Wuing You with Words ...

If you tour the countryside of Morocco, you may discover Argan trees. They thrive in the arid climate. What's remarkable are the goats, who climb all over the trees and teeter on the branches like expert acrobats. They eat the fruit and poo out the pits. In the olden days, the Berbers collected the pits and ground them to extract the oil, which is nutty in flavor and has tons of vitamin E. You can eat and wear the oil. Argan oil is expensive but pretty fashionable these days in the West. Cosmetics companies put the oil in all kinds of products, touting its health and beautification benefits. The manufacturing no longer involves goats, though the traditional way seems more wholesome and organic. The machines are stealing jobs even from the goats. We saw trees with multiple goats. Unfortunately, the photo below only shows one goat. But it's an arse-facing action shot, so that's pretty cool.

I like both movies and books. They each have their virtues. Books are good at conveying a character's inner thoughts. Movies are good at showing visuals. The cliche is true: A picture is worth a thousand words. Chefchaouen, a small town in the mountains of Morocco, is probably the most visually striking town in that country. The reason? The place is awash in blue. It's like being inside a giant ice sculpture. Pretty and other worldly.

The tannery in Fez's medina is over 1,000 years old. It's a place where craftsmen turn animal skin into leather by soaking it in chemical soups, which include salts, acids, pee, and poo. A pretty potent mix. All manual labor. No machines. Pretty much the same process since the beginning. It's tough work. For a visual, think makeup or watercolor palettes, but much bigger. It's probably the most iconic image of Morocco, for a good reason. I don't know if there's another place with a tannery of this history and scale. All guidebooks have an obligatory picture of the tannery. What my photo doesn't convey is the stench. When you visit, they give you a sprig of mint to put under your nose. Utterly useless. The sight is, however, appropriately breathtaking.

This is the kind of thing I imagine Kai to doodle in his sketchbook.

One of my writer friends said this: "It is less important to please people who don't like your book than to please people who do, because it is better to have something people love than something they merely don't hate."

Some of things I've learned learned while writing my first novel: Write fast; edit slow. For my earlier drafts, I tried to craft each sentence one by one. Dumb mistake. So much of the earlier stuff got cut.  Writing is a solo endeavor. You gotta love writing and you gotta love the story you're writing, otherwise you won't have the motivation to finish. You should read a lot and broadly. You can learn from everything. Even books you don't like will teach you what not to do. I've liked books in genres that I never thought I would like.  My favorite time to write is the middle of the night, when the world and my brain are quiet.

Tagine is Morocco's signature cookware. It is a pot with a conical lid, used to slow cook vegetables and meats. The stew itself is also called tagine, usually eaten with couscous. Delicious. If you don't find it tasty then you must be sniffing too much glue. Vegetable Tagine in Fez