Writing about writing.

What to do on a sleepless night in Paris? Well, update my blog, I guess.

I sleep all day and write all night. That's not 100% true, but it's mostly true. It's more like I sleep too late, go buy food or go to cathedrals or go look at clothes I can't afford, then make dinner and spend the rest of the evening writing, ripping out pages, scratching out and adding things all over the place, and eventually I fall into bed.

It's a schedule that's working out really well for me, in fact. Although maybe being so absorbed in my writing makes me a little bit of a strange person when I set out into the rest of the world. Oh well.

What am I writing? Everything. I write what I see, what I know. I write who I know. My inspiration is always so obvious, I think. I sit down to write fiction and inevitably realize that the character I'm writing bears a certain resemblance (and by that I mean entirely similar) to someone that I know. I sit down to write poetry and volumes about Paris, about living in a city, about those that I miss, just pour out. I can't separate myself and my circumstances from my writing. I'm not saying that I write simple accounts of everything that happens to me. The events are fiction, the stories are stories. But they all come from inside of me, from what I know and who I am. Maybe that makes me less talented than people who can write objectively, who can write and entirely exclude themselves from the process. But maybe it also makes me and what I write a little bit more real, too.

The things I will miss when I leave Paris: my alone time and French baked goods.

Oh, and also half-bottles of wine in restaurants for 5 euros. I'll miss that, too.