Abysmal

I like to get brunch at this place just down the street on weekends. I bring my folding keyboard, and for whatever reason, it often ends up being the most productive writing session I get all week.

I've been working on this one chapter for so long they closed the store.

No, not that one. One at the Louvre. When I went into rewrites, part of the plan was to expand the scene I'd set in the Carrousel du Louvre, trying among other things to achieve more of a build-up to the Inverted Pyramid (which figures so prominently in the ending of The DaVinci Code.)

I looked up the shops they have in that underground mall. Took notes on anything I might get a word or two from. Unfortunately there's not really any clothes shopping on the route from the Metro to the entrance of the museum -- the closest I can come to a remark in that direction is Fossil, a chain that does watches and other accessories (the shops down there, minus one assumes the food court and the McDonald's that went in with some controversy, tend towards the higher end.)

There is a rather bizarre foodie place called Comtesse du Barry. It is sort of a truffles and foi gras in gift wrap place, but with their own spin -- if you couldn't tell from the name. So I might use that, if only to have Penny drop, "There are so many people at Versailles today" while threading the crowd near it.

Or not. Every step of the way through this chapter I've had to debate with myself if it is right to go into something, or if it pulls the narrative off track. At least I've got the new version of the Drea conversations in draft and it looks like it is going to work.

(So...the excerpts from Huxley's book are set out with white space and italics, unless it is a short quote in the body, for which it is set out in quotation marks. The flashbacks to her first night in Paris are done without any typography, slipped into with introduction; "I remembered when I had..." and with the first lines in past perfect; "I had walked..." and then a definite "brought myself back to the present" at the end of each. And they get more Proustian as the novel unfolds. The Drea conversations, meanwhile, are real-time but in text chat. They also only take place when Penny is in spaces that aren't quite the Paris of most of the body text. Such as, while riding trains in the metro.)

Anyhow...between doing all this research, and finally writing the scenes, it looks like the store moved. Because the official site of the Carrousel du Louvre no longer lists that store.