8. Reinvention in Paris: The gayest city in Europe that inspired my novel
Happy pride month! 🏳️🌈 & Myth-busting "Should you stick to one genre?" in publishing.
This juicy post has 3 parts, so dig in for:
My book’s journey that started (before I knew it) and circled back to Paris
The myth that novelists can only be successful in one genre
Historical roots of gay pride in Paris that I found while researching my book
Part 1: My Paris Experience
Traveling has always been one of the ways I’ve found to best reinvent myself, which I’ve done many times.
Why?
Because your biggest obstacles to change are often the people around you and the environment/culture you’re immersed in.
You may decide that you want to make a change, but as soon as your friend comes up to you expecting that you’ll go along to watch the same stupid movies that you don’t even like but had only watched because you were bored…
…or they offer you a cigarette when you just gave up smoking…
…or your ex messages you before you’ve found a replacement for them…
What do you do?
It’s easy 90% of the time to just go along with the easy option before you.
But when you’re in a new country where no one knows you, where no one has put any rules on your behavior, where everything is new, then you can do whatever the hell YOU want. Change is easy because everything around you has already changed.
When the city of reinvention called me…
A little more than a decade ago, a shit ton of things fell apart in my personal life. For now, suffice it to say that I felt like entering my “Eat, Pray, Love” era early and suddenly found myself with an opportunity to go and travel through Europe for the first time, which I’d wanted to do my whole life.
I planned a massive trip rather backpacker style using the European high-speed overnight train system to see all the major cities in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Holland, France, you name it. I had a jam-packed itinerary where if I even missed one day, then the rest of my trip would be fucked (need rebooking).
My first stop was Paris.
I had no idea WTF I was doing, and my travel plans all fell apart. I met a lot of other backpackers in hostels, and I ended up seeing NO other cities in Europe at that time.
Instead, I stayed in Paris for 6 weeks 😂.
Now the thing about changing your life is that it doesn’t happen all at once, even when you’re in a new country.
The great thing about Paris is that it’s so multicultural, and there are so many incredible things to see and explore and EAT that I felt like a different person nearly every day depending on where I was or who I was around.
I felt like a pious nun at the Notre Dame cathedral that took my breath away.
Did you know there are actually indentations in the stone steps of the towers made from centuries of nuns walking in the same spots for so long?
I felt like a Queen returning home at the grounds of Chateau de Versailles (Don’t let the name fool you; it’s not a house as “chateau” literally translates to. It’s one of the biggest palaces in the world. 😂) (photo below)