A Week in Paris
It’s a week tomorrow since I arrived in the Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris after hauling my enormous suitcase through the transport strike crowds at the Gare du Nord. I’m spending a month in residence here and, now I’ve finally settled in, I thought I’d give you a quick overview of what I’ll be up to whilst in Paris.
Firstly, I’m working on a series of new Postcard Stories, all based on individual art works exhibited in Paris. I sent the first batch out this morning and it’s already been a great excuse to visit some of the city’s incredible galleries and museums. I’m specifically looking for stories in the pieces which might often be overlooked so this month, you’ll mostly find me in the tiny little rooms at the back of the Louvres or scribbling away in some of the more obscure museums. Three down. About a million to go.
Secondly, I’m working on a YA novel. I keep working on YA novels and giving up because they are desperately difficult to write. But this particularly idea’s been trailing me around for months and months now and this residency has given me the perfect opportunity to sit down with the concept, write into the characters and see if there’s anything worth developing here. I’m ten thousand words in and I do not hate it yet but my personal wall’s always been around about the twenty thousand word mark, so maybe come back to me next week and see if it’s still going swimmingly.
Finally, I’m reading a lot. There’s an amazing Irish literature collection here at the CCI and once I get through the backpack of books I’ve hauled with me, I’m going to be ransacking the collection for novels I’ve always meant to get round to reading. I’m also continuing with my Agatha Christie project. I’ve just been informed that it’s 100 years since her first book was published and my project’s a great way to celebrate that. I’m going to pretend that this has always been my intention. If you don’t know anything about #MyYearWithAgathaC you can read about it here on my blog and keep an eye out for the little fan fiction stories I’ll be dropping around Paris this month. I’m also hoping to get to some readings at Shakespeare and Co, maybe visit some of the city’s best cinemas and of course sample as much of the food and wine as I can.
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I’ve been reading Agatha Christie’s autobiography in instalments, (it’s quite the beast), this week and loved this section about self-awareness.
I remember seeing my own grandson Matthew when he must have been, I suppose about two and a half. He did not know I was there. I was watching him from the top of the stairs. He walked very carefully down the stairs. It was a new achievement and he was proud of it, but still somewhat scared. He was muttering to himself, saying: “This is Matthew going down stairs. This is Matthew. Matthew is going down stairs. This is Matthew going down stairs.”
I feel a little bit like Matthew going down stairs this week. Writing in Paris is the sort of thing writers in movies do. It doesn’t feel real. One week in and I’ve not yet relaxed. It’s a new achievement, all this sitting in cafes, scribbling in notebooks, attempting to look like the genuine article. It feels as if I’m acting the role of someone who’s a writer, writing in Paris, where you’re meant to write. I’ve a little voice constantly running through my head. “This is Jan writing in Paris. This is Jan writing in Paris.” I have not been this self-conscious for years. I’m also tripping over and bumping into way more things. Everything feels like a scene from a film and I’m not sure who I’m playing yet.
Last night I went to hear the American author John Freeman speak in Shakespeare and Co, (the voice in my head ran a running commentary throughout, “This is Jan going to a reading in Shakespeare and Co. This is Jan becoming a big cliche of herself,”). I found myself talking to another writer in the line, a nice non-fiction writer from NYC, both of us tripping over ourselves to establish we were proper writers, with actual published books, not just the sort of people who come to Paris to be writers and go to readings in Shakespeare and Co. I could hear other people in the line having similar conversations. Clearly, there’s a lot of self-conscious writers knocking around. Anyway, all this to say. I’m not quite myself in this city yet. It may take a few more days to turn off my inner narrator and just eat baguettes, and drink good wine, and go to the Louvre and write my stories without noticing every little move I make.
I will check in next week with further updates. By then I hope to have made more progress with my French. I’m trying but the Ballymena’s wild strong in me. Like today I spent five full minutes trying to tell the woman at the Post Office that I wanted eight stamps for my postcards. In the end I resorted to holding up eight fingers. “Ah,” she said, in equally woeful English, “nine,” and handed me twelve stamps. This is typical of my interactions so far. Fingers crossed I will soon assimilate.
