Running in Luxembourg Gardens

The tropical drizzle weeds away the, gotta-burn-those-champagne-calories joggers from the regulars.

Today I thought I'd run counterclockwise.  Most people do.   I see myself coming around the senate where  the Maiollol nude stands guard next to the gendarme. There, la tour Montparnasse disappears into the mist beyond the circular reflection pool where kids use long sticks to push wooden sailboats on windy days.  It's the same at the Tuilleries. You know those stiff pointillism paintings by Serat, kids pushing colorful toy boats near the Louvre.  The Tulleries is a dust bowl, Luxembourg is a dust bowl.  I'm glad it's drizzling.

The pre-autum haze is a pale yellow light and smells like must and fallen leaves.  Horse chestnuts litter the ground, no kids are there to collect them. It's too early.

But instead of running counterclockwise I lay in the bed, it's wednesday, there's no school.  Ugh! another day away from the studio at least I can sleep in once in a blue moon.

What I need to do is run the round and take notes of the sculptures. The Pan behind the reflecting pool, the ode to Delacroix near the orangerie and the various busts.  The MC in my book needs to know them by heart.

Let's start the coffee.

I déjà see it

Franglais is a true bastard language.  

"That's a fish?"  asked Cherie.  "I déjà see it."

"You already saw it." I corrected her.

"I alweady see it."

"Where did you see it?"

"At the boucher."

"I love it when you say boucher. Can you say it again? No, but listen Love,  the boucher sells meat, this is a tuna head, it's a kind of fish." 

"But, you know, the butcher had it.  Moi, je l'ai déjà see it, with the flowers."

"You mean at the market?  Did you see it at the market?"

"Yes maman, with papa."

"The man that sells fish at the market is called a fishmonger.   Don't ask me who invented that word."

"WHAT?"

"Rien." 

written for the prompt déjà vu on GBE 2: Blog On

A Piece of Cake

Wouldn' t you just dream to have a workspace like this? 

It's where I get to play all day.  I love it, absolutely love it.  One of the best things about the space, is that there is no internet.  At first I was worried but after three weeks of creative freedom and high productivity I am pleased.

Sometimes I feel like I am icing a cake.

I can't post this stuff on my other blog that is reserved just for paintings because there are three live feeds that pull the photos for painter related websites.

Way back in 2008 I got too much hate mail so decided to impersonalize my blog posting.  Even though my blog had been chosen by a travel  website as one to follow, I decided to let it die.  That was my Vagabond artist blog. 

When I started this blog I felt it should be specifically oriented towards writing. I love writing but there's more in my life than that.  And it seemed too much like brown nosing for a platform.  I was doing the right thing, building a platform.

...

Paris is awesome in August.  So few people are here. Lots of cool people hanging out in Luxembourg Gardens, they're easy to spot.  Not so stuffy.  This August I met an Australian-French couple and their kids.  She's a cellist and he is an orchestra conductor.  We see them this afternoon if all the kids follow our schedules, right!

Just yesterday I met a professor of writing classes from Harvard.

September is another story: la rentrée.  Eeeks, stress! Schools starts.  All the classical moms are back with their kids dressed in grey, beige and light blue. The chocolate shops display giant pencils, black boards and satchels all made of solid dark chocolate.

For me, la rentrée means blissful studio time.  My work is my pleasure.  I can't wait until Tuesday to go ice that canvas with gobs of oil paint.  To dust it with spray paint and to work on the 4th first draft of that memoir.  The lump that is weighing down the hammock.  

Thanks Again Janet Reid

This  quote from Janet Reid's  Biblio Buffet interview From The Editors Desk, the tough work of writing a reported version of their lives, makes me want to give it another try, to write a memoir.

About six months ago I wrote to Janet Reid thanking her for her blog because I realized that I am not a writer.  I am just another one of those laughing stock the editors snicker over. Someone who feels compelled to tell their story. At least I don't have blue hair, though I may wear a bracelet made by my daughter. I thank her again for her generous blog. 

I didn't know what genre I was writing but now I know thanks to a book I splurged for as soon as I read about and thanks again to Janet Reid's blog.  (Her blog and her Query Shark blog are always the first one's I read on the stratosphere.)  The book is  Shimmering Images by Lisa Dale Norton.  Ms.  Reid describes the genre as Non-commercial Memoir but she also refers to it as Commercial Non-fiction. Surely the first is a sub to the second.  

Long ago I wanted to major in creative writing, instead became an oil painter.  But writing gives me great pleasure, even if I am a rookie.  So I'm starting this blog again and will be  returning to the saturday afternoon writing workshops at Shakespeare and Co.  Last year I signed up for a writing workshop at WICE and did not like it.  The Shakespeare and Co. workshops are way more interesting for me, perhaps because they are so brutal.    

After trashing the third first draft, over 150 pages written passionately, here I am again. This time I have a method and a structure that draws my plan like the affiches marking the Parisian metro exits.

Vitoria Lynn Schimdt's Book in a Month and her Story Structure Architect are part of the material that  I've been studying to understand structuring a longer work.  There is no way I'll write it in a month with an upcoming show and house move in the planning.

Here we go again. 

Wice in Paris and manuscript lengths

Today I start the five day marathon at the GMAC - Grand Marche d'Art Contemporain at the Bastille in Paris.  Today is for hanging but tomorrow visitors come and I'll be there for 11 hours then only 9 hours for the following four days.  I'll be happy when it's finished.  It feels good to prepare for a show and finally hang it and sell paintings.

Then I start the first course at Wice.  It is a gift to myself to help me organize and finish the manuscript White Sky in Paris.  Seven dates with Dr. Gretel Furner who offers  Writing the Migrant Soul.  I am a migrant soul.

When the show is over I can concentrate on the write1sub1 shorts and start planning that other story about  time travel that has circled in my head.  I realized after reading a post on Querytracker blog that each story has it's length and should organically reach its length.  This makes sense to me as a painter.  Each painting plays itself out and forcing it into something is always artificial.  One brush stroke can change the whole tone of the painting and even kill it.  

Tagged Truck

Another tagged truck in Paris.  This one has a great mix of pochoir and NY style graffitti.  I like  the forgotten white top.

Robert Crais

I just finished the The Forgotten Man by Robert Crais.  Check out his website.  He's pretty hot and how accomplished.  

You may say, wow that was published five years ago, yeah well.  But I lived in a mental cave for the past 20 years or so and I don't have a Kindle, not many people do here in Paris.  When I was in the English books' isle of my local library trying to choose a novel, my three year old picked out Robert Crais.  Awhile back I saw Janet Reid blogging about meeting him at the Bouchercon so made a mental note.