In 1961, having abandoned her university studies, Collobert worked at the Galerie Hautefeuille in Paris, where she wrote "Totem" and many other texts that would three years later be part of her book Meurtre (Murder).
After a self-imposed exile in Italy from May to August 1962, she returned to collaborate with the Algerian magazine Révolution Africaine until it stopped being published during the presidency of Ahmed Ben Bella.
After joining the Writers' Union in May 1968, and soon after turning up in Czechoslovakia during the Soviet backlash to the Prague Spring, Collobert traveled almost continuously from 1970 to 1976.
In 1978, she asked Uccio Esposito-Torrigiani to translate her last work, the ironically titled Survie (Survival), into Italian; reportedly, she wanted it published as quickly as possible.
Survie came out at the end of April, and Collobert died by suicide on her birthday three months later, in a hotel on the rue Dauphine in Paris.