A writing podcast for writers and curious readers, featuring interviews with authors, poets, agents and editors. Twice chosen as one of Writer’s Digest Magazine’s 101 Best Website for Writers. Vermont-grown.
Episodes
Monday Mar 26, 2018
Monday Mar 26, 2018
Vermont author Jill M. Allen, who will be reissuing her self-published story and ballad collection: The Green Mountains Deep: Fiction About Disabled Vermonters by a Disabled Vermonter, with Onion River Press (from Phoenix Books) in the near future.
This week’s Write the Book Prompt is to think about your own abilities and obstacles, and write about how they affect you as you make your way in the world.
Good luck with your work in the coming week, and please listen next week for another prompt or suggestion.
Music by Aaron Shapiro
Tuesday Mar 20, 2018
Tuesday Mar 20, 2018
American novelist and short story writer Yang Huang. Her new novel in stories is My Old Faithful, winner of the Juniper Prize for Fiction (University of Massachusetts Press).
This week’s Write the Book Prompt was generously suggested by my guest, Yang Huang. Alter the rhythm of your writing to jog your creative mind. First, work on a problematic scene by focusing closely on the language, painstakingly going over every word choice, until you make it work or realize this needs to be cut.
After a short break, return to the desk and write as fast as you can, hardly reading what you wrote. Silence the inner critic for the time being, and set your mind free. Write for an hour, until you slow down, or you want to read over the passage.
Sleep on it. Edit the passage next day and throw away any material you cannot use. Analyze the movement in your narrative. What have you discovered about the story and characters?
Good luck with your work in the coming week, and please listen next week for another prompt or suggestion.
Music by Aaron Shapiro
Sunday Mar 18, 2018
Sunday Mar 18, 2018
Prize-Winning Author Michael Andreasen, whose new story collection is The Sea Beast Takes a Lover (Dutton).
This week’s Write the Book Prompt was generously suggested by my guest, Michael Andreasen. Try to find an oblique angle - an odd vector of approach. Sometimes this is as simple as not starting in the place where you have the impulse to start. So if your charaters are in a room, perhaps begin in the other corner of that room. Describe the air coming in the vents, or something happening outside the window. Or maybe a sink in a nearby bathroom is making a noise. Move the focus someplace else. We have such an urge to get to the ONE thing we want to talk about, and talking about only that thing can become boring. A dripping faucet, or an unattended child spotted through a window, about to wander into the street, can ramp up the tension.
Good luck with your work in the coming week, and please listen next week for another prompt or suggestion.
Music by Aaron Shapiro
Saturday Mar 10, 2018
Saturday Mar 10, 2018
New York Times bestselling author Robin Oliveira, whose new novel is Winter Sisters (Viking).
This week’s Write the Book Prompt is to consider how it must have been to live before weather could be predicted: imagine how it would be to not know if your day would hold sunshine, wind, ice, rain. Write about unexpected weather.
Good luck with your work in the coming week, and please listen next week for another prompt or suggestion.
Music by Aaron Shapiro