Write The Book: Conversations on Craft

April Ossmann - Interview #510 (5/21/18)

 

Vermont Poet April Ossmann, whose new collection is Event Boundaries (Four Way Books). 

This week’s Write the Book Prompt was generously suggested by my guest, April Ossmann. It’s about extended metaphor, which we discussed during the interview. April says it makes for magic in poems. Often poets use metaphor but they drop it too soon and don’t explore it deeply enough. But when you push it and continue describing using the metaphor, that’s often when you get to a moment of epiphany or discovery and you realize something. The smarter part of the brain can then teach you something. Focus on describing in specific detail and keep the event or theme in the periphery of your brain. It’s a great exercise. Pick something for a metaphor and maybe in that description, write about something that wasn’t as you expected it to be or something that happened in a way other than how you expected it to happen.

Good luck with your work in the coming week, and please listen next week for another prompt or suggestion.

Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro

Tim Kreider - Interview #509 (5/14/18)

 

Author and cartoonist Tim Kreider, whose new collection is I Wrote This Book Because I Love You: Essays (Simon & Schuster).

This week’s Write the Book Prompt was generously suggested by my guest, Tim Kreider. When he offers prompts to his students, he tries to keep them broad so that the students can write about what they want to write about. Here is one that he has offered to spark their ideas: Write on the theme: “That’s how they get you.”

Good luck with your work in the coming week, and please listen next week for another prompt or suggestion.

Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro

 

Madeline Miller - Interview #508 B (5/7/18)

 

Award-winning author Madeline Miller, whose new novel is Circe (Little Brown). 

This week’s Write the Book Prompt was offered by my guest, Madeline Miller. Inspired by an Ursula K. LeGuin exercise, Madeline has used this one in her classes. She says it’s about “the elephant in the room.” Write a scene that is about a major trauma without actually mentioning the trauma. For example, have two characters talk about a death that has just happened, but neither of them mentions it. This is the elephant in the room. It is never named, but the truth of it is there in the scene.

Good luck with your work in the coming week, and please listen next week for another prompt or suggestion.

Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro

Kim MacQueen Interviews Lisa Romeo - Interview #508 A (5/7/18)

 

Kim MacQueen's interview with author Lisa Romeo, whose debut essay collection is  Starting with Goodbye: A Daughter’s Memoir of Love after Loss (University of Nevada Press).

For a Write the Book Prompt, consider Lisa Romeo's advice to not let in the inner critic! Just write. 

Good luck with your work in the coming week, and please listen next time for another prompt or suggestion.

Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro

 

Veera Hiranandani - Interview #507 (4/30/18)

 

Author Veera Hiranandani, whose new young adult novel is  The Night Diary, published by Dial Books.

This week’s Write the Book Prompt, which was suggested by my guest, Veera Hiranandani, concerns point of view. Veera says that people aren’t always aware of why they are using the point of view they’ve chosen. She likes to suggest to her students that they switch both point of view and tense, as an exercise, just to see how different their work might feel. So if you’re writing a piece in the third person past tense (“she went to the restaurant,”) try changing it to the first person present tense (“I go the the restaurant”) or first person past tense (“I went to the restaurant”), just to see how that feels to you. It can offer a new way of looking at your writing that can be really interesting, even if you don’t ultimately decide to use it.

Good luck with your work in the coming week, and please listen next week for another prompt or suggestion.

Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro