Author: “Conventions: The Garden At Paris,” “Passports,” “Frontiers,” and “Distances.” British Airways frequent flier. Lover of the Catskill Mountains...and the 1700s. New novel of 1797-1805, "Tomorrow The Grace," due out in 2019.
I have said here previously that I don’t count words when I write. (I disagree with the idea of measuring “progress” by daily “bean counting.”) I don’t even really look at page numbers. Early on in a manuscript especially, I just write and write and write.
Ladies, your man may want to say something extra-special to you today, but he may not be able to find the right words. Be understanding, please. It has always been such with many of us men.
Over a year and a half since I put its first words on a blank screen, Tomorrow is feeling increasing “today”: daily it is more complete. I had laughed to myself while sitting at that La Clusaz table as well that whenever it is finally finished, you may again think as you read some of it – as with parts of Conventions – that I have lost my creative mind.
“In San Francisco, the first place I work in USA, I meet an American woman who loved my French accent. I learned after that to speak it with women in America more. ‘I love your accent,’ they always say that,” he chuckled.
I had also anticipated I would not be writing much this week in France due to the fact four of us are unexpectedly sharing a small holiday apartment. So I had decided that I would at least read some while here.
“Are you going to be writing while we’re here?” our friends’ daughter asked me at one point as we walked in the town.
“I hope so,” I replied.
Writers: NEVER EVER EVER apologize for YOUR imagination and YOUR creations.
Gather ’round, kids, and let me share with you a taste 20th century living. We booked our coming trip entirely using the internet: flights, accommodation, taxi. Before the internet existed, to book an airline ticket it was commonplace in those olde days to visit a business – a physical building – that was called a “travel agency.”
Writing is much like swimming: taking pointers while on land is helpful of course, and having a lesson or two or three in the water is necessary, but ultimately you must attempt to swim in the deep end entirely on your own.
And I find when I return to the keyboard I may write whatever initially jumps to my mind. I may ask myself, “It has been a few days, so how is ‘Miss Sánchez‘ today? Maybe she’s off to see Mont Saint Michel? And perhaps she has a dog now?”
We tend in our 21st century to consider reading a silent and private endeavor. Yet for most of history reading was far more social than it is today.
When a relative – the same one I’d mentioned last week – messaged me yesterday through Instagram that she wanted me to suggest which of my novels she might read first, I had no choice really. I had to talk about them directly…
Simply having a story to tell is not enough.
I recall being assigned it in graduate school (too long ago now) in a course on Russian government/history. (There’s a real shocker, eh?)
So much for “privacy,” and “controlling” and “protecting” your personal data, eh?
Welcome here to my semi-weekly journal covering novel writing, travel, international matters, and whatever related that pops to mind…. sometimes seriously, sometimes rather less so. The center (centre) of my authoring universe. I hope you enjoy your visit.
Edward: “I hope I may be quite honest with you that I will be quite pleased for the opportunity to become far better acquainted with Miss Sánchez once we reach Holland…”
Robert: “My friend who wrote that letter, he’s passed eighty now. When I was in Paris fifty years ago, where I met him, he loved her dearly. And, oh, Nancy, how she loved him…”
Béatrice: “We will all of us have a drink to everyone we remember and love.”
Bill: “Fiction comes from fact, and lots of fact makes great fiction when you re-write it as fiction.”
Valérie: “Because you are born on a farm, this does not make you a horse!”
Isabelle: “I’ll set the table… This is better than a restaurant. Oh, and by when I leave… I expect you will have told me all about General de Gaulle also.”
