Paris apartment

Oh my god, look at these apartments, they are all so divinely beautiful. \r\n\r\nI want that one! No, that one. No, wait…. I can\’t choose, I want them all! \r\nLet\’s go and live in Paris, we\’ll have a gorgeous apartment in le Palais Royale, or rue Buci…… sigh…..\r\n \r\nhttp://parisapartment.wordpress.com/

Finishing the script for the short film

The script for the short film adaptation of The Silver Stopper (the Colette story) is finished! Finishing a project I love leaves me a bit muddled — on one hand, there’s the exhilaration of success; on the other, there’s the blueness of it being all over. So, pulling myself together: finished! Bravos, self-applause, cheap champagne and a celebratory dinner at the appropriately Parisian Le Métropolitain. I reminisced with a diabolo, an old childhood favourite: lemonade mixed with a mint syrup so marvellously fresh that it’s like drinking a delicious toothpaste.

What a surreal feeling to have completed a project in only two or three months, which for me is such a short time, it’s positively supersonic — my Max and Lucia short story took perhaps six months to complete, and I’ve been writing the Nights in Paris novel for two years now. (But I can’t dwell on that thought, it’s too disheartening.) I’ve registered the script with the screenwriter’s guild, which felt awfully grown-up and professional. I’ve also given the script to a couple of friends who have worked in film and theatre; now I’m anxiously awaiting their comments. I haven’t experienced sending off your small, only child to a faraway boarding school, but I imagine that there are some similarities. Should I have kept her at home, all to myself? Will the teachers think she is as much of a genius as I do? Are the other children cleverer and more popular than she is? When she comes back, will she have been so influenced by other people that she’s unrecognisable? Will she turn into a brat?

Enough worrying: I’m old enough to know by now that criticism has to be considered carefully, but it doesn’t have to be acted on if it doesn’t feel right. At a university creative writing course, I took everyone’s criticisms to heart and rearranged my novel in progress until it was completely changed, only for the class to be horrified and say it had been much better before. “But it’s what you told me to do!” I wanted to yell. Arrgh. So now I know. If this child does turn into a brat, at least I can change her back.

J’ai fini, j’ai fini le scénario! Ca m’a pris seulement deux or trois mois pour l’écrire, c’est vraiment extraordinaire — ça fait déjà deux ans que j’écris mon roman… On a fété ça en dînant chez Le Métropolitain, et j’ai évoqué mon enfance avec un diabolo fraîchement pimenté de menthe, comme un boisson fait d’un dentifrice délicieux…

Film locations for The Silver Stopper

The first draft of the script for the short film about Colette is finished! It wrote itself really; it’s been amazingly quick and easy. I’m not too sure about the title of the short film, though: I like my title The Silver Stopper for the Colette short story, but I wonder if it’s not exciting enough for a film. It needs something more thrilling, something that says: Parisian love triangle circa 1905! In the classiest way possible, of course.

The director, Toni, and I went to see the Katherine Mansfield house in Thorndon, recreated as it would have been when Katherine was growing up there in the 1890s. It’s beautiful, and would be perfect as a film location. We haven’t yet asked them if we can film in the house — I will be surprised if they say yes, to be honest (I had to hand over my bag in case it scratched the wallpaper, so I can’t imagine they’ll want actors lounging around in corsets on the white, lacy bedcovers or sitting on the embroidered chairs), but it won’t hurt to ask.

The hunt for locations begins! We need a 1900s kitchen, two bedrooms, two salons, and a hallway with stairs. This last requirement will seem odd if you live in Europe, where most hallways have stairs. But the only stairs in our home, and in most people’s homes here, are for going up or down (steep hills) to the front door. Stairs are almost exotic! We also need a horse — you’d think the horse would be the most difficult character to find, but in the weird, wonderful and surprising place that is New Zealand, we already have a few potential horsey actors.

The script is different from the story in that I’ve taken out all scenes of Parisian exteriors — it’s impossible to make Wellington look like Paris, so we’re not going to waste our time trying. There are three exterior scenes, but these are in gardens and woods, which can easily stand in for Paris. Never mind, descriptions of beautiful grey brick walls, pale blue shutters, and wrought iron balconies bursting with red geraniums, I haven’t abandoned you, I’m still keeping you in Nights in Paris!

J’ai fini le premier brouillon de mon scénario pour un film sur Colette! C’est épatant! Maintenant il faut trouver une ancienne maison pour filmer… pas façile en Nouvelle Zélande!

music and food to write to

The days of patiently waiting for the muse to arrive are over, or I would never get anything done! In lieu of the muse, the essentials are: my computer, of course (the one luxury I would take onto a desert island); a soundtrack chosen from several ‘writing’ CDs: something dreamy — Liszt or Satie; haunting and beautiful — Madeleine Peyroux or Jane Birkin; or mesmeric — the Gotan Project, chillout or Deva Premal; and my ultimate, the Henry and June soundtrack. I have only five or six CDs which allow me to concentrate on writing at the same time. The music has to have a fairly constant volume (no pounding beats or dramatic sonatas), and be something I can drift in and out of, as opposed to actually listen to. I save Joan Armatrading (her new album is fab), Natasha Atlas and ‘the L word’ compilations for when I’m doing the washing up!

I also need a large thermos of green tea and a generous supply of sugar-free chewing gum or Polo mints from Cool Britannica, the UK import shop. I sometimes feel as though I should be smoking those fancy French cigarettes with the white filter, especially when I’m writing descriptions of Paris, or naughty bits, but seeing as I don’t smoke, I need to do something with my mouth so I don’t grind my teeth to powder in an adrenaline-fueled writing frenzy!

Colette story short-listed for competition

The Silver Stopper is a short story I adapted from my novel, Nights in Paris. I entered the story into a historical fiction competition just before I left NZ. What a lovely surprise when I got home to find that I’d been long-listed — and an even nicer surprise a while later when I graduated into the short-list! The competition is run by Fish Publishing, based in Ireland — see their great website, www.fishpublishing.com.

And now I’m back home… it’s so sad that Paris is half the world away. I think the hardest thing for many Europeans about living in NZ is that travelling is so much more of an effort — we’re used to having countless countries just a few hours away — we’re used to being spoilt!

I’ve made a wonderful new inspiration board, to go with my original board and my writing CD. I now have a 1900s-Colette board and a 1930s-Anaïs board. Ideally, of course, I wouldn’t separate them, but I have so many fabulous Parisian pictures and photographs that it’s impossible to fit them on one board. I found some beautiful postcards in a Parisian gallerie — one of Kiki de Montparnasse, nude except for some bizarre shoes, sitting in a chair and stretching up, showing off the little tufts of hair under her arms and her superb, gravity-less breasts. Another postcard shows a couple at the famous drag bar Le Monocle, both the femme and the butch so theatrically made up that it seems ludicrous that butches really were mistaken for men in those days. I’m fascinated by postcards advertising cigarettes for women; I have one from 1900 and the other from the 1920s. They make smoking look so peaceful, relaxing and natural — both cards feature colourful flowers and sexy, hazy smoke.

J’ai aussi une copie d’un article de Colette qui date de 1906 et décrit son premier rôle de théâtre, «L’Amour, Le Désire, La Chimère». L’article est décoré de photos de Colette dans son costume de faune, a moité nue avec de jolies petites cornes, comme un petit diable adorable.

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