A Writer in Paris

This time last year, I was in Paris on a special trip. A special trip for me.















I mean, just for me.

I left on the Friday morning while my darling husband looked after our daughter and I came back on the Sunday evening.

Two whole days in Paris J

Just before I left, I had bought a little gem, pictured here. A Writer's Paris ­– A Guided Journey for the Creative Soul by Eric Maisel. A wonderful, perfectly produced book all about Paris and what a writer can do – must do – when coming to write in Paris, whether for a month, three months or a year (or anything in between), on a budget or not (though mostly it’s all about surviving on a shoe string in the City of Light, because ­– ahem – it’s a well-known fact that writers are broke half the time. Because writing takes time, usually time when you can’t work simultaneously, so one constantly struggles between time for writing and time for earning a bit of money). It has pictures and drawings, lovely use of attractive fonts, and the cover and glacé paper… wow! They make you feel like you’re holding a very expensive and very precious book. Which I guess it is.

Three years before that, I had read Eric Maisel’s A Writer's San Francisco (whose looks were unfortunately not quite as appealing – don’t you just hate that, not being able to get two similar books in the same collection?!) and compulsively turned its pages in the streets and cafés of SF. This time, I would do the same in the city where I was born, getting inspiration from reading Eric’s beautiful writing and from his ideas. Writing ideas generously offered by writers always get my creative juices flowing. (Eric’s even spurred me to write this post!)

I was born to write. Whether I’ll ever get published (other than electronically I mean, as will soon happen with my short stories, nearly ready for the iPad J) is neither here nor there. It’s increasingly clear to me that I absolutely don’t care what will eventually happen to my writing. As long as I keep writing (here and privately on my computer or in my numerous notebooks), I’ll be happy.

A Writer's Paris ­– A Guided Journey for the Creative Soul. So much promise.

And it delivered.

I wrote and wrote and wrote:

on the train

in a little café ironically named “Comme à la maison” (if I was going to end up at home, why go to Paris at all?! Or was that a hint – I was at home!? But I knew that anyway. I LOVE Paris. I do feel at home in Paris. But I also feel at home in Oxfordshire, thankfully!)

in my hotel room at the Hotel Acte V, in the 5^th arrondissement

It was an idyllic weekend in an idyllic city for a budding writer. It even snowed!

Thank you, Eric. Next time, I’ll do exactly as you say and spend at least a month in Paris and go to all the places you mention and I’ll even try to write a novella in four weeks!

Bookmarks

I have a passion for bookmarks, especially those linked to places I visit. At the end of September, my husband and I eloped to Burgundy for three nights while my parents kindly looked after our nearly-three-year-old-daughter. During our little wine and food tour, we spent half a day and an evening in wonderfully inviting Beaune and I couldn’t resist buying three bookmarks to add to my collection. You will see two of those in the picture (I can’t find the third one – no idea where it may be. I always read about 10-15 books at a time, so I went through all the books I’m currently reading and also through my pile of bookmarks but couldn’t find it!)

Me and my bookmarks…

‘So this trip is a success, isn’t it?’ my husband half stated, half enquired when we left the shop (Athenaeum de la vigne et du vin).

‘Why?’

‘Because you’ve found some pretty bookmarks.’

‘Yes. So far I thought it was an awful trip, but now I’m thinking What a wonderful trip!’ I replied in a fake overly excited tone.

You see, my husband always does without bookmarks. He relies on his memory to remember the page number or the passage he last read. So, as I’m sure you’ll have understood, he was taking the mickey out of my strange habit and collection. He doesn’t need these ‘contraptions’, as he would call them.

Yes but when you read 10-15 books at the same time, it’s simply impossible to remember all those page numbers or passages. By the time I found the right page or passage, it would be time to go to sleep/I would be fast asleep (I mainly read in the evening)! But also, even if I read just one book at a time, I would still have a bookmark. I love the various kinds of bookmarks that are now produced around the world – magnetic, long, short, narrow, wide, circular, paper-clip style, covered front and back with beautiful photographs, showcasing a quote or two – you name it. They remind me of brilliant holidays or special days out.

Double pleasure when I open a book – the anticipation of reading and the memory of a place or a moment during a shopping trip. Or simply, a person – many of my friends have given me wonderful bookmarks over the years. Keep them coming!

PS: L, thanks again for the ‘bookworm’ birthday card, featured in the picture ;)

Bruised

Six months today! Three more to go!

I am bruised.

All over.

But inside.

Mind you, outside too – I keep bumping into things, dropping things, hurting myself with forks and knives and jewellery and pens.

But on the inside, it’s not my doing. It’s Sprog’s.* I am battered, beaten, shaken, trodden, flattened and crushed. Day in, day out, and at night too.

I couldn’t go back to sleep last night. It was only half past midnight, I had been sleeping for a couple of hours, but Sprog had woken up and just used my bladder as a punching ball – the loo beckoned. Then Sprog never went back to sleep, hiccupping one minute, kicking the next. So I didn’t either. Well, until about 2.30 a.m., that is, after lying still on my back on the sofa bed in the study, resting, reading, till my eyes couldn’t distinguish the words on the page any more.

I hope that this is not the first step on the downhill slope that leads to the abysmal first few weeks after Sprog has joined the world (till he/she finally sleeps through the night). If so, it will be a long winter...

* I don’t like using the name ‘Sprog’ for our baby, but Monsieur l’Anglais likes it and it stuck pretty much from Day 1, so we carry on using it. I did suggest using the boy name we’ve chosen on ‘he days’ and the girl’s name on ‘she days’ (no, we don’t know what sex the baby is), but no, he prefers to use ‘Sprog’, so hey, I might as well use it here too!

Are you a Woolly Mummy?

Especially for T. ...

I have been reading The Yummy Mummy’s Survival Guide by Liz Frazer avidly, but I would like to write about a different kind of mummy – the Woolly Mummy.

You are a Woolly Mummy if:
- you are more hairy than a monkey – and yes, even in the most unsightly places
- you scratch yourself all over, in all kinds of places (nipples, areolas, small of your back, and of course underarms)
- you spend countless hours brushing your teeth every day (see my French blog)
- you can only express yourself using ‘ooohs’ and ‘aaahs’ and ‘mmmhs’, because you have a woolly memory and you get completely gaga in front of (pictures of) cute baby animals, e.g. cygnets under their mother’s wings (yes, under, or even between – see picture, taken by our professional photographer friend during a boat trip on the Thames)
- you get all excited and emotional when you look at your friend’s first baby scan – let alone your own
- you grow a hairy tummy and a beard!

Ah, the joys of pregnancy!!!

Travelling

At first, it felt a little like being in a farm, stuck with herds of strangers. I just wasn't reassured. It all felt cheap and cheery and 'what does it matter if we crash and you die?' An old Indian woman next to me in the queue about to board the plane had told me, just ten minutes before, that Stelios Haji-Ioannou, the founder of EasyJet, was going to be on the plane with us – she had seen him hanging around. I suddenly remembered this interesting information and told myself that surely if the boss is going to be on board, they will have triple-checked everything and so we would be fine. In any case, my lucky star is always there with me. Nothing to worry about. I have never had any problems travelling, it wasn't going to start happening today.

The first flight of my life was when I was six months old, ironically to Nice, just like today (though, of course, from Paris, not London, and [perhaps shockingly] in the care of an air hostess – not because my mum was one, not because I was an orphan or in foster care – no, simply because those were the times when you could entrust your infant with a hostess to deliver her to her grandparents at the other end of the country, which thus freed you to set off on your own travels, whether it be India or Senegal or any country in between). So yes, I was practically born on a plane. I'm used to flying. I must have flown more than 100 times in the thirty-one years I've been using this means of transport. It's just that, this afternoon, I didn't like the feel of the whole experience.

Now that I've read a few pages of my book (Alias Grace) and an article about Petite Anglaise (alias Catherine Sanderson) in the Daily Telegraph, and chatted a little to my neighbours (thankfully, by some sort of miracle, there was a seat towards the front of the plane and I didn’t have to sit down right in the middle of the twenty-strong group of secondary school students, acting like brats), I feel a bit more settled. It's not the nice, relaxing, quiet atmosphere of a British Airways plane, but for 56 pounds, it will do I suppose. I'd like to snooze for a while, but I don't seem to be tired enough.

People keep buying stuff – mini pizzas, red wine, bottles of water, scratch cards, tea, chocolate bars, lip gloss, collagen eye masks... You wonder why they bother getting cheap flight tickets to then buy lots of expensive extra things they don't need. I, for one, made my own salad last night and, along with a yoghurt, a banana, an apple and plastic fork and spoon, stuffed it in my already-bulging travel bag. Admittedly, I did buy a small Toblerone bar and a packet of Polos when I arrived at the airport, for a grand total of £1.42. Reasonable, wouldn't you say? Go low-cost airlines! At least, thanks to the likes of Stelios, we have a choice: fly as cheaply as is possible, then spend, or not, extortionate amounts on tat. Oh and it's quite safe – I arrived unscathed in the land of my childhood holidays, in and around Nice. I am ready to start my pilgrimage proper.

New table and benches

At the beginning of June, we bought this lovely table and matching benches. Because of the horrible weather, we were only able to put them up a whole month later!

And because it practically hasn’t stopped raining since then, we have only been able to sit at it three times!

But when the sun is out, especially in the morning and in the evening, oh, what blissful minutes and/or hours I spend there, reading my book, writing my novel, dreaming, looking at the red kites above and stroking the cat!

Too old

I’m getting old. For the first time ever, I’ve seen the year of my birth (1976) next to an author’s name on the jacket of a book. Normally, they’re either much younger (22, 25) or they’re just a year or two older (for example, Zadie Smith, 1975).

That’s it, I’m old now. It is now officially too late to be labelled a ‘young writer’.

I still remember my grandmother telling me that I really should try to have a novel completed in my early twenties as it’s so uncommon and it would just be so good for marketing purposes, and just so good for my own CV (and pride). I tried, I tried, God knows I tried, but the only novel I finished was a children’s novel, and I was already 26. And it was no way near being ready for an agent or a publisher to even glance at it. And it still isn’t.

On Thursday last week, I went to WH Smith in Oxford and spent part of the money that was on the gift card I got for my 30th birthday last month from my in-laws. I went for something completely different: a novel written by a guy, Jon McGregor, called So Many Ways to Begin. I fancied a man’s point of view this time. He writes very well and is very good at creating atmosphere, with sounds, smells and the small things that his characters do. His first novel, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, was apparently very well received and he won the Betty Trask Prize and the Somerset Maugham Award. I’ll let you discover So Many Ways to Begin (I haven’t read his first novel), but the other thing about Jon McGregor is that he now lives in... Nottingham! Where I spent my first four years ‘chez les Rosbifs’! There must be a hidden link. Maybe one day I’ll find out what that is.

My point is this: whenever I see or read a book written by somebody who’s around my age, I get all competitive and think ‘I can do it too! In fact, I AM going to do it!’ Either that or I get very depressed and think ‘I started this story/novel a year ago and look, I’ve only written ten pages’ (or two, or just a few ideas). But still, somehow, it gives me renewed impetus to carry on writing.

I got this feeling the other day when I read Petite Anglaise’s post (on 21 November – see link on right-hand side) about her (potential) new den in Paris that will help her carry on writing her memoir about her life in my birth place. It gave me the kick in the bum that I needed – I was all inspired again. ‘Stop wasting time, just do it now! Today, tomorrow, and every single day after that! Just WRITE!!!’ So Petite, if you read this one day, thank you and good luck with your memoir. I can’t wait to read it as I’m sure it will be as good as your blog, if not better.

One of the things that I have to come to terms with is the fact that no matter how much I love reading novels and thinking up ideas for my own and starting what will be ‘great novels’ in my wildest dreams, I probably will never be a novelist. No matter how much I would love to say ‘I’m a novelist’ some time in the near future, it probably won’t happen (I have to write ‘probably’ – never say never, as they say). I may be able to say ‘I’m a writer’. But if one can only be considered a writer if they are published, then even that is less than certain. (Julia Cameron, for one, disagrees totally with this idea, but even if I told Petite in one of my comments that ‘Of COURSE you are a writer’ even if her memoir hasn’t been published yet [but it will, she has a contract!], somehow I can’t apply the same principle to my own situation – I WRITE, but I’m not a WRITER.) ‘I’m a writer.’ That would be good enough for me, I suppose, but there is something even more mysterious about ‘being a novelist’.

I read today in my writing magazine (Mslexia – a wonderful magazine for female writers of all ages) a very good piece of advice: think of your novel in little scenes, and just write those scenes as they come to you. Don’t think about ‘the whole novel that I have to write’ – only think about these snippets of dialogues and those little ‘happenings’. This advice might help me with my current novel (three pages!). (Yes, I’m still going to try, and probably all my life! Just because I love novels too much and because I love coming up with ideas, sentences, character profiles, similes, non-cliché images. I have been writing stories since I was 8 years old after all – you can’t stop me now I’m 30! I will just carry on till I die, whether I get published or not.)

Still, on Saturday morning, I got up at 6.45 (I was wide awake) and I wrote for five hours non-stop. I think this might have happened once in my life – but only once: when I was writing the final chapter of my children’s novel. I was inspired and it just had to be finished that day, I had decided. I think I wrote for seven hours, in fact. But these five hours on Saturday were not devoted to my novel, as I would have liked them to be. They were spent revising many pages of the self-help book that I’ve been writing for nearly two years, adding more pages to it, and reviewing the proposal that I started putting together a few months ago. It felt good – really good.

But it wasn’t a novel, and I am 30 and getting too old to be a ‘young, fresh talent’.