An American Writer's Dream: To Live and Write in Paris

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Quirky Stories and Pics from my Search for the American Dream

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My life—which is my writing life—qualifies as a quirky story. It depended on a pot of carrots, my Higher Power, 3 heartbreaks in a year, finding a special book, terror, and courage.

Carrots Led Me to Paris 

by Norma Jaeger Hopcraft

(first appeared on writer Elaine Stock's blog)

I stood with a pot of carrots in my hand, looking at my small children’s shiny, blond heads as they ate dinner. I was divorced for one year, and hoped that the worst of the grief was over. What was I going to do with my time?

I relied on my Higher Power, so I was supposed to say, “God, what do you want me to do?” So I did.

But I knew he wasn’t going to write it on a wall in my apartment. He would write it on the wall of my heart. As long as it was moral, exciting, and developed my talents, that was his will for me.

I was working at the time as a reporter in Central Jersey. I had wanted to be a writer ever since I read my first sentence, “See Sally run.” It was magic that little black squiggles on a page made pictures in my mind. I wanted to do that for other people.

After many twists and turns in life, I stood divorced, contemplating carrots and what to do with all the time that no longer had to go into husband-care. From that carrot-scented moment on, I wrote while the kids did their homework. I got a corporate communications job writing business news. I wrote on the daily train to New York City and on the weekends that the children were with their father.

I took my work to critique groups. The group interplay was fascinating, but what fellow writers said about my work stung. I jotted down every criticism, prayed to use each one to get better, and persevered.

Eventually the kids grew up and left. In spite of a huge effort, I got laid off from the job. I used the small package they gave me to make a dream come true: I circumnavigated the United States! On a Greyhound bus! I visited 20 cities in seven weeks. You can see my posts from that trip in October, November and December 2011 in this blog (in the righthand column). I stayed in hostels and met people from all over the world. 

I found another job. I wrote. I listened carefully to critiques at writers groups. I weighed what was said against my instincts, I read the classics and the Pulitzer Prize winners. I prayed to develop my God-given gift for writing, such as it was, and to use it to the glory of God. 

For me, this did not mean writing “Christian fiction.” Instead, I wanted to write compelling fiction from a non-judgmental Christian worldview for the audience I wanted to reach—non-Christians. For me, writing to the glory of God meant seeking artistic freedom to portray a wide range of humanity, including the evil.

I sent work to agents and literary magazine editors. I had two successes and then nothing—for years on end.

I wondered if I should keep writing, but wrote down any encouraging thing people had ever said to me. One of the best was from my elderly Dad, who had been a huge criticizer as I grew up. This time he said, “You have what it takes.” 

It didn’t seem that he was right, with all the rejections that I had, stored in envelopes. But I tried to believe.

In spite of a heroic effort, I got laid off from the next job too. I watched in horror as my savings dwindled. I worked like a stevedore on the docks to look for a job. I prayed for God to open up a spot for me so I could stay in my little house. I loved it, and it loved me back. I wanted to keep living there just about as deeply as I had wanted to stay married.

I screamed and cried and cursed and bawled like a baby because the answer was “no.” Then my fiancé and I broke up. I rented out my home and went to live with my widowed mother—almost as painful to accept as the divorce.

In a bookshop near my mother’s house I found a book, “A Writer’s Paris.” It said that, if you were an American writer, you really needed to spend time in Paris, a week, a month or better yet a year. “You can do it,” the book said. “Just go.” 

My mother died, I had a tiny windfall, and I was free to go. I was very scared. I didn’t know a soul and not a word of French. But courage is fear that has said its prayers. I rented a room over the internet and bought a one-way ticket to Paris. That was one of the great thrills of my life. A one-way ticket to a fabulous city!

Every time I crossed the Seine I rejoiced that God had turned, in just one year, what felt like three tragedies into a glorious opportunity. I lived on a shoestring, but I was living in Paris!

Three years later I live in Brooklyn and I’ve published The Paris Writers Circle.

Perseverance. Prayer. Read the best writing. Listen at critique groups. Sift through every criticism, go with your instincts, and use everything to write better. 

And see where writing takes you! Around the country. Around the world.

Just go on. 

You’ve got what it takes.

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Next is pics FROM me in NYC but OF PARIS. They are all riffs on the theme, "Every time I crossed the Seine, I thanked my Higher Power that things had turned out this way, that I was in Paris on a full-time creative writing sabbatical."

How about you? Are you an aspiring writer? Are you someone who, like me, is hoping for outcomes beyond your wildest dreams? Stick with HP! and comment below!