Write The Book: Conversations on Craft
Arts:Books
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
Robert S. Foster - Interview #613 (Special Show)
Janice Shade - Interview #612 (Special Show)
Sharon Cameron - Interview #611 (4/6/20)
Judith Chalmer - Interview #610 (3/30/20)
Kerrin McCadden - Interview #609 (3/23/20)
Kathryn Guare - Archive Episode #608 (3/16/20)
Megan Angelo - Interview #607 (3/9/20)
Anne Lamott - Archive Interview #606 (3/2/20)
Amy Bonnaffons - Interview #605 (2/24/20)
Barbara Buckman Strasko - Archive Interview #604 (2/17/20)
Kathleen Donohoe - Interview #603 (2/10/20)
Jessica McDiarmid - Interview #602 (2/3/20)
Ann Patchett - Archive Interview #601 (1/27/20)
Cynthia Newberry Martin - Show #600!!! (1/20/20)
Lisa Moore Ramée - Interview #599 (1/13/20)
Benjamin Percy - Interview #598 (1/6/20)
Abby Frucht - Interview #597 (12/30/19)
Jon Clinch - Interview #596 (12/23/19)
Dave Eggers - Interview #595 (12/16/19)
Douglas Glover - Interview #594 (12/16/19)
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Lit Society: Books and Drama
Ex Libris
Fresh Air
Black Beauty
Frankenstein
Myths and Legends
The Foxed Page