Writer's Notebook - James Rafferty Blog

A Choice of Setting

One of the fundamental decisions a writer needs to make is to choose the setting for their story or novel.  I have travelled quite a bit, so this affords me a broad palette of possibilities when deciding where to set the story.  Sometimes I write science fiction, so there's an additional element of time which can also contribute to the overall setting. 

My first novel, Growing Up Single,  is a coming-of-age story set in multiple locations. I ended up using several of the places I'd traveled to as settings, including New York City, Paris, the Riviera and Montreal.  When writing a setting, I like to visualize in my mind's eye what I see and then include salient details in the description that I put in to words.  My goal is to sketch in enough sensory detail so that the reader can imagine them being within in the scene. I'm visual by nature, but adding a sprinkling of description using the other senses can really flesh out a scene.  Let's consider an example. 

I love being on the water, but the ocean has a very different feel than being alongside a lake.  If I'm writing about a walk on the beach by the seashore, the description would seem incomplete if no mention was made of the salt-infused air.  One might also feel the squishing of sand between the toes and hear cries of a passing seagull on this same walk.  As writers, we can include all of this sensory data in our descriptions, or weave in particular highlights and let the reader add in the rest. 

I find that writing about particular locations is highly subjective.  Paris is one of my favorite places, but when I listen to people talk about the city, inevitably they have found their own version of the city which has nuances that differ from my own experience.  At the same time, when I read Hemingway's delightful memoir, A Moveable Feast, much of which was set in the Paris of the Twenties, the city he described was quite recognizable.  One can still visit famous cafes by Montparnasse and other parts of Paris, and imagine that Hemingway is over in a corner scrawling notes for his next novel.  

The next time you visit someplace new, imagine what it would be like to use this setting in a story.  If you're a writer, you may be storing away the details or impressions of a location for potential use later on.  As a reader, you can consider how you'd feel if the location you're visiting appeared in a story and how you would react to that. In stories, we tend to focus on the characters, but things can get a lot more interesting if they're in a location which helps push them into new realms of experience. 

Eight Views of Paris

I've probably visited Paris on about ten occasions during the past dozen years, but it never fails to inspire me.  In this post, I'll share a few photos from my latest visit along with verbal impressions.  

Just imagine waking up in the morning and looking out as dawn is breaking.  This is what I saw.  

Paris is a city of contours, but one can see Sacre Coeur and Montmartre from almost anywhere that offers a clear view.  I love the way this perspective is draped in shadow.  

One of my favorite ways to see a city is from the water.  I highly recommend taking one of the boat tours on the Seine.  I've had good experiences with Les Bateaux Mouches and the pictures here were taken from a ride during a late afternoon.  Here is a view of Musee D'Orsay which shows one of it's magnificent external clocks.  It's not hard to imagine the museum in its prior incarnation as a train station from this angle.  

Further up the river, we began to approach the small islands which have formed the center of the city from its earliest days.  The cathedral of Notre Dame is very well known, but always worth another look for its remarkable architecture and fine details.  From the river, we got to see it from many different angles in a matter of a few minutes.  Here, it rises up above one of the iconic stone bridges which span the Seine.  

The ride along the river was leisurely, though the boat moved along at a steady clip.  Life was good as we bathed in the sunlight and watched the city pass by, with captions offered by a recorded spiel in five languages.  We listened to both the French and English, picking up a bit of history along the way. After looping around Notre Dame, we took a right fork down the Seine and soon the city center receded behind us.  After passing the Louvre on our right, the Eiffel Tower became more prominent as we rode down the river.  In this view, I like the way the tower rises up in counterpoint to the church in the foreground.  

I took several more pictures from the water, but I'll continue this visual tour from the land.  As I mentioned in my last post, my son Jason and I swapped tips about Paris throughout the trip.  He had grown rather fond of walking along the Seine on the cobblestones by the water and looking up at the bridges overhead.  Here is a glimpse of two of the stone grotesques who had been frozen into place in their role as underpinnings of a stone bridge.  

My son spent many hours of his time in Paris sitting in the Louvre and copying drawings and paintings from the great artists whose work was on display.  One of his favorites was the Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens, the man whose paintings of voluptuous women inspired the adjective Rubenesque.  Late one afternoon, I took the metro to the Louvre and walked into the courtyard adjacent to the controversial pyramid designed by I.M. Pei.  The pyramid lines up in perfect synchronicity with the obelisque at Place de la Concorde, with the Arc de Triomphe and the huge empty picture frame which marks La Defense.  Note the mini-version of the Arch in the background at the border between the Louvre and the Tuleries -- more symmetry.  

One of the treats for both of us during this visit was to walk around Parisian neighborhoods like Le Marais, Ile St. Louis, St. Michel and Porte Maillot as the dusk turned into night.  As the natural light faded, the streetlamps would take over, giving the cityscape a totally different ambience.  Here is the massive Arc de Triomphe glowing amber in the night.  

When we walked in the early evening, this was also a signal that it was time to start looking for a restaurant.  Our goal was to find food that we would both enjoy and to try several different types of cuisine.  As noted in the last post, Jason's desire for vegetarian food presented some challenges, but we managed to find a number of places that worked for both of us.  On our last night in Paris, we returned to the outskirts of Le Marais and found a French restaurant called Le Marche.  Its menu was written in chalk on large blackboards. After eating seafood most of the week, I opted for a rich Poulet Supreme, a chicken dish stuffed with goat cheese and surrounding a mound of finely mashed potatoes. Jason ordered their vegetarian special, which featured endive.  The wine was a red Sancerre; it was young, but opened up as we ate our meal.  Our seating was al fresco and we had a fine view of the adjacent courtyard.  

The light reminded me of the look and feel of Woody Allen's recent film, Midnight in Paris, and we could hear the chime of church bells on the hour.  Real life did intrude; the smell of tobacco from smokers at the next table wafted in our direction from time to time.   

We chatted as the night slipped away and the cool air of the normal Parisian spring began to descend. We celebrated this last night with dessert, a Creme Brulee for Jason and a robust Tarte Tatin de Pommes for me, all of which was just right.  Soon it was time to step out into the courtyard and walk a couple of blocks to the nearby St. Paul metro.  Our sojourn in Paris was now complete.  Or, as one of my French colleagues told me earlier in the week, a la prochaine (until the next time).  

Glimpses of Paris

I arrived in Paris in late March and was greeted by delightful weather -- warm days and lots of sun, accompanied by an extra hour of light at day's end. This was my second visit this year, but the bitter cold and snow of February had been replaced by balmy breezes. My son Jason had just finished a two month stint at a local art studio in Paris and was still in the area, so we met near my hotel by the Porte Maillot metro stop. We quickly agreed to head for the green fields and trees of Paris's largest park. We walked through a tunnel, followed several paths and crossed a few streets until we'd reached the Bois de Boulogne. It was midday and lots of people were out walking, but the park is so large that we found several paths that were relatively unoccupied. Eventually we reached a large pond, where many people were lolling about. We kept on walking and circumnavigated the pond, then cut over to a wood area which had paths which were mostly empty. During the walk, Jason regaled me with tales of his prior weeks and I interspersed his words with stories from some of my previous visits. Thus we began a process which we continued through the week -- comparing experiences and swapping ideas on places to go and things to do.

We had begun to loop back after seeing the pond, but the park seemed to go on and on. Signs did confirm we were indeed heading back toward Porte Maillot, so we took our time. By now, I'd taken off my leather jacket and we'd both worked up a sweat. From here, we decided to take the metro to the the St. Germaine des Pres area on the Left Bank for a late lunch. We surfaced right by one of my favorite cafes, Les Deux Magots, but kept walking. We soon reached Rue de Buci, which is crammed with outdoor markets, cafes and bistros. We found a spot in a small restaurant which we both liked and perused the menu. Jason is vegetarian and I love seafood, so we had to be careful all week long in choosing restaurants which would work for both of us. At this place, he ordered an all vegetable salad and I settled on an old favorite, Salade Nicoise. We watched the passersby, listened to a mix of eclectic rock music blaring from loudspeakers and basked in the sunlight. My son's casual conversational French worked well for him as he chatted briefly with our waitress; by contrast, my own French felt rusty from lack of use. My meal was everything I'd hoped for; the salty anchovies anchored a diverse mix of crunchy field greens and my son happily accepted the eggs that I didn't want. His dish was also fine. Paris is not known for vegetarian cuisine, but the French love of food comes through in most of the dishes.

From here, we meandered in the direction of Jardin de Luxembourg, which has become a favorite spot for me on recent visits. On this day, the park was gorgeous, but people were jammed into every nook and cranny where they were allowed. The only exceptions were for a few spots where no sitting on grass was permitted. We enjoyed our walk through the park, but didn't mind leaving the crowds behind. We continued our walk -- my pedometer had recorded 31,000 steps by the end of the day -- looping in the direction of St. Michel. For me, the walk tripped numerous memories, since I'd stayed in this part of Paris both on my first visit in 1982 and seven years later when I returned with my wife during our honeymoon.

Jason had developed a penchant for bookstores in Paris, so he took me to one which is among the most famous, Shakespeare and Company. Here is what it looked like late on this busy Sunday afternoon.

By now, my legs were exhausted, so I found a chair outside the shop and relaxed while Jason browsed the books inside.

From here was crossed over to Ile St. Louis and walked upon the cobblestones of narrow streets, occasionally sticking our heads into galleries. We weren't too far from the Bastille area, home to one of my favorite brasseries, Bofingers. We continued our walking tour, passing the Rue de Rivoli and finding the little side street which housed the restaurant. Alas, the menu, while replete with several different types of choucroute which appealed to me, really had nothing that would suffice as a main course for Jason.

We walked on, heading toward the side streets of Le Marais. Here we found a delightful Italian restaurant called Le Caruso and found pasta dishes met our needs. We spoke French with our Italian waiter and accepted his recommendation of a carafe of Chianti Classico to accompany dinner. The food was delicious and nicely complemented by the dry red wine. After dinner, we hopped onto the metro and went our separate ways. Truly an auspicious beginning for a week in Paris.

I'll offer more thoughts and glimpses about the trip on my next post.

Writer’s Notebook: Paris Sojourn

Last weekend I left Paris to return to the United States.  Since that time, the volcanic explosion in Iceland has wreaked havoc with air connections to and from Europe, so I’m glad I got away when I did. 

In my last post, I talked about the first two days of trip.  I meant to include a picture of the band at Le Petit Journal, so I’ll include one here: 

 
 

On the third night of the trip, I met with a couple of my colleagues and we headed out to a local Malakoff restaurant called Le Timbre Poste (translated as the postage stamp).  We were looking for it and one of my friends said that it was very bright.  Moments later, a festive riot of neon in colors like pink and yellow appeared to our left – we’d found our destination. 

The interior of this place reminded me of other restaurants I’d been to in Paris – lots of tables were packed into a relatively small space and the atmosphere felt almost festive.  Our waitress was very friendly and very tolerant of our less than perfect French.  From the extensive menu, I chose a salad of greens and goat cheese and a main dish of Magrets de Canard (scallops of duck).   I was the only one at the table interested in wine, so I bought a half bottle of a red Bordeux.  The wine was on the young side, but fit the food very well.  On this night, we all talked about our initial experiences visiting Paris.  Two of us – myself included – had gone to Paris for our honeymoons.   Our mood improved as the evening went on, thanks to the tasty dishes and with help from the wine.  My main dish was both filling and delicious.  

The next night I was on my own, but a stateside colleague emailed me a couple of suggestions.  Game for a new dining experience, I looked up his suggested seafood restaurant – Vin et Marée – on the Internet and discovered they had four locations in Paris, including one in nearby Montparnasse.  This dining establishment had an elegant feel to it and many of the patrons wore dressy outfits.  After a long week, I was tired, so I struggled a bit to read the menu of specials on the blackboard propped up by table.  The 2nd item on the chalk drawn menu was not translatable by either me or the French couple at the next table who tried to help. Turned out écrevisse means crayfish. The dish itself had three mounds of the crayfish, which looked like lobster, but had a more subtle taste, all surrounding a kind of eggplant mousse. Very tasty.

My main dish was a favorite of mine, seafood choucroute, which combined a melange of seafood with classic brasserie style sauerkraut. They really knew what they were doing on this dish. While working my way through it, I sipped from a carafe of white Loire wine. I thought I was done, but the dessert menu seduced me. I got the healthiest thing on the chalkboard, a ring of fruit surrounding a boule of sorbet: 

 

After all of that, I walked around for a while around Montparnasse, which has a wide variety of nightlife including many bars, cafes and other attractions, then headed back to the hotel.

The next morning was to be my last in Paris, so I needed to get packed and ready to go.  Once I'd taken care of that, I took the metro to one of my favorite areas in the Left Bank, the very energetic area along the street called St. Germain des Pres.  From the metro, one ascends the steps and exit directly in front of church.  Looking across, I noticed one of my favorite haunts in town, the famous café Les Deux Magots.  Feeling its magnetic attraction, I ambled over to it and took a seat in the glassed-in non smoking area (still a rarity in Paris).  From here, I had a fine view of the street and the row of customers in front of me.  The restaurant looks like this: 

 

By now I was very hungry and began to peruse the menu.  My original plan had been to get a continental breakfast, but I changed my mind and ordered a Norwegian salmon sandwich instead of a croissant, along with a Cafe Creme and orange juice.  While waiting for my order, I watched the passersby, who were typically well-dressed and included a mix of business people, students, tourists, intellectuals and artists.  Soon, a few young people sat in front of me and I watched with amusement as the blonde-haired woman just beyond the glass partition teased her hair nervously with quick movements of her fingertips and fingernails painted indigo. 

The drinks soon arrived and I delighted in the fresh squeezed orange juice.  The coffee was not quite as strong as I'd been drinking earlier this trip, but still gave me the desired lift.  A couple of minutes later, my sandwich arrived, a long baguette, sliced in two, with long strips of salmon and a topping of cucumber strips.  Voila.  Breakfast had turned into brunch and I'd eliminated the need to have one more meal before leaving Paris.  I had a few other adventures on this trip, but the tellling will have to wait for another time.   I'll leave you with one last picture from a walk along the nearby Rue de Buci, a bustling street filled with open air markets and on this day, many signs of spring. 

 

Writer's Notebook: Interlude in Paris

I just got back from a business trip to Paris.  It was hectic and I worked a lot of hours, but I still found time to enjoy a few of my favorite things about the city and explore new places as well. 

I stayed in a small village called Malakoff which is located just outside the Peripherique, the highway which loops about the city center.  Malakoff is unpretentious and has reasonably priced hotels and excellent Metro access, so it's a good jumping off point for getting around the city.  It also has cafes, restaurants and open air markets, offering a miniature slice of the more extensive set of options found a few kilometres away in the heart of the city. 

Here's a typical street in Malakoff. 

 

And here's a hint that the political climate here might just vary a mite from that found in the US. 

In the mornings during the week, I stopped in a couple of small cafes with my colleagues and I had a typical French continental breakfast -- cafe au lait, a croissant, possibly a baguette and orange juice.  The coffee in Paris is much stronger than typically found in the US and kick starts the day in fine fashion. 

The evenings offered a chance to relax and pick from a variety of menu choices.  Our first night, a large contingent of us headed to an old style restaurant called Nos Ancetres Les Gaulois on Ile-St.-Louis, just a couple of blocks from the Notre Dame cathedral.  This small island is one of the oldest parts of Paris and our room in the restaurant felt like a cave carved out of stone and brick -- not for the clautrophobic.  The food here was basic.  One would first choose from appetizers which were offered on large tables and consisted of mounds of cheese and sausage to be sliced on the spot, plus a variety of vegetables and breads.  All of this was accompanied by table wine; our group filled small stone carafes as a way to minimize the trips upstairs to refill a glass.  Later, we picked from entrees of various sorts of meat.  My choice was lamb chops, which were tasty, but not prepared in any sort of special style.  Later, the cheese course arrived and again we had a chance to pick off our own slices of soft or hard cheeses.  Dessert was also offered, but by then I was slumping after many hours without sleep, so a few of us returned to the hotel. 

The second evening was more distinctive -- a visit to a jazz club in the famous Montparnasse district called Le Petit Journal.  The concept was a good one: combine the supper club experience with fine food, hearkening back to a number of movies set in Paris where jazz and nightclubs played a prominent role.  And I must say, our fixed price menu did have fine choices and I was able to indulge in my preference for fish in both the appetizer and main course.  But the music was so-so.  The group included about 25 instruments and as a result, musicians packed in tight on the stage.  Most of the group was young, possibly even high school age interspersed with a few veteran jazzmen.  For example, the trumpet player had wild curly gray hair behind a receding forehead, but played credibly in a variety of styles. 

The music was mostly from the Duke Ellington songbook and worked well enough, though the ensemble work was not as tight as I've seen among some award winning jazz groups at Massachusetts high schools.  The main issue was the singer.  After a couple of instrumental pieces, a woman who resembled Carla Bruni-Sarkozy -- at least with her combination of medium length brown hair and rounded cheek bones -- joined the group.  Her breathy vocals -- think of Marilyn Monroe serenading JFK -- stepped through the lyrics, but it sounded like an academic exercise; her singing simply lacked soul.  At one point, I whispered to one of my French colleagues that it sounded like she'd learned the songs phonetically. Still, the combination of fairly good jazz -- from the musicians -- and fine food made the evening work and I thanked our host for setting it up. 

It was a late night and we got on the Metro for our return trip to Malakoff just before the subway lines closed at 12:00 midnight. 

I'll talk more about this trip and further adventures about town in my next post. 

An Experiment: Making a DVD for the Holidays

I conducted an experiment today which turned out well. I decided my in-laws and my parents would enjoy a collection of family photos, and music that my son and I had recorded at various times during the year.

I pulled up the Windows DVD Maker under Vista, identified which photos I wanted to arrange in a slide show and then pulled in music that I'd recorded earlier this year for the First Tracks songwriting contest, along with with my recording of Calico Jack, a song written by two of my online friends.  You can listen to these recordings online here.  Then I asked my oldest son to contribute music that he'd recorded with his trio in the last couple of months.

In about two hours, I'd assembled the entire thing, a slide show with background music. The program has a useful preview feature, so I was able to weed out pictures with issues. Next, I burned the DVD. My in-laws were visiting, so I played the DVD for them after dinner. It provided an excellent way to share my travels and family pictures, not to mention the music. I've already burned another copy and printed out a jewel box cover to bring to my parents this weekend.

This technology stuff is pretty cool when it works!

Here's a couple of pictures that I used for the menu:  

Chinaman's Hat on Oahu, Hawaii

 

Carousel in front of Hotel de Ville, Paris, France

Happy holidays to all of my readers.  

Riding the Eurostar

Last week I had my first chance to take the Eurostar train that runs under the English Channel. My reaction --- do it when you get the chance!

I was writing in my journal throughout the trip. Here are some excerpts:

Blazing past the rolling green meadows of northwestern France, while Frank Sinatra and Jimmy Buffet offer a soundtrack of Mack the Knife on my Ipod. Speeds approach 200 mph; the train glides silky smooth o'er the tracks --- no annoying roars from jet engines. To my left, giant white windmills spin with a light breeze. Here's a a furrow cut through miles of early bloom farm land. There's nothing like this in the U.S. We speed along at a rate that's nearly twice as fast as New England's Acela.

The musical pace picks up with the robust hard piano chops of Ektar, playing a song called Place St. Henri. It's the real deal, courtesy of a hot young jazz group --- the instruments are piano, drums and bass, but it sounds like there is much more. We're still in France, but soon will dip below the English Channel.

Paris itself has a new novel form of transport --- bikes for rent. According to a French colleague, the first hour is free, then you pay about one Euro per hour. I saw several people using them during my 2 day stay. They can be dropped off at any of a series of bike racks set up throughout the city. One thing about Paris --- there is something new on every visit. Of course, you have to compete for road space with cars, buses and pedestrians, but the new approach is still very popular.

On curves, the train tilts on banked rails --- very cool. I just saw a sign for Calais --- the edge of the sea should be near. It must be colder here in the French countryside. The white of snow is blended on top of the green. In the background, David Gilmour sings "Wish You Were Here". Indeed!

Now, we're finally in the chunnel, 1 hour and 45 minutes into the trip. We did have a couple of stops along the way or we would have been here sooner. I took the moment to reset my watch to Greenwich Mean Time. The tunnel is dark except for occasional lights on the sides. Twenty minutes later, we emerge into the English countryside. It's very different here. The landscape is much hillier and has more coarse vegetation. We just passed a road sign that indicates London is 40 miles away. We've got to be going at least 160 mph, which is evidently new for the English portion of this trip. I'd heard that the new tracks and newly refurbished station on this side just opened last November. We had one more stop in Ebbsfleet, a rustic community and then went through a landscape that included sheep and livestock in the foreground, with tall gray windmills and factories in the distance. Our final stop was the St. Pancras station. The last time I was in the UK, it still ran into Waterloo station, but that was the old route.

The St. Pancras station is impressive. It is big and glassy, with lots of new shops and elements of ongoing construction in the background. My first thought --- this is a harbinger of 21st century transportation. Consider this: Each car held about 80 people and the train had 16 cars, offering a capacity of 1280 people. No small wonder that this train is starting to make money. Plus, we are right in the heart of London and were only a 20 minute cab ride from our business meeting. This was a very good experience. I'd be happy to do it again and don't miss dealing with the Heathrow or Charles de Gaulle airports a bit.