Write The Book: Conversations on Craft

Carolyn Conger, PhD - Archive Interview (8/23/21)

An interview from the archives with consultant and teacher Carolyn Conger, PhD, about her book Through the Dark Forest: Transforming Your Life in the Face of Death (Plume). 

This week’s Write the Book Prompt was inspired by the book, Through the Dark Forest: Transforming Your Life in the Face of Death. No matter where you are in life - age-wise, health-wise, or otherwise - this week consider what you’ve left unfinished so far in your life, and what you would like to do about it. Maybe also keep in mind how you have navigated the pandemic, and whether the past year and a half have made you feel more vulnerable. Write about all the things that come up as you invite these thoughts and feelings.

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

 

Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro

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Julia Alvarez - Interview #623 (5/11/20)

Vermont Author Julia Alvarez on her new novel, Afterlife (Algonquin). 

This week I have two Write the Book Prompts to offer, both generously suggested by my guest, Julia Alvarez. First, a prompt she learned about when she was researching titles for her book. In considering the title Afterlife, she researched, as authors do, to be sure her book’s title was original and unique. As she did this work, she found out about another book titled Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives, by the neuroscientist David Eagleman. The book offers forty short, imaginative narratives on the theme of God and the afterlife. Julia says the pieces are sometimes funny, sometimes not, but they are all clever and inspiring. She suggests a writing prompt in which we write such a piece: a 2-3 page vignette that imagines what happens when we leave this life.

The second prompt Julia suggests is to write a six-word story or bio. Hemingway famously penned this one: For sale: baby shoes, never worn. Julia was once asked to contribute to a book titled NOT QUITE WHAT I WAS PLANNING: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous & Obscure, edited by Smith Magazine. As Julia points out, it can be hard to do! If you like, you can narrow it down to what your life is like in this particular year. Either way, here is a six-word prompt for you, from Julia Alvarez:  Write your story in six words. 

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

Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro

Kathryn Davis - Interview #578 (8/19/19)

Vermont Author Kathryn Davis, whose new novel is The Silk Road (Graywolf Press). 

As she mentioned during our interview, one goal that Kathryn Davis had in writing The Silk Road was moving fluidly through time. She said, “The way you experience living is often like you’re sitting in this kitchen but there’s some part of you that is somewhere else, and … it’s also temporally dislodged. We’re not as organized as beings as we like to think we are.” This week’s Write the Book Prompt is to consider this statement, and to consider time and space, and your ideas about them. How are time and space organized in your consciousness? Do you feel they are independent of one another, are they interchangeable? Do you see the flow of time as unidirectional, do the past and future exist, or do they become conceptual given the notion of the now--the present moment? Maybe you’ve never thought much about these ideas. But sit with them and consider what might change in your work if you were to attempt a revision that embraced some of these new ideas. I don’t mean you should turn that historical novel into science fiction. But might the tense change to offer a more interesting presentation? Maybe your consideration of this subject will open up a new path to the structure you've struggled to find.

This week, either play with time and space in your work, reconsider how you tend to ground your stories, novels, and poems in each, or double down on what you already thought and the way you have worked in the past. If there is such a thing.

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

Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro

Tessa Hadley - Interview #543 (1/14/19)

 

Tessa Hadley, author of the new novel Late in the Day (Harper).

This week’s Write the Book Prompt was mentioned during our interview. Tessa Hadley said she needs to know who her characters are, physically, in order to write about them. She has set an exercise to students in which they pair up and write physical descriptions of each other. So this week, write a physical description of someone you know well or at least can get a really good look at. Don’t let that person see the outcome of your efforts; Tessa says this last instruction--not sharing the outcome--is imperative, insuring that you will keep the physical description that you write honest.

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

Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro

Katharine Dion - Interview #517 (7/2/18)

Author Katharine Dion, whose debut novel is The Dependents, published by Little Brown.

This week’s Write the Book Prompt comes from my interview with Katharine Dion. Something that has been useful for her, and is related to the kind of stories she is interested in telling, is to look around at situations that have on first glance nothing interesting going on: a situation or setup that might at first even seem boring. Then reverse that proposition in your mind. Assume the opposite: that something fascinating is going on in the situation, or between the people you’re observing. This will give you the chance to look again at something you initially chose to dismiss. We dismiss things for all sorts of reasons, Katharine points out. Either we are fearful of what we see, or we’re made uncomfortable by it. But looking again at what we might initially dismiss can offer unexpectedly rich material.  

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

Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro

Julia Alvarez - Archive Interview #437 (1/30/17)

An interview from 2012 with Julia Alvarez about her then-new book, A Wedding in Haiti. She recently published a new book about death "for children of all ages," Where Do they Go? - with illustrations by Vermont artist Sabra Field.

This week's Write the Book Prompt is to consider Julia Alvarez's statement, "Part of us dies with the death of people we love." And to write.

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

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

 

Pamela Heinrich MacPherson - Interview #425 (11/7/16)

Vermont Poet Pamela Heinrich MacPherson, whose work keeping vigil with the dying inspires her poems, with her 2016 collection Vigil: The Poetry of Presence. 

This week’s Write the Book Prompt comes to us from Pam MacPherson, who suggests looking into the work of the “Wake Up to Dying” Project, an awareness and action campaign that encourages people to think and to talk about dying. In reading about the Montpelier-Vermont-based organization, you may find inspiration in the stories that you find.

Good luck with your work in the coming week. If you are having a difficult week, given the election and all of the uncertainty about what's to come, write about that. Write your fear and your anger, your hope and your dedication. And perhaps look into a cause that you can support on the local level to help your community.

Tammy Flanders Hetrick - Interview #349 (5/25/15)

Vermont author Tammy Flanders Hetrick, whose new novel, Stella Rose, was published in April from She Writes Press.

This week’s  Write The Book Prompt was suggested by my guest, Tammy Flanders Hetrick. It’s essentially the idea that prompted her to write her novel, Stella Rose. Imagine knowing that you weren’t going to be there. Imagine having three months to prepare. Now write. 

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

Philip Graham - Interview #299 (6/23/14)

Write the Book's 300th (!) episode features an interview with Philip Graham, author of two story collections, The Art of the Knock and Interior Design; a novel, How to Read an Unwritten Language; and The Moon, Come to Earth, an expanded version of his series of McSweeney's dispatches from Lisbon. He is also the co-author (with his wife, anthropologist Alma Gottlieb) of two memoirs of Africa, Parallel Worlds (winner of the Victor Turner Prize), and Braided Worlds. Dzanc Books will reprint The Art of the Knock, Interior Design, and How to Read an Unwritten Language as ebooks this summer.

This week’s Write the Book Prompt is inspired by the interview you heard today with the author Philip Graham. We spoke about the appearance of objects in written work. As Philip mentioned, his 1979 short story, “Light Bulbs,” chronicled how a couple coping with the “empty nest” grew to form relationships with the light bulbs in their home, almost as a substitute for their absent children. This week, as you work, consider the objects that show up in your work. In particular, pay attention to those objects that already exist there. Try to understand what they might be doing for your story, and how your appreciation of their existence might deepen what you’re writing.

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). 

 

Jessica Hendry Nelson - Interview #282 (2/10/14)

Vermont writer Jessica Hendry Nelson, author of the memoir If Only You People Could Follow Directions, and co-founder of the Renegade Writers' Collective.

This week’s  Write The Book Prompt was recommended by my guest, Jessica Hendry Nelson. “Write a letter of apology of which you don’t mean a word.”

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. 

Carolyn Conger, PhD - Interview #278 (1/13/14)

Author Carolyn Conger, PhD, whose new book is Through The Dark Forest: Transforming Your Life in the Face of Death, published by Plume.

This week’s Write The Book Prompt is one of many exercises that appear in my guest, Carolyn Conger’s book: Through The Dark Forest. She has generously agreed to let me include it here. This exercise is called Expansion, Contraction, or Balance? The questions in the exercise are designed to speak most directly to people who might be facing death more imminently, but you can adjust them to your own situation. Ultimately, of course, we can all benefit from considering what the end of our lives will look like, and living a full life for as long as we can.

This exercise is meant to initiate a meaningful inquiry into being present. Take out your journal and write about how you are experiencing the rhythms of your life. Address these questions and add whatever comes to mind about keeping your life big. Accept what you discover without judgment.

• Is there anywhere in my life I’m hiding, giving up, or disappearing into my illness?
• When do I feel most alive, most fully myself?
• Are there areas of my life where I want to be more present?
• Are there times in my life--perhaps during medical procedures--when it’s appropriate not to be aware and present?
• Do I feel a balance in the amount of time I’m in expansive states, neutral states, and contractive states?
• What do I feel about the idea of being present for my own death?

There are no correct answers to these questions. You are exploring your rhythms of awareness in your life now, and noticing how, when and where you are present. You have the right to make these choices, and it’s healthier to make conscious choices about what you are doing, rather than falling into automatic behavior. 
      ~ Excerpt From Through the Dark Forest: Transforming Your Life
            in the Face of Death, by Carolyn Conger, published by Plume.

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

Music credits:  1) “Dreaming 1″ - John Fink; 2) “Filter” - Dorset Greens (which was a Vermont band in 2008, featuring several South Burlington High School students, now grads.)