New Year, New Decade, New Story

It's New Years Day. I realize that my writing is so sparse these days that most of you have probably moved on to other ventures. I too, have moved on. I'm not in Paris. I'm home. But, what I've moved onto is the fiction. I'm writing fiction, actually working on my novel instead of my blog.

When I went to Paris, I had the thought that I'd write fiction while I was there. What I didn't take into consideration is the time I actually spend writing, the hours and days it takes me to get even one polished chapter. I also didn't understand that almost instantaneously, I would see that I couldn't just "go forward" or "fill in the missing details of the environment," but rather I had to re-create the story I was telling.

The entire time I was in Paris, I had a "feel" of how the story was changing, but I did not know the new story. I tried things out in my mind and once I even tried my hand at drawing Géricault in through fiction, but I was unsuccessful, I didn't know how to do it.

I also was too busy to write fiction. Most of my days were spent out in the world of Paris and France. I only stayed home when I was ill, which I was for about a week near the end. Even then, I couldn't write fiction and spent my time hunting down more information via the Internet. In fact, that week of mostly staying in served me well, because I went back out into my neighborhood for two last walks right before I left, armed with much more understanding of what I was seeing and what I needed to be looking for. Those last two walks were some of the most important walks I took for my novel. They were literally loaded with specific information.

Now that I don't have Paris outside my door, I can only get there in one of two ways. I can read—and I have been reading a lot since coming home. I finished Stendhal's The Red and Black and I read my way through most of a book on called The Biography of Paris, an excellent history of Paris. I've also read through a guide book that was written in the sixties and traces the history of the ninth arrodissement, where my book is set. It gave me a lot of names of places that used to exist.

The second way to get there, is the obvious: I can write my novel. And that, I am happy to report is exactly what I've been doing. I've not only put out the opening chapter, the one I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, but I gone forward into the next chapter and, more importantly, I've been able to lay out the trajectory of my story—about forty chapters total.

I have discovered how the two pieces (what I wrote before leaving for Paris and what I've been writing since my return) fit together. I've discovered the through line, if you will. I've probably put something like 50 hours into the writing and mostly rewriting of the opening. It's on its second round this week in my writing group. That is to say, I gave it to my group last week, got their critique and went back to work on it after all that feedback and have now given it to them again. On Monday they'll give me more feedback.

I'm pretty sure that the draft I just gave them is getting close. I'm very pleased with it. I'm downright excited about it to be honest, and the changes that just went into this second drafting of it really make me happy. I keep seeing new things. The complexity keeps growing.

I also created a map. My old neighborhood, hugging Rue des Martyrs, is becoming a bit of a character in the book. The map shows me where everything I know about from the period is located—at least in my neighborhood, which in its day was known as Nouvelle Athènes. It's good that I have a sense of ownership and belonging, and sketching it really heightened that sense.

I started by drawing it out on regular typing paper. I used my handy-dandy Louvre pencil that I bought the day I went into the Louvre to sketch Delacroix and Géricault for my Art History class—which created the same sense of ownership and belonging for the Louvre, I might add. (More on this later.)

I copied the map once, and then when it really seemed I had it right, I copied it onto a large piece of card stock about 3 feet by 3 feet and marked things in different colors. (I bought a big eraser for the task and a pencil sharpener too.) My map is hanging on the wall right behind my desk and whenever I want to know anything about my neighborhood, I simply turn around. It's very exciting, actually, even though to say so must make me sound obsessive and silly. But, I can "see" where things are happening and that impacts what I write.

For example, I realized that Louise walked down Rue Bréda and that she got there because the bridal trail that comes up behind the hôtel where she was teaching her piano lesson went on past the house, and that she walked the trail, getting her boots all muddy.

About the pictures I've included: the first one is of a stretch of wall that's still standing. The Farmers-General Wall surrounded Paris in the early days of the 19th century and, in fact, cut Rue des Martyrs in half—it's southern end was incorporated into Paris, it's northern end was outside the wall climbing the hill toward the top of Montmartre. The next picture is Rue des Martyrs in the late 1800s, building renovation going on. The next picture is a sketch of La Brasserie, the café at the foot of Rue des Martyrs that was popular during the time of my book.  The last gem is a picture of Ary Scheffer's house before the facade was modernized and painted green. I was so happy to find that.