The Olympic Affair

The beginning

This is the beginning of my olympic affair, to write a first draft novel as a blog - it's going to be a real mess lets see where this goes, to where I don't know, 50k in words by the end of November , I'm officially starting today with my first post on the 6th November 2020. The beginning is vague, so is the ending and the middle is a muddle. I've done some planning(mind dumping) that is full of gaping holes with no scenes and undeveloped characters but I've done lots of note taking and fast writing of ideas around the story hoping this will lead me somewhere - I'm operating more as the amateur gardener and a graduate architect with no experience. Will my writing efforts this month result in a word blob of meaningless babble, who knows? 

My plan, characters, setting, plot and theme is open 

• boy meets girl
• 1960's, 1970
• Munich 1972
• The Olympics 
• Basketball
• Gymnastics
• CIA
• KGB
• defection 

The first concept of The Olympic Affair (drawing above, the USSR chess superstar meets the talented gymnast from the USA at the Olympics this was partly inspired from Walter Tevis novel - The Queen Gambit which I read before its release as a Netflix's series and Ian Flemings, From Russia with Love) I intend to write the first draft of a novel as a blog post chapter by chapter account of the Romeo and Juliet love story set in the Cold War. Can love really defy war's cold killing nature? Or does love get trampled and steamrolled into the ground, left for dead, as with so many young lovers its always the way, as the almighty state always takes precedence over the young dreamy individuals. The setting is the summer olympics in Munich 1972 it's a time of political upheaval in a world torn by continuous wars from the end of WWII, like WWI, 'a war to end all wars' has become a hollow statement and just highlights the flaws of humans prone and strangely addicted to killing their fellow man; to take a life is the hardest thing to do, not just living with the consequences of your actions but your own moral feelings, to live with yourself after killing another - could you? How would you cope? 

'I'm not a crook... I'm the president of the United States' (Nixon and Brezhnev)

The olympics is a sporting event to celebrate peace and bring together the greatest athletes across the globe to compete in a friendly nature but kindness and goodwill like so many other things becomes tainted by using sports as a political weapon against international states. The 1972 political backdrop of the long Cold War between the USA and USSR goes on, a war with no outright battles to decide the victor, it's about small battles of triumphs over the other using 'covert ops' and 'active measures' ( to meet US foreign policy objectives the CIA tries to influence foreign nations through culture, communication and media, like operation Aerodynamic and Mockingbird - propaganda weapons to drip feed and change the hearts and minds of people over the longterm to confront and contain communism globally and the KGB likewise shadows, follows and checks the aggressive capitalist expansionism of the US)This is a see saw war with no outright winner, it's only in the sports arena of the olympics that the decisive battles are fought and won.