[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.]
Writing in Paris is likely to entail writing in public—your hotel room or studio will likely be cramped, and you may find it hard to spend many consecutive hours in it. Because you are probably unaccustomed to writing in public, you may want to practice at home first. I’ve been writing in public for forty years and I love it. I especially love writing in bus stations. I’ve written in Mexican bus stations, Korean bus stations, Portuguese bus stations, Hungarian bus stations—all with equal pleasure.
In Paris, I like to write at the Gallieni bus station. Connected to the last metro stop on the Gallieni line is a complex of restaurants and shops and, up some escalators and down some corridors, Paris’s international bus terminal. In an immigrant neighborhood east of Paris, just over the border of the city, it is exactly where you’d expect a third-class transportation option to be located. Whether Canadian students, Arab migrant workers, or returning Romanians and Bulgarians, people taking the bus to Bucharest or Sofia expect no better.
Every few minutes a drama unfolds. One day I choose a bench in the boarding area for the Paris-London bus because the dramas there may unfold in English. Almost as soon as I’m seated, a drama commences. The British bus driver checking passports rejects a Chinese man and his wife. The driver gruffly explains that the man’s passport is unacceptable. It contains contradictory information, indicating in one place that the man has a child and in another place that he doesn’t. The Chinese couple will not be allowed on the bus. Suddenly they have no way to get from Paris to London and their flight home to China.
My imagination ignites. What if they have a child (the child alluded to in the passport), and he is currently staying with relatives in London? I spin out that novel, as any novelist would. It is a novel that begs to be written from the child’s point of view. He is staying with relatives he has never met before. His parents, who have gone off on a small trip to Paris, fail to return. He wakes up one morning, it is drizzling in that London way….
No! I rein in my imagination and return to the nonfictίon book I’ve come to work on.
Nearby the bus for Sofia is loading. A family seems to have lost something important, a piece of luggage, a grandfather, a child. The bus driver is arguing in Bulgarian with two men who look like assassins. It seems that they don’t have tickets but still expect to ride. The wild energy of loading commences; the lost family member, a young man, languidly appears; the passengers crowding around the bus pour aboard as if dropped down a funnel. At the last second the two assassins are let on.
A spy novel that would be fascinating to write suddenly invades me. No! I slap that novel away and return to my nonfiction. What a pleasant way to spend a few hours! You write what you intend to write and at the same time fill up your cup with a dozen new ideas for books—books that you may never write, but that thrilled you for a few minutes.
On the way back, four young Brits board my métro car. At the next stop, two of the many gypsy musicians who ply the métro hop on. The Brits smile in recognition. The gypsies launch into a lively accordion-and-fiddle rendition of a folk tune that I’ve heard on the métro many times already. Then the strangest thing happens. The Brits, who must be conservatory students, start playing along with the gypsies in thin air.
One Brit plays the piano, the second plays the violin, the third the flute, the fourth the clarinet. They play perfectly. You can just tell. They keep tempo, dip when the music dips, bounce when the music bounces. They are completely serious (though mock-serious), four Cheshire cats performing their senior recital—knowing, physical, adroit, accomplished. It is a perfect Monty Python skit.
Next to me sit a woman of color and her young daughter, a girl of six or seven. The girl has to peer around her seat to watch the musicians and the accompanying Brits, which she does with wide-eyed wonder. When we say that a child is born innocent, it is this look that we have in mind. It is entirely possible that this girl will become a musician because of this moment; or a writer, penning a novel about a gypsy girl and a West End piano prodigy; or a painter who marries the smoky haze of jazz clubs with the heat of the African sun. Just look at her!
I hadn’t planned to write, but how can I not? Leonardo said, “Always carry your little pad.” What does it mean if you don’t? What does it signify if you leave your writing tools at home? It takes no Freudian analyst to make the interpretation that you find it too easy not to write. Write in your company cafeteria, on the subway to work, in line at the home supply store. When a sight tugs at your heart, pull out your pad and write.
I often write in churches, more so in Paris than anywhere else. I love the ancient ones the best, the bare, vaulted ones, the simple stone ones that let in almost no light. Because it rains in Paris much of the winter and because, to keep to your austere writing regimen, you will need plenty of free places to write, you too will probably end up writing in churches. You may find yourself doing so even if your religion is writing rather than one of the traditional creeds.
Indeed, you may want to elevate your passion for writing to the level of faith. Here is a reasonable writer’s creed. “I belong to the First Church of Writing. I affirm that truth, beauty, and goodness are cornerstone virtues of the human experiment, that individuals for whom this idea resonates must lead the way for others, and that writing is just another name for this reluctant leadership. I make some things up, I tell some useful truths, I try to use words wisely and well, and I make my meaning with a pad and pen.”
We can’t say with any precision what we worship, as it isn’t creativity, human nature, soul, spirit, love, or life. What it’s closest to may be the following: we worship our own moral nature and the heroic effort required of us to be true, beautiful, and good. We worship something in us that is the best the universe has to offer. Only potential until we free it, it is as real as iron once we act.
But living it!—there’s the rub. If your daily routine is to wake up at dawn, take a quick shower, dive into rush hour traffic, make phone calls as you drive to work, and race headlong from task to task for the next fourteen hours, how does writing fit into your life? If you had a manor, gardens, servants, and an independent income, then perhaps you could write properly. But with life as you find it, where can you find the opportunity?
In Paris. That week, month or year that you carve out of a secular life to come to Paris is your time to write—and worship. Wander into Saint Julien le Pauvre, a Left Bank church dating back to around 1200. University meetings were held there until 1524, when student protests caused the parliament to ban all Sorbonne riffraff from the church. Now a Greek Orthodox church, Saint Julien is a perfect place to get out of the rain, contemplate your natural religion, and write. Use the churches of Paris for your own purposes. Who could begrudge you praying in your own way?
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