Inconnu

Inconnu (Fr.)/ Unknown (Eng.) noun: not known, understood or recognized; strange, new, undiscovered, untravelled, unmapped, undetermined, undisclosed, unspecified, unfamiliar; secret, not revealed;  not established or verified.

"Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little."
- Agnes de Mille, American dancer, choreographer, publisher

Perfectionnisme

Perfectionnisme (Fr.)/Perfectionism (Eng): a propensity for being displeased with anything that is not perfect or does not meet extremely high standards.

And as far as my creative endeavors are concerned, I suffer from this.

I don't feel finished with my NaNoWriMo piece although the deadline was four days ago and I hit submit. I feel that it really needs a final chapter, a conclusion. What happened to the woman who found love in Paris? Where is she now? What did it all represent in the grand scheme of things? The ending could be 1-2 pages as far as I am concerned, so the length is not what has been keeping me from the sensation of having crossed the finish line-- perfectionism is.

I have simultaneously been participating in the 12-week Artists' Way program and find it auspicious timing that this week's chapter is all about Perfectionism.

Here is an except from the Artist's Way chapter on Perfectionism, by Julia Cameron:

"Tillie Olsen correctly calls it the knife of the perfectionist attitude in art. You may call it something else. Getting it right, you may call it, or fixing it before I go any further. You may call it having standards. What you should be calling it is perfectionism."

"Perfectionism has nothing to do with getting it right. It has nothing to do with fixing things. It has nothing to do with standards. Perfectionism is a refusal to let yourself move ahead. It is a loop-- an obsessive, debilitating closed system that causes you to get stuck in the details of what you are writing or painting or making and to lose sight of the whole."

"Perfectionism is not a quest for the best. It is a pursuit of the worst in ourselves, the part that tells us that nothing we do will ever be good enough-- that we should try again."

"No we should not."

"A book is never finished. But at a certain point you stop writing and go on to the next thing. That is the normal part of creativity-- letting go. We do the best we can by the light we have to see by."



With that said, I will let the ending be exactly where it is was of the official NaNoWriMo deadline, let go, and find comfort that its unfinished-ness could be the beginning in disguise-- perhaps for a sequel.

Les Essentiels: Novembre

1. Being able to talk to my Mom whenever I need/want The fact that she is only a phone call away is something that I am grateful for on a daily basis.

2. Rodin Face Oil. Now that the weather has changed, it keeps me hydrated.

3. Moleskin notebooks: for work, school, journaling, and just keeping track of all my inspirations. I have four active books in rotation at all times. And a tall stack of filled books.

4. Invitations to Hawaii, Noyers-sur-Serein, and Vienna presenting themselves when I least expect it.

5. NaNoWriMo for that kick in the ass to complete something that is very important to me.

6. Botot toothpaste makes brushing my teeth an event that I look forward to.

7. Weekly artist dates with myself per The Artist's Way program. The morning pages that are also part of the program are pretty incredible as well, for example this morning writing three pages filled with gratitude was a pretty fantastic way to start the day.

Love this pice of art at the Pompidou

8. Fall runs through Paris. Looking down is now just as amazing as looking up and around.

9. Lobster sandwich picnics at Spring, with a couple who gives me evidence that it exists by showing me what real love looks like after many years.

10. Making stateside plans to see my entire family and all my incredible friends during my upcoming visit, and knowing that I will return to Paris, where beautiful things like this happen in places where you least expect them:

Le magnétisme

Photo by Garance Dore

"'Tis curious that we only believe as deep as we live. We do not think heroes can exert any more awful power than that surface-play which amuses us. A deep man believes in miracles, waits for them, believes in magic, believes that the orator will decompose his adversary; believes that the evil eye can wither, that the heart's blessing can heal; that love can exalt talent; can overcome all odds. From a great heart secret magnetisms flow incessantly to draw great events."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (excerpt from Beauty)

Deux fois

Deux fois (Fr.)/ Twice (Eng.) adverb:  two times; in two cases; on two occasions.

This is Day Ten of the month long NaNoWriMo  (National Novel Writing Month) Challenge. Or as I like to call it, The Month That I Slept a Total of 30 Hours and Drank as Many Bottles of Wine.

I am proud to say that I have stuck with it so far (there's still time to jump ship) despite my better (saner) judgement. Everyday the goal is to write approx. 1,700 words in order to reach the 50,000 word goal at the end of the month. I am at 16,000 (how did that happen?) I already have a very full plate so taking on this challenge, on top of work, school, and Paris, not to mention zero skills as a writer, is probably considered a Category 5 act of insanity.

It would have been easy for me to have abandoned the mission once I realized that a novel is supposed to be fiction, and to write fiction you must first have a main character and a story to tell.  I had neither. Instead I decided to retell my own story of the first time I moved to Paris in 2006. At least that gave me a no excuse way to get started. Plus it is a story that I have been encouraged to retell.  So that is what I am doing.

Suffice it to say, I am both bored with and amused by my story. Retelling it has found me looking at it in a whole new light. And on Day Ten I am rethinking both the beginning and the end.

"We write to experience life twice."
- Anais Nin

L'art

Turbo by Baptitse Debombourg, Galerie Patricia Dorfmann, Paris

“If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don’t have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I’m not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”
-Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country, 2005

La peur

La peur (Fr.)/ Fear (Eng.) noun: a feeling of agitation and anxiety caused by the presence or imminence of danger.

Charlotte Rampling: The Look on Nowness.com.

Today is Day Three of a 30-day challenge to write a 50,000-word novel (National Novel Writing Month).To keep on the pace, I should write approximately 1,700 words per day. To say that I am behind that pace is an understatement. I spent Day One in a drunken state hoping that the wine would deliver me with a story idea, a brilliant character, a setting. Something. Anything. Instead it gifted me a hellacious hangover and zero words. Day Two I was too hungover to write, although I did birth a rather long (dare I say 1,700 words long?) mental list of reason why quitting was a good, no a great idea.

This morning I awoke to a fabulous bit of advice in my inbox... "Just plan to write a 50,000-word pile of hot steaming shit." Which is what I have now officially begun to do.

"Write what you know" I once heard said about the writing process. After too much coffee and a bowl of fruit,  I have written 2,936 words about the first time I tried living in Paris, back in 2006. Only 47,064 steaming hot words left to excrete.

Is there a story line here? A plot? Interesting character development? I have no freaking idea.

"There's an animal excitement about confronting situations where you have no idea what the outcome will be. When you're presenting yourself in front of crowds... what can happen. There's a challenge element to the exposure which is quite, well it's almost erotic. In a sense challenging your senses to that, you're pushing yourself to go dangerously into places. But that's what fuels most interesting things. Fear."

- Charlotte Rampling, for The Nowness