Write The Book: Conversations on Craft

Emily Arnason Casey - Interview #591 (11/18/19)

Vermont Author Emily Arnason Casey, whose debut essay collection is Made Holy

(Crux: The Georgia Series in Literary Nonfiction). 

This week's Write the Book Prompt was generously offered by my guest, Emily Arnason Casey, during our live conversation. It's one she's used in a recent class: write about a place you can't return to. See if you can find an object in that landscape of memory that gives you some direction or shapes your understanding of that place.

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

Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro

 

Kim MacQueen Interviews Cinse Bonino - #589 (11/4/19)

Guest Host Kim MacQueen interviews local author and teacher Cinse Bonino about her new book on creativity, One Key See, One Key Do (Onion River Press).

This week’s Write the Book Prompt comes from Cinse Bonino’s new book, One Key See, One Key Do, and it’s about noticing things we usually miss. Pick something at random to notice. You could choose to intentionally pay attention to all the doorknobs and handles you encounter today, or perhaps notice all the buttons on people’s clothing. Take the time to notice something you don’t usually focus on your attention on. For instance, you could notice if the people around you, not just the ones you know, are right-handed or left-handed. Notice all the slip-on shoes. Notice all the height difference in the couples and small groups of people you encounter. Notice the things people do when other people are speaking. 

Most of all, notice what you think and do as you attempt to see more. Figure out what you do intuitively that helps you to notice more. Make a note so you can do it on purpose in the future.

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

Gary Kowalski - Archive Interview #586 (10/14/19)

Interview from the archives with Author Gary Kowalski, about his 2012 book Goodbye, Friend: Healing Wisdom for Anyone Who Has Ever Lost a Pet (New World Library).

This week's Write the Book Prompt is to write about an unexpected interaction with an animal to which (to whom?) you have no personal ties.

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

Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro

 

Sydney Lea - Interview #585 (10/7/19)

New interview with Author, Poet, and former Vermont Poet Laureate Sydney Lea, whose new poetry collection is titled Here (Four Way Books). 

This week’s Write the Book Prompt is to write a villanelle. Syd Lea and I discussed his poem, “Old Lessons,” during our conversation, and he then explained what the poem’s form consists of. But here’s a recap, thanks to the Poetry Foundation (where you can also find examples): "The villanelle is a French verse form consisting of five three-line stanzas and a final quatrain, with the first and third lines of the first stanza repeating alternately in the following stanzas. These two refrain lines form the final couplet in the quatrain."

This week, write a villanelle! See what happens as you allow yourself this very specific form to contain the ideas that come.

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

Archer Mayor - Interview #583 (9/23/19)

Vermont Author Archer Mayor just published his 30th Joe Gunther novel, Bomber's Moon (Minotaur).

Blood Moon, Super Moon, Blue Moon, Harvest Moon, Bomber’s Moon. This week’s Write the Book Prompt is to come up with a new type of moon, and write about a night on which it rises. 

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

Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro

 

Miciah Bay Gault - Interview #580 (9/2/19)

 

Vermont Author Miciah Bay Gault, whose debut novel is Goodnight Stranger (Park Row Books).

This week’s Write the Book Prompt is to try your hand at the exercise that brought Miciah to find the first line of Goodnight Stranger, a trick that was suggested to her by former WTB guest Juliana Baggott: Try summing up your novel in the first sentence, and see what happens.

When she was the editor of the journal Hunger Mountain, Miciah set the authors of one issue this task, which comes from a famous Ray Bradbury exercise for generating ideas: "jot lists, without thinking too hard, of the things that represent the writer’s deepest interests, preoccupations, desires, fears, obsessions." This original exercise can be found in Bradbury's essay "Run Fast, Stand Still, Or, The Thing at the Top of the Stairs, or, New Ghosts from Old Minds" in his book Zen in the Art of Writing: Essays on Creativity. So that can be a second Prompt this week. 

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

Tony Whedon - Interview #576 (8/5/19)

 

Vermont Author and Musician Tony Whedon, whose essay collection Drunk In the Woods (Green Writers Press) was recently nominated for the Vermont Book Award.

I announced this week's "official" Write the Book Prompt after the broadcast's first interview, with Megan Price, but here's another: find a recording of John Coltrane's "Giant Steps" (which Tony mentions in one of the poems read in this interview). Here's one. Play it. Turn it up, play it again. Don't like jazz? Don't be ridiculous. Turn it up and play it again! Sit down and write. See what happens. 

Good luck with your work in the coming week, and please tune in next week for another prompt or suggestion! (Now play it again!!!) 

Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro

 

Megan Price - Interview #575 (8/5/19)

 

Vermont author Megan Price, who will soon publish another in her wildly popular Vermont Wild series (Pine Marten Press).

This week’s Write the Book Prompt is to write a story, poem, or essay that concerns wildlife or nature, and maybe has a funny aspect to it.

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

Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro

Susan Z. Ritz - Interview #573 (7/22/19)

 

 

Vermont Author Susan Z. Ritz, whose debut novel is A Dream to Die For (SheWrites Press).

In our live in-studio conversation, Susan generously shared the following, which is now this week's Write the Book Prompt: 

Pick up a box of buttons or bows or pieces of jewelry and choose two that are somehow different from each other. Think about the people who might wear or use these things. Write a scene where they meet somewhere - perhaps a café or park - and hold a conversation that begins: "Where were you last night?" Susan says her students have found this exercise to be a great avenue into scene, dialogue, and character. 

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

Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro

Eric Zencey - Archive Interview #572 (7/15/19)

 

 

An interview from the archives with Vermont Author Eric Zencey, who passed away on July 1st after a battle with cancer. Eric's books included Virgin Forest: Meditations on History, Ecology, and Culture (University of Georgia Press); Greening Vermont: The Search for a Sustainable State, coauthored with Elizabeth Courtney (Vermont Natural Resources Council/Thistle Hill); and The Other Road to Serfdom and the Path to Sustainable Democracy (University Press of New England). 

This week’s Write the Book Prompt is to consider the following quote from Eric Zencey’s book, The Other Road to Serfdom and the Path to Sustainable Democracy, and then write about whatever might occur to you, having read it:

 

 

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

Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro

Chris Tebbetts - Interview #571 (7/8/19)

 

Vermont Author Chris Tebbetts, whose latest novel is Me, Myself, & Him (Delacorte Press). 

This week's Write the Book Prompt was generously offered by my guest, Chris Tebbetts. He, in turn, first heard about this one through the writer Matt de la Peña, who suggests writing letters to yourself from your characters, explaining what you’re getting right or wrong about them. 

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

 

Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro

 

Amy Rose Capetta and Cori McCarthy - Interview #554 (3/25/19)

Vermont authors Amy Rose Capetta and Cori McCarthy, whose new novel is Once & Future (jimmy patterson). 

This week’s Write the Book Prompt was generously offered by my guests this week, Cori McCarthy and Amy Rose Capetta. When they received notes from their editor about a section of Once & Future that, for one reason or another, needed a little work - perhaps not enough was happening in a scene - they would sit down and brainstorm what they came to call “the ten worst things that could happen to your character.” The first thing was always, "the character dies." Even if this was not the answer, Cori and Amy Rose say that you have to include ridiculous things as well as possibilities. The ridiculous things loosen up the other things that might actually lead to a solution.

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

Music: Aaron Shapiro

Emily Bernard - Interview #552 (3/18/19)

Live, in-studio interview with Vermont author and UVM faculty member Emily Bernard, with her new book, Black Is the Body: Stories from My Grandmother's Time, My Mother's Time, and Mine (Knopf).

This week's Write the Book Prompt was generously suggested by my guest, Emily Bernard. Here it is, in her words:  

I tell my creative writing students that the best villains are born in ambivalence. A good rule of thumb is to let the reader love a villain first, before you condemn them. If a character is wholly loathsome, we readers might ask why you are asking us to spend so much time with them, or why you allowed them inside in the first place? For this writing prompt, choose someone who treated you unkindly from your past or your present and write about them, focusing on the one thing—a skill, quirk, personality trait, etc.-- that makes them lovable.

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

Music: Aaron Shapiro

J.P. Choquette - Interview #542 (1/7/19)

 

Vermont Author J.P. Choquette, whose latest is Let The Dead Rest. 

This week's Write the Book Prompt was suggested by J.P. Choquette. It has helped her to use the "fifteen-minute method" of writing, rather than trying to squeeze her productive time into the "fringe hours of the day." Set a timer for 15 minutes, and write until the alarm rings. You'll get work done, and you'll feel a real sense of accomplishment. 

I'll just add that a variation of this exercise, "The Pomodoro Technique," splits work into short segments, separated by breaks. I've had a lot of success with this approach, as well.

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 #541 (12/31/18)

Interview from the archives with Vermont Author and Poet Julia Alvarez about her book, A Wedding in Haiti (Algonquin Books). This show was originally broadcast on RETN and WOMM-LP "The Radiator" in 2012.

This week’s Write the Book Prompt is to write about a wedding through the eyes of the photographer, the caterer, or the officiant. 

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

Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro

Gin Ferrara - Interview #539 (12/10/18)

Vermont author and fellow WBTV-LP host Gin Ferrara. We discussed her children's book I'm Not Afraid of Snakes: a not-too-scary story (published by Gin in 2009).

This week's Write the Book Prompt was generously suggested by my guest, Gin Ferrara. Her book, I'm Not Afraid of Snakes, deals with Florida, the place of her childhood. Gin points out that we all have magical memories about the place that we come from, be it about a corner store, someone's back yard, the sound of the birds at night, or something else. Write about the magical, powerful, unique piece of your childhood place. 

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

Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro

Former Vermont Governor Madeleine May Kunin - Interview #529 (10/1/18)

Interview with former Vermont Governor Madeleine May Kunin about her memoir, Coming of Age: My Journey to the Eighties (Green Writers Press).

This week’s Write the Book Prompt is to write about a transition from one era to another in your own life, as Madeleine May Kunin has written about her journey to the eighties. Are you a new teenager? A new parent? Have you recently gone through menopause? Have you retired? We are all forever going through transitions, but how often do we write about these changes in our lives, minds, bodies? 

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

Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro

 

Megan Mayhew Bergman - Archive Interview #528 (9/24/18)

 

From the archives, an interview with Vermont Author Megan Mayhew Bergman. We discussed her first story collection, Birds of a Lesser Paradise  (Scribner). She has subsequently published a second: Almost Famous Women. 

This week’s Write the Book Prompt is to find a moment that you feel is lacking in your poetry or prose, and infuse it with at least two sensory elements--visual details or details of touch, taste, sound, or smell, to try to enliven that moment in your work. Then find another point in that same piece where you can somehow echo the sensory element that you added. For example, if you first added the taste of salmon, and this is something vital to your story, perhaps later a chair can be not just orange or pink, but salmon-colored. Don’t hit your reader over the head with something, but try to find ways to echo and repeat (important) images and ideas. 

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

Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro

Sarah Ward - Interview #520 (7/23/18)

Vermont Author Sarah Ward, whose new novel is Aesop Lake (Green Writers Press). 

This week's Write the Book Prompt was generously offered by my guest, Sarah Ward. In her writing, Sarah tries to fully depict villains as well as the “good guys,” whose stories always do tend to be fully explored. In the Harry Potter series, for example, what do we really know about Malfoy? Why is he—a wealthy, privileged boy with two devoted parents—such a jerk? Write the backstory of a villain. What drives him to be a bully or a sadist? What makes her so dark, so villainous? What are your villains frightened of? What do they want?

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

Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro

 

Robert and Martha Manning - Archive Interview #515 (6/25/18)

 

 

Robert and Martha Manning, (former Vermont) authors of Walking Distance: Extraordinary Hikes for Ordinary People, published by Oregon State University Press.

In conjunction with this interview, I'll post a slideshow with audio of my own recent long hike: El Camino de Santiago de Compostela. Watch for that, and for this week's prompt, soon. 

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

Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro

 

Karen Crouse - Interview #512 (6/4/18)

 

Interview with author and New York Times Journalist Karen Crouse, who recently published her first book, Norwich: One Tiny Vermont Town's Secret to Happiness and Excellence (Simon & Schuster). 

This week’s Write the Book Prompt was generously suggested by my guest, Karen Crouse. It is inspired by a talk she heard, given by the author Elizabeth Gilbert. During her talk, Elizabeth Gilbert mentioned that she'd had no idea, when she set out to write her book, Eat Pray Love, that it would eventually meet with so much success. She commented that that knowledge might even have made it hard to approach in the first place. She went on to suggest that, when you sit down to write, don’t think of it as a formal exercise. Think of it as relaying a story you might tell it to your best friend. This always stayed with Karen, who has found it valuable advice. And so she has shared it with us!

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

Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro

Bill Mares - Archive Interview #511 (5/28/18)

 

Interview from the archives with Vermont author Bill Mares. We discussed his book, Brewing Change: Behind the Bean at Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, co-authored by Rick Peyser. He has since published The Full Vermonty: Vermont in the Age of Trump, co-authored by Jeff Danziger. 

This week's Write the Book Prompt is to write about the role coffee has (or does not have) in your own work and life. 

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

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

Ralph Culver - Interview #504 (4/9/18)

Vermont Poet Ralph Culver, recorded live in the studios at WBTV-LP. We discuss Ralph's new chapbook, So Be It.

Happy National Poetry Month! 

This week we have three Write the Book Prompts. Ralph suggested two during our conversation.

1) The first extends his point about how "ridiculously broad" or "OCD specific" prompts can be. You can tell someone "write twenty lines of blank verse," or you can be specific: Write twenty lines of blank verse representing one side of a phone conversation between two spouses who are arguing about money. (It's possible Ralph offered this prompt with tongue in cheek, but I liked it, so I'm including it here.)

2) Write a poem about something or someone you lost.

3) My own suggestion is inspired by Ralph's poem "Fill Up," in which the narrator notices his own distorted reflection in the metal of a dented car ashtray. The distortion is literal, but it bends the poem as well, affecting the way in which we think about what we've read. In your work this week, include a literal reflection in your poetry or prose. See how a reflection in water, a window, a mirror... might affect someone's view of him- or herself, or of someone else or their surroundings. 

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

Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro

 

 

Jill M. Allen - Interview #502 (3/26/18)

 

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

 

Shelagh Reads a Story by Howard Frank Mosher - Show #497 (2/19/18)

 

 

Upon his passing in 2017, Howard Frank Mosher was recognized as one of America's most acclaimed writers. He finished his final book, Points North,  just weeks before his death. On today's show, in celebration of Howard Frank Mosher, and with the permission of his publisher, St. Martin's Press, I'll read one of the stories from this last collection, "Where is Don Quijote?"

This week’s Write the Book Prompt, drawing from the last sentence of Howard Frank Mosher’s story, “Where is Don Quixote?”  is to write about "the one thing left in this world that you are certain of."

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

Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro

Bill McKibben - Interview #490 (1/1/18)

Vermont author and environmentalist Bill McKibben, whose new (and debut, after some twelve nonfiction books!) novel is Radio Free Vermont (Blue Rider Press). 

This week’s Write the Book Prompt is to find an article in a newspaper or other news source and turn it to fiction, while retaining the underlying thematic point of the original journalistic piece.  

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

Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro

Adam Federman - Interview #482 (11/6/17)

Vermont author Adam Federman, whose new book is Fasting and Feasting: The Life of Visionary Food Writer Patience Gray (Chelsea Green).

This week’s Write the Book Prompt is to look for inspiration in a cookbook. So, for example, in my kitchen I do have the cookbook by Salvadore Dali, which is titled Les Diners de Gala. In opening the book, I find many things. Recipes like Lobster with Black Pearls, Ramekins of Frog’s Legs, and Tripe of Yesteryear. Maybe you’ll open a more tame cookbook, and find an inscription from a friend, reminding you of a long-ago birthday or anniversary. Maybe you’ll be inspired by a photograph of a lamb chop with mint jelly. Or maybe a recipe for turkey with roquefort will inspire you to write about a family celebrating thanksgiving in France. Whatever you find, let it be the way into this week’s writing.

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

Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro

Katherine Paterson - Interview #480 (10/30/17)

Newbury- and National Book Award-Winning Vermont author of Bridge to Terabithia, Katherine Paterson, whose new novel is My Brigadista Year (Candlewick). 

This week's Write the Book Prompt is to consider an historical event that might have reverberations in our own time, and write about it. 

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

Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro

Nancy Hayes Kilgore - Interview #475 (9/25/17)

Vermont Author Nancy Hayes Kilgore, whose new novel is Wild Mountain (Green Writers Press). 

This week’s Write the Book Prompt was generously offered by my guest Nancy Hayes Kilgore, who is a pastoral counselor and has been a parish pastor as well. She suggests considering, “What was your first spiritual experience? Where were you? What could you see and feel? What were your senses telling you at that time? What spiritual awakening might have come out of the moment?” Consider these questions, and use them as inspiration as you begin to write.

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

Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro

 

Vermont Book Award - Show #474 (9/18/17 B)

A series of excerpts of past Write the Book Interviews with guests who have had some association with the Vermont Book Award, which will again be presented this Saturday, 9/23/17, at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. 

Missing from these excerpts are two related authors: Thomas Christopher Greene, president of VCFA, which founded the award, and Tanya Lee Stone, one of this year's judges. I simply didn't have time to excerpt all of the interviews I wanted to! But listen to their full interviews by clicking the links on their names. 

Good luck with your work in the coming week! 

Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro

Tamar Cole - Archive Interview #471 (9/4/17)

Interview from the archives with Vermont Writer and Writing Coach, 

Tamar Cole (tamarcole21@gmail.com).

This week's Write The Book Prompt is inspired by a prompt that Tamar Cole has used in her writing workshops. She offers a word and then has participants write six lines about that word, or influenced by that word. So let's do that. In honor of Labor Day, the word for this week's prompt is enterprise. Think about the word enterprise, and write six lines. Or more!

Good luck with this prompt and tune in next week for another.

 

Bob Boyd - Archive Interview #470 (8/28/17)

Interview from the archives with Local Writer and Tai Chi Teacher 

Bob Boyd, author of Snake Style Tai Chi Chuan:

The Hidden System of the Yang Family.

This week's Write The Book Prompt is to consider the movement of an animal and use that in a comparative piece about human nature. 

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

 

 

John Huddleston - Archive Interview #468 (8/14/17)

Middlebury College Art Professor and Photographer John Huddleston, author of Killing Ground: Photographs of the Civil War and the Changing American Landscape (2003, Johns Hopkins University Press) and Healing Ground: Walking the Farms of Vermont (2012, Center for American Places).

This week’s Write the Book Prompt is to find out what used to be in a place that you frequent. Who lived in your house when it was first built? Do you know anything about that person or couple or family? Did another business used to exist in your favorite restaurant or coffee shop? Did an important event happen on land that you’re familiar with? Think about the history of place, and let that history inspire you as you write.

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

Amy Huntington - Interview #467 (8/7/17 B)

Vermont Author and Illustrator Amy Huntington, whose latest book is Fresh-Picked Poetry: A Day at the Farmer's Market (Charlesbridge).

The retreat Amy mentioned in our conversation is AIR Serenbe in Chattahoochee Hills, Georgia. And more information about the Children's Literacy Foundation (CLiF) can be found here.

This week, thanks to Amy Huntington, who recommended it, we have an Illustrator Prompt. She writes: “My inspiration for a lot of my recent work comes from nature, and spending time outside observing and learning about the natural world around me. I do this near my home and when I’m traveling. I find that sitting quietly in one place, sketching for a half an hour, allows me to see more and remember more. I also use details from this work to lend authenticity and depth to my illustration work. PROMPT: Take a sketchbook and your favorite medium, (mine is a fountain pen), and spend a half an hour outside drawing. ) You don’t have to find the perfect subject. It can be a tree or a leaf or a knot of twisty roots. I have a barn swallow nest outside my kitchen window that I have been itching to draw. You’ll find that after a bit of quiet sitting – even if it’s by a patch of weeds on the edge of a parking lot - you’ll start to hear and see critters around you interacting with their environment. This is all fuel for stories!”

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

Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro

Leda Schubert - Interview #466 (8/7/17 A)

Vermont Author Leda Schubert, whose new children's book is Listen: How Pete Seeger Got America Singing (Roaring Brook Press).

This week’s Write the Book Prompt is to read with a child, as Leda Schubert suggests at the end of our interview. Do you have young children? A niece, a nephew? Grandchildren? Maybe you can volunteer to read at your local public library. Watch how the children react to what you read. If you write children’s books, this will help you understand what appeals to young readers. If you don’t, then use the opportunity as inspiration for a poem, a story, an essay inspired by the experience.

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

Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro

Nadine Budbill - Interview #464 (7/24/17B)

Nadine Budbill, daughter and literary executor of the late David Budbill, Vermont poet, playwright and author. We discuss David's life and work, in particular one of his last publications, Broken Wing, a beautiful Vermont allegorical tale about a rusty blackbird with a broken wing. A story of loneliness, survival, tenacity and will, Broken Wing is also about music and race and what it is like to be a minority in a strange place. With a brief conversation as well from Dede Cummings, whose press published the novel. (GWP) 

This week's Write the Book Prompt is to read some of David Budbill's work and let it inspire you in your own writing. His work was frequently included on the Minnesota Public Radio show The Writers' Almanac. Those poems can be accessed here.

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

Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro

Dede Cummings - Interview #463 (7/24/17A)

Vermont Poet, Publisher and Book Designer Dede Cummings, whose new poetry collection is To Look Out From (Homebound Publications).

This week’s Write the Book Prompt is inspired by the conversation you just heard with Dede Cummings. Dede found the title for her collection To Look Out From, by researching the etymology of the name of the town where she was raised, Matunuck, RI. Matunuck, as we learn in the collection, is possibly a term that comes from a Southern New England Algonquian term meaning “high place,” “high point,” or “to look out from.” In your own world, is there a place name or otherwise relevant term that you hear all the time but perhaps have never investigated? Maybe you live in Winooski. Did you know that Winooski comes from an Abenaki term that means “Land of the Wild Onion?” Is your last name from a place you could research and learn more about? Do a little investigative work and then write a poem, a story or an essay that is inspired by what you learn.

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

Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro

 

Greg Delanty - Archive Interview #460 (7/3/17)

Award-winning Irish/Vermont poet Greg Delanty, who teaches at Saint Michael's College.

Today's Write The Book Prompt is to write about an event that elicits skepticism from one person and awe from another. 

Good luck with this prompt and tune in next week for another. 

Music credits: 1) “Dreaming 1″ - John Fink; 2) “Filter” - Dorset Greens (a Vermont band that existed briefly in 2008 and 2009, featuring several South Burlington High School students - now grads)

Sydney Lea and Chard deNiord - Interview #458 (6/19/17)

Two interviews about one book: former and current Vermont poets laureate Sydney Lea and Chard deNiord have collaborated to edit a new collection, Roads Taken - Contemporary Vermont Poetry (Green Writers' Press: Dede Cummings, Publisher). 

This week's Write the Book Prompt is to go outside and listen to the sounds around you - be they from birds, frogs, peepers, or your neighbors around the barbecue - and write. 

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

Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro

 

Bill Schubart - Interview #456 (6/5/17)

Vermont Author Bill Schubart, whose new novel is Lila & Theron (Charles Michael Publishing).

This week's Write the Book Prompt is to consider the following lines from Bill Schubart's essay "On Exigency," and to write from that point of inspiration: 

“There is an intrinsic self-reliance in those who see life’s exigencies as challenges to be overcome. Development in the person who feels victimized and overlooked by life becomes stunted since he is always looking outside himself for someone or something to blame.”

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

Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro

M.T. Anderson - Interview #453 (5/22/17)

Vermont Author M.T. Anderson, whose debut graphic novel was released in March: Yvain - The Knight of the Lion (Candlewick Press).

This week’s Write the Book Prompt is to re-imagine a legend, be it Arthurian, Shakespearean, Tolkien or J.K. Rowlian. Read part or all of a famous legend and write a poem, a scene, or a story inspired by your experience of what you’ve read. You don’t have to stick to the story, or even reflect it subtly. Just let it inspire you. See where it might lead to read an old tale. Here are links to a handful of possibilities to help you get started:

The Odyssey

Robin Hood

King Arthur

Romeo and Juliet

The Hobbit

A Vermont Legend about Ethan Allen

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

Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro

 

Jane Shore - Archive Interview #452 (5/15/17)

Interview from the archives with Vermont Poet Jane Shore. We discuss her 2012 book, That Said: New and Selected Poems (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).

This week’s Write the Book Prompt is to write a pantoum poem, just as Jane Shore wrote “Fortune’s Pantoum,” which she shared in our interview. Here's a link to a longer explanation of the pantoum, which comes from the site poets.org. Part of that explanation is this: "The modern pantoum is a poem of any length, composed of four-line stanzas in which the second and fourth lines of each stanza serve as the first and third lines of the next stanza. The last line of a pantoum is often the same as the first."

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

Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro

Stephen P. Kiernan - Interview #451 (5/8/17)

Vermont Author Stephen P. Kiernan, whose new novel is The Baker's Secret (William Morrow). 

This week’s Write the Book Prompt was generously suggested by our guest, Stephen P. Kiernan. The book he’s now writing involves the difficult task of describing art. Stephen recommends reading W.H. Auden’s "Musee des Beaux Arts," one of the best examples he can recommend of writing inspired by a painting. In this case, the painting is “The Fall of Icarus,” by Pieter Brueghel. Here's a link to the poem and the painting. Have a look, then find a work of art that’s unfamiliar to you, and write about it. Stephen says, having now done both for different projects, he finds writing about music easier than writing about art, because like narrative, music occurs through time. Both have movement, crescendo, culmination, completion… A painting is a moment apprehended that does not have narrative.

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

Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro

Former VT Governor Madeleine Kunin - Archive #442 (3/6/17)

Interview from the archives with Madeleine M. Kunin, Vermont's first woman governor, about her book The New Feminist Agenda: Defining the Next Revolution for Women, Work, and Family (Chelsea Green).

This week’s Write the Book Prompt is to write about a prejudice you know yourself to have. Because, if we're honest, we probably all have them. I'll start. I avoid cars with a certain regional license plate, because I'm of the opinion that those drivers can not be trusted on the road. (No, I won't name the region.) Do you have a prejudice? How do you feel about it? Are you ashamed of it, proud of it? Do you work to get past it? 

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

Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro

Jericho Parms - Interview #440 (2/20/17)

Vermont author Jericho Parms, whose essay collection, Lost Wax, was published last fall by University of Georgia Press. 

This week’s Write the Book Prompt was generously offered by my guest, Jericho Parms. This prompt speaks to the process she sometimes used while writing the essays in Lost Wax. She calls it FINDING PROSE (OR POETRY) IN PAINTING:

• Look at a painting (or sculpture, or image) and free write, in list or sentence form, everything you see. Be as specific and detailed as you can. No observation is too acute or obtuse. Think about color, texture, composition, form. Use your senses. Seek words to match the tone, the textures, the style.
• Continuing your meditation, allow your thoughts and imagination to roam freely and beyond the canvas. Note any external images or memories that come to mind as you observe the artwork. Seek associations. What are you reminded of? When have you felt this before? What or who (when or where) do you find yourself thinking of/grappling with/curious about?

So that’s Jericho’s prompt for you this week. I’d add one other idea, which is to try your hand at a contour drawing of the painting you study, in much the same way that Jericho drew some of the works that inspired her in writing Lost Wax. The exercise would be to draw some representation of the piece in a single go, without ever raising your pencil. On the cover of Jericho's book, you can see the kind of outcome that such an exercise might inspire.

 

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

Music Credit: Aaron Shapiro

Major Jackson - Interview #438 (2/6/17)

Award-Winning Poet Major Jackson, whose collection Roll Deep comes out in paperback February 28th (Norton).

This week’s Write the Book Prompt is to write a poem that attempts to imitate the work of Major Jackson. Read some of his work yourself and think about intention, rhythm, meter, rhyme. Maybe write a golden shovel, where you choose a line from a poem by Major, and use each word in the line as an end word in your own poem. Keep the borrowed words in order.

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).

 

Michael DeSanto - Archive Interview #436 (1/23/17)

Michael DeSanto, co-owner of local independent bookstore chain, The Phoenix, in an interview from 2012. 

This week's Write the Book Prompt is to write about someone buying the wrong book, with disastrous consequences. 

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).

 

 

Castle Freeman, Jr. - Interview #431 (12/19/16)

Vermont Author Castle Freeman, Jr., whose novel The Devil in the Valley comes out this week as a paperback (Overlook Duckworth).

This week's Write the Book Prompt is to experiment with rhythm and repetition in your own work.

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).

Martin Magoun - Archive Interview #429 (12/5/16)

Vermont writer Martin Magoun, author of the poetry collection Shattered and a memoir in essays, Russian Roulette: Depression, Suicide, Medication (DRUGS), published by Wharf Rat Books.

 

This week's Write the Book Prompt is to peek into a car that is not your own, and create a story based on what you see. What's in the back seat? Is it neat, messy, full of cans, full of books? Are there crumbs on the seat? Is there a car seat? Who owns this car, and what's their story?

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).

 

Tony Whedon - Interview #428 (11/28/16)

Vermont Poet Tony Whedon, whose new collection is The Hatcheck Girl (Green Writers Press/Sundog Poetry). 

This week, thanks to my guest Tony Whedon, we have two Write the Book Prompts: 

* Either imagine an attic or remember one from your past, and describe the things you see there.

* Find a piece of music that you don’t know that well and explore it with words as you listen.

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).

Mary Dingee Fillmore - Interview #427 (11/21/16)

Vermont Author Mary Dingee Fillmore, whose new novel is An Address in Amsterdam (She Writes Press). 

This week’s Write the Book Prompt was generously offered by Mary Dingee Fillmore, who says that when she is stuck in her writing, she likes to describe the environment: the weather, the shadows in the snow or grass... This nearly always works to get her work going again.

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).

Megan Mayhew Bergman - Archive Interview #426 (11/14/16)

Interview from the archives with Vermont author Megan Mayhew Bergman. We discussed Birds of a Lesser Paradise, published by Simon and Schuster. Since this interview, Megan has published another story collection: Almost Famous Women.

Today's Write The Book Prompt is to write about the way light is coming through a nearby window.

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).

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.

C.D. Bell - Interview #424 (10/31/16)

C.D. Bell, author of Weregirl, the first Choose Your Own Adventure (Chooseco) project with a single, dedicated ending! 

To some extent, change is a part of every book. The main character goes through a change, or her town goes through a change, or the situation that sets up the book changes. Perhaps these aren’t all as abrupt or significant as the change that takes place when a werewolf transforms, but still… This week’s Write the Book Prompt is to write about a transformation. Or just study the piece you’re working on a decide what is changing, because that’s probably something you should understand.

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).

 

Meg Little Reilly - Interview #423 (10/24/16)

Former Deputy Associate Director at the White House Office of Management and Budget Meg Little Reilly, author of We Are Unprepared (MIRA Books). 

This week’s Write the Book Prompt concerns the word storm, which has many uses, perhaps because of the impact that storms have always had on the populations that experience them. Here are a few brief definitions and synonyms: a violent disturbance of the atmosphere with strong winds and usually rain, thunder, lightning, or snow. Windstorm, tempest, whirlwind, gale, squall. A tumultuous reaction; an uproar or controversy. As a verb, it can mean to move angrily or forcefully in a specified direction. To storm off, stomp, march, stalk, flounce, stamp. It can be a sudden attack and capture by means of force. “Someone stormed the capital yesterday.”

Write a story, poem, essay or scene in which any form of the word “storm” or one of its synonyms has significance. If you have a friend who spells her name G-A-L-E, then you can go ahead and write about her.

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).

Fomite Press - Interview #416 (9/5/16)

Marc Estrin and Donna Bister, founders of Vermont's Fomite Press, "a literary press whose authors and artists explore the human condition -- political, cultural, personal and historical -- in poetry and prose."

This week's Write the Book Prompt was generously suggested by my guest, Donna Bister. Write about your first pair of shoes. Or, if you can't remember them, write about your favorite shoes. 

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).

Tovar Cerulli - Archive Interview #414 (8/22/16)

Posted in Writing, Politics, Activism, Creative Nonfiction, Meditation, Nonfiction, Environment,Food, Nature, History, Memoir, Farming, Essays, Health, gardening on Mar 15th, 2012

Vermont writer Tovar Cerulli, author of The Mindful Carnivore: A Vegetarian's Hunt for Sustenance, published by Pegasus Books.

Tovar Cerulli's website bio describes him as having had an "outdoorsy" boyhood. This week's Write The Book Prompt is to write about an outdoorsy experience. 

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).

Thomas Christopher Greene - Interview #405 (6/20/16)

Thomas Christopher Greene with his new novel, If I Forget You (Thomas Dunne Books).

This week's Write the Book Prompt is to write a love scene. Allow yourself to express emotion, and don't mistake sentiment for sentimentality.

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).

Neil Shepard - Interview #397 (4/25/16)

Vermont Author Neil Shepard, whose new poetry collection is Vermont Exit Ramps II, with photographs by Anthony Reczek (Green Writers Press / Sundog).

This week’s Write the Book Prompt is to consider whether your own work feels at all strong armed or overly intentional. Can you maybe bring in some element that will lessen that or make it more subtle? In his poems, Neil brought in anagrams, fortunes from fortune cookies, signage that he saw on his travels. What can you introduce to take out the overly contrived or explained elements of your work? Neil suggested you could write a counter statement to every statement. Play around with this idea and see if you end up wanting to keep some of the counter statements that balance out what might otherwise feel overly preconceived. 

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).

Elizabeth Stabler - Interview #394 (4/4/16)

It's National Poetry Month! This week's interview is with Vermont Poet Elizabeth Stabler, whose new collection of poetry, Wren, was published by Red Barn Books in 2015.

This week’s Write the Book Prompt was generously suggested by my guest, Elizabeth Stabler. Perhaps because this year has been so unusual, weather-wise, or perhaps because each season is unique, Holly suggested that this week’s prompt be to write about THIS spring. 

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).

Ron Krupp - Archive Interview #391 (3/14/16)

Two years after this interview from the archives, Vermont author and gardener Ron Krupp published a new book: The Woodchuck Returns to Gardening (Whetstone Books, 2014).

The Woodchuck Returns to Gardening is again rooted in organic gardening methods.... a jester called the "Chuckster" follows Ron around making fun of his gardening adventures and asking questions that allow for the inclusion of helpful insights. This week's Write the Book Prompt is to write a scene or a poem in which a character acts as a joker or heckler in some way, but manages to bring a larger truth to the page.

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).

Laura Williams McCaffrey - Interview #390 (3/7/16)

Vermont author Laura Williams McCaffrey, whose latest novel is Marked, published by Clarion.

This week’s Write the Book Prompt is to expand the vocabulary of the world about which you are writing. Laura Williams McCaffrey said in our interview that the fantastical vocabulary of the dystopian world of her novel Marked tends to be functional vocabulary. “Squatties” squat -- that’s what they do, she tells us. In considering the world you are perhaps creating in a piece of fiction, or poetry, or essay, even if you’re not working on a dystopian piece, think about the functional vocabulary of that place, time, or community. Are you writing about a faraway place? Might there be a vocabulary you could research and expand on, or a vocabulary that you should invent? Is there a workplace in your piece that might have specialized functional vocabulary? Perhaps an ad agency that has a code word to refer to an important client waiting in the lobby? Or maybe in your narrator’s family, are there words or expressions specific to their experience that you could add to amplify your reader’s understanding of their life together? Maybe the mother always shouts a certain phrase when she wants  the kids to turn out their lights and go to sleep. Maybe she shouts, “BEDTIME!!” at the top of her lungs. Or does she come to the door and barely whisper it, her tone full of consequences. 

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).

Christine Hadsel - Interview #383 (1/18/16)

Christine Hadsel, Director of Curtains Without Borders, a project that preserves painted historic scenery in Northern New England. Her new book is Suspended Worlds: Historic Theater Scenery in Northern New England.

This week's Write the Book Prompt is a visual exercise. Take a look at these photographs from the Curtains Without Borders Project, and let them inspire you to write.

Waterbury Center, VT

  

Vergennes, VT

 

North Hyde Park, VT

 

Townshend, VT

Good luck with your writing this week, and tune in next Monday for another prompt! 

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

Brett Ann Stanciu - Interview #379 (12/21/15)

Vermont author Brett Ann Stanciu, author of Hidden View (Green Writers Press).

Brett Ann Stanciu suggested a famous John Gardner exercise for this week's Write the Book Prompt. Here's a link to a site that lists many. (Brett's favorite is #4d). 

Here's her own version of that exercise:

Describe a building as seen by an elderly woman whose sister has recently been killed by a random and unexplained act of gun violence. Do not mention the sister, death, or the old woman doing the seeing. Then describe that exact building at the same time as seen by a young woman in love for the first time. Do not mention love, the loved one, or the young woman.

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 former South Burlington High School students).

Chard deNiord - Interview #372 (11/2/15)

Gary Lee Miller interviews Vermont's new Poet Laureate Chard deNiord, whose recent release, Interstate, is part of the Pitt Poetry Series (University of Pittsburgh Press). 

This week's Write the Book Prompt is to use the following as a starting point: "I haven't always been the world's nicest person." 

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 former South Burlington High School students).

Coleen Kearon - Interview #371 (10/26/15)

Vermont author Coleen Kearon, whose debut novel is Feminist on Fire (Fomite Press).

This week's Write the Book Prompt was generously offered by my guest, Coleen Kearon. Open a favorite book to a random page. Write down the opening three words of any sentence. Close the book, and use those three words as a starting point for your own work. 

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 former South Burlington High School students).

Amy Seidl - Archive Interview #360 (8/10/15)

Interview from the archives with Ecologist and educator Amy Seidl, author of Early Spring: An Ecologist and Her Children Wake to a Warming World and Finding Higher Ground: Adaptation in the Age of Warming.

This week's Write the Book Prompt concerns caring for the earth. Write about one step you have taken toward this guardianship. Then write about a next step you hope to take.

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 former South Burlington High School students).

Sean Prentiss - Interview #351 (6/8/15)

Write the Book's 351st episode (!) introduces Shelagh's new co-host, Gary Lee Miller, in an interview with Vermont author Sean Prentiss about his new book, Finding Abbey: The Search for Edward Abbey and His Hidden Desert Grave, published by University of New Mexico Press.

Sean Prentiss generously shared two Write the Book Prompts with Gary during their interview. The first is this: 

Find a piece of writing you love. Study it. What is the tone? What is the shape on the page? What is the title? How much dialogue is used? How are characters developed? What is the theme? Once you’ve studied the piece, then try to emulate it.  Write your own piece that mirrors or learns from the piece you love. Allow yourself to follow the original, but also to meander where you need. 

The second prompt for this week focuses on beginning and endings. If you have a draft of an essay, story or poem that you like but find yourself stuck with the beginning or ending, go ahead and add a second beginning or ending. Just tack it right on. Maybe start or end your piece with an overt idea, or start or end your piece with a scene that moves us to some new place or time. Or start with a powerful metaphoric image. This can be just the kind of writing play you need to get you where you want to go. 

Good luck with these exercises, and listen next week for another.

Music credits: I Could Write a Book by the Boston-based band, Possum.

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.  

Kim Dannies and Sue Monk Kidd - Interview # 348 (5/18/15)

Two interviews this week! The first, with former Williston Observer columnist, French-trained chef and memoirist Kim Dannies, whose new book is Everyday Gourmet. The second, with best-selling author Sue Monk Kidd, whose book, The Invention of Wings, has just come out in paperback from Penguin.

This week’s Write The Book Prompt was generously suggested by my guest, Kim Dannies. Either use the following phrase for inspiration, or as a starting point: “He was slicing limes...” 

Good luck with this exercise, and 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. 

Jennifer McMahon - Archive Interview # 344 (4/20/15)

Archive Interview with Vermont Novelist Jennifer McMahon. In this, our first of two interviews, we discussed her book, Don't Breathe A Word. My other interview with Jennifer can be found here. 

Write a story, poem or scene in which spring cleaning features prominently. 

Good luck with this exercise, and 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. 

Gary Lee Miller - Interview #342 (4/5/15)

Vermont author Gary Lee Miller, whose collection of stories, Museum of the Americas, was published by Fomite Press in July 2014.

This week’s  Write The Book Prompts were suggested by my guest, Gary Lee Miller. The first three are prompts that he has used in his work with the group Writers For Recovery. Gary refers to these as Positioned Prompts--prompts that give writers a specific, unique starting place to help them get going.

• Here's exactly what happened. 
• She was just a block from her house when she found the blue envelope on the sidewalk.
• In the beginning, all I wanted was a normal life.

Gary also shared a prompt called the Neverending Sentence, which he and his friend use in writing workshops they teach for kids. It reminds me a bit of the game of telephone. You begin by writing a simple sentence on a page, pass the sheet to another person, and ask that person to change one word or phrase. It goes from there. Gary's example is below. As you can see, it might get a little weird. But that's part of the fun. And it definitely gets more interesting!

• On a Tuesday morning, Gary Miller walked to town to buy eggs.
• On a Tuesday morning, Charmagne Miller walked to town to buy eggs.
• On a raggedy Tuesday morning, Charmagne Miller walked to town to buy eggs.
• On a raggedy Tuesday morning, Charmagne Miller walked to Carter’s Corner to buy eggs.
• On a raggedy Tuesday morning, Charmagne Adelphi walked to Carter’s Corner to buy eggs.
• On a raggedy Tuesday morning, Charmagne Adelphi walked to Carter’s Corner to steal eggs.
• On a raggedy Tuesday morning, Charmagne Adelphi walked to Carter’s Corner to steal somebody’s car.
• On a raggedy Tuesday morning, Charmagne Adelphi walked to Carter’s Corner to steal Henry Beefer’s car.
• On a raggedy Tuesday morning, Charmagne Adelphi walked to Carter’s Corner to steal Henry Beefer’s golden retriever.
• On a raggedy Tuesday morning, Charmagne Adelphi walked to Carter’s Corner to steal Henry Beefer’s deaf golden retriever.
• On a raggedy Tuesday morning, Charmagne Adelphi stumbled to Carter’s Corner to steal Henry Beefer’s deaf golden retriever.
• On a raggedy Tuesday morning, Charmagne Adelphi stumbled, half exhausted and violently ill, to Carter’s Corner to steal Henry Beefer’s deaf golden retriever.
• On a raggedy Tuesday morning, Governor Peter S. Shumlin stumbled, half exhausted and violently ill, to Carter’s Corner to steal Henry Beefer’s deaf golden retriever.
• On the Tuesday before the hurricane, Governor Peter S. Shumlin stumbled, half exhausted and violently ill, to Carter’s Corner to steal Henry Beefer’s deaf golden retriever.
• On the Tuesday before the hurricane, Governor Peter S. Shumlin stumbled, half exhausted and violently ill, to Carter’s Corner to vaccinate Henry Beefer’s deaf golden retriever.
• On the Tuesday before the hurricane, Governor Shumlin stumbled, half exhausted and violently ill, to Carter’s Corner to feed Henry Beefer’s deaf golden retriever.
• On the Tuesday before the hurricane, Governor Peter S. Shumlin stumbled, half exhausted and violently ill, to Carter’s Corner to shoot Henry Beefer’s deaf golden retriever.
• On the Tuesday before Hurricane Irene wiped out half of Vermont, Governor Peter S. Shumlin stumbled, half exhausted and violently ill, to Carter’s Corner to shoot Henry Beefer’s deaf golden retriever.
• On the Tuesday before Hurricane Irene wiped out half of Vermont, Governor Peter S. Shumlin’s half brother Luke Tweedly stumbled, half exhausted and violently ill, to Carter’s Corner to shoot Henry Beefer’s deaf golden retriever.
• On the Tuesday before Hurricane Irene wiped out half of Vermont, Governor Peter S. Shumlin’s half brother Luke Tweedly stumbled, half exhausted and violently ill, to Carter’s Corner to shoot Henry Beefer’s deaf golden retriever in the ass.
• On the Tuesday before Hurricane Irene wiped out half of Vermont, Governor Peter S. Shumlin’s half brother Luke Tweedly stumbled, half exhausted and violently ill, to Carter’s Corner to shoot Henry Beefer’s ex wife Melodica in the ass.
• On the Tuesday before Hurricane Irene wiped out half of Vermont, Governor Peter S. Shumlin’s half brother Luke Tweedly stumbled, half conscious and furious as a rabid hamster, to Carter’s Corner to shoot Henry Beefer’s ex wife Melodica in the ass.
• On the Tuesday before Hurricane Irene wiped out half of Vermont, Governor Peter S. Shumlin’s half brother Luke Tweedly stumbled, half conscious and furious as a rabid hamster, to Carter’s Corner to shoot Henry Beefer’s ex wife Melodica, who had betrayed him more than once, in the ass.
• On the Tuesday before Hurricane Irene wiped out half of Vermont, Governor Peter S. Shumlin’s half brother Luke Tweedly stumbled, half conscious and completely furious, to the Little Bub Daycare Center to shoot Henry Beefer’s ex wife Melodica, who had betrayed him more than once, in the ass.
• On the Tuesday before Hurricane Irene wiped out half of Vermont, Governor Peter S. Shumlin’s half brother Luke Tweedly stumbled, half conscious and completely furious, to the Little Bub Daycare Center to shoot Henry Beefer’s ex wife Melodica, who had betrayed him more than once, in the ass with Cupid’s arrow of love.

Good luck with these exercises, and 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.