What is the date you began writing this piece of fiction and the date when you completely finished the piece of fiction? I wrote in my first note that the idea of my novel (The War of the Witches) goes back to February 2019. It began with news saying that a number of Russian witches cast spells for Putin. They chanted: “Cursed be the foes. Cursed be the foes.” Then the idea was born: a novel about a Russian president seeking the help of witches for a war with an enemy.
Click on the link below to read “Russia’s Witches Back Vladimir Putin With Magic, but U.S. Spell Casters Turned Against Donald Trump”
https://www.newsweek.com/witches-back-putin-against-trump-1321266
I went back to my note and saw this: I wrote this outline in February 10, 2020. I’m surprised to read this because I didn’t think it took one whole year to start the book. So, I wrote the outline and then I added more details to it.
My note says I began to write the outline in a café; a traditional one that I will talk about later. The café is situated in one of the crowd streets that are full of restaurants and traditional food shops and also many wheelbarrows. It was the afternoon of that day that was one of those days that recorded the lowest temperature degrees.
I found another note saying I began the first chapter on February 14, 2020. And it was time for Covid-19 pandemic. The authorities announced the first cases two weeks later. So, the streets were still crowded and I could go to the cafés to write the book. The first draft finished on Saturday’s night; June 13, 2020 with 22k words.
Where did you do most of your writing for this fiction work? And please describe in detail. And can you please include a photo? Like most of my novels, I wrote the biggest part of it in the traditional cafés. These cafés are one kind. The others are newer. Those newer are called “cafés” and are similar to those in the other parts of the world. The café is a calm places, mainly a big hall, with chairs and big tables upon which you can put your laptop or tablet and read and write without the need to bow you neck and get pain. It looks comfortable, but I hate it.
Its tea is much expensive (400% of the tea in a traditional café) and it’s not delicious. If one wants to show off and tells the others he’s an author, it’s the right place although he won’t get much of it, because if he’s ignorant enough to say it, the others will tell him: “Author? So what?”
The traditional café is called chaikhana (the place of tea). It’s a place where you can speak loudly even without the chaikhana serving domino (it’s, then, called a casino and I don’t like it because it’s very noisy and full of smoke of cigarettes). The tables in a chaikhana are little and rectangular and you have to bend your neck to use your tablet or phone and then accept all the health consequences. Laptops in the chaikhana are literally laptops, that is you can’t put it on the table but on your lap. I usually use my iPad or iPhone there. The two latter proved to be genius inventions. You can carry them everywhere and use them everywhere.
The tea of most, but not all, of the chaikhanas is delicious. Another place for traditional tea is a wheelbarrow. You sit on a chair, or on a bench, at a similar little table. Other tea wheelbarrows have no chairs to offer. You just drink your tea and go away. They’re not writer-friendly places, not even for a short post on social media.
To me, it’s wise to write in a chaikhana because when at home, the internet is distracting. I never have internet connection when outdoors, and so I keep writing. Many times I went back home 11 p.m. or even 12 a.m.
When it was the era of only pen and paper and when there was no internet, reading and especially writing at home meant a great desire to sleep. The new technology (computers, tablets, phone) are better to overcome that desire. Moving the eyes along the lines of a book or a manuscript has the same effect of hypnosis of a moving hand before the eyes.
What were your writing habits while writing this work- did you drink something as you wrote, listen to music, write in pen and paper, directly on laptop; specific time of day? For previous books, it was the ways of the old days: pen and paper. When I began to use the computer, it sometimes started with pen and paper, somebody typed it and then I completed it on my computer, or later, my laptop.
`I wrote the last book using both my phone and iPad. One of my manuscripts (ready to be edited) is about 110k words and I wrote every word of it using my phone. My new procedure now is to use the phone and then complete the book on the iPad, or use only the iPad. The laptop is good for track-changes stage when I get the manuscript from the editor and also for formatting and designing the book.
There’s no specific time to write a novel. It’s just when I wish or decide to write. The place also governs the time. When in a chaikhana, I write. But when at home, I write, and then take a look at the social media, and then write, and then comment on a post or tweet, and then write, and then publish a post or a tweet, and then write, and then take the last look at the social media and finally when it’s late I curse the social media because it distracted me from writing.
Tea or coffee or wine? Wine is forbidden in our religion and I don’t like it. Sometimes when at home: coffee. Most of the time: tea and tea and more tea. I mentioned before that I usually write my novels in a traditional café, and so I drink traditional tea in a traditional glass cup. Even at home, the tea is always ready, but it can’t be compared with the tea of the chaikhana.
Please include just one excerpt and include page numbers as reference. This one excerpt can be as short or as long as you prefer. I will choose the ending. It’s not a spoiler because the novel is open-ended. When this excerpt ends, the reader can write the ending on the blank pages (paperback and hardcover only). The excerpt is too long, but I think it’s dramatic enough to include it. Page numbers: paperback p: 242-245. Hardcover: 211-214.
The force ran to form the departing body. With Aleksandr between them, the woman in the middle made a cluster and hugged one another. The outer circle grabbed each other. Valeria was about to say the incantations to create the storm when a scary, slow song of a woman rang in her ear. She recognized the voice. It was challenging her with a tune of mockery. Valeria smiled.
“First, you showed your face, and now your voice,” she said to herself. “I should’ve known they would bring you to play in our game. But leave this to another occasion. An occasion we both choose. And for our own glory.”
“Don’t hurry to go, Valeria,” the far voice hissed. “We’d love to take part in this battle. Who knows if we’ll ever meet again?”
Valeria’s eyes narrowed. The far voice resumed saying the slow, scary song. Embracing two witches on her sides, she looked over her shoulder to the western horizon where the song came from. The wind blew her locks into her face. Still squinting, she kept looking in the direction of the voice for a while, then she left the two women and walked in the great surrounding circle toward the voice. The arc ahead broke and the women stepped aside. A group of women appeared, walking to the spot with calm steps.
Olivia’s force had reached the last point in the frontline. Olivia waved a hand for her force to deploy in three rows, one behind the other. She stood before the rows. Destroyed tanks, dead soldiers, and burned bodies sending the smell of fried flesh separated the two forces.
“Olivia!” Valeria said to herself. “Never could I imagine meeting with you under such a circumstance. Let’s see where our Fates will take us.”
Natalya stood behind Valeria to the right. “Our coming will be worth it, Valeria,” she said.
“No matter when, we should have met our peers,” Nadezhda said.
“We’ll turn it into a party,” Nadine said.
Valeria stretched her arms to her sides.
“Make three rows like them,” she told her force. “We seem to not be departing soon. It became our project, not the president’s.”
The witches deployed in three rows. Yelena moved forward.
“We stand in the front with you,” she said.
Larisa and Yekaterina hurried beside Yelena.
“Yelena stands on the right of the rows,” Valeria said. “Larisa and Yekaterina stand on the left. All three watch the two wings.”
On the other side, Lina ran toward her mother. She stopped before reaching the force. The mother and daughter shared glances. Then they smiled. Katie, with her slung arm to her neck with a bandage, and Laura, supporting her weight on a crutch, stood beside their friend. All three recognized their young Russian peers in the distance. Lina tightened her fist.
“Let’s do like them,” she told her friends.
Katie and Laura moved to the right wing. Laura went to her knees. Lina stood on the left.
Olivia screwed her eyes at the distance. Valeria felt her gaze. Olivia thought to herself, hoping Valeria would hear her.
“Eh, Valeria,” she said to herself. “You did the wrong thing by starting a war between the witches of the two greatest schools.”
Valeria heard Olivia’s thoughts.
“We might’ve avoided it, Olivia, if you accepted my offer,” she said. “Instead of finishing each other, we would’ve unified our powers to break the sanctions of the governments. Now we’re fighting each other on behalf of those who persecuted us.”
“You could’ve refused the task, Valeria,” Olivia thought. “Politicians never keep their word. We only see the top of their iceberg of lies. And now we’re fighting their battle, not our own.”
“We will fight ours one day, Olivia.”
“We can stop it all. You can go with the man. This way we save the two countries from unnecessary destruction.”
Valeria pondered for a while.
“My government will thank us for it,” she thought at last. “It will thank us for avoiding the war, too. But yours will think it was a plot of both of us, and you let us get away with the damage we caused.”
Olivia turned to the troops behind her force.“Get back everyone,” she shouted to them at the top of her voice. “One spark is enough to make the volcano of the Underworld erupt and emit both the good and the wicked powers.”
Although not understanding the order, the closest soldiers retreated. On seeing them, the units in the back withdrew before they reached them. Olivia waited until they all went farther, her eyes still on Valeria and her army.
The sun rose from the sea behind Valeria’s army. It shone on Olivia’s white dress and turned it to orange. She squinted at the rays.
“Now, we both are dressing in red, Valeria,” she thought. “It’s six twenty-one in a new morning. It’s the longest morning ever. The world will memorize these last moments on the threshold of a long and disastrous war that it has never seen before.”
Click on the link to order WAR OF THE WITCHES from Amazon
Why is this excerpt so emotional for you as a writer to write? And can you describe your own emotional experience of writing this specific excerpt? The excerpt is what I think to be the climax of the tension. Those moments are the threshold of a great disaster. The telepathic conversation between the two great witches, Valeria the Russian and Olivia the American, makes the scene more dramatic. And it reminds us of the offer Valeria proposed to Olivia to pull together. When I wrote this part I felt the dramatic tension reaching a point where it should stop to let the reader finish the story.
Were there any deletions from this excerpt that you can share with us? And can you please include a photo of your marked up rough drafts of this excerpt. There were additions more than deletions. One deletion is the following as it seemed unnecessary:
“It’s useless. It’s over now,” Valeria thought. “In this moment, war has the final word to say. And now, I’ll let you launch the first attack.”
“It doesn’t matter who’ll launch it,” Olivia though.
Click on link below to visit Fadhil Qaradaghi’s website
http://www.fadhilqaradaghi.com/
Most of the INSIDE THE EMOTION OF FICTION links can be found at the very end of the below feature
http://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2021/03/stephenson-holts-arranged-marriage-is.html