SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Got a suggestion here, listeners. Put down your bagel. Pick up a pen and paper. Fire up the laptop. Open the Notes app on your phone. Whatever your chosen method, face the blank page. Now what? Well, here's an idea.
LUCY IVES: (Reading) Walk to a place where you can sit a while undisturbed. Now, write a detailed account of how you got there. The shorter the trip, the longer the account should be.
SIMON: Oh. Lucy Ives, author of the books "My Name Enters America" and "Life Is Everywhere" is out with a collection of daily exercises to inspire creative writing. It's called "Three Six Five: Prompts, Acts, Divinations." And Lucy Ives joins us now from Corinth, Vermont. Thanks so much for being with us.
IVES: Thank you so much for having me.
SIMON: You've written for The Paris Review. You've been newly named a Guggenheim fellow. What prompts this book?
IVES: Well, this is a book that comes out of the process I use myself to teach myself how to write when I was a younger person in my 20s. And then when I became a writing teacher, I started doing little experiments in my classes and offering my students brief exercises for writing. And eventually, I started to want to share these prompts with more people. And so this book is a year's worth of prompts for writing.
SIMON: Writers make writing sound like hard work, and it is, right? If it were easy, I suppose more people would do it. But you invite people to be playful too. For example, tell the story of a journey you once took to a place where you never arrived. Now, is this like just getting lost trying to find the Dairy Queen?
(LAUGHTER)
IVES: It could be. I mean, you might be going someplace even better than the Dairy Queen, and the nice thing about never getting there is that that place can be the most amazing place.
SIMON: Well, what's the goal to - for people to try it, to get published or to just write better diaries or amuse themselves?
IVES: If people want to be published and use this book to work on a project, it certainly can be for that. But this book can also just be for reading. In a certain way, the prompts are like poems or little pieces of philosophy. So you could use the book in the way that you might use a work of literature, use it as something for thinking. It could also be a book that you use to discover something about yourself.
SIMON: And how does that work in the writing process?
IVES: Well, I think that, you know, we often think of writing as a technology that makes our thoughts or language permanent and portable. But writing is also something that originates somewhere between or among our brains, arms, hands, fingers. And if we are attentive to writing and what happens in these moments when we're writing, we can really uncover a lot. We can find a lot of energy and a lot of surprise.
SIMON: All right. I found it irresistible. Who knows how many I'll try, but I tried No. 60 - werewolf. Could I get you to read the prompt for us?
IVES: Yes. One moment. I'm just going to turn to it.
(Reading) Write from the point of view of a nonhuman animal.
SIMON: All right. Here's what I came up with. Ready?
IVES: Yes.
SIMON: From the point of view of a nonhuman animal.
(Reading) Sun seeped under my eyelids. The two-legged male to one side of me snored, stinking of stale coffee. Two-legged female on the other side breathed out vapors of Chanel and sauvignon blanc. My insides pressed for release, yet I knew that just to let go would wet the soft surface below. So I slipped my tongue tip under an eyelid of the two-legged female. She lifted her eyes open and repeated some incomprehensible babble in a sweet tone I learned would lead to two legs slipping out of slumber and walking for my relief. I licked female two-legs on her mouth. Her breed takes it as a sign of love. Two-leggeds are so easily fooled.
IVES: Wow. Bravo.
(LAUGHTER)
SIMON: And?
IVES: Oh, it's a dog.
SIMON: Yes. Yes, it's a dog. It's a dog.
IVES: (Laughter).
SIMON: Well, on the other hand, the reader determines that, don't they? It's open-ended.
IVES: Yes. That's right. That's right. That's absolutely true.
SIMON: If it reminds someone of a hedgehog, who am I to say? Well, you know, do you have music on? Do you sit in a quiet room? Do you sit in a crowded cafe?
IVES: Are you asking about me, about my - how I write?
SIMON: Well, and what advice you'd give others.
IVES: You know, I don't really think it matters. You know, sometimes the best time to write is when you think that you don't want to or that you don't have enough time. Those can be the times when there's a part of your mind that you seldom use for writing that you could access, and it might have something really amazing to tell you. I mean, I personally like silence, but in this book, there are some exercises you can do to music if that suits you, or you can go for a walk and write at the same time. I think there are all sorts of different ways to write. I'm not one of those person who goes in for the sort of, like, locked in their study with earplugs in sort of thing.
SIMON: Lucy Ives. Her new collection of writing prompts with drawings by Nick Mauss is "Three Six Five." Thank you so much for being with us.
IVES: It's a delight to be here. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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