{"id":48789,"date":"2024-08-04T06:17:26","date_gmt":"2024-08-04T10:17:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.chezcora.com\/?p=48789"},"modified":"2026-06-24T10:28:38","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T14:28:38","slug":"an-apple-pie-and-a-rough-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chezcora.com\/en\/tarte-aux-pommes-et-brouillon-decriture\/","title":{"rendered":"An apple pie and a rough draft"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The more I write, the more I can do it anywhere: in a coffee shop, a fast-food joint, at my kitchen table, on my couch or in my bed when sleep is slow to come. Each day, I write something. I note different ideas that come to mind, things I\u2019ve seen or invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I write my drafts on the small pages of a notepad I can easily carry around. 1, 2, 3, 4 \u2013 I number the pages in the top-right corner in a circle the size of a blueberry. I strike out words and erase others; I cross out a sentence that doesn\u2019t belong. On my tablet, I sometimes even delete an entire page. I read my text out loud to ensure it has a musical quality to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I rarely know exactly what I\u2019m going to write when I start typing on my keyboard. Sometimes I wait, I drink one or two cups of coffee, I stand up and walk in circles around the kitchen table until a word grabs my attention. WINDOWS. A wall in my kitchen is made entirely of windows, flooding the room with light. A red cardinal taps on the glass, an ambulance siren wails loudly and then fades into the background, children\u2019s shrill screams pierce my eardrums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Noise doesn\u2019t bother me and neither does silence, which is like flour waiting to become something else. When I write at home, I listen to Handel, Vivaldi, Gregorian chants and baroque music. Perhaps it helps me to feel safe? Music is generous. It waltzes with my inspiration and produces miracles. I never have meager ideas when a great musical master keeps the rhythm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pandemic emptied homes of guests, and I learned to appreciate it. I quickly got used to the silence and creative solitude; so much so, that I didn\u2019t notice the time flying by. I\u2019ve always kept my house tidy, so there was no big clean-up to do. My habit of never putting a book back in the right place on the bookshelf produces the only enduring mess really! I have so many books now that I don\u2019t know where to put them anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since I started writing, I never think in terms of breaks, days off or vacation. My light is always on. Stringing words together in a sentence brings me tremendous joy. It just takes one mother word and then its entire brood colours in a few pages in no time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When nothing interesting happens, I vault onto planet HAIKU. You might have heard of these three-line Japanese poems before? Just three lines are all you need to create a castle. They often contain a transparent immediacy, the ephemeral that runs through our lives or an unexpected flowering. The unoccupied mind finds a feeling of openness within the terse lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My mother was always too busy taking care of us. Many times, Dad would insist that she nap for an hour, but she refused each time. \u201cI\u2019ll rest when I\u2019m dead,\u201d she\u2019d constantly repeat. I\u2019m my mother\u2019s opposite; I love to fall asleep in the middle of the day with a book over my face to hide the light. I also enjoy keeping busy with an unexpected subject for a letter, a flight of rare, thought-provoking expressions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like Mom used to say regularly, \u201cwhen we grow up, we have to learn to read between the lines.\u201d My poor parents always navigated between two oceans: indifference and pain. A mother who\u2019d grunt and a father who\u2019d cry most of the time, especially after opening a beer or two to soothe his heart starved for affection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Describing everyday life remains my favourite topic; it\u2019s just as important to me as eating is to stay alive. Inspiration can come from anywhere. I just need to wait for a surge of ideas, almost like a magic trick, a sequence of fascinating and ordinary words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The road taken by words can sometimes be a bumpy one. I imagine a conversation between the two crows on the roof of the garage and suddenly, the storm softens my ideas. Most of the time, the real and unreal happily collide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m constantly on the lookout for a good sentence, an unusual fact, a childhood memory or a wrong turn on the road. Sadly, I haven\u2019t kept a diary for very long. I\u2019ve always loved to write. The husband forbade me from doing so, so I wrote in secret for the 13 years we were married. I typically wrote at night and burnt the pages as soon as the ink dried.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, I\u2019m free and write night and day as I please. I don\u2019t do it to become famous, but to stay effervescent, to cultivate the best of myself and share it with my loyal readers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I sleep, dream and ramble on occasion. Dear readers, I\u2019d like you all to sit at my big writing table, mingling fantasy, sweet madness and freshly baked apple pies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cora
\u2764\ufe0f<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The more I write, the more I can do it anywhere: in a coffee shop, a fast-food joint, at my kitchen table, on my couch or in my bed when sleep is slow to come. Each day, I write something. I note different ideas that come to mind, things I\u2019ve seen or invented. I write my drafts on the small pages of a notepad I can easily carry around. 1, 2, 3, 4 \u2013 I number the pages in the top-right corner in a circle the size of a blueberry. I strike out words and erase others; I cross out a sentence that doesn\u2019t belong. On my tablet, I sometimes even delete an entire page. I read my text out loud to ensure it has a musical quality to it. I rarely know exactly what I\u2019m going to write when I start typing on my keyboard. Sometimes I wait, I drink one or two cups of coffee, I stand up and walk in circles around the kitchen table until a word grabs my attention. WINDOWS. A wall in my kitchen is made entirely of windows, flooding the room with light. A red cardinal taps on the glass, an ambulance siren wails loudly and then fades into the background, children\u2019s shrill screams pierce my eardrums. Noise doesn\u2019t bother me and neither does silence, which is like flour waiting to become something else. When I write at home, I listen to Handel, Vivaldi, Gregorian chants and baroque music. Perhaps it helps me to feel safe? Music is generous. It waltzes with my inspiration and produces miracles. I never have meager ideas when a great musical master keeps the rhythm. The pandemic emptied homes of guests, and I learned to appreciate it. I quickly got used to the silence and creative solitude; so\u2026<\/p>","protected":false},"author":414,"featured_media":48790,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"Mme Cora \u00e9crit d\u00e9sormais partout, du caf\u00e9 \u00e0 son lit. Elle m\u00eale recette de tarte aux pommes et secrets de ses brouillons d'\u00e9criture.","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_seopress_news_disabled":"","_seopress_video_disabled":"","_seopress_video":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas_manual":[],"_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable_all":"","_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"class_list":["post-48789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lettre-mme-cora"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chezcora.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chezcora.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chezcora.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chezcora.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/414"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chezcora.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chezcora.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chezcora.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chezcora.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chezcora.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48789"}],"curies":[{"name":"WP","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}