbed some locals the wrong way while inspiring others. Having read the account, I have a better idea of the trials and tribulations such a team goes through and how best to model my team throughout the course of the book.

So, essentially, I've found a way to slow down Chapter Three which was a concern earlier and to lengthen the store in a meaningful and informative way.

Set Straight

Somewhere along the line I got the impression I could write the first few chapters, submit a query letter to literary agents and/or publishers and then voila, get the ball rolling. Alas, I was mistaken. Thanks to a friend who is a literary agent, I've learned that a first time fiction writer ought to complete his or her work first and then submit letters.

Soooooo, I'll just keeping plugging along.

Calendar, calendar, on the wall...

"What are you doing?" I asked Lainey Schumaker on our first day working together in the summer of 2000 in rural eastern North Carolina.

"I'm planning the campaign from Election Day backwards on my calendar."

I learned very quickly to follow Lainey's lead. She had run campaigns before, came from a political family and understood the ebb and flow of campaign work intimately. So, in short order, I too put together my political calendar working from Election Day backwards.

To this end, I picked up a weekly calendar the other day specifically for the trajectory of events in the book; working from Election Day 2008 back to the day the Batswana arrive in the U.S. in August 2008.

In the beginning, there were the Cosmos

Yesterday I watched Once In A Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos, a documentary about the soccer team which played in the 1970s and '80s in the North American Soccer League (NASL). The movie begins with various people involved with the Cosmos talking about why they thought soccer had never become popular in the U.S., namely because it required Americans with short attention spans to watch a game with no breaks and no time outs, though they failed to mention that soccer does have a break half way through the game.

The movie then goes on to prove this reasoning wrong. Thanks to the international star power of Pele (Brazil), Giorgio Chinaglia (Italy), Franz Beckenbauer (Germany) and the financial backing and hands-on support of Warner Communications' executive Steve Ross, the Cosmos were not only a dominant team and winner of many Soccer Bowls, but drew sellout crowds of 70,000+ to Giants Stadium. To put this in perspective, on June 14, 2008 David Beckham's Los Angeles Galaxy drew 39,872 on the road in San Jose and 27,000 routinely at home.

This, of course, begs the question, "What happened?" A number of reasons are given. First, the league over-expanded to 24 teams (Major League Soccer has 14) which put a drain on talent, especially domestic talent from which a big enough pool had yet to develop. Second, a lack of television presence hurt the sport. Some games did eventually make it to ABC Sports, but apparently this was either too little too late or advertisers pulled the plug due to the lack of opportunities to hawk their products. Third, Warner Communications hit on hard times financially. Lastly, the movie suggests that FIFA, soccer's international governing body, put the nail in American soccer when it awarded Mexico the 1986 World Cup despite the aggressive push made by Steve Ross. The U.S. eventually hosted the tournament in 1994, two years after Ross passed away and years after the NASL had folded.

The movie also offers the claim that the Cosmos are the reason why so many kids (18 million are registered in the U.S.) play soccer now. As a kid in New York in the late '70s and early '80s, I started playing soccer, but had no clue who the Cosmos were; neither did my folks. If anything, yes it was probably a good daycare substitute, a way of meeting other kids and learning about sports/being physical/athletic. At the end of the day, unlike hockey, football or baseball, it's cheap. All you need is a ball which may explain its global popularity.

What does this movie do for the book? It reaffirms that Americans (people in general, really) are attracted to stars and to winners no matter what the endeavor which bodes well for our protagonists. Who cares where they are from or what sport they prefer as long as they deliver the goods and do so with some pizzazz?

Address please?

In Chapter Three, the Batswana (the curious plural of people from Botswana) move their offices into the heart of Dearborn, specifically what has been the vacant Montgomery Ward building which I mentioned earlier. Well, after re-reading that link I'm confused. It seems that there is the Montgomery Ward building and then there is the John H. Schaefer building. I need to find out which is which and which I want to include in the story.

It also appears that the Montgomery Ward building may be torn down by September 1st to make way for a new building. The future of the Montgomery Ward building has been in limbo for a number of years with various plans having come and gone to no avail. I'll have to keep an eye on this development as it raises key questions:

1) If the building is torn down by 9/1/08, how does that impact my story which takes places between 08/08 and 11/08?
2) Can I ask readers to suspend their disbelief to accommodate what may be an anachronism?
I probably can, but I don't want to and there's the rub.
Till I have concrete answers, I'm gonna keep on truckin'. Revisions to Chapter Three are moving right along with characters and events taking on more depth and precision.

Booked

I made plans to return to Dearborn in August today. Specifically, I'm going to watch a historic baseball match and then off to Comerica Park to see the Tigers take on the Orioles in Detroit. I also need to peek into the Montgomery Ward and find out more about it's current status. This visit will give me a better idea of what the characters would see and feel as the story takes places between August and early November. My February visit gave me a good overview, but was a bit out of context as I froze my balls off.