A three day weekend means it’s been a little hard to get back in front of the computer and start attacking real work once again. Despite a three hour drive to get back to Portland in the morning, and a full day of Wend work, today was still my day to post at Written Road… fortunately I remembered that the deadline for the Solas Awards for Best Travel Writing are coming up soon!

With a crazy summer I haven’t put aside any time for personal writing (I know… that’s bad), but the deadline for the awards reminded me of last year at around this time when I was putting together my own submission. It ended up winning Gold in the Family Travel category… which reminds me that I probably should be committing more time to crafting decent narratives (where does all the time in a week go??) So in honor of sitting down with pen and paper and elaborating on travel experiences instead of getting stuck in the daily grind of the blogosphere, and to give myself a bit of writer’s encouragement, here is an excerpt from Everday Parisian Theatrics:

Theater and film are almost as essential to the romantic Parisian image as Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower. Acting has always played a revered role in French culture, and from grandiose theater productions to cinema classics, the rest of the world has had the chance to taste the artistic delicacies that the country is known for. We have all been seduced by French film. Some of us are drawn to the amorous sounds of the French language spoken between young idealists, dressed in black, their souls engaged in debates on existentialism. Others glue themselves to the screen to consume the simple oddities that paint the picture of Paris street life, infused with the character that the city is so well known for. And some are merely enticed by imagining that such a world actually exists beyond the screen. We fall in love with French cinema, because the screenwriters that the country is known for magically bring together everyday simplicity with cosmopolitan complexity.

Read the rest here.