IWSG—My tenth official NaNo

December 6, 2023December 6, 2023 ~ Carrie-Anne ~ 7 Comments

Welcome back to the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, which convenes the first Wednesday of every month to commiserate over worries, fears, doubts, and struggles.

This month’s question is:

Book reviews are for the readers. When you leave a book review, do you review for the Reader or the Author? Is it about what you liked and enjoyed about your reading experience, or do you critique the author?

When I review either a book or album, I not only review it for the actual audience, but for newbies to that author, band, or singer. When I was making the transition from casual lawnseat fan to hardcore, serious Who fan, I read all the album reviews at thewho.net (now only available through archive.org, sadly), and came to discover most of them weren’t written with new fans in mind. Thus, when I wrote my own reviews, I geared them towards people without years of fandom under their belts and all this detailed historical knowledge.

Someone on Amazon once left a nasty comment on one of my reviews, asking why I always mention if a book, album, or film is a good fit for a new fan or more for a serious, longtime fan. How in blazes are new fans supposed to figure out what to get first, what’s better-suited for when they’re more established in their fandom, and what’s best saved for last? It’s so arrogant to presume only other hardcore fans of 20+ years will be reading reviews for confirmation bias!

Personally attacking a writer because you didn’t like the story, and presuming to speak for his/her motivations and inspirations when you don’t even know him/her, is completely unprofessional and unacceptable.

I won my tenth official NaNo and lucky number thirteen overall with 57K, which is one of my lowest wordcounts but a big success considering the vast majority of my project was handwritten and how much I’ve been struggling since lockdown and the cancellation of all in-person write-ins for two years. When you’ve plummeted deep into a chasm, you can’t just climb out immediately and resume your normal life like nothing happened.

My project, Part 65ish of my magnum opus Cinnimin, is set from 12 September 2001–25 June 2002, but I only got up to the morning of 17 September, the eve of Rosh Hashanah. Those were some heavy High Holidays that year.

I loved using so many of my beautiful fountain pens and inks for each set of characters and each day of the story. The one constant was this lovely Retro 51 Autumn Leaves pen with an extra fine nib, which was refilled seven times during NaNo and always inked with Diamine’s Fire Embers. All of Raizel’s scenes are written with this ink-pen combo.

I’m also really proud of how well I wrote the Pashto quote at the beginning, after practising it a number of times to make sure I got the spacing and formation of the letters as perfect as possible. I have almost no experience with writing Arabic scripts, but I hope to keep improving.

As you may have heard, there’s a huge ongoing scandal with a mod of the Young Writers Program being accused of grooming minors and directing them to his creepy diaper fetish website, which began being scrubbed after authorities finally got involved. The Berkeley brass ignored complaints for years, as though this were so much less important than constantly issuing polarizing political statements that have ZERO to do with writing.

I’ll be discussing my feelings about whether to continue participating in NaNo or not in more detail in future posts. I truly hope there are serious changes in their management and they get back to their non-political roots.

This was also a very difficult month to get as much writing done as usual, since I’ve been so preoccupied by the terrifying skyrocketing in antisemitism worldwide, plus the fate of our precious hostages. I even used my phone on Shabbat to check Instagram and Twitter for constant updates. The Jewish community hasn’t been the same since 7 October, but we’re also more united than ever.

Praise God, all the children age 18 and under have been rescued except the two Bibas boys, 4-year-old Ariel and 10-month-old Kfir. Little Kfir has become everyone’s baby, and we all hope and pray he’s still alive.

Once all this is over, I’ll have more peace of mind and be able to devote more time to writing each day.

How did you do on NaNo this year, if you participated? Have current events ever demanded you focus less on your writing?

Golestan Palace (کاخ گلستان)

April 8, 2023March 16, 2023 ~ Carrie-Anne ~ 3 Comments

Golestan Palace started life during the reign of Shah Tahmasp I (1524–76) of the Safavid Dynasty. The ever-expanding palace complex was within the walls of Tehran’s citadel, and underwent renovation during the reign of Karim Khan Zand (1750–79) of the fairly short-lived Zand Dynasty.

The palace became the seat of the Qajar Dynasty (1789–1925) when Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar selected Tehran as his capital in 1786. Persia had dozens of different capitals prior, including Isfahan, Qazvin, Shiraz, Mashhad, and some cities which are no longer within the borders of modern-day Iran.

In 1865, Golestan Palace was rebuilt and expanded again by architect Haji Abol-hasan Mimar Navai. Sadly, Reza Shah Pahlavi ordered many of the buildings destroyed between 1925–45, under the ridiculous belief that the existence of this centuries-old Qajar palace would slow down the growth of a modern city. Some people have no respect for history.

Ugly new buildings in line with the cookie-cutter architecture of the 1950s and 1960s were eventually erected in place of the destroyed buildings.

Though much of it was destroyed under the justification of progress, the Pahlavis nevertheless used Golestan Palace for royal functions. The most notable were the coronations of Shah Reza (1925) and Shah Mohammad (1941). A new palace complex, Niavaran, was designed for the Pahlavis in 1958 and finished in 1967.

Seventeen buildings survive in the Golestan Palace complex. In addition to palaces, there are also libraries, archives, museums, and halls.

Many people consider the Edifice of the Sun the most beautiful and breathtaking part of the complex. It was designed by Moayer al-Mamalik and built from 1865–67 by Ali Mohammad Kashi for Naser al-Din Shah Qajar, a painter and photographer who loved the panoramic views of the city from that place.

The two towers of this structure are smaller versions of those from the viewing palace of Ali Qapu in Isfahan, which was used by the Safavid Dynasty.

Palace of the Sun (Shams-ol-Emareh), Copyright Diego Delso, delso.photo, License CC-BY-SA

The most famous of the halls is the Mirror Hall (Talar e Aineh). Though it’s fairly small, the mirror work is incredible. Haj Abd ol Hossein Memar Bashi (Sanie ol Molk) designed it in consultation with Yahya Khan (Mowtamed ol Molk), Minister of Architecture.

Painting of the Mirror Hall by Kamal-ol-Molk

Within the palace is the Marble Throne, designed by Mirza Baba Shirazi (Naqqash Bashi) and royal stonecutter Mohammad Ebrahim Esfahani, and built from 1747–51. The 65 pieces of marble used to create it came from a mine in Yazd.

The throne’s Royal Balcony is said to have been built during the reign of Karim Khan Zand in the second half of the 18th century, though he preferred to sit on a carpet instead of a throne, and he even refused the title Shah. The stone columns of the balcony were taken from Shiraz to Tehran on orders of Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar.

The Karim Khani Nook (Khalvat e Karim Khani) was built in 1759, and a favourite of Naser al-Din, whose grave was eventually moved there after being lost for awhile. Inside this terrace is a much smaller marble throne, with far less embellishment.

Originally, there was also a small pond with a fountain in the middle, with water pumped in from the Shah’s private subterranean stream and used to irrigate palace grounds.

Exterior of Karim Khani Nook, Copyright Yamaha5, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International

The Pond House (Howz Khaneh) was once a summer residence with a subterranean cooling system of streams pumped into ponds all through the building, ending in the outdoor gardens. This aquiferous system was discontinued due to negative effects from indoor humidity. Today the Pond House is an art gallery of European paintings.

The Brilliant Hall (Talar e Brelian) features gorgeous mirror work and chandeliers from Italian artists. It replaced the Crystal Hall (Talar e Bolour), which was ruined by dampness.

Brilliant Hall, Copyright Diego Delso, delso.photo, License CC-BY-SA

The Containers Hall (Talar e Zoruf) displays chinaware given to the Qajar rulers by European dynasts. Some of it was gifted by Queen Victoria, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Napoléon, and the Tsars.

The Ivory Hall (Talar e Adj) was used as a dining room, and now houses artwork and gifts given to Naser al-Din by European monarchs.

The Diamond Hall (Talar e Almas) was renovated by Naser al-Din, who added Roman arches to the walls and put up European wallpaper. Today it houses 19th century art and handicrafts.

Emarat e Badgir, Copyright Razie Amirian, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International

Emarat e Badgir, Copyright Saieh65, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International

Detail of one of the Windcatchers, Copyright Shahabedin Alishahi, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International

Emarat e Badgir, the Building of Windcatchers, was constructed during the reign of Fath-Ali Shah Qajar (1797–1834), and renovated under Naser al-Din. Its central room has the finest stained glass in the entire palace complex, and there are four wind towers which enable wind to move through the building like AC.

The Museum of Gifts originally housed china and silverware gifted by European monarchs. Today it also displays rare objects like historical weaponry and armour, Qajar seals, crowns, and a decorated ostrich egg.

Photographic archive, Copyright Diego Delso, delso.photo, License CC-BY-SA

Aybaz Palace also originally was dedicated to expensive gifts, but is now one of Iran’s finest ethnological museums. Museum Hall houses Iranian paintings. The palace also has a photographic archive begun by Naser al-Din.

In 2013, Golestan Palace was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Naser al-Din’s tomb, Copyright GTVM92, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International

IWSG—Lessons learnt from my ninth official NaNo

December 7, 2022December 6, 2022 ~ Carrie-Anne ~ 7 Comments

It’s time for the last Insecure Writer’s Support Group meeting of 2022. The IWSG convenes the first Wednesday of every month to commiserate over worries, fears, doubts, and struggles.

I feel almost like my NaNo win was cheated, since a fair amount came from creative nonfiction (journal entries, blog posts, etc.) and material that didn’t make it into my master file for Almost As an Afterthought. I also didn’t spend as much time writing each day as I should’ve.

However, I did redeem myself for my humiliating wins of the last two years, where I only crawled across the finish line on the final day. I also finally got back to writing in my journal Mary every day, after another few months of hiatus. (I’m long overdue to write an updated, improved post about my journalling history!) With the obvious exception of 29 November (George Harrison’s 21st death anniversary), 99% of my journal entries were about NaNo and my writing habits.

You can tell which days are Saturdays from the sharp drops! I don’t use my computer from Friday sundown to Saturday nightfall.

While I was writing to Mary (named after The Monkees’ song “Mary, Mary” and Pete Townshend’s solo song “Mary”), a major realisation about my writing (or lack thereof) in recent years dawned on me. Because lockdown wrecked my mental health and normal daily wordcounts, I turned my primary focus to editing books for publication and working on slightly tweaked new editions. During the two years pre-lockdown, I also spent a lot of time on that pursuit.

Hence, I somehow latched into permanent editor mode and forgot how to write the way I did for the previous 35ish years of my life. Joyfully, uninhibited, letting books write me instead of the other way around, saving the rewriting and editing for later, just focusing on getting the raw story out first.

I became all about writing slowly, carefully, cognizant of what’s worth keeping, what’s trash, what should be moved to a later book, what could be repurposed for later in this book. Hence, writing and rewriting a phrase or sentence over and over. Deciding to junk lines that don’t work. Realising as I’m writing that a scene, section, or dialogue is clutter or crap that doesn’t belong there, and moving it into a file of deleted material or only keeping it in the NaNo file.

That never happened to me before. With chutzpahdik confidence, I thought every last word was gold and would automatically remain. Only during edits would I look at the material with fresh eyes and sort out the clutter.

I ended up going the total opposite direction and approaching all first drafts with the critical eyes of an editor as I’m actively creating them.

While I stand by my decisions about what to work on and not work on during NaNo, and am glad I got a solid start on the near-total rewrite of Afterthought, I do feel in hindsight that perhaps it wasn’t the most ideal time to start. I eventually began writing out of order and leaving chapters unfinished to get back to later, since the words weren’t flowing as effortlessly as I hoped, and some parts needed slower and more careful writing due to incorporating research.

Also, I was writing without the context of a completed rewrite of The Very Last, esp. considering there are several very big changes in Cinni’s life in the second half of TVL.

During the last 20 minutes or so, I was frantically typing rambling, incoherent nonsense and clutter I knew wouldn’t make it into the master file. I just wanted to get as many words as possible before midnight and get to the next goal of 62K.

Not bad considering the last two years!

Once December started, it was like a veil lifted, and my normal writing finally resumed with my resumption of TVL. One of this year’s winner prizes is a free title upload at IngramSpark, so I’m hoping to have that book all polished and ready by the 15 March deadline. I obviously won’t rush if it’s not ready by then, but it’s a good goal to work towards.

Did you do NaNo this year? What was your experience like? Have you ever redeemed yourself after a bad patch or disappointing experience?

IWSG—My ninth official NaNo

November 2, 2022November 2, 2022 ~ Carrie-Anne ~ 8 Comments

It’s time again for The Insecure Writer’s Support Group, which meets the first Wednesday of every month to commiserate over worries, fears, doubts, and struggles.

This month’s question is:

November is National Novel Writing Month. Have you ever participated? If not, why not?

This is my ninth official NaNo, and my twelfth overall. I unofficially participated in 2010, 2011, and 2012, though I didn’t sign up because I mistakenly believed the objective was to write a book complete at only 50,000 words. Once I discovered you don’t have to complete your book and that 50K is just the bare minimum, I finally signed up. I later retroactively, honestly added my wordcount from those three unofficial Novembers to my stats page.

The reason I didn’t participate in 2013 was because I was having a lot of computer issues and only was able to work on three chapters of Dark Forest. My fan’s broken left vent was making unbearably loud noises constantly, and the computer was also having a few other issues. I didn’t write anywhere close to 50K that month.

The technical issues temporarily resolved, though they later came back and were so unbearable I had no choice but to get a new (used) computer in August 2014. Amazingly, that 2007 MacBook Pro laptop still works! I need to use it every so often to get old photos from my library, and when I need a backup for my current younger computer. It also has an awesome collection of Solitaire games which isn’t compatible with newer computer software.

Perhaps because I rarely use that computer anymore, and usually don’t use it for very long stretches, the fan noise has much improved.

As discussed in my October IWSG post, I decided to work on a near-total gut renovation of Almost As an Afterthought: The First Six Months of 1941 for NaNo 2022. I really hope I can redeem myself for my poor showings the last two years, only 53K in 2020 and barely crawling across the finish line with 50,051 in 2021 at ten minutes to midnight.

While lockdown did wreck my mental health and trigger my cyclical depression, I didn’t take enough personal responsibility for keeping my writing momentum afloat. Like Rustico in the most famously raunchy story of The Decameron, I shrugged and surrendered without a battle instead of fighting for what I know I’m capable of.

Since 2017, I’ve counted my blog posts as creative nonfiction towards my NaNo wordcount. I don’t know if I would’ve been able to win in 2017 if I hadn’t included my 12-part series “The Jazz Singer at 90.” Writing that series gave me back my writing mojo when it was at such a low point, and finally made me excited and confident about my writing for the first time in a long time.

This year, I wrote as many November posts in advance as possible, so I can devote most of my time and energies to Almost As an Afterthought.

The key storyline of Almost As an Afterthought is Cinni’s longing to enroll in her school’s progressive track when she starts junior high, and her ever-increasing love of history. Her mother is adamantly opposed to it, and wants Cinni to remain in the general track. Kit wants to move to the progressive track too, and her mother, whom she’s always had a very acrimonious relationship with, is also opposed.

Meanwhile, many of their friends decide to take the qualifying tests and apply for scholarships. It would mean the world to Cinni if they could all stay together and have such a golden opportunity for a better future.

Until last year, I was always a NaNo overachiever. My all-time best year was 2018, when I wrote almost 131K. In 2019, I pulled 101K. If I can redeem myself and prove I’m still capable of writing a few thousand words a day, I hope that can carry through to post-NaNo writing, as it did in 2017.

And if I not only win but return to real overachieving, I’ll reward myself with my dozenth ear piercing, combined with the second nostril piercing I hope I can get for my birthday in December (after very unhappily being forced to cancel at the last minute last year).

Are you participating in NaNo this year? Have you done it in the past, and what was your experience like?

IWSG—Slowly returning to view the cheerful skies

May 4, 2022May 4, 2022 ~ Carrie-Anne ~ 7 Comments

It’s time again for The Insecure Writer’s Support Group, which meets the first Wednesday of every month to commiserate over worries, fears, doubts, and struggles. This month’s question is:

It’s the best of times; it’s the worst of times. What are your writer highs (the good times)? And what are your writer lows (the crappy times)?

Unfortunately, due to several bouts of my cyclical depression, being forced to move to an area I hate and in a house not my own, lockdown, and other factors, it’s been quite awhile since I last felt a true writing high. In the old days, it was the feeling I had when finishing a mammoth book that had been writing me more than I wrote it.

This picture I took soon after finishing the 406K first draft of The Twelfth Time, holding some of my writing soundtrack, perfectly illustrates it:

My writing mojo was pulled out of the toilet by my 12-part series on The Jazz Singer at 90 in 2017, and 2018 was my best NaNo ever, at 130,730 words. In 2019, I wrote 101,262 for NaNo, and massively overachieved in both April and July Camp NaNo.

But ever since lockdown began, my usual daily writing productivity hasn’t been the same. I know what I’m easily capable of, and barely making 50K in November, or even 10K in other months, is not it.

Near the end of April Camp, I put my alternative history about Dante and Beatrice on what hopefully won’t be a very long hiatus, and went back to the radical rewrite and restructuring of the book formerly known as The Very Last. I was inspired to return to my Atlantic City books after spending a few days doing the last proof-check of Movements in the Symphony of 1939 (formerly The Very Next).

After approving that book for a print edition, I read through The Very Last until the point I left off on the rewrite last year (though I also began rewriting chapters beyond that). I wrote almost 1,000 words on the first day back, though I ended up moving that chapter, and two other chapters, into a file of discarded chapters.

It truly was hashgacha pratit (Divine Providence) that I put the radical rewrite on hiatus in 2015. At the time, I was frustrated I couldn’t find more detailed information about the 1940 Portuguese World Exposition, and couldn’t be arsed to research and write about the 1939–40 World’s Fair in Queens only two years after I did that for Journey Through a Dark Forest. Now I realise I couldn’t have rewritten that book the way it needs to be had I continued in 2015.

As I discussed in this post, I deleted a lot of pointless, cluttery chapters and subplots. However, I wasn’t yet ready to admit to myself that the ninth item in that list not only was clutter too, but also inherently creepy. Even if Kit is aged up two years, 15-year-old Jerry still has no business dating her! She might look, talk, and act more like a 13-year-old, and I might’ve seriously toned down their relationship, but that doesn’t change her real age.

I’ll be discussing this in more detail in a future post.

I’ve been in a low place with my writing for so long, often taking weeks to write a single chapter, it’s difficult to vault back up and immediately resume my former daily average of at least 3K. As Virgil wrote over 2,000 years ago:

The gates of Hell are open night and day;
Smooth the descent, and easy is the way;
But to return, and view the cheerful skies,
In this the task and mighty labor lies.

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