In writing: with the author Sandrine Roudeix

Sandrine Roudeix is ​​the author of five novels, the latest of which, “Pas la Guerre”, hit bookstore shelves this year. It superbly tells the daily life of a young couple that could be us, or another, violently quarreling for one night, on the occasion of their move. Used to letters, Sandrine Roudeix first worked in publishing, then she was a journalist and photographer for the press before becoming a screenwriter for television. For her Madmoizelle, she rethinks her relationship with writing and gives some tips to get started.

To miss. What is your relationship with writing?

Sandrine Roudeix. Huge question! I feel a certain urgency, something vital. What’s the point of writing if you don’t throw yourself into the void, if you don’t feel like you’re risking your life with every sentence? It’s a very psychological relationship, a bit dizzying. Even a little destabilizing, because we are often at the limit. I deal with filiation, family transmission, individual and social emancipation, and each of my five novels is a kind of catharsis of my personal history. I am also a photographer and I write with my senses. I want my readers to have an intimate experience. I want them to see, but also to touch, smell, taste, hear the story as if it had happened to them.

It was by appreciating other people’s books that I wanted to create my own.

Sandrine Roudeix

To miss. When did you start writing?

Sandrine Roudeix. I came to writing through the theater. When I was twelve I was at the conservatory and, if I immediately realized that I was not in my place on the boards, I found a backbone in learning the lyrics. As a teenager I spent weekends learning poems by Aragon, Prévert, Rimbaud, tirades by Antigone or Le Cid. It was by appreciating other people’s books that I wanted to create my own. I started writing novels more than twenty years ago, although the first one, “Attendre”, was only published by Flammarion in 2010. It’s a long-term adventure.

To miss. What time of day do you prefer to write?

Sandrine Roudeix. Morning. I need both regularity and a certain virginity. I wake up quite early, with no alarm, and almost every day I approach my work table trying not to talk to my partner. I need to sleep more, in a kind of bubble, to free the brain and silence the little voice that sometimes fears it won’t make it. I also need this discipline to get to the end. Even if there are ups and downs along the way. It is this momentum confirmed every day (sometimes forced) that allows me slowly but surely to reach the last page.

I discovered a long time ago that discipline has allowed us to overcome our blocks. Like an athlete who trains every day and jumps better and better.

Sandrine Roudeix

To miss. Do you have a favorite place?

Sandrine Roudeix. I have been writing at home, on my desk in red ant, always in the same place for fifteen years. I love my Parisian apartment which is on the sixth floor and opens onto the rooftops of Paris, and the proximity of my large library reassures me. I find inspiration and energy there. Also a kind of sisterhood and brotherhood. Although, for my penultimate book “What Air Is Need to Fly”, which chronicles the moment my adult son left home, I exceptionally needed to settle elsewhere to take some distance from that. that I was passing by.

To miss. How do you handle the blank page when this happens?

Sandrine Roudeix. For regularity. I discovered a long time ago that discipline has allowed us to overcome our blocks. Like an athlete who trains every day and jumps better and better. Since then, I have been less afraid. I know the words will come sooner or later, as long as we call them every morning.

To miss. What is the book that changed your way of writing or which in your opinion is a must?

Sandrine Roudeix. There are plenty of them. Rather contemporary novels. I like classical literature, but it’s the writings of today that resonate with mine, that pursue the same kind of artistic research, that give me momentum. I have a shelf in my library where I keep all these texts handy. In particular there are “Writing” by Marguerite Duras, “To get lost” by Annie Ernaux, “A White Bird in the Blizzard” by Laura Kasichke, recently “The Cost of Living” by Deborah Levy and “The Patience of Traces”. by Jeanne Benaeur… Difficult to name just one.

To miss. What does it give you to write?

Sandrine Roudeix. I think this still me. Writing allows me to stop running away from myself. It is a way to face the invisible and the unspeakable and, in a sense, to triumph over it.

To miss. How do you write? Are you more of a typewriter, notebook or computer?

Sandrine Roudeix. Computer. Although, when I write a novel, I take notes on everything that happens to me (which I then rewrite on the keyboard). It can obviously be a notebook, but also an advertising brochure or a novel. The last pages of my books are black with scribbles.

To miss. Any advice for Madmoizelle readers who would like to take advantage of the summer to start writing?

Sandrine Roudeix. To start! Don’t look for an idea, sit down and write down what comes to mind. Without getting in touch with you. Listen to your inner voice with its ticks. Once finished, take the time to understand your words, what you meant. There is often a meaning, a breath, that walks between our sentences. One gets the impression that they meet, but in reality they follow each other. A subject almost always appears.