Stephanie Booth's online ramblings
He was preoccupied. Twenty miles later, he realized that the car he was driving wasn’t his. There was an unconscious girl on the back seat.
They fled through the country, narrowly escaping death more than once. They never found her daughter, but many years later, had one of their own.
[fr] Ce soir, j'ai eu pas moins de 13 idées d'histoires courtes (50 mots). J'en ai écrites 5 dans le train en rentrant, et 8 attendent d'être développées. Du coup, j'ai décidé de les reposter ici, au lieu de squatter les commentaires de Vince systématiquement. Va aussi falloir que je m'y mette en français, pardi!
Tonight was almost magical. On the train home, I wrote no less than five 50 word short stories. Then on the way home from the station (bus and walking), thought up starting-points for eight more.
I started out feeling a little shy about posting them here, so have been parasiting Vince’s comments in the post above. I feel like I want to have these stories here, too, so I’m going to be back-posting them to CTTS. I’ll use the tag “50words” to keep track of them, so you can see them all on one page by clicking on that link.
One thing I understood tonight is that I don’t have to feel capable of writing a novel based on the idea I develop in 50 words. I can make up a 50 word story about a serial killer, even if I know I wouldn’t have the beginning of a clue how to portray one.
It’s liberating.
“I’m going away for the week-end. When I come back, I want you and your stuff out of here!”
Sobbing and frantic, she started packing up her nearly four years of life with him.
Lived 3 months on Sarah’s couch. Fell madly in love with Josh. Forgot all about Mike.
I took my shoes off and put them carefully beside the bed. My ruby red slippers.
I crawled under the bed and curled up next to the cat. I couldn’t remember when I’d abandoned the top of the bed. It just seemed safer with something above my head.
She grabs her gun, hops on her horse, and makes for the village where her lover is living. She charges into the house, killing everybody in the way. Reaches the room where he is sleeping, picks up the cat curled up on the bed, and blows his brains out.
Love.
She pulled the curtains and slipped between the sheets. The neighbours’ bed upstairs was creaking rhythmically.
“Not again!” she thought.
Sally remembered that time in the restaurant with Harry. She still had it in her.
Tomorrow morning, they would be the ones looking at her enviously in the entrance hallway.
The little old lady had spent her evening looking through faded photographs. Her children, their children — and theirs.
She remembered one photograph that appeared to be missing.
She made for the loft and reached for the big staggering box of her husband’s memorabilia.
It knocked her down dead.
Like the others, I was greedily eying the last chocolate in the silver tray. We tried to keep the conversation going and our saliva under control.
Susie opened her mouth.
John’s hand moved.
Awkward silence.
Rex jumped up and whisked away the chocolate with an expert flick of the tongue.
[fr] Depuis toujours, j'ai envie d'écrire des romans, mais je me sens fondamentalement incapable d'inventer des histoires. Je sais raconter une histoire (enfin, de façon relativement compétente, je pense), mais si mon cerveau fonctionne en surchauffe pour produire des idées d'article ou des pensées à développer dans mon blog, il reste désespérément muet pour ce qui est de la construction de scénario.
Après quelques conversations avec Suw et son ami Vince, qui en est à son cinquième roman, j'ai décidé qu'il était temps de prendre sérieusement cette envie qui me hante (oooh... ohhh...) depuis belle lurette. L'imagination et la créativité, ça s'exerce. Je vais exercer mon cerveau à inventer des histoires.
Had some interesting conversation these last two days here in Leeds with Suw and Vince about writing fiction. Vince actually writes fiction, Suw has quite a bit at some point, and I’ve always wanted to.
I write loads and always have (mainly on and around this blog during the last years), but it’s mainly essay-ish or fact, like the many pages of my journal of the year I lived in India. What little fiction I have written, mainly in my school years (some of which you can find in the writing section) is mainly scenes, atmospheres, small episodes. No stories, really.
I’ve always wanted to write stories, but always felt myself fundamentally incapable of doing so. I remember two attempts to write meaningful fiction in my early years. First, I must have been nine or ten, and I had received a nice thick notebook. I decided I was going to write a story in it, but it fell flat after one line. Second, I was a teenager, and I spent a good part of some winter holidays diving into the creation of a science fiction novel. I think the impulse came after reading a C. J. Cherryh book. I had a main character, a bit of a world, but no story. I just started writing, and about 12 pages later it was going nowhere and my interest fizzled out. I still have what I wrote in a folder — it was called “Aurora”.
My head is always bubbling with ideas of things to blog. Stuff to comment upon, ideas about the world, life, or tools that I want to talk about. But my head is completely void of stories. It’s as if the storytelling part of my imagination was broken, or so still it couldn’t move. Well, I can tell a story if I know what the story I have to tell is (so, based on fact) but I can’t come up with one. At least, I don’t come up with stories naturally.
What the conversation with Suw and Vince made me understand was that I could excercise that skill. I can train my mind to think up stories. I just need to do it explicitly at first. I need to try to think of stories.
Vince told me to think up an ending before getting started, and I think that’s a good point. A good novel can be killed by a lousy ending, and a medium story can be redeemed by a good ending. And I remember, in school, when we started creative writing, our teacher mentioned that it was often really hard for us to come up with good endings, and that she recommended we do not try and write stories with ends, and stick to vignettes or scenes. I think it was good advice at the time, but now I’m not 12 anymore. I’ve grown up and am probably capable of thinking up endings to stories 🙂
So, yesterday, as we were driving Steph and Virginie to the airport, I found myself daydreaming and trying to come up with stories. Interestingly, what I came up with was mainly “world ideas”. Minor changes one could make to our world and which would create an interesting setting for a story.
But no stories yet. I’m going to keep working on it.
[fr] Je donne une conférence dans un peu plus d'un mois à des responsables de communication d'entreprises suisses. On m'a demandé de fournir une présentation de mon intervention, qui figurera sur l'invitation. Voici la version resultant de deux jours en sueur (oui je sais, c'est pas très impressionnant!) -- j'apprécierais votre feedback en la matière si vous lisez l'anglais.
A little over a month from now, I’ll be giving a talk on corporate blogging to leading communications executives of Swiss companies. I’ve been asked to provide an introduction to my talk, which will be included alongside some biographical information in the invitation to the event. Here’s my draft, based on examples of previous invitations I was given:
> Blogs are way more than teenage diaries, and it is now common knowledge that they can be a precious tool in corporate environments. Many companies today are interested in embracing social media, and some take the plunge — unfortunately, not always with the desired results.
> Blogging is not a magical solution. Though it requires little technical skill to exertblog (akin to sending an e-mail), it comes bundled with the culture of openness and real human dialogue described at the beginning of the decade in The Cluetrain Manifesto, which can be at odds with existing corporate communication practice.
> When a corporation starts blogging, whether behind the firewall or on the internet, it changes. Not all corporations are ready for that. Not all corporations can accommodate those sometimes unpredictable changes.
> Though one could just start blogging blindly, it is wiser in a corporate setting to identify some particular needs or problems which can be addressed with social media. Though social media is by nature error-tolerant, it would be a mistake to underestimate the importance of learning the “blogging culture”, or the time required to keep a blog alive.
> Stephanie Booth will share her insights on how blogs can find a place inside corporate culture, and how to go around introducing them in such a setting. The focus will be on blogging culture and practices, illustrated by real-world examples taken directly from the blogosphere.
I’ve been struggling with it for the last two days, and I’d appreciate your feedback in the comments (both on the language and the content).