[Many of us are caught in the following predicament: we have tremendous pent-up wanderlust, but we don’t feel that it’s quite safe enough to travel yet. So, let me present you with some excerpts from my book A Writer’s Paris to help slake some of that wanderlust, while at the same time providing you with lessons of values to writers and all creatives. These essays also connect to my recent book Redesign Your Mind, as they present new ways of thinking about the creative process and the writing life.]
It is one thing not to write at home. At home, you can keep yourself busy with the rigors and routines of ordinary life and not quite notice that you aren’t writing. There is always another errand to run, another meal to prepare, another corner of the garden to weed. Time is abundant and easily squandered, and also fleeting and hard to grasp. There is always tomorrow, but never today.
It is another thing, however, to not write when you’ve come to Paris to write. That’s a failure much harder to ignore, albeit a common one. One in a hundred writers comes to Paris and writes up a storm. The other ninety-nine arrive and fall into a non-writing routine. They wander the streets and feel their hearts bursting, but (except to jot down the occasional impression) rarely pull out their pads.
One day of not writing is nothing. Two days are nothing. The occasional sick days, blue days, play days, and days of pure idleness are nothing. But the I-haven’t-written-in-two-weeks-and-I’m-not- even-close-to-writing not writing—that’s intolerable. Each day spent that way is a new reproach and buries you deeper in a pit of regrets. The deeper that pit grows, the less possible it feels to claw your way out. One day you shake your head and realize that you’ve given up the ghost.
Not writing may dog you from home, where you were already not writing. It may creep up on you as your Paris days unfold. Maybe you came to Paris, had your share of lovely times and crises, and actually managed to write—though not as much as you had hoped. Paris turned out to be rainier and lonelier than you expected, and fewer days found you thinking about your novel. You got sick once or twice, recovered, had a money scare, had some lovely times by the Seine, and, one day, completely stopped creating. You went off traveling to the Normandy coast with some new acquaintances and got embroiled in their interpersonal dramas. It was sexy and wild, but also stupid. Then you spent a week obsessing about the tall waitress (or was it the slim waiter?) at the corner café. After that obsession ran its course you got caught up following a lurid current event on television, the abduction of a schoolgirl from her Paris apartment. You sat glued in front of the television for a week, manically flipping channels for updates. If you were writing, you would never have succumbed to such a distraction. But you weren’t writing.
Now you haven’t written for two months. Several of those days you spent entirely in bed. You really don’t feel well, mentally or physically. You attribute your not writing to your low-grade illness and announce to yourself that you haven’t the “necessary equilibrium” to write. You feel scared, scared that this downturn may be permanent. For the first time since you arrived in Paris you’ve begun thinking about heading home early, your nonrefundable ticket be damned.
What will you do? What can you do?
First of all, cry. Really cry. Feel as sad as you actually feel. Cry because you’re lonely, because you’ve spent too much money, because you hate the novel you’re writing. Really sob! Better a wild thunderstorm than month after month of dreary weather. Feel genuinely sad and not routinely depressed. Feel!
Then make a plan. Let it be short and sweet. For instance: Get up, even if you don’t feel like it. Get dressed, even if you don’t feel like it. Gather up your writing, even if you don’t feel like it. Go to a café, order a croissant and coffee, open up your pad and write, even if you don’t feel like it. Maybe you hate your current novel: Love it by writing. Maybe you have no idea what comes next in the novel: Learn by writing. Maybe you want to quit: Persevere by writing. The plan in a nutshell: Get up, go out, and write.
If you make it to the café and manage to write, celebrate with a second croissant, some extra butter and jam, and a second cup of coffee. Say “I will do this again this afternoon, and tomorrow morning, and tomorrow afternoon.” Slam the table top for emphasis. “I will do this again this afternoon, damn it!” Then smile. Your heart is beating again. Your blood is boiling. You have a pulse, a future, a brain that works. You’ve come back from the dead.
Look around you. Isn’t it a different Paris? I bet it is. Even magical places lose their allure when you abandon your art. The Seine becomes just another toxic open sewer, Notre Dame just another pile of chiseled stones. Then you manage to write for an hour and the magic returns. Paris smiles again. The City of Light lives up to its name. You dance back to your cramped studio.
If you’ve come all the way to Paris to write and you’re not writing, don’t capitulate. Prove the exception. It is common not to write, and unusual to return to the trenches. You can be among the ninety-nine who regret, or you can be the hundredth who writes. You can return from Paris with excuses or with a manuscript. Which will it be? Shed salty tears, pack up your notebook, head to a café, and find your way back to your writing.
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