Write The Book: Conversations on Craft

Rachel Urquhart - Interview #305 (7/28/14)

Rachel Urquhart, author of The Visionist, published earlier this year by Little Brown.

 

This week’s  Write The Book Prompt was inspired by my conversation with Rachel Urquhart. Study your paragraphs for redundant or superfluous closing sentences. Rachel Urquhart did this in her final edit of The Visionist, and realized that these unnecessary wrap-up sentences closed many of her paragraphs. When Rachel mentioned it, her mother-in-law, who’s a historian and a writer, realized that she also did this in her work. Have a look at your own prose. Maybe you’ll find that you do it, too.

Good luck with this prompt and please listen next week for another.

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

 

Jojo Moyes and Heath Hardage Lee - #304 (7/21/14)

Two Interviews: Jojo Moyes, author of One Plus One, published by Pamela Dorman Books, a Viking imprint; and Heath Hardage Lee, author of Winnie Davis: Daughter of the Lost Cause, published by Potomac Books, An Imprint of the University of Nebraska Press.

Today’s Write the Book Prompt was suggested by my second guest on the show. Heath Hardage Lee suggests that, when seeking new material, you look in your own back yard. Remember that she discovered Winnie Davis by happening to notice her portrait while her mothers’ friends were playing bridge. Likewise, be sure to look closely at your own city or community for material that is exciting or unusual. Often we miss what’s right in front of our nose.

Good luck with this prompt and please listen next week for another.

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

Jennifer Karin Sidford - Archive Interview #303 (7/14/14)

Jennifer Karin Sidford, columnist, blogger and award-winning creator of The Dreamstarter Books 1 & 2.

This week's Write the Book Prompt is to write about an object that has been in your family for a very long time. It can be a treasured object, or one you abhor. Something you are in possession of, or something you are not.

Good luck with this prompt and please listen next week for another.

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

Chris Bohjalian and Sue William Silverman - Two Interviews - #301/#302 (7/7/14)

Interviews with Vermont author Chris Bohjalian, whose new book is Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands; and Sue William Silverman, whose new memoir is The Pat Boone Fan Club: My Life as a White Anglo Saxon Jew.

 

Today’s Write The Book Prompt was suggested by my second guest on today’s show, Sue William Silverman. (In our last interview, Sue and I discussed her book on craft: Fearless Confessions: A Writer's Guide to Memoir, which has a lot of excellent exercises.) Sue says one interesting exercise can be to  get a photograph of yourself from another period in your life, such as when you were a kid, and write one paragraph that describes what you see in the photograph. Then write another paragraph about what was happening outside the frame of the photograph. For example, Sue looks at a lot of photographs of herself as a kid, in which she is smiling and looks really happy. Nobody would know she was "dying inside" at that time in her life. So she might write the first paragraph about the pretty young girl who is beaming from ear to ear. But then she might write a second paragraph about what's not taking place in the picture, which for Sue might be to write about growing up in this incestuous family—that maybe her father even took the photograph, so maybe he is forcing her to smile, to convey the idea that theirs was a happy family. Sue says this can be an interesting exercise in comparing and contrasting what else might be going on. You have a picture, great; but is it telling the truth? Or is there another truth that's happening outside the frame? 

Good luck with this prompt and please listen next week for another.

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

 

Kate Atkinson - Archive Interview #300 (6/30/14)

Interview from the archives with Kate Atkinson, whose latest novel is Life After Life. We spoke in 2011 about her most recent Jackson Brody novel, Started Early, Took My Dog.

This week’s Write The Book Prompt is inspired by Kate Atkinson’s latest book, Life After Life, published in 2013. Life After Life follows Ursula Todd as she lives through the turbulent events of the last century again and again. In crafting Ursula’s narrative, Kate Atkinson played quite a lot with time: the passage of time and the way events might change if lives could be repeated with changed insight or enhanced sense of premonition. This week, try to play around a little bit with time. Don’t necessarily have a character come back to life over and over, but perhaps present a single moment in time from various angles and perspectives. Or do something different with time - something unexpected and perhaps not quite chronological.

Good luck with this prompt and please listen next week for another.

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