Interview with Vermont novelist Jim DeFilippi.

Prompt: Today’s Write The Book Prompt was suggested by my guest, Jim DeFilippi, who suggests trying what he calls “a George V. Higgins.” Rather than writing a particular scene head on, perhaps let the reader find out about an event in a secondhand way. Two characters who know what happened can talk about it after the fact, filling in detail and background through dialogue. Jim cautions that the scene should not entail one person recounting for the other what happened, but that the two characters should both understand the event and have a conversation that, in turn, informs the reader.

A Little Shameless Self-Promotion: Keep up on what’s happening with Write The Book through two new sites: the blog and the twitter page. Check them out: http://writethebook.wordpress.com/ and http://twitter.com/writethebook

Music credits: 1) “Dreaming 1″ - John Fink; 2) “Filter” - Dorset Greens (a Vermont band featuring several South Burlington High School students)

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Interview with author of fiction and nonfiction, and director of the University of Iowa nonfiction program, Robin Hemley.

Prompt: Today’s Write The Book Prompt was suggested by my guest, Robin Hemley, who has had great success using this exercise in his classes. Write about the first kitchen you can remember. Close your eyes. Spend about 15 minutes taking a mental tour. Go through the cupboards and the refrigerator, see the sink, look at the ceiling and the floor. What people can you recall seeing in that kitchen. What conversations did you hear or take part in? What smells do you remember? Do this slowly. If at all possible, consider trying this exercise in a group. Nominate someone to offer prompts to the others, working slowly and helping them to think of those not-quite-lost bits of memory that might send you in a new direction or enrich whatever you’re already working on.

A Little Shameless Self-Promotion: Keep up on what’s happening with Write The Book through two new sites: the blog and the twitter page. Check them out: http://writethebook.wordpress.com/ and http://twitter.com/writethebook

Music credits: 1) “Dreaming 1″ - John Fink; 2) “Filter” - Dorset Greens (a Vermont band featuring several South Burlington High School students)

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Interview with international consultant and environmental journalist, Laurel Neme, Ph.D.

Prompt: Today’s Write The Book Prompt was inspired by my guest, Laurel Neme. She mentioned her interest in keeping a scrapbook of milestones toward her success as an author, with letters of support from readers and mentors. She feels that having such a book to look at and reflect on could be a helpful tool down the road, when she might be stuck or even disheartened while working on a future project. So here’s your assignment for the week: as you work on a new project, consider keeping a journal of thoughts and ideas devoted exclusively to that particular endeavor. When  you reach a level of success with that work, turn the journal into a scrapbook. Keep mementos about the project in its pages. And keep in mind, a collection of rejections might well be followed by a single, important acceptance. Keep them all. Down the road, they might become equally motivating as you begin new projects.

A Little Shameless Self-Promotion: Keep up on what’s happening with Write The Book through two new sites: the blog and the twitter page! Check them out: http://writethebook.wordpress.com/ and http://twitter.com/writethebook

Music credits: 1) “Dreaming 1″ - John Fink; 2) “Filter” - Dorset Greens (a Vermont band featuring several South Burlington High School students)

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Interview with novelist, essayist and short story writer Castle Freeman, Jr.

Prompt: Today’s Write The Book Prompt was suggested by my guest, Castle Freeman, Jr. When he has gotten stuck in the past, Castle has tried this exercise to restart or rededicate himself as a writer. Take a very simple story, such as a fairy tale, a sequence of events, a dream or something that’s happened to you, and write a narrative of it. Get yourself in a frame of mind where you can go back to your roots as a writer. Keep it to two or three pages, and write very slowly, one word at a time, one sentence at a time. Write as though you’ve never written anything before; as though no one has ever written anything before. Set aside all that you think you know about the story itself and about writing. As Castle says, “Get a real fresh start, just for that little space.”

A Little Shameless Self-Promotion: Keep up on what’s happening with Write The Book through two new sites: the blog and the twitter page! Check them out: http://writethebook.wordpress.com/ and http://twitter.com/writethebook

Music credits: 1) “Dreaming 1″ - John Fink; 2) “Filter” - Dorset Greens (a Vermont band featuring several South Burlington High School students)

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Interview with poet Rauan Klassnik.

Prompt: Today’s Write The Book Prompt was suggested by my guest, Rauan Klassnik. Rauan uses an iPod to shuffle his own thoughts (recorded as audio files), as well as excerpts from television and radio, in order to generate ideas for his poetry. If you don’t have an iPod, or prefer to work on paper, follow the exercise as Rauan explained it to me: Turn on your radio or TV. As you hear a song or conversation, randomly write down either what you hear or what it brings to mind. (If you write down someone else’s actual words, change the phrase later or put it in quotes in your poem.) Now change the channel and do the same thing again.  Do this six or seven or maybe ten times. Fill a page of paper. Then do that three or four or five times over, writing in blocks of text.  Then rework those blocks. Juggle the order around, change things, add things. When you need a change, skip to the second page and start doing it there. Work in batches. You can work with sound files and an iPod, set to shuffle, if you know how to use that technology to help you. But that’s not necessary. The exercise works just fine on the computer, using the cut and paste function, or with old fashioned paper and pen. This won’t necessarily result in a finished poem, but it’s a useful exercise for generating ideas and getting started.

Music credits: 1) “Dreaming 1″ - John Fink; 2) “Filter” - Dorset Greens (a Vermont band featuring several South Burlington High School students)

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Unfortunately, due to a glitch, last week’s re-broadcast of an interview with David Budbill did not air. Please tune in this week and listen to a conversation with poet Rauan Klassnik. I’ll re-schedule the  Budbill re-broadcast at a later date! Thanks.

Interview with novelist and fiction editor of the journal Ploughshares, Margot Livesey.

Prompt: Today’s Write The Book Prompt is inspired by my guest, Margot Livesey. If you’re unsure how to proceed with a scene in a work of fiction, write from the perspective of an off-screen participant, someone who does not and will not have a narrative perspective in your work but might, given the chance, help you to see something you’ve been missing. As Margot pointed out, had she been stuck trying to write the scene between Cameron, her point-of-view character, and Davey, his friend, she might have written a letter from Davey to Cameron, simply to see what Davey would say about him and about the state of their friendship. Even if she weren’t planning to use the letter in her novel, the exercise of writing it, and approaching Cameron from Davey’s perspective, could be helpful in discovering how to move forward.

Music credits: 1) “Dreaming 1″ - John Fink; 2) “Filter” - Dorset Greens (a Vermont band featuring several South Burlington High School students)

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Interview with fiction and CNF author Laurie Alberts.

Prompt: Today’s Write The Book Prompt is offered by my guest, Laurie Alberts. Laurie suggests writing about two characters, one an adult, the other a child. They can be based on real people or they can emerge completely from your imagination. Have them travel together to visit the adult character’s childhood home. Write two scenes about what they might see in two different seasons: once on a mid-winter day at dusk, once in mid-summer, during a sunny day. Write from the point of view of the adult or the child, or one each, or write from an omniscient point of view. Let the exercise bring out the some of the emotions that a visit back home can evoke. Good luck with this exercise and please listen next week for another.

Music credits: 1) “Dreaming 1″ - John Fink; 2) “Filter” - Dorset Greens (a Vermont band featuring several South Burlington High School students)

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Interview with author of fiction and creative nonfiction Phyllis Barber.

Prompt: Today’s Write The Book Prompt is suggested by my guest, Phyllis Barber. She recommends, “Read Flannery O’Connor, who does things with character that I don’t think I’ve seen many other writers do. Her characterizations are fabulous. So… Look at Flannery!” And that is your prompt today: look at Flannery. Her stories can be found in the books Everything That Rises Must Converge and A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories, among other collections. She also wrote two novels: Wise Blood and The Violent Bear It Away. And, of course, every writer can benefit from reading her essays on writing and the writing life, collected in the book, Mystery and Manners.

Here’s a snippet from her story, A Good Man Is Hard To Find. Even if you’ve never read this story and even if you don’t know the context of the scene, I think you’ll come to know the characters very quickly, from these few paragraphs:

They drove off again into the hot afternoon. The grandmother took cat naps and woke up every few minutes with her own snoring. Outside of Toombsboro she woke up and recalled an old plantation that she had visited in this neighborhood once when she was a young lady. She said the house had six white columns across the front and that there was an avenue of oaks leading up to it and two little wooden trellis arbors on either side in front where you sat down with your suitor after a stroll in the garden. She recalled exactly which road to turn off to get to it. She knew that Bailey would not be willing to lose any time looking at an old house, but the more she talked about it, the more she wanted to see it once again and find out if the little twin arbors were still standing. “There was a secret:-panel in this house,” she said craftily, not telling the truth but wishing that she were, “and the story went that all the family silver was hidden in it when Sherman came through but it was never found . . .”

“Hey!” John Wesley said. “Let’s go see it! We’ll find it! We’ll poke all the woodwork and find it! Who lives there? Where do you turn off at? Hey Pop, can’t we turn off there?”

“We never have seen a house with a secret panel!” June Star shrieked. “Let’s go to the house with the secret panel! Hey Pop, can’t we go see the house with the secret panel!”

“It’s not far from here, I know,” the grandmother said. “It wouldn’t take over twenty minutes.”

Bailey was looking straight ahead. His jaw was as rigid as a horseshoe. “No,” he said.

The children began to yell and scream that they wanted to see the house with the secret panel. John Wesley kicked the back of the front seat and June Star hung over her mother’s shoulder and whined desperately into her ear that they never had any fun even on their vacation, that they could never do what THEY wanted to do. The baby began to scream and John Wesley kicked the back of the seat so hard that his father could feel the blows in his kidney.

“All right!” he shouted and drew the car to a stop at the side of the road. “Will you all shut up? Will you all just shut up for one second? If you don’t shut up, we won’t go anywhere.”

“It would be very educational for them,” the grandmother murmured.

That, again, is an excerpt from Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard To Find. Phyllis Barber suggests reading O’Connor’s work in looking for inspiration on character development. Good luck with this activity and please listen next week for another.

Music credits: 1) “Dreaming 1″ - John Fink; 2) “Filter” - Dorset Greens (a Vermont band featuring several South Burlington High School students)

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Interview with fiction author Tammy Greenwood.

Prompt: Today’s Write The Book Prompt was suggested by my guest, Tammy Greenwood. When she is stuck in her work, Tammy frequently turns to prompts from the book A Writer’s Book of Days: A Spirited Companion and Lively Muse for the Writing Life, by Judy Reeves. Specifically, Tammy once broke through writer’s block with the help of a prompt to write a scene in which a character takes a bath. So that’s your prompt today: have your character take a bath. And thank you to the author Judy Reeves for the book that suggests that prompt. Good luck with this exercise and please listen next week for another.

Readings by Tammy Greenwood, from Two Rivers (New York: Kensington Publishing Corp). Copyright © 2009 by T. Greenwood. Recorded with permission from Kensington Books.

Music credits: 1) “Dreaming 1″ - John Fink; 2) “Filter” - Dorset Greens (a Vermont band featuring several South Burlington High School students)

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