I was going to build to this but it’s you, I’ll just go there. Recently I went to Paris, bought a pack of ten metro tickets online, and I’ve still got six left. Consequently I have decided it would be a terrible waste of about 12 euros if I don’t go back to use them up.<\/p>\n
In a few weeks’ time, I will. I’m going to Paris on my first-ever writing retreat, the first despite a very long time now of being a writer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For reasons passing understanding, I mentioned that I was considering doing something like this, I mentioned it in an online chat and I think I even said it on 58keys, my YouTube channel. Wherever I said it, two things happened. One was that I got a Buy Me a Coffee donation expressly to be spent making the retreat happen, which was startlingly fantastic. And the other was that I was told by a friend that he’d been on a writing retreat where he was the sole person who wrote while every single other person — and every other married person too — spent the entire time in what he described as a hurricane of sex.<\/p>\n
So I’ve decided I need a writing retreat.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But rather than go on some organised one and, you know, maybe learn anything, instead I really have booked a hotel in Paris. First I’d thought I’d just stay at home, switch my phone to stun, and write away in my office. Then I figured no, I’d go to Bath instead and have a fanboy’s great time going around places Jane Austen has written about. Then I considered London, too.<\/p>\n
And there’s a writer I so nearly ended up working with that on emailing to say it was a shame that project didn’t turn out, I offered to buy him lunch some time. I’ve nothing to tell you, I said, and nothing to ask, which turned out to be handy because he hasn’t replied.<\/p>\n
Possibly I shouldn’t have told him about the hurricane of sex.<\/p>\n
Anyway. I considered Edinburgh. It’s a fine city. Cardiff is great. I mean, Cardiff Bay and that beautiful Millennium Centre, fantastic.<\/p>\n
But I spotted a connection here and realised that I was looking at cities because I need cities. I realised I was looking for anywhere other than the city I live in, because this much is certain: if I stayed in or even near Birmingham, then the smallest breeze would send me right back to my office.<\/p>\n
Instead, I’m going to be alone in the 19th Arrondissement of Paris and I’m going to visit the cafe from “Before Sunset”, but otherwise I will be writing and writing and writing.<\/p>\n
It’s an indulgence, and spending a lot of money to not waste 12 euros is possibly questionable. But when this comes up in a few weeks’ time, it will be after an extra-busy time, and it will be right before another extra-busy time.<\/p>\n
I’d ask if you want to come with me, but that suddenly seems awkward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was going to build to this but it’s you, I’ll just go there. Recently I went to Paris, bought … Continue reading