Write The Book: Conversations on Craft

Write The Book Interview #130 (2/14/11) Julie Metz

Interview with Julie Metz, graphic designer and author of the memoir Perfection. This week's Write the Book Prompt comes to us from a listener in Westford, Vermont. Mark Peloquin writes that he's had good luck with this prompt:

Describe your room as a child.  Describe why you felt safe there or perhaps, why you did not.  Describe what you would see when you looked out the window or through the key hole. Describe any things that were on the walls and why there were significant.

Good luck with this prompt, many thanks to Mark for sending it, and please listen next week for another. Excerpt of Perfection read with permission from Hyperion Books. Music credits: 1) “Dreaming 1″ - John Fink; 2) “Filter” - Dorset Greens (a Vermont band featuring several South Burlington High School students).

Write The Book Interview #128 (1/31/11) Richard McCann

Writer of fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry Richard McCann, author of Mother of Sorrows. This week's Write the Book Prompt comes to us from the writer Dorothy Allison, by way of my guest, Richard McCann. In teaching writing at American University, he will occasionally offer this prompt to his students. First, he has them read Dorothy Allison's essay, SURVIVAL IS THE LEAST OF MY DESIRES, which is included in her collection, SKIN. In the essay, she suggests that writers make use of the whole of their lives: honor your dead, your wounded and your lost, and acknowledge your crimes and your shames-what you did and did not do in this world. Richards suggests making a list: who are your dead, your wounded and your lost (literal and metaphorical), and what are the crimes and shames of what you did and did not do. He says those lists become good places from which to start writing. Good luck with this prompt and please listen next week for another. Excerpt of Mother of Sorrows read with permission from Vintage, a division of Random House.

Write The Book Interview #127 (1/24/11) Bill Schubart

Local Short Story Writer, Public Radio Commentator and Businessman Bill Schubart. His latest collection is Fat People. This week's Write the Book Prompt was included in the interview itself, but here it is again:

My guest, Bill Schubart, said during our talk, "I love stories. I grew up in a French Canadian family in Morrisville, VT, and everybody told stories all the time in French and English." He went on to say that we as a society are too distracted by technology, and we don't listen to each other as much as we used to. So ask your family members for their stories. Listen to their stories. Maybe even record them. You can then write about these stories, or you can just enjoy them. As Bill said, "...stories define us, in our communities [and] in our families."

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 South Burlington High School students).

Write The Book Interview #120 (12/6/10) Pamela Harrison

Vermont Poet Pamela Harrison, author of the new collection, Out of Silence. This week's Write the Book Prompt was suggested by my guest, Pamela Harrison.  In her creative writing classes, she will sometimes ask students to read and study Archibald McLeash's Poem "Eleven," which captures a particular time in the intellectual and emotional life of an eleven year old boy. He is asked by the adults in his life to "think, think, think!" But he's not ready to think. He's still living deep inside his body. He hasn't arrived at his intellectual capacities yet and hasn't awakened to his separate self. The poem, says Pamela, beautifully captures that time in the life of a child. Your prompt this week is to find the poem "Eleven" and read it. Look at each line as it develops. Then find or remember a place in your own life that was your hideaway, your safe place as a child, where you were most alive inside your body and where you had a sense of wholeness; then write. It's amazing, says Pamela, what this exercise inspires in her students. Good luck with this prompt and please listen next week for another.

Write The Book Interview #119 (11/15/10) Joseph Mazur

Interview with Vermont Mathematician, Professor and Author Joseph Mazur. This week's Write the Book Prompt was suggested by my guest, Joseph Mazur. I'm including it in his words, as sent to me in an email:

You know that nonfiction writing requires the writer to bring readers to places they haven't ever been and to tell them things they have not known. In one single sentence, that is the task of the nonfiction writer. But to keep readers reading, a book must be alive with human experience. That's the job of anecdotal entrances and anecdotal relief.

Anecdotes are there to first amuse, and therefore hook the reader, and then to give clues to what the book is about.

If you are writing nonfiction, try weaving in as much anecdotal material as possible. Take a look at some of Stephen Jay Gould's books for fine examples. Gould was the king of anecdotal entrances.

There are a few principles to favor when using a leading anecdote-Bring in something that the reader can identify with, a character, a place, an object, or a brief amusement. Watch out for making it too specific-specificity has an uncanny way of creeping into the lead to defeat the hook.

I introduce each of my own books with lead anecdotes-

I came to understand mathematics by way of a Russian novel. (The first sentence in a book about truth and logic in mathematics.)

My father was the first person to tell me about paradoxes of time. (The first sentence in a book about time and motion.)

When I was a child, my uncles would gather every Saturday at my grandparents' house to sit at a long dining room table telling jokes while accounting their week' s gambling wins and losses. (The first sentence in a book about the history and psychology of gambling.)

My own high school days were the near misfortune of my teenage years. (The first sentence in a book about learning math in an inner-city high school.)

What about anecdotal relief? In most cases, relief suggests a reprieve from something burdensome. And burdensome reading is never a welcome task. However, unless it is memoir or biography, nonfiction often involves the burden of strings of complicated information that tends to swell into what sometimes seems to be disconnected from thoughts of the real world. Even the best nonfiction writers need to think about anecdotal relief just as the most indefatigable readers need respite.

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

Write The Book Interview #118 (11/8/10) Jon Turner/Warrior Writers

Jon Turner, Vermont Veteran, Poet, Paper Maker and Warrior Writers Member. This week, instead of a Write the Book Prompt, I'm going to refer you to the Warrior Writers' blogspot. There, alongside regular blog entries, you'll find weekly writing prompts, poetry forms, and occasional shared work. Please listen next week when the Prompt will return. Music credits: 1) “Dreaming 1″ - John Fink; 2) “Filter” - Dorset Greens (a Vermont band featuring several South Burlington High School students)

Write The Book Archive Interview #115 (10/18/10) Sorche Fairbank

Sorche Fairbank, Literary Agent and Founder of Fairbank Literary in Hudson, NY. This week's Write The Book Prompt is directed toward aspiring novelists. Your job this week is to write a synopsis of your book. Many literary agents will ask to see a synopsis with an initial query, or as a follow-up to a query that caught their attention. Here are a few things to consider as you approach the task.

* A synopsis is not a chapter outline. It's not necessarily even a chronological retelling of the book. Rather, a synopsis presents the book's plot and introduces the main characters in an appealing way that will interest an agent in reading the whole novel. It's a chance to show off your creativity, as well as your ability to condense and organize material.

* You may find that the agents you are querying have their own guidelines for appropriate synopsis length. But if they don't specify otherwise, try to make your book synopsis two-to-three double-spaced pages.

* Use the jacket covers of books you're familiar with as guidelines for how to approach writing a good synopsis. Jacket copy is written to sell books, and that's what you're trying to do as well. Here's an example. This is the jacket copy of a paperback reprinting of George Orwell's 1984: "The world of 1984 is one in which eternal warfare is the price of bleak prosperity, in which the Party keeps itself in power by complete control over man's actions and his thoughts. As the lovers Winston Smith and Julia learn when they try to evade the Thought Police, and then join the underground opposition, the Party can smash the last impulse of love, the last flicker of individuality."

* UNLIKE book jackets, your synopsis should fully describe the plot of your novel, including what happens at the end. To skip over the ending in hopes that the agent will want the full experience of reading your masterpiece is to take yourself out of the running. This is a sales pitch, and the agent will want to know how your book ends if she requests a synopsis as part of the query process.

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)

Write The Book #113 (10/4/10) Angelique and Morella Devost

A Discussion Of Writers' Block with Angelique and Morella Devost, Hypnotherapists and Practitioners of Neuro-Linguistic Programming. This week we have two Write The Book Prompts, suggested by my guests. Morella and Angelique Devost. The first is the prompt you heard Angelique mention in the interview, to write about a "Fraught Drive in a Car." And the second is to consider the idea that Morella mentioned, What would you do if you could not fail? And then write with that sense of possibility. Good luck with these exercises and please listen next week for another. And check out these articles, if you're interested in resources about the work that Morella and Angelique Devost do. Music credits: 1) “Dreaming 1″ - John Fink; 2) “Filter” - Dorset Greens (a Vermont band featuring several South Burlington High School students)