Category: Writing

Not Writing, Again [en]

[fr] Clairement, un autre phase de non-écriture. Ça passera.

Another post on writing/blogging, yes, another one. I am in a “not writing” phase. I actually want to write. Ideas keep flapping around in my head. But the idea of actually disciplining myself to focus on writing about them just makes me want to hide under the covers.

I go through these phases regularly, as you know if you’ve been reading this blog for more than a few months. They last for a moment, and then I get back into writing.

I haven’t yet clearly identified what sets them off and what makes them end. I know there is a vicious/virtuous circle effect involved. The less I write, the more stressful the idea of writing again becomes, because all the things I have wanted to write about — but haven’t — during the “no writing” phase have piled up in my mind, and I feel that blogging regularly again means that I have 20 posts to write, and that they all need to be long, documented, enlightening masterpieces. It’s as if the “idea of blogging” or the “idea of the blog post” grows like a weed in my mind when I’m not actually doing it, and that makes the process much more scary than it actually is.

On the positive side, I know that “blogging again” always starts with publishing a blog post or two — which is what I’m trying to kick off here. Never know.

This is a pretty boring post. My apologies.

I’ve gone down the rabbit-hole of blog-reading on Penelope Trunk’s blog. Go read her. (And follow her on Twitter if you’re so inclined.) I’ve finished reading the Saga of Seven Suns by Kevin J. Anderson (not this Kevin Anderson! another one!) who is also on Twitter, I’ve just discovered. I love the idea of being able to follow SF authors I’ve enjoyed on Twitter. Cinema-side, I recommend you go and see The Hurt Locker if you haven’t already done so. It’s a beautiful — and hard — movie which rattled me a bit in the same way that the essay “I Miss Iraq. I Miss My Gun. I Miss My War.” did. (You might want to read that one with Readability to make it a more comfortable experience.)

Wrong Place, Wrong Time [en]

[fr] Un autre récit de rêve -- double, celui-ci. Je suis navrée, mais ça sort toujours en anglais...

A dream.

I have a gift for ending up at the wrong place at the wrong time. For example, think of the day Obama broke our beautiful lake in half by blowing up a huge bomb under it. I was in Saint-Tryphon, the lovely town at the end of the lake, and watched as the water ran out of it through the crack, as swimmers tried to reach the shore, and as the first rows of buildings in Saint-Tryphon toppled over in slow motion under the afternoon sun to come and lie down in the receding water.

We spent the rest of the afternoon checking out our boats, which were moored in mid-air, lowering them so that they would be back in the water again.

At some point I fled. I ran through Saint-Tryphon, watching the wobbly buildings by the shore and praying that the people would get out before they fell. I climbed into the mountains, found an abandoned village, and spread the word. “The lake is draining itself!” Nobody really believed me.

Obama had smilingly assured me that the lake would stop bleeding out sometime in the evening, and that everything would be back to normal in a few days. He didn’t seem to think there was anything wrong with what he had done. I was just horrified.

Or another time, shortly after that, I had taken a trip to some middle-eastern country just in time to witness the explosion of a nuclear device under the sea near the coast. I saw birds fall out of the sky as they feebly tried to fly away. Why I was alive, I just couldn’t understand. A car with two military stopped and picked me up. We went to the command centre where for some reason, most of my luggage was waiting for me. There were some nice people there, but it was out of question to let me go back home.

I swallowed an iodine pill, and wondered why on earth we all had to be exposed to so much radiation. My life doesn’t always make sense to me, as you can see.

I was relieved to meet Cecil in the command centre. He was a friend of mine, and we plotted our escape together. Julie, one of the assistants, would come with us — she was a nice girl and also felt that she had nothing to do there, that her life was supposed to take another path. The trouble was packing (we had many belongings) and finding a way out of the country (that was Cecil’s job, being in a position of authority).

Amongst my most precious belongings was some jewellery, and a set of teeth (I know this sounds funny, but they were ivory and polished, and worth quite a lot in those days), as well as some pearls. Trying to get everything to fit in bags and boxes was a nightmare, especially as we couldn’t afford to have the other people in the command centre figuring out that we were going to make a run for it. They must have, because we even got comments on the size of our boxes, but they pretended nothing was wrong. Maybe they hoped it would go away if they didn’t confront it.

So we packed, and repacked, and repacked, and as days went by I became more and more anxious about leaving. We almost managed, once. Robert took us out to his helicopter. There were four of us, but Cecil was nowhere to be found. I was a bit worried, because Robert was completely loyal to those in charge, and I really wondered what the deal was with him taking us away. Maybe he was actually going to take us to a reeducation camp or a prison, and all our precious belongings would be taken away from us.

We never knew, because as he was fuelling up, he never passed the DUI test — and the helicopter was not up to standards either. I heaved a sigh of relief as we returned to the base, but went to bed certain that we had been found out and absolutely had to leave the very next day.

It didn’t happen the next day, or the one after that. It was agonizing. Cecil disappeared, after a long phone call to his family where I heard him tell his son he loved him very much. The day after that, Simon came up to me and gruffly told me that I was leaving, that Cecil had left instructions, and that he was my driver. Simon was not happy about it, but followed orders. I initially expressed surprise but decided to go along with it.

He scowled at me while I put my big box and bag in the boot of his tiny car. I climbed in, and we drove off. I didn’t need a Geiger counter to tell me how radioactive we were, and I hoped that we would not set off any alarms at the airport. I already had too much luggage and getting on board without attracting attention was going to be a tight squeeze.

As you can see, I made it out in one piece. I had to leave some of my things behind, but the precious teeth and pearls travelled in my jeans pocket (you know how TSA are with precious items in checked-in luggage: they just tend to disappear). I went through long and painful anti-radiation treatment, and thankfully today’s medical technology is keeping at bay all the cancers I should have developed as a result of such important exposure.

What was going through the minds of those people at the time, it really beats me.

Raconter une histoire [fr]

[en] I write a weekly column for Les Quotidiennes, which I republish here on CTTS for safekeeping.

Chroniques du monde connecté: cet article a été initialement publié dans Les Quotidiennes (voir l’original).

J’ai eu une révélation ce week-end. Elle concerne l’écriture, et plus particulièrement la fiction. On sort donc aujourd’hui un tout petit peu du domaine de la technologie, mais on y reviendra, vous verrez.

Depuis toute petite, je veux écrire. Des histoires. Mais, contrairement à d’autres aspirants romanciers, les histoires à raconter ne se bousculent pas dans ma tête. C’est même plutôt le grand désert déprimant.

Je vous passe toutes les étapes de mon cheminement par rapport à l’écriture ces dernières années pour aller droit au but: samedi soir, en lisant un livre consacré à l’écriture (pas moins que ça!) j’ai enfin compris que les histoires émergent des personnages qui les vivent.

Cette prise de conscience m’a fait l’effet d’un électrochoc: je faisais tout à l’envers! Depuis des années, je me torture le cerveau à essayer d’inventer des histoires dans lesquelles j’insérerai ensuite, un peu accessoirement, quelques personnages pour leur donner corps. Il faut bien faire vivre les acteurs, après tout.

C’est bien joli, me direz-vous, mais quel rapport avec la technologie qui sert de fil rouge à nos petits rendez-vous du lundi? Les histoires, justement.

Le cerveau humain aime les histoires (c’est d’ailleurs pour ça que les anecdotes gagnent toujours face aux statistiques, et qu’on continue à avoir une peur panique des prédateurs sexuels sur internet et des accidents d’avion). Quand on se lance dans le monde des médias sociaux, en ouvrant un blog, par exemple, on aura beaucoup plus de succès si on sait y raconter des histoires que si on se contente d’y recopier communiqués de presse et autres informations promotionnelles.

A la lumière cette petite porte ouverte sur le monde de la fiction, je relis mes conseils d’il y a quelques semaines pour bien écrire sur un blog, et je réalise qu’il y a maintenant des clés supplémentaires à offrir:

  • lorsque je recommande d’utiliser la première personne dans un blog, c’est bien sûr parce que ça rend la chose plus personnelle et que ça aide à connecter l’auteur et le lecteur, mais c’est aussi parce qu’en se mettant en scène dans son article, on a plus de chances d’en faire une histoire — une histoire réelle, qui émerge de qui l’on est
  • raconter des histoires vraies plutôt que de les inventer, mis à part la question éthique, est une question de survie puisqu’écrire de la fiction crédible est un exercise vraiment difficile et périlleux (sauf peut-être pour les romanciers confirmés).

Donc quand vous écrivez, souvenez-vous: on cherche à raconter des histoires, et une histoire, c’est avant tout l’histoire de quelqu’un. Encore une fois, les êtres humains sont la clé.

Plot Grows Out of Character [en]

[fr] J'ai enfin compris comment écrire des histoires. Les histoires naissent des personnages. Il faut partir des personnages et les développer et les écrire à la vie, et non pas partir de l'histoire elle-même.

“Plot grows out of character,” says Anne Lamott, author of “Bird by Bird (Some Instructions on Writing and Life)”, which I am currently devouring.

Today, February 20th 2010, I think I have finally understood how to come up with stories. The stories come from the people in them, the characters. Who they are, what they’ve been through, what they care about, the choices they make, the way they react to what happens to them.

I’ve always wanted to write fiction, but failed at coming up with anything resembling a story or a plot. I started writing 50-word short stories about 18 months ago to jog my creativity, and it has worked pretty well in demonstrating both that I am capable of coming up with story ideas and that it is possible to excercise creativity.

But so far, I have been concentrating on the story, and not on the people in it.

Recently, I have realized how very good I am at imagining explanations for the behaviour of people surrounding me, or people in general. I tend to have a pretty anxious personality, which means I have “Disaster Channel” playing in my brain 24/7 (fear not for my sanity, though, after years of therapy I have learned to turn off the sound and ignore it most of the time).

So, give me a situation, say, X. is late, and my brain will immediately and effortlessly produce half a dozen plausible and disastrous reasons for her lateness. As I have learnt, though, that Disaster Channel does not provide a realistic view of the world, I have also trained myself to come up with “reasonable” and “reassuring” explanations.

I’ll stop there with the dissection of my psyche. Suffice to say that I am really good at inventing a whole range of explanations for human behaviour. (OK, with a biais towards the disastrous, I’ll give you that.)

Today, at long last, I have realized that coming up with a plot is just that. A story is about people and their behaviour. Writing it is about coming up with characters that are believable, and listening to what they want you to write.

To prove the point, I have written no less than two “really shitty first drafts” over the last few hours.

I’ve unlocked something today.

Political Nightmare [en]

[fr] Récit de cauchemar.

A dream.

In a few hours from now, they are going to come and make our heads roll. The new government of New York City, with which we have worked for many months to ease the transition, is officially going to step into power — and we, as the old city government, have to disappear.

I don’t want to die! I knew nothing of this when I joined the task force. I’m not even an American citizen! When they say a career in politics is brief but glorious, how was I to know it would be so literal?

President Obama is here, fondly recounting his memories of making the heads of his previous local government roll. There is obviously something very important about the heads rolling well once they have been cut off.

I protest, my voice calls out in despair “I’m a Swiss citizen! I shouldn’t even be here!” but nobody seems to hear, nobody seems to perceive my anguish, and everything just goes on.

It does occur to me that Obama is still alive, but I’m not sure what to make of it.

They have paraded us through the city, half-drugged, half in a daze. I hope beyond hope that some miracle is going to save me, but everything seems perfectly orchestrated to lead me to my demise.

This is a nightmare. Literally.

I want to wake up.

Small Black Flies [en]

Small black flies invaded the office, before taking over the whole city. It got so bad you had to wear a mask to avoid breathing them in. They formed a fine black film over everything, including your skin.

People went mad.

One day, all the flies died. It was over.

This is a 50-word short story. Read more by me on CTTS or by others too on Facebook.

Inner Swamp [en]

Lucy hasn’t been tending her inner swamp lately. It’s starting to overflow, dripping from her eyes and ears. She knows the swamp monster is feeding on the gloom and growing each day.

With Patrick, she sets off on an inner journey to kill the beast.

They prevail, but remain forever joined.

This is a 50-word short story. Read more by me on CTTS or by others too on Facebook.

Je chronique, chronique [fr]

[en] I'm really enjoying writing my weekly column for Les Quotidiennes, and discovering that the constraints of the genre are giving me all sorts of ideas to write about.

Il y a un peu plus d’un mois, je démarrais mes chroniques du monde connecté pour Les Quotidiennes. J’avoue prendre beaucoup de plaisir à l’exercice.

Quand on pense à la créativité, on imagine que celle-ci s’exerce dans les champs du possible qui ne connaissent ni entraves ni limites. D’une certaine façon, ce n’est pas faux, mais la créativité, c’est surtout en présence des contraintes qu’elle se manifeste. Ce sont les contraintes, quand elles rentrent en friction avec les désirs et les objectifs, qui font jaillir la créativité.

Pourquoi ce discours sur la créativité? Parce que je suis en train de faire l’expérience, après bientôt dix ans d’écriture sur ce blog, qu’écrire dans un autre format, pour un autre lectorat, avec un agenda de publication fixe — bref, des contraintes — me donne un autre souffle. Le blog, tel que je le conçois, est un espace de liberté quasi absolu de mon écriture: j’écris quand je veux, sur ce que je veux, pour qui je veux, et aussi long ou court que je le désire.

Pour la chronique, par contre, c’est différent. Le public n’est pas le mien, c’est celui des Quotidiennes, pour commencer. J’ai un thème (relativement souple, certes) auquel me tenir. J’écris une chronique par semaine. Je vise une longueur et un type de discours “genre chronique”.

Et ce qui est dingue, c’est que ces contraintes me donnent l’idée d’écrire des choses que je ne penserais pas à écrire ici, sur Climb to the Stars — alors que je peux y écrire tout ce que je veux.

Vive les contraintes!

Du coup, je vous encourage à aller me lire là-bas. Pour vous faciliter la tâche, titres et liens vers les six chroniques déjà écrites.

Bonne lecture, feedback bienvenu!

Ecrire en 2D [fr]

[en] I write a weekly column for Les Quotidiennes, which I republish here on CTTS for safekeeping.

Chroniques du monde connecté: cet article a été initialement publié dans Les Quotidiennes (voir l’original).

Ecrire en 2D, oui, vous avez bien lu. Mais n’est-ce pas ce qu’on fait toujours? Une feuille, ou un écran, ça a bien une hauteur et une largeur, c’est-à-dire deux dimensions.

Certes, certes. Mais je ne parle pas ici des dimensions du support: je parle de celles du texte. Du texte? Oui, voyez-vous, un texte, ça commence en haut, ça finit en bas, et entre les deux on suit les mots alignés bien sagement. Un texte, c’est au fond une longue ligne qui se replie un peu sur elle-même pour des questions logistiques. Une dimension. Un début, une fin, et un chemin bien précis pour aller d’un bout à l’autre.

L’écriture en deux dimensions, c’est celle de l’hypertexte. Le nom l’indique bien, d’ailleurs: c’est un texte qui va au-delà (préfixe “hyper-“) des contraintes linéaires unidimensionnelles du texte classique (tout comme un hypercube est un cube qui pousse au-delà des 3 dimensions qu’on attribue généralement à celui-ci).

Assez de maths et d’étymologie: l’hypertexte, c’est le texte du web, et peut-être déjà celui des aventures dont vous êtes le héros qui ont égayé une partie de mon adolescence.

Un texte sur le web, ce n’est pas quelque chose dans lequel on est enfermé de la première à la dernière lettre. C’est parsemé de liens, autant de portes de sortie vers d’autres mondes et d’autres mots, d’autres textes pour comprendre mieux, expliquer plus, explorer plus loin.

Et quand on écrit un texte en deux dimensions, on n’aligne pas les mots de la même façon que pour un texte en une dimension. C’est ce qui distingue ceux qui écrivent pour le web et ceux qui écrivent pour le papier.

Ajouter des liens dans un texte, ça change la façon d’écrire. Et pour qui a passé sa vie à écrire en une dimension, c’est un art qui ne s’apprend pas du jour au lendemain.

Me lire, ailleurs [fr]

[en] A handful of articles I've published elsewhere (in French) these last days.