Preparing to Disappear Into Literary Paris

Preparing to disappear into literary Paris sounds romantic.

In reality, it looks like a new, completely unrelated job, marked-up chapters, cold coffee, eight more workshop critiques waiting for me, and a novel collecting dust in the corner.

I’m trying to remember what it feels like to do anything without glancing at the clock every ten minutes. I’m sure you know that feeling.

In eight weeks, I’ll leave for a writing workshop in Paris.

I’ll be staying in the Latin Quarter, carrying those chapters through cafés and narrow streets once crowded with writers far more talented and certain than I feel. I’m excited to finally put faces to the names behind all these pages.

Meanwhile, my own story waits impatiently for me at home.

It’s a romantic suspense novel about Tally — an aerialist and trauma nurse from an affluent Virginia family. She veered off The Hill trajectory long ago, but her carefully ordered life begins unraveling after an attempted kidnapping and the sudden return of Darren, her childhood frenemy turned former Special Forces operator. He comes home to help manage his father’s growing government contract company, but chaos seems to follow him everywhere he goes.

The story has nothing to do with Paris.

And somehow, it has everything to do with Paris—at least that’s what I’m telling myself!

Because I think part of being a writer is learning how to observe. To gather atmosphere before you understand exactly where it belongs. Maybe it’s the history. Maybe it’s the rhythm of the city. Maybe it’s simply standing in places where generations of writers have doubted themselves and written anyway.

 Right now, I’m planning a weekend—or at least a Saturday morning—to get to work.