No Shake and Bake for You

 

What are your thoughts on writing ‘outside your own experience’? What are the potential pitfalls? What are the reasons to do it? Can you give a personal example of how you navigated this potentially problematic terrain?

 

There are Two Easy Outs to answer this question.

Research.

Imagination.

But you didn’t come here for Simple and Easy. No Shake and Bake for you.

I’ve never been one to shy away from uncomfortable truths, and any writer worth their salt will eventually face the choice: play it safe, or take a risk. I didn’t say take a permanent position. I said take a stance. However temporary, however flawed.

The pitfall? Anything you create invites criticism.

I’m certain the cave painter in Lascaux had a critic pee on his drawings.

And let’s be honest: a one-star Amazon review is one thing.

Surviving an assassination attempt, like Naguib Mahfouz or Salman Rushdie is writing with real stakes.

Writing is dangerous because it’s paradoxical, in that it’s anarchistic and democratic.

Anyone can do it. And while doing it well is subjective, I’d argue it boils down to three things:

Curiosity.

Education.

Empathy.

History has shown that oppression often fuels resistance and creativity. That’s the human spirit in action. But it’s also shown that domination starts by controlling education, sowing disinformation, and making people forget their own histories.

I said earlier that research is an Easy Out. It is—but it’s also vital.

The sheer amount of knowledge available at the click of a mouse is staggering.

To sound like Andy Rooney for a moment: “Back in my day…” I had to drag myself to the Big Brown Box that came before Google and fish out an index card. Then it was off into the wilds of the Dewey Decimal jungle at the local library.

I was a voracious omnivore—Pac-Man with a library card. I ate books like snacks. I say this without humblebrag (okay, maybe a light humblebrag): by the time I was twelve, I had read over a thousand books. Classics. Trash. Shakespeare and Harold Robbins. I read it all.

I even kept a list. Probably the most OCD thing I’ve ever done.

I didn’t know it then, but my future English teacher was the one who interviewed me for admission into a competitive high school. Picture the nerdy kid from The Breakfast Club. That was me: the ‘neo-maxi-zoom-dweebie’ with a booklist.

She flipped through the pages and asked, ‘You really read all this?’

I said, ‘I did. Doesn’t mean I understood it.’

That’s where curiosity meets humility—and confrontation: with yourself, with the loud and often contradictory universe. The cliché holds up: the more you read, the less you know. It’s easy to spiral into despair from that. Why even bother?

But then comes the point.

Curiosity doesn’t care what’s ‘In’ or ‘Out’ of the canon. I read Huckleberry Finn. I wasn’t offended by the N-word—I was curious about it. I wanted to know: were Black people always slaves? (Spoiler: no. The ugly truth? Some African tribes sold their rivals into slavery.) That line of questioning led me to a deeper understanding of how race has been used as a manufactured justification for oppression and colonialism.

Curiosity is asking why you see certain books on the shelf—and why others are missing.

I write crime fiction and mystery. But I’m not a criminal. I’ve never robbed a bank, buried a body, or impersonated a detective, unless you count binge-watching Netflix as field research.

I’m constantly writing outside my own experience. To do it well, I rely on the three things I mentioned earlier: Curiosity, Education, and Empathy. Also, a slightly incriminating browser history.

There’s a meme: a guy in a dark suit reviewing someone’s browser history.

He sighs, ‘Writer.’ And moves on.

That’s me.

Writing crime fiction means diving into the mess of human motives—grief, guilt, revenge, desperation. I don’t need to be a murderer to explore those emotions. No more than I need to be a prince to understand Hamlet.

I imagine it. I walk with it. I talk to it. I find a truth.

I’ve written multitudes: African American characters. Gay. Female. Nonhuman. I’ve tried to meet each one with care, research, and imagination—not performance.

Which brings me to Education.

It’s systematic, and political. There’s a reason geography is left out of the contemporary curriculum in the US. If you can’t find a country on a map, it’s easier to ignore its history or bomb it without a second thought. Teach thyself. Read like an Omnivore.

Intellectual curiosity is nonlinear. It connects dots that causation can’t explain. It asks the awkward questions. It leads you into unfamiliar territory and dares you to stay there long enough to learn something.

And then there’s Empathy. That’s the game-changer.

Empathy is what lets you manifest grief, joy, or injustice in a form that feels alien at first, but turns out to be human. It also opens your eyes to uncomfortable truths and acts as a gateway to compassion and wisdom.

That’s why History matters. That’s why Education matters.

I always tell people read U.S. labor history because it isn’t taught in school. Ask yourself, Why not? Then, for a global counterpoint, read Eduardo Galeano’s Open Veins of Latin America. See how the same story unfolds.

Which brings me to my final thought:

Want to really write outside your experience?

Read outside your native language. In the original.

I taught myself French because this sentence from Flaubert’s Legend of St. Julien stunned me:

Quelquefois, dans un rêve, il se voyait comme notre père Adam au milieu du Paradis, entre toutes les bêtes; en allongeant le bras, il les faisait mourir.

[Sometimes, in dreams, he saw himself as our father Adam in the middle of Paradise, surrounded by all the beasts; and by merely stretching out his arm, he killed them.]

You can read what you know and reinforce what you think you understand—or you can go looking elsewhere to understand how much you don’t know.

Your choice.

I write because I think and I feel.

And because the world’s a mess.

And someone has to try making sense of it—with a pen, a keyboard, not a Molotov.

Write what you know?

 

What are your thoughts on writing outside your own experience? What are the potential pitfalls? What are the reasons to do it? Can you give a personal example of how you navigated this potentially problematic terrain?

 

One of the first rules of writing that I learned was right what you know. I couldn’t agree less. So, I ignore it all the time. Personally, I think that should be a rule strictly for non-fiction. I mean, considering that someone always dies, normally not well, in my novels, my family and friends, probably co-workers too, or maybe mostly co-workers, are probably very grateful that I decided to pitch that rule in the trash.

To label it a rule is probably a bit of an exaggeration, but still, in my mind, fiction writers should, as the great Janet Evanovich once told me, “Write whatever you want!” And now, that is exactly what I do. But that was not always the case. Despite my dark heart crying out for murder and mayhem, my first books were squarely in the women’s fiction genre. They were all about the everyday struggles of trying to navigate the drama of family, friendship, and love, because that is what I knew.

I still love those books, more importantly, I love how well received they were by readers, who found that they could relate to the struggles and strength of those characters, because those were their struggles too. And that is the beauty of writing what you know, the authenticity shines through in a way that is never quite the same when you’re writing outside your own experience.

 I can’t tell you how many times readers have approached me to tell me which girl they thought they were from my first books. Still, there is nothing more exciting than letting your mind wander into new streams of thought, building new worlds, and dare I say, learning all kinds of things you didn’t know. And that’s the tradeoff folks, the learning of brand-new ideas, new worlds being created at the tips of your fingertips. And unlike with doctors, when writers play God, no one dies, in real life, that is.

 But make no mistake the pitfalls are there lying in wait. The biggest one of them being the reader who knows everything about that thing that you wrote and thought you could bluff your way through, and they are ready and waiting to tell you everything single thing you got wrong, be it by email, your socials, or, gasp, a handwritten letter delivered the old-fashioned way. They will point out every mistake, no matter how small in 4k, baby. And you’ll have no choice but to live with in for eternity. Because as we know, the internet is forever. The very thought of it gives me the shivers.

As scary as that may sound, or did, to me in the beginning. The reward far outweighs the risk. Because for every super attentive reader that will find your mistakes and beat you over the head with them for all eternity. There is that reader who will walk up to you and tell you, “I hate you for making me cry so hard over someone who isn’t even real.” Or my all-time favorite, “You’re going to get me fired because I stayed up all night reading your book and was late for work.” Thank you, dear reader. My job is done here.

So, write what you know, sure. But never be afraid to branch out and build that brand-spanking new world. But first, research, research, and research again, because Mr. Know-It-All is waiting and he is ravenous.

To Share, or Not to Share - A Writer's Dilemma, by Harini Nagendra

Here's the question of the week: How much should a writer share about their personal life? 

Sally Rooney has refused, in interviews, to talk about her private life. Author Debbie Urbanski recently wrote a piece for Literary Hub titled: If I tell you secrets about my personal life, will you look at my new book? The point Debbie made was, most of us are desperate for publicity, we need our books to sell, so we feel compelled to participate in the sharing of personal information. What are your thoughts on how much writers should share?

I'm not comfortable with putting details of my private life out for public consumption. But even if I was, the basic premise doesn't make sense to me. Sure, many readers are eager to know even the smallest details of celebrities - their sleep and work routines, what they like to eat for breakfast, the names of their pets, salacious details of their romantic lives, what their kids wore to go on a play date - but that's celebrities. I don't see why anyone would be interested in the daily life of a regular writer. Just like my fellow Minds writers this week have described this week, I don't think I have done anything terrifically adventurous - nor do I live a life that is glamorous and full of parties, fine clothing and late nights. 

If a reader wants to hear about a regular day in my life, I'd be happy to share it with them on a podcast - one of those podcasts you play at night when you want to go to sleep.      

I really think it's a myth, that sharing the tiniest little details of your personal information with readers will make them buy your books. Many of my favorite authors, whom I follow on social media, post very little about themselves - I read their posts for any details they may reveal about their writing life, their processes of writing, and the books they are working on now. Especially if they're writing a series, and I want to know when I can expect the next book that tells me what my favorite characters have been up to since the last time I read about their shenanigans.

I do know a number of writers that work assiduously to post at least 3-4 times a week, trying to increase their follower count, because that's what their editors and agents asked them to do. Has it increased their sales? Hard to say for sure, but it seems unlikely. From my own experience - and I do post a lot, and have a decent number of followers on some platforms like LinkedIn, but that's mostly on ecology and sustainability (my day job) - I don't see my social media posts on books moving the needle on sales. In-person events do make a difference, and the independent bookstores that I visit often in Bangalore move close to half the books I sell in India - the lovely people at these stores hand sell my books, and are absolutely the best friends a writer can have. 

Do they know about my personal life? No, and I think they would be horrified if I began to overshare. I don't know much about their life either, which is fine with me. I am very touched and honored to have faithful readers who turn up at these events and chat with me, and line up to get books personalized and signed for friends. I can recognize several by face now, and some by name as well, and we chat a bit about this and that - but it's mostly about the books, or the traffic and the weather, or sometimes about plans they have to write a book themselves - which is always lovely to chat about. 

When we don't exchange personal information about ourselves with readers when we chat with them in person, why would it be any different on social media?

But let's move from discussions of personal life to something better - new books! Into the Leopard's Den, Book 4 in The Bangalore Detectives Club series, released on 1 July in the US and other parts of the world - the India release date is July 18.

Here's the gorgeous US/world cover

 And the stunning India cover - it's hard to say which one I prefer, both are so different but I love them equally.

And now, about the book. 

Amateur detective Kaveri Murthy returns with her most complex case yet: investigating a series of murders that take her from the bungalows of Bangalore to the mist-enshrouded mountains of Coorg.

Bangalore, 1922: Pregnant and confined to the house by her protective mother-in-law, Kaveri Murthy has resolved to take a break from detection. But when an elderly woman is murdered at night and dies clutching a photograph of Kaveri while asking for her help—how can she refuse? Missing the assistance of her husband Ramu, who is working in Coorg, Kaveri investigates her new case with her able assistants, milk boy Venu and housemaid Anandi. They find a trail of secrets that lead them to suspect the killer may be in Coorg.

Eager to be reunited with her husband, Kaveri sets off to Coorg to investigate. When she arrives, she encounters a thorny thicket of cases. Why does a ghost leopard prowl the forests at night, terrorizing the plantation workers? And who is trying to kill Colonel Boyd, the Coffee King of Coorg? She finds suspects in every coffee bush and estate—from Boyd’s surly plantation manager and security guard to the feuding brothers who own the neighboring plantation—and the many women the Coffee King has pursued and abandoned.

When two vulnerable children appeal for her help, Kaveri is drawn deeper into the case, becoming emotionally involved in finding the killer. Soon, one murder turns into two—and then a few days later into three. Now the killer has tasted blood and needs to be stopped. Racing against time, Kaveri must take on her most complex challenge so far, with the assistance of Anandi and Venu in Bangalore, and with Ramu and Inspector Ismail in Coorg. In this stunning new novel by an acclaimed master of the form, the Bangalore Detectives Club must find and expose a brutally intelligent killer before they strike again.

Get the book at your favourite local bookstore, or

https://bookshop.org/p/books/into-the-leopard-s-den-a-bangalore-detectives-club-mystery/RGgUs59vWC29VzRS?ean=9781639368976&next=t&

or your online platform of choice!

Voyeurs and Exhibitionists from James W. Ziskin

Sally Rooney has refused, in interviews, to talk about her private life. Author Debbie Urbanski recently wrote a piece for Literary Hub titled: If I tell you secrets about my personal life, will you look at my new book? The point Debbie made was, most of us are desperate for publicity, we need our books to sell, so we feel compelled to participate in the sharing of personal information. What are your thoughts on how much writers should share? 

In the Before Times—before social media—people didn’t share the details of their private life with the world at large. For starters, there was no avenue to do so. Unless you wanted to take out a full-page ad in the newspaper, and that cost a lot of money. If you weren’t already famous, no one knew you or cared anything about you. And if you were famous, you probably had a publicist to manage your PR.

Before reality TV, influencers, and Tiktok, the common ethos was that certain things were better kept to oneself. Was it The Bachelor and celebrity porn tapes that killed decorum? When did people decide they would no longer be ashamed of their most private moments? Society now rewards immodesty, otherwise how would you explain the Hawk Tuah Girl? I’m no prude. I couldn’t care less what one does in private. But what about in public? Should we be sharing our lives to such an extent?

EXACTLY HOW MUCH IS TOO MUCH?

Of course this is a personal decision. People are free to show and tell what they want. And, by all appearances, there’s a healthy demand for consuming what people show and tell. At the same time, we can choose to keep certain details private. À chacun son goût, comme on dit. This week’s question has forced me to think about what I share with the public on social media, and I realize that I’m a fairly private person.

WHAT I DO SHARE

1. I do talk about my writing. After all, I’m on social media in the first place to promote my writing career. To that end, many of my posts link to 7criminalminds.blogspot.com, even if I’m not sure how much traffic they drive to this page. And who knows if these posts help sell books?

2. I do talk about other people’s books. Pay it forward and backward.

3. I do talk about my teaching. Not much, but from time to time I post drawings I make for my French class.

4. I do share pictures of my cats because the Internet was invented to be a giant repository of cat pictures and videos.

WHAT I DON’T SHARE

1. I don’t talk about my health. Not that my friends wouldn’t be interested to know how I’m doing, but people have enough troubles of their own. They shouldn’t have to worry about mine.

2. I don’t talk about my finances. My mother taught us not to discuss money, and I’ve always tried to follow her advice.

3. I don’t rain on other people’s parades, at least not publicly. Privately is another matter. Sure, I dislike certain kinds of music, look down on some popular films and TV shows, and root against my hated sports teams, but I keep those details to myself. What would I gain in ridiculing someone else’s preferences? It’s not as if people are wrong for liking something different. Maybe we could all try to be less self-assured, more tolerant, and polite about other people’s taste.

4. I don’t talk about the foods I like. Or hate. That’s between me and my palate.

5. I don’t post selfies of…well…myself. On the other hand, I do post the occasional picture of…myself…but not in a look-at-me-aren’t-I-so-cute kind of way. More like a this-is-the-least-objectionable-photo-of-me-I-can-find kind of way.

6. I don’t post dad jokes. 

7. I don’t post provocative opinions simply to get reactions. There are eight billion people on earth. Who cares how cleverly edgy I think I am? Plus, that’s a sure-fire way to lose friends and alienate people. (Apologies to Dale Carnegie.) Readers, too.

8. Perhaps most important, I DO NOT POST pictures of large spiders. That’s just rude. Some people—not naming names here—have real phobias and are truly freaked out by such creatures. I ask you all to reconsider the next time you think a hairy arachnid is something worth posting.

But does any of this sharing or not sharing help sell books? Of course not. I have about 3,000 friends/followers on social media. Even if every personal post I shared earned me a tenth of that number in book sales, I’d still be selling only tens of books. Well, maybe hundreds. But that isn’t enough to make the bestseller list. Or even a modest living. And, of course, you’d have to be Pollyanna to expect one out of ten of your friends/followers to buy your book simply because you mugged for the camera and showed some ankle.

So, no, I don’t like to share too much publicly. Oh, wait. I almost forgot to mention one last thing I don’t share online:

POLITICS

9. I don’t talk much about politics in public fora, mostly because I get hoarse preaching to the choir or in the desert, depending on the audience. It’s one or the other, isn’t it? And I’ve yet to see any converts out there. So, online, I keep my thoughts mostly to myself, apart from the occasional 👍, ❤️, 😡, or comment on someone else’s post. 

But make no mistake. I stand firmly against injustice, racism, misogyny, bullying, bigotry, and cruelty. Those are not political issues. They are affronts to human decency and goodness. If you don’t oppose those, fuck right the fuck off and don’t buy my fucking books. There, I said it. That felt good.

For better or worse, the age of social media has given us an affordable—for all intents and purposes free—stage on which to perform in puris naturalibus if we so choose, for an audience of millions. And there are voyeurs aplenty out there to consume our exhibitionism. Some will say it’s in poor taste to share so much about ourselves, while others revel in the attention. No such thing as bad publicity.

Me? I think I’ll keep my clothes on, literally and figuratively speaking. I realize that all of the examples I cited above—what I will share and what I won’t—actually say a lot about me. Does that make me a hypocrite? Am I an exhibitionist? I suppose so. But all in all, I’d rather show you who I am than tell you.

Sdlfkhdsf

Clicks, Likes and Book Sales

What are your thoughts on how much writers should share? 

by Dietrich

Sally Rooney, known for her reticence in discussing her private life, contrasts with the pressures many authors face to share personal details for publicity. In a recent Literary Hub piece, Debbie Urbanski asked, "If I tell you secrets about my personal life, will you look at my new book?" This question highlights the dilemma: in an era where personal branding often overshadows artistic output, how much should writers reveal to promote their work?

While sharing personal stories—through social media, interviews, or essays—can foster a connection with readers, it also raises questions about authenticity and privacy. I see social media offering grassroots promotion opportunities, yet there’s the risk of blurring boundaries between public and private life. Does the literary marketplace start to feel like a confessional booth, where oversharing can be mistaken for authenticity?

The decision to share hinges on intention and agency. When personal stories align with a writer’s values, such as in memoirs that illuminate broader truths, they can resonate deeply. However, oversharing can invite scrutiny rather than empathy and create an expectation for more disclosure. It feels to me that this turns a writer’s life into an open book, potentially at the cost of personal agency.

Sally Rooney’s success—millions of books sold and adaptations on major streaming platforms—demonstrates that a writer’s work can speak louder than personal revelations. While maintaining a social media presence can boost visibility, I think trading privacy for publicity feels like it comes at a steep price. Instead of divulging intimate details, I’d sooner focus on sharing thoughts on the creative process, my literary influences, even intellectual passions to hopefully engage readers without sacrificing  personal boundaries. Besides, I think a touch of mystery can be more compelling than an open book.

Attention! Attention! My Life is....

 

Most writers are desperate for publicity. We need our books to sell, so we feel compelled to participate in the sharing of personal information. What are your thoughts on how much writers should share? 

Writers are told that readers want to feel as if they have gotten to know writers personally. And I’m actually okay with that. I’m met a lot of fans and have always found it a real pleasure. I don’t mind if they know something about my personal life. But how much? I will talk about where I live and where I have lived, what I like to do when I’m not writing, my favorite music and art, how long I’ve been married, my relationship with my son. So where does it end? 

 I’m fascinated by writers who make a living from not just their writing, but who they are. In other words, some people are famous for being famous. One example is Joyce Maynard, who came to fame because of her relationship with J.D. Salinger. I’ve talked to her in person, and she’s really congenial, and completely open about that relationship, which many found scandalous. Scandal = attention. I wonder if each novel she writes would have gotten the same attention had she not been famous first. I don’t mean to denigrate her. Maynard writes perfectly good novels. But I’ve read a lot of better novels that didn’t get that much attention. 

 There are many other examples. People who were famous in other ways—musicians, politicians, painters, spouses of famous people, actors… And invariably they get a lot of splashy publicity. The question is in order to sell our books, do we feel compelled to participate in the sharing of personal information? Well, fine, I’ll share. 

But quite frankly my life hasn’t been that interesting. I’ve done a lot of traveling, including on our boat, and that was pretty wonderful. But…are people going to read about those adventures and run out to grab my latest Samuel Craddock novel? Probably not. I worked for the CIA for three years. So? Will that make them want to snatch up my domestic suspense novel? 

 I was raised in Texas by a pretty ordinary family—except that Mary Karr wrote a much-acclaimed book, The Liar’s Club, about just such a family. When I read it, the setting, plot, and characters were so familiar that I wondered if she lived down the street from me. 

 Bottom, line I don’t think sharing my personal information is particularly useful for selling books. 

 Maybe I should make up some juicy personal information: Which of these would bring me the kind of attention that sells books? 

- I once hitchhiked all the way across the country, from California to New York. It took me six months and I had incredible adventures along the way. 

-At the age of sixteen I was captured by a gangsters who wanted me to pretend I was his wife so he could slip past a roadblock. 

-When I was in my 20s, I starred in a Broadway play under a different name. 

-I have two husbands and two different families. Neither family knows about the other one.

 ….I could go on. But would that really sell my books? I actually believe the most important thing is to write a good book first. And then try to figure out what the latest and most exciting publicity scheme is (which is a completely different issue). But revealing personal information? Probably isn’t going to do much for my sales.

And speaking of sales, my latest thrill, DEEP DIVE came out last week. Check it out (thanks to fellow "mind" for the great promo ad). 

Now, let me tell you about the time I was diving and wrestled a shark....

Coming Out of the Darkness - Matthew Greene

Sally Rooney has refused, in interviews, to talk about her private life. Author Debbie Urbanski recently wrote a piece for Literary Hub titled: If I tell you secrets about my personal life, will you look at my new book? The point Debbie made was, most of us are desperate for publicity, we need our books to sell, so we feel compelled to participate in the sharing of personal information. What are your thoughts on how much writers should share?

When I was younger, I wanted to be an actor. I lived for community theatre and school plays and was convinced that I belonged on the stage. I headed off to college to study musical theatre performance, and it took less than one semester to realize I was in the wrong place. The prospect of turning a few fun moments in the spotlight into a professional pursuit seemed miserable, and I started casting about for a Plan B. The moment I stepped into my first real writing class, I knew I’d found my place. 

There were a lot of reasons for that shift in focus, but a lot of it came down to this: I didn’t want to be the product I was selling. As a writer, I could bring in pages, perhaps even read them out loud for a group…but when critiques began, it was the pages we were talking about. The work. The writing. Not me. As a playwright, I clung to a quote from Marsha Norman who insisted that writers belonged in the dark in the back of the theater. They weren’t meant to be seen. So, it stood to reason that a novelist could be even less visible. It was the pages that mattered, not the author.

I’m sure you can tell where this is going. Cut to several years later, and I’m constantly being encouraged to “put myself out there” and to “put a human face” to my work. I thought I’d escaped the dreaded “b-word” (branding), but it seems writers are no longer allowed, as Marsha Norman encouraged, to stand in the dark and let their work do the talking.

Maybe I was naïve from the start. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so eager to hide so early in my career. After all, Dickens was doing public readings long before the days of BookTok and Instagram Live. But the pressure to be out in front seems to be growing exponentially, and we can probably blame social media for that. (After all, we blame it for everything else.) 

Of course, this brave new world presents opportunities that didn’t exist in generations past. Self-promotion can be exhausting, but it can also be empowering. Authors who used to be at the mercy of marketing budgets and industry gatekeepers can (theoretically) take matters into their own hands, engage with their readers, and build a career online. Sure, this has made the landscape more crowded, and it’s more difficult than ever to get noticed. But that’s all the more reason to post early and often, isn’t it? All the more reason to share as much of yourself as you can in an effort to break through the noise.

So, how much personal information does a writer have to share? It’s something I’m still grappling with. I’m consistently surprised that people even want to know about my life and my creative process. It’s certainly not that interesting when you’re in the midst of it. But I found myself talking a lot about my background, my personal experiences, and my perspective as a debut novelist while I was promoting There’s No Murder Like Show Murder. And I must admit, it was kind of fun coming out of the dark.

All of this is colored, in my mind, by the AI elephant in the room. Putting a “human face” to our work is more important than ever, since it’s something our audiences will never get from computer-generated content. Our humanity is baked into our prose, of course, and discerning readers will always be able to feel that. (Or so I keep telling myself to avoid the doom spiral.) But the more I’m willing to talk about my work—about the experiences, anxieties, and insights that fueled the thing I'm trying to sell—the easier it will be to forge those strong, human connections.

I think about the fallout from the Milli Vanilli lip-syncing scandal and the subsequent trend of live performance music videos and “unplugged” concerts that followed. Bands and artists were eager to prove that they were real musicians. Maybe we should take a page from their book. Maybe sharing personal details is our version of warming up in front of the audience, unplugging the amp, and showing the messy, beautiful humanity that powers our work.

Follow Your Nose by Poppy Gee

CRAFT If you were teaching a writing workshop, what’s a great writing prompt for writers to get started on a piece of writing? Or is there a method you find helpful when you’re sitting at your desk and can’t think what to write about?

One of my favourite writing prompts is using the scent of smell to trigger a memory for the character, sending them back in time to a significant or interesting moment. I use it when I’m teaching my crime fiction writing workshops - it’s a good way to access a character’s backstory, without overthinking it. As a pantser – someone who writes by instinct, not according to a plan – this technique often opens up new character trajectories for me.   

 

Scent Memories... they might be sparked by fresh flowers, a hearty meal, or seaweed and surf.

Our sense of smell is the strongest and most powerful of all the senses. There is a scientific reason for this: our olfactory bulb is located at the front of the brain, and acts as a relay station, sending signals to other areas of the brain that control emotion, memory and mood. Evolutionally, our sense of smell guided us to make vital decisions about food, potential dangers, who to mate with, who to fear.

Certain smells create a powerful scent memory that can cause an emotional response – this is a great way to give texture and depth to a character.

For me personally, if I catch a whiff of someone’s cigarette as I’m walking down the street, I inhale it happily. The sweet, pungent smell of cigarette smoke reminds me of carefree childhood summer holidays at my grandparent’s house on the Gold Coast. Gramps smoked a pipe and cigars, and Nana smoked slim cigarettes she kept in an elegant silver tin. In the early evenings, Gramps would smoke in his chair in the front living room overlooking the Broadwater, drinking rum. Often there was a bowl of burger rings on the table. In the early morning, when the lawn was still damp with dew, Nana wandered her beautiful, tropical garden alone, cigarette in hand. This was her daily ritual, surveying her pawpaw tree for new fruit, admiring her bird of paradise and flowering ginger, her dressing gown floating elegantly around her, her cigarettes and lighter hidden in a deep pocket.

My grandparents had an array of ashtrays: chrome spinning lidded ashtrays; pretty crystal-cut glass bowls; ashtrays set on tall stands that could be moved around the room. They had a huge glass bowl jar of matchboxes that they had collected from hotels across the world. Back in the 70s and 80s, when you could smoke anywhere, upmarket hotels offered branded matchboxes for guests, like they do drink coasters. As a kid I loved playing with their matchbox collection. My parents hated the idea of smoking, they told us it was smelly, dirty, poisonous, that it ruined your teeth and skin. I didn’t see any sign of this on holidays at Nana and Gramps’ place. I know smoking is bad for you, but I still connect the sweet scent of burning tobacco with summer holiday feelings: beach days and movie nights, ice-cream and amusement parks, and my grandparents, living the relaxed, graceful life of retirees with time to make smoking a pleasant ritual.

A scent memory in a narrative could be deeply meaningful, such as the scent of fire triggering a traumatic experience; a certain perfume reminiscent of an unfaithful lover; the fresh, clean scent of a new baby reminding a character of their own private, terrible loss. But it could also be something simple: the yeasty smell of beer a reminder of a pub where a person used to work; the salty, warm smell of movie popcorn jolting someone back to a first kiss; or the smell of two-stroke diesel on cold air prompting memories of snowmobiles, boats or even a lawnmower and a story associated with that.

Using the sense of smell is a simple, effective technique to add colour and texture to your story, and it has the potential to extract something really interesting from your subconscious. 

Sole Lundy Fastnet, by Catriona

If you were teaching a writing workshop, what’s a great writing prompt for writers to get started on a piece of writing?

Or is there a method you find helpful when you’re sitting at your desk and can’t think what to write about?

There's going to be some sporting reference in this post, so why not start now: it's very much a question of two halves.

If I was teaching a writing workshop and wanted a way to offer prompts to the other writers in the room, I'd wheel out what3words (link) - the little bit of free software (website or app) that can plot any 3-metre-square place on earth with . . . guess how many words? Except of course I wouldn't suggest to a room full of students that they start downloading apps - so distracting. Instead, I'd recommend coming at it the way I did: on a property website. So there would be a roomful of students, looking at pictures of pretty houses in the English countryside on RightMove (link). Yeah, on second thoughts, I'd give them five minutes to find the what3words website and stick a pin in a map to get a prompt. 

clip apples leap - W3W's landing page

prep mock pops - the White House

quadruple shins handlebar - Crazy Horse Mountain

Ooooh - I just got struck by a plot idea. A student in a writing workshop uses their own address to write a W3W piece and . . . well, you're all mystery-fiction fans. Stalker's paradise, right?

But moving on to the second half of the question: I've got nothing. I've never sat at my desk with no idea what to write about. I'm either writing about whatever happens next in the story I need to hand in by some scary-close day or I'm writing the start of the perfect story in my head that won't run into any problems as I carry it effortlessly and triumphantly to the page.

So I was kind of stuck, on Monday, when I had checked the week's question and was out doing my early morning gardening hour, listening to the radio as usual. Lucky then that, as I mulched some chard and kale, the BBC Radio 4 programme that happened to be on was Poetry, Please and this week it was about the 100th anniversary of the Shipping Forecast (link).

Bear with me. 

Yes, this half-hour poetry show was dedicated to the daily broadcast of gale warnings, general synopsis, area forecasts, and weather reports from coastal stations and inland waters which has been going out, first on long-wave and now on 92.5FM, twice a day, including - this is crucial - at 00.48, just before the national anthem and the switch to the World Service as R4 goes to bed . . . for one hundred years.

There were ten poems - well, nine poems and a Blur track - all inspired by the shipping forecast, and I'm sure Roger McGough had to make some tough decisions to get it down to just ten, because the shipping forecast is . . . well, it's . . . okay, it's a kind of national prayer / meditation / lullaby that Brits hold tenderly in our hearts. I didn't have to look up "gale warnings ... inland waters", for instance. I can hear the soft voice of the last R4 announcer of the day saying all of it. And I still have feelings about the Spanish government changing the name of the Finisterre lighthouse to Fitzroy. 

It's already poetry: irresistible, beautiful, mysterious:

                    "Viking, North Utsire, South Utsire, Forties . . ."

And it's ended up a kind of collective writing prompt for a nation. Former poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy's sonnet "Prayer", to take just one example, opens:

                        Some days although we cannot pray

                        A prayer utters itself.

                        A woman lifts her head

                        From the sieve of her hands

and ends on the word "Finisterre" Finisterre, Spain. Not Fitzroy. Just sayin'.

I always buy Neil a t-shirt for Christmas and I never thought I'd do better than 2020's Four Seasons Total Landscaping, but last year I knocked it out of the park, with this excerpt of sea conditions from a coastal station:

And then there was the time that two bits of British culture met head-on and one had to give. (Like when QEII was crowned the same day Sir Edmund Hillary got to the summit of the highest mountain in the world and the headline writers were flummoxed. Until the Daily Express came up with ALL THIS AND EVEREST TOO.)

Well, it happened again in 2011 when England was just about to beat Australia at cricket, in what's known as "the ashes", after a match in 1862 that England has never got over losing. There were two minutes left, but it was 00.47 Greenwich meantime and so either R4 Test Match Special, the five-day-long live broadcast of the cricket (yes really) or R4 The Shipping Forecast was going to have to give. 

There was an argument that very few ships actually rely solely on the shipping forecast rather than the technology onboard and it was unlikely that lives would be lost. Click here to hear what happened. (Hint: the shipping forecast is relevant for ships on one day and never again. There are sixty-five episodes available on BBC Sounds. (And I highly recommend it.))

 Cx

 

What We Talk About When We Talk About Writing Prompts

If you were teaching a writing workshop, what’s a great writing prompt for writers to get started on a piece of writing?
Or is there a method you find helpful when you’re sitting at your desk and can’t think what to write about?

I don’t say this as a humblebrag, but I’ve never suffered from Writer’s Block.

My issue has always been starting with the right image or phrase. Get that right, and I’m in the zone. Hours go by. Sentences seem to write themselves. (Flow, as the nerds say.)

So let’s stop treating writing prompts like caffeine for writers and start using them more like tuning forks. A way to find the pitch you’re writing toward.

My approach: Tie your prompt to a craft goal.
The prompt isn’t the spark—it’s the lens.

 

1. Craft Focus: Perspective

Prompt: Look at the letter W.
Is it the 23rd letter of the alphabet?
Or upside down—or an M?
Or turned sideways—the letter E?

The lesson: Any scene, character, or plot point can be recharged if you shift how you see it. Sometimes, the solution isn’t new material—it’s a new angle.

 

2. Craft Focus: Emotion

We’ve all heard “Show, don’t tell.” But how do you feel your way into emotion without stating it outright?

Prompt: Pick a color. Now ask:

• What emotion do you attach to that color?
• Is that association cultural? Personal? Both?

Example: In the West, black is death. In parts of Asia, white is.
Stephen Crane’s “The Blue Hotel” plays with this beautifully—blue as mood, setting, danger.
Or look at Chandler’s “Red Wind.” The Santa Ana wind is a red hot, and dry wind that affects people and the detective’s investigation psychologically.

The lesson: Emotion can live in the atmosphere—in color, in light, in objects. Let the reader feel what’s unsaid.

 

3. Craft Focus: Visual & Sonic Narrative

Sometimes you’re stuck not because you don’t have an idea, but because you don’t know how to stage it.

Prompt 1:
Read the final lines of Chandler’s “Red Wind.”
Then watch the last scene of High Noon.
Chandler’s pearls = Cooper’s badge.
One gesture, no words, tells the whole story.

Prompt 2:
Watch Midnight Run.
Listen to the dialogue.
Almost every line is a question.
Even the answers are more questions.
It shouldn’t work. But it does.

The lesson: Dialogue can dance. Props can carry weight. Storytelling isn’t just in plot—it’s in how people speak, what they drop, what they won’t say.

 

4. Craft Focus: Time (The Hidden Architecture)

Writers often get tangled not in what happens—but when.
Time on the page is slippery. Is the story moving forward? Looping? Stuck? Too fast? Too slow?

Prompt:
Write a scene twice:

• Once in real time (moment-to-moment, like a film).
• Then compress that same scene into five sentences, with time jumps built in.

The lesson: Narrative time is elastic. Knowing when to stretch a moment and when to skip ahead—gives your writing rhythm. It’s what separates pace from plot.

Look at how Toni Morrison handles time in Beloved.
The novel loops, haunts, and slips between past and present—not randomly, but with purpose. Memory is the structure.

 

Now, it’s your turn.

A Prompt About Subtext (Your Carver Moment)

Prompt:
Write a scene between two people who both want something but neither can say it directly.
Every line of dialogue must be either:

• a question,
• an evasion, or
• an unrelated comment.

Inspiration: Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants.”
What’s being discussed in that story is never named but you feel it.

The lesson: Sometimes, the most powerful writing is what’s not on the page. Let tension build in the unsaid.

 

Let the prompts be more than warm-ups.
Let them be invitations to depth.

Ready. Set. Write!

 

If you were teaching a writing workshop, what's a great writing prompt for writers to get started on a piece of writing? Or is there method you find helpful when you're sitting at your desk and can't think what to write about? 

A friend of mine once gave me a gift called The Writer's Toolbox, which includes different ideas, prompts, and games that promise to stimulate your creativity and crush writer’s block. That was many years ago. I am happy to say, knock on wood, that I've not had to use it, yet. Still, I keep it handy, just in case.

 My actual writing process is unbelievably simple, I either plop my butt in the chair and just start writing on whatever idea that is percolating in my brain at the moment, and fortunately there always seems to be a few. Or I stress read while berating myself about procrastinating about writing until shame chases me back into my chair to write again. Now, I'll admit as processes go, it might not be the glamorous, sexy, answer but it's the truth. 

There is one writing prompt that I really do enjoy and find helpful for kicking that lazy idea factory into gear, the free write. In fact, it was a free write in a random English class that made me think that maybe writing was something I could be actually good at. It’s a wonderful thing to be given a word, a sentence, or even a subject, along with few minutes to allow whatever story that may be trapped in your head to come flowing out onto the page without judgement. And it does come, good, bad, and almost always ugly, it comes.

So, if I were teaching a workshop I would start with a fresh piece of paper and a pen and fifteen minutes to write without thought just words on paper, no grammar, no structure, not even a story, just ideas being born in real time. I’m never not surprised at what appears on the page. I think my students would feel the same.

I would also prompt them to read Stephen King’s, On Writing. As every writer should.😊

 

Finding a gem in the midst of garbage - by Harini Nagendra

What's the writing business going to look like 5 years from now? Do you think it's going to be more or less the same, or will AI and other technology trends transform it dramatically - if so, how? 

If someone offered to tell my future for free, I would normally run from them, as far and fast as I can. I don't want to know what my future will bring - if it's not good news, I would be paralyzed by fear, and if it is good news, I'd probably become complacent and give up any form of active striving.

(Photo: Close-up of a glass ball by Marco Verch under Creative Commons 2.0)

But when it comes to the book writing business, I wouldn't run away - in fact I'd be sorely tempted to steal a crystal ball if I knew where one was to be found. As a teacher too - I know it's getting harder and harder to design assessments because students can so easily AI the answer. I have colleagues teaching coding courses who are resorting to pen-and-paper exams, because that's the only way for them to tell if students have understood the philosophy behind the coding - or if they have asked ChatGPT to write the code for them. I've always preferred take-home, open book exams because they encouraged creative thinking, as opposed to rote memorization - but AI has turned all of that upside down.

What about book writing, though? I can see AI editing and translation software becoming widely used by writers - at least for copy editing. But I think a good development editor is worth their price in gold, and can't be replaced - even in 5 years - by AI. Similarly, books that display lateral thinking, creative books that connect two different genres or play with tropes in an unexpected way - go against the grain of most AI algorithms, which rely on training algorithms - that is to say, they can do more of what they are taught to do, and probably learn how to do it well, but can they do something completely new, which hasn't been done before? I'd be surprised - though I'm not saying no for now. The speed at which these algorithms evolve is quite something. 

Would I ever want to use AI to write a book? No - it would suck out all the fun from the process. I can't understand why writers would want to use AI to write text, or plot out an entire book, though I expect many will use generative AI to flood the market with books. These books will be substandard, because their purpose is only to make money, not to create something beautiful - but if they can be generated in the millions and billions at the click of a button, how will readers find the books they want to read? How can we bring back serendipity, the joy a reader experiences at discovering a new book or author whom they never heard of - and then get drawn into the worlds they create? 

That's what I worry about, when I worry about AI. Not that writers will still write books, and readers will want to read them. But - how will readers find writers that sparkle and catch their eye, when the landscape is filled with cheap rubbish?

How Much Would You Pay to Watch a Robot Hit a Golf Ball? from James W. Ziskin

What's the writing business going to look like 5 years from now? Do you think it's going to be more or less the same, or will AI and other technology trends transform it dramatically - if so, how? 

There is much dread about the future of AI and the writing of fiction. Specifically, lots of folks are wondering if AI will put human writers out of business.

Well, in 1997 Deep Blue defeated chess master Garry Kasparov. In the twenty-seven years since, has anyone organized a world chess championship for computers? Would anyone watch if they did? I don’t think so.

Let me give another example:

Would you pay to watch a robot hit a golf ball? (Click on link or picture)

Or would you rather watch this? (click on link or picture)

If people are willing to get on an airplane, fly to Georgia, rent a car, check into an expensive hotel, and pay hundreds of dollars to sit in the sun for eight hours to watch a human whack a small dimpled ball with a stick, then I predict that no one will ever want to read stories written by robots. No matter how good AI becomes, it will never be human and therefore will hold little interest beyond a huh-look-at-that, fleeting curiosity that will shrivel up, die, and be forgotten as soon as a butterfly floats by or a favorite song comes on the radio or you smell onions frying or you pet a cat. Or…huh, look at that… My fingernails need trimming.

Admit it. AI has no spirit, no perspective, self-irony, or obsession. It has no convictions, no envy, no sloth, and no lust for success. It doesn’t care. In short, it has no soul. 

And its heart has never been broken, which means it will never write anything of creative value. 

If you don’t agree with me, let’s do a simple test, Pick A or B from the choices below:

1. I would rather 

    A. Pay to hear a mimic imitate Frank Sinatra really, really well

    B. Pay to hear Frank Sinatra sing

2. I would rather 

    A. Watch an automaton perform Hamlet 

    B. Watch John Gielgud perform Hamlet

3. I would rather

    A. Read a humorous story written by AI

    B. Read anything by P. G. Wodehouse

4. I would rather

    A. (Ahem) do it with a love doll

    B. Do it with a real person

5. I would rather

    A. Own a non-fungible digital image of…I don’t know…anything at all?

    B. Own a true Vermeer or a finger painting by my child

6. I would rather 

    A. Put on virtual reality glasses and visit the virtual Grand Canyon

    B. Visit the Grand Canyon

7. I would rather

    A. Have a robotic dog do whatever robotic dogs do

    B. Have a dog gaze into my eyes with love and devotion and purity of heart

If you answered A to any of the above, please return your Human Race Membership Card to the trash bin on your computer screen. You don’t need it.

If you answered B to all of the above, you win! Take heart. AI will never replace the human joys cited above. Nor will it replace millions of other human joys, each as unique as a snowflake. And it will never replace human writers. Not in five years. Not ten. Never. 

But if—by some miracle—it does replace human writers, a robot will surely win the Masters, the U.S. Open, the British Open, and the PGA tournaments. (And we’ll all be doing it with love dolls.)

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