One Week After My Last Day, I Boarded a Plane to Paris
Choosing your dream when everything else falls away
There are cities you visit, and cities you return to. Paris has always been the latter for me, drawing me back year after year, as inevitably as the tide returning to shore.
The trip to research my historical fiction novel set there had been planned long before I lost my job. I was scheduled to depart one week after my last day. One week after I would no longer be earning a fat paycheck with strings attached.
Most people would have canceled.
I didn’t even consider it.
The timing felt surreal.
One chapter of my life had just ended, and I was boarding a plane to Paris to immerse myself in the very dream I had been building in the background. Suddenly it wasn’t in the background anymore. It was the future I was going to make work.
I didn’t originally plan to set half my novel in Paris. I knew early on that it would begin aboard Titanic’s sister ship, the RMS Olympic, before moving into a European city shaped by the early years of the First World War. What I didn’t know at first was which city that would be.
When Paris revealed itself as the natural choice, I was delighted.
I booked the trip after completing the first draft of the novel so I could experience the locations firsthand before beginning the second draft. Even though my story is set in 1914, so much of Paris still feels suspended in time. I was able to walk the same streets as my characters, wander through the neighborhoods where they lived, and absorb details I never could have gathered through photographs or online research alone.
A Writer in Paris
This was my fifth trip to Paris, but my first one researching a historical fiction novel, which gave my time in the city a very different feel. I was there not as a tourist this time but as a writer. It wasn’t about sightseeing. It was about letting the characters of my novel reveal themselves through the place they lived. I wandered through neighborhoods with no goal in mind. Just to be there and to notice.
Traveling in January, during the low season, allowed me to more fully immerse myself in the rhythm of local life. Without the usual crowds, Paris felt quieter, more intimate, and more accessible. By the end of my week there, I felt less like a visitor and almost like a local myself.
This was exactly what I had hoped for, and needed, for the novel.
The city I fell in love with years ago rose to my expectations once again. More than that, Paris seemed to welcome me back with a generosity I hadn’t anticipated, offering details, insights, and unexpected moments that ultimately changed the book in meaningful ways.
I spent time in the four Parisian arrondissements that appear in the novel. Each of these distinct districts have their own layout, rhythm, and character. Spending time in each one allowed me to understand their differences and how they connect to one another. Together they form the Paris of my story.
What Paris Confirmed
I’m so glad I didn’t cancel that trip.
Not just because my novel is better for it, though it absolutely is. Writing the Paris scenes feels more natural and alive now. When I write them, I am back on the streets of the 7th arrondissement, back in the Tuileries, back inside the city with my characters as their story continues to unfold.
But the trip gave me something even more important than research.
It confirmed what I already knew.
Writing was no longer something I did on the side of my “real” life. It was the center of it.
Somewhere between the quiet January streets, the hours spent wandering through the arrondissements of my novel, and the realization that I had boarded that plane despite all the uncertainty waiting for me back home, I stopped seeing writing as a distant dream and started seeing it as my current reality.
It’s not lost on me that my journey as a writer began with tears on a flight home from Paris just over one year ago.
And now, the story that brought me back to Paris is finally preparing to enter the world this summer.
Paris has always felt a little magical to me. But this time, the city gave me more than inspiration for a novel.
It gave me permission to believe in the life I was trying to build.
If you enjoyed stepping into the world of my historical fiction with me, I’ve written more about the Paris locations, history, and inspiration behind the story on my blog.