Catégorie : Writing related topics

The Sad Destiny of Books

I’ve read a book yesterday.

Whaaat?
Yesterday?
You read a Book?
WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?

Ha, but wait, dear fellow writers! I was lucky enough to be able to read an out-of-print book. I sort of mindlessly stumbled upon it in the audiobook section of an app I merely cannot live without these days.
It almost felt like finding a treasure in that used book store nearby where I used to live, about a decade ago. Good times!

It’s the kind of book you might not be able to find in a library either. Indeed, if you live anywhere else than here, in my little North-American francophone bubble, you will definitely not find it anywhere.

(Side note: aren’t you baffle sometimes by the incredible amount of wonderful stories we’ll never read because they are buried in libraries everywhere in the world, written in languages we’ll never learn. Author Carlos Luis Zafon explores the idea in The Cemetery of Forgotten Books; a beautiful novel, if ever you like a bit of magic.)

It’s a young kid novel, released in 2011. The first of 4. And like I said, out-of-print. A fairly interesting little novel, brought back to life by the kind people in charge of the Audiobook section on the OHdio app.

Now, the scene is set. Time for a little confession. I’ve always had ambiguous feelings towards audiobooks, and even more twisted feelings toward Epub and PDF books. My affection is growing over time, still…

Still, I grew up with books printed on paper.
I felt so lucky, back when I worked in bookstores and bookshops, to be able to get my hands on secret ARCs, to discover new books every single week.

I love, love, love spending time curled up with a book in my hands (although, I read less nowadays).
I love the smell of the pages – yep, I’m that kind of gal -, I love the moment where you realized you read a paragraph twice already and it might be time to go to bed but… just one last chapter.

Thing is, as I briefly mentioned above, there’s a bunch of fresh new books released Every Single Week. Of that bunch, there might be ten, twenty new novels, if we agree to mingle all genres and ages here. The most devoted book clerk, the most avid reader can’t possibly read them all.

This leads me back to the main topic of this post: the sad destiny of books.

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Writing Under So Many Stars

Such a marvellous sight!

It’s almost Christmas Eve. A few days need to go by, but we’re almost there.

This year, hubby-to-be, kiddo and I chose a different place to celebrate the North American Holidays season.

From Christmas to almost New Year’s Eve, we settled down in a little cozy, sparkling with wonderful art cabin, just a sigh away from the St Lawrence River, nearby a little village on Ile d’Orléans.

When I first started to write this post, no moon shined on the ice crackling on the shore.

However, stars did. So many stars, so bright in the frigid minus 20 degrees Celsius.

Such a marvellous sight, dear fellow writers, not only did I feel the need to share, but it made me wonder about the power of travelling and its impact on my creative writing quest.

For nowadays, technology obliging, writers can do such in-depth researches that travelling to physically experience the weather, the atmosphere, the sounds, the decor, the smells of any destination seems almost like a burden.

However, here I am, dear fellow writers, listening to the ice pilling up on the shore so close to the cabin. Crackling crack crack criiick. A big cargo boat is slowly going down in what’s left of free water.

And a little « what if… » starts to dance in my mind.

Continuer la lecture de « Writing Under So Many Stars »

Semantic Satiation, or What Might Lurk Behind the Proverbial Writer’s Block

lt all began with a writer.

In order to make the audience of tv show « Ted Lasso » laugh, that said writer taught it would be fun to explore the well-researched psychological phenomenon that is semantic satiation.

One thing led to another, and there I was on a very quiet Tuesday, listening to the host of a francophone late-morning radio show I almost enjoy, repeating the word « chapeau » for 15 seconds.

After a while, you don’t understand a word anymore. It’s just random, almost annoying sounds.

And apparently, the same phenomenon can be applied to writers.

Sometimes, we’re puzzled by how bad our writing appears to be. Or by how impossible it seems some days to write a decent 500 words in less than an hour.

The answer might just be this: Semantic Satiation.

Writer’s Block and Semantic Satiation: Same Battle?

Well, it’s not exactly the same thing.

Semantic satiation have to do with the repetition of one word leading to the feeling the word has become meaningless, or sound darn weird.

Although writers may suffer from a sort of word saturation, if, for example, they write continuously without a break for a prolonged period of time.

After a while, the act of writing in itself, no matter if it’s fiction or technical writing, if it’s writing business letters or legal contracts, may lose its sense for some writers.

Suddenly, no words are good anymore.

They are the same words as the day before. It’s always the same words. However, they sound weird, they seem stupid, meaningless.

I’ve always called it writer’s block. Now that I heard about semantic satiation and how a similar phenomenon can affect writers, it shed new light on the said writer block.

When every word I write is bad, it’s a signal I need to step away from the page and go do something else!

Dear fellow writers, I hope this helped… and made you smile a bit.

Until next time!

Sources:

APA PsycNet

Mental Floss

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