Hi, luminous writers, and welcome back to Write, Publish, and Shine. In this episode, I’m in conversation with a writer who’s very new to me, Suzanne Roberts, a luminous writer and teacher with more than 30 years of experience helping creative writers get to the page. So new to me, but not new to the writing world. Suzanne’s new book, 52 Writing Prompts: Inspiration for the Creative Writer, grew from years of teaching and her ongoing Substack of the same name. Fifty-two would be a year of writing prompts, so that’s an amazing feat. And we talk about what makes a prompt useful, why the best ones are specific but open enough to surprise you, and how a writer may discover the form of a piece by writing rather than deciding in advance. We get into that. We also move into difficult material and the craft choices that can help us approach it. Suzanne offers a striking challenge to the advice that a writer must always wait before writing about a painful experience. I love how she views craft as a shortcut to time, and she shares ways to create distance through point of view, fiction, restrictive forms, all of our favourites.

So really a kindred person, a writer out there in the world, and I’m happy to have her here on the podcast. At the end, also, Suzanne gives us a prompt, and this is a conversation about making art instead of chasing the product, finding a writing practice that fits your actual life, and trusting that you are a writer because you write. So here is my conversation with Suzanne Roberts. So I wanted to welcome you, Suzanne Roberts, to the podcast. Thanks so much for being here.

00:01:42.250 | Suzanne Roberts

Thank you for having me. I’m really, really happy to be here.

00:01:45.120 | Rachel Thompson

To begin, I’m just wondering if you could give us a snapshot of your life as a writer right now, like literally right now. Where are you calling in from? What are you working on? What’s on your desk? Or what are you carrying in your bag today?

00:01:58.470 | Suzanne Roberts

So I am coming to you from South Lake Tahoe, which is where I live in California. And I’m sitting in my office with 1,000 books, which is one of my favourite places to be. I feel like I’m among old friends. And I am supposedly, I say supposedly because the thing I really need to be working on is my novel, which I’ve been working on for about 10 years. However, I keep cheating on it with essays. So right this minute, what’s on my desk is, I’m writing an essay about Burning Man, which is a big festival in the desert that’s coming up. I’m about to leave for it in a couple of days. And so that’s what’s on my mind. And I’m actually writing an essay about Burning Man, cheating, cheating on my novel.

00:02:43.380 | Rachel Thompson

I love that. And I can attest to the beauty of your bookshelves behind you, since I see them in our call here. Just sharing that with listeners. You know, we were just introduced online here, but one of the things I noticed about you, and one of the reasons I wanted to have you on here too, is that you spent more than 30 years teaching creative writing. That’s a long time to be teaching creative writing. So I’m just curious about what has stayed alive for you in that work, to do it over that time, and if there’s anything that still surprises you when you sit down with creative writers.

00:03:14.560 | Suzanne Roberts

Yeah, you know, I think a lot about sort of making meaning of our lives. Some of us get to live a long time, some of us only get to live a short time. We don’t know. We have no answer to that. But what we can control is making meaning. And for me, being with students and having us all make our own meaning is what keeps it alive for me. It’s really my church. I have friends who love to go to actual church, and they love to worship. They talk ecstatically about it. And that’s how I feel when I’m talking about reading and writing and literature. I feel like I’m worshipping. I feel like it is my church. And so it will always be alive for me. It’s something I’ll never retire from. I’ll always want to work with students. The thing that surprises me, I think, is that I guess that I still love it so much is one thing. But another thing, I think, is that so many different people can come with so many different belief systems, and we can actually all do work together and do good work together despite having such different beliefs.

00:04:26.840 | Suzanne Roberts

And it’s because we all believe in the work and we all believe in making art and writing. So we may have very, very different backgrounds, very, very different belief systems, but we are tied together through the writing. And it continually surprises me in such a divisive time in our world.

00:04:44.400 | Rachel Thompson

I was checking out your forthcoming book, 52 Writing Prompts: Inspiration for the Creative Writer, and I’m a big fan of prompts, especially prompts in the way that you’re building them as well too, with a lot of meaning. And, like, you’re talking about the meaning-making and how that’s almost a religious experience. I resonate with that idea too, that it’s very, the passion of it and the all-encompassingness of it. My point, and I’m getting to one here, is that, yeah, there’s just really beauty in prompts. And I love that you have 52 prompts. What made you want to gather this book now?

00:05:20.490 | Suzanne Roberts

You know, I think when I was teaching full-time, I always sort of wanted to create my own book so that I could teach it. But I didn’t have time to do it, right? Because I was teaching full-time. And even though there are some really great books out there, and I do want to give a shout-out to Janet Burroway’s craft books because I think they’re amazing and they teach really well, I never had time to do that. So when I quit my full-time teaching job, I’m still teaching in the MFA program, I do a lot of community workshops and things like that, I really was trying to figure out a way to sort of give back. I think it’s really important as writers to do service work, meaning, how do we give back to our fellow writers, to our writing community? And I was trying to figure that out. And a friend of mine said, “Well, why don’t you start a Substack newsletter?” And this was five years ago now. And I was like, “What’s that?” Because it was really new. And she said, “There are a lot of writers on there.” I said, “Well, what would I do on there?”

00:06:17.030 | Suzanne Roberts

And she says, “Well, you love to give advice,” which is true. I do love to give advice, solicited and otherwise. She said, “Just, I don’t know, do something about, you’re a great teacher, you know, do something with teaching and writing.” So I thought, okay, well, I’ll send out a writing prompt every week, every Friday for one year, and just do it for one year. And so I got started and, you know, I just started sending them out. And I thought, well, I’m gonna do it by theme because if I were to write a book, I would want it to be organized by theme and not by genre. Because I think sometimes you set out to write an essay, but only a poem will do. Or sometimes you set out to write a poem and it becomes a novel. So I thought, okay, I’m gonna send out 52 writing prompts. Well, at the end of the year, I had all these subscribers, and I thought, well, I gotta keep doing this, I guess. So, you know, I started only sending out two a month because every week was really a lot. So now I’m, like, on prompt number 175 or something like that.

00:07:14.740 | Rachel Thompson

Wow. Congratulations.

00:07:16.330 | Suzanne Roberts

Yeah. And then I realized, oh, this could be a book. So I went to my publisher, the University of Nebraska Press, and I said, “Hey, what do you think about a craft book?” And I’ve already published three other books with them. And they said, “Well, write up a proposal.” So I wrote a little proposal, and they said, “Yes, we want it.” So then I thought, well, okay, I’ve gotta write this craft book. So I wrote it, and I think it’s actually more timely and more important than ever before. And I couldn’t have predicted this because of AI, because I think we need books that encourage people to use their own brains in every stage of the writing process. So I think that this book is really important at this moment, which I couldn’t have predicted.

00:08:00.280 | Rachel Thompson

Yeah, that’s really fascinating, actually. I wanted to ask you just about prompts too. Like, what makes a prompt work well for writers? What are the conditions of these prompts that help writers surprise themselves?

00:08:13.410 | Suzanne Roberts

Well, the way that I have put the book 52 Writing Prompts together is I sourced 35 stories, essays, and poems from contemporary writers, and most of the prompts are imitation prompts. So I will end up giving an essay about, I’m just thinking of Camille Dungy, who has an essay in there about visiting slave castles in Africa. And so then I’ll ask the writer, right, the reader and the writer, to think of a time that they went to a place that was important in their own ancestry or something like that. So I am a big believer that books are our greatest teachers. So when I’m feeling stuck, I open a book, I read a poem, and I can think about, oh, this writer’s doing this certain thing. And so I think imitation prompts are great. I also think the best prompts are super specific, however, open to interpretation. So I might ask you to think of an object around your house that has some certain meaning and to write what you remember surrounding it and what you don’t remember. So maybe we’re doing a memory exercise. Even though it’s specific, you can write about a million different things.

00:09:27.310 | Suzanne Roberts

You could also say, okay, well, I’m going to think about the objects in the house of my character in the novel I’m working on. And so you can use these prompts for multiple genres.

00:09:38.630 | Rachel Thompson

I love that it’s super specific, but everyone’s going to come up with something different. So it’s very specific to the writer.

00:09:45.620 | Suzanne Roberts

It’s fun to do in a group, like a writing group or a community workshop or a classroom, and then listen to what people came up with because they’re wildly different, even though the prompts are super specific.

00:09:56.460 | Rachel Thompson

I’m also noting that in the book you talk about difficult embodied material, writing the hard stuff kind of thing too. So I’m wondering about advice you would give writers about writing difficult embodied material, and especially, I think, that work that it’s easier to maybe look away from or want to resolve really quickly. I see that instinct sometimes in writers as well.

00:10:18.080 | Suzanne Roberts

Well, I think we’ve all heard, “Give it time.” You know, you can’t write about something in the middle of trauma. And I think there’s a shortcut to time. Like, I think giving things time is sometimes great advice, but I think there’s a shortcut. And the shortcut for me is using craft. So if I want to write about something difficult, instead of using first-person “I,” I might use second-person “you.” Right? And even if the final draft goes back to first-person “I,” I couldn’t have maybe gotten it on the page. Or if it’s really, really difficult, but I still want to mine it and explore it, maybe I give it to a character, a fictional character, that same problem or issue. Other ways are to use form. So, like, if you’re writing a poem and you say, okay, I’m gonna create a sonnet or a sestina, you’re thinking so much about the rhythm and the rhyme and all of that. So you’re not thinking so much about the trauma, even though that’s what you’re writing about. And the essayist can do that with a hermit crab essay, which, of course, is an essay that sort of pretends to be something it isn’t, right?

00:11:25.260 | Suzanne Roberts

Like you’re writing a menu for a restaurant or a horoscope or dating profile or whatever it is. And it’s really about something difficult, but it’s masquerading as something easy. So I think you can shortcut time with craft.

00:11:40.910 | Rachel Thompson

Yeah, I love that thought, especially the second person. I find it is often a powerful tool for writers, and I will often get pretty raw work that is written in the second person, which I just love as a POV anyway, actually, but it’s super effective. Thank you for sharing that advice. I thought I’d ask you for advice since you said you like giving advice.

00:12:00.890 | Suzanne Roberts

Oh, I love giving advice. Yeah, I’ll probably give you a lot more even when you don’t ask.

00:12:05.940 | Rachel Thompson

Sure. I was also checking out your essay collection, Animal Bodies, and I’m wondering if you want to talk a bit about, or if you could share with us a bit about writing that, because there is also difficult material there too. So what did it ask of you as a writer?

00:12:23.990 | Suzanne Roberts

Yeah, that book is, as you said, it’s about sort of the most difficult things that we go through, right? There’s a lot of loss. So loss of people, loss of friendships, loss of a marriage, loss of a dog, right? And in order to write that book, it took a long time, and I had to really listen to what the book wanted to be. I had it at first set up as a memoir, right? And then that wasn’t working. And so I realized it needed to be individual essays. And then I had it set up sort of in the five stages of grief, sort of ironically, right? Because grief doesn’t work that way at all. And then I realized there was another memoir out that had already done that. And that’s one of the reasons why we must read widely and deeply, to see when someone else has already used our great idea. So what I really realized is I had to listen to the material, and I had to say, okay, what is this really, really about? In fact, I had a conversation with two friends that I was, I’m still on this text stream with two other writers.

00:13:24.400 | Suzanne Roberts

And I said, I’ve gotta figure out what this book is really about. And they said, well, what is it about? And I said, well, it’s really about our animal natures, our animal bodies, all of the things we do as human beings that connect us sort of to the animal world, things that we have no control over, our desires and our grief. And someone on the text stream, my friend, said, well, here’s your title, Animal Bodies. And I said, that’s a terrible title, you know, because I thought, oh, people are gonna think it’s about, you know, elephants and giraffes and things like that. But I realized it was the right title. And I also realized, as I was revising, that in order to go deeper, which I had to do, I had to be so vulnerable and so honest. And I’m not talking about honest, like telling the truth, because I already do that. But I’m talking about figuring out why I do the things I do and why I feel the things I feel, even when sometimes I don’t know.

00:14:23.070 | Rachel Thompson

I love that distinction because we’re always asking writers to be honest, but you have to actually know what you feel and think, and sometimes that’s really hard to access, especially in this time and place. You also were talking about finding the form, and I meant to in the moment, and then I forgot to follow up about how I love that about your prompts as well too, the fact that you keep it open because you can enter into the work and not quite know what shape it’s going to take, and it can tell you over time. So I just appreciate that you do that both in your own writing and then in your teaching as well too. It’s like, keep it open and figure out what the form wants to be, let’s say.

00:15:01.570 | Suzanne Roberts

Yeah, you know, I think there are writers out there who think, oh, you must focus on one genre or you’ll never get really good at anything, but I call BS on that. When you look at our history, and you look at the writers who have written in multiple genres, Sylvia Plath, the Brontë sisters, you know, so many writers have been able to write well in poetry, fiction, nonfiction. And that’s one of the things that I’m not sure about in our current, like, MFA tracks, where we ask our students to only focus on poetry or only focus on fiction. I think the best thing a fiction person can do is take a poetry class.

00:15:41.510 | Rachel Thompson

So…

00:15:42.150 | Suzanne Roberts

I’m very, very fluid with it. And especially if we’re teaching, like, introductory classes, are we going to really expect a, you know, freshman or sophomore in college to know what genre they want to write in? They gotta try them all. So I really like to think of myself as a storyteller rather than being strictly in one genre or another.

00:16:01.100 | Rachel Thompson

For sure. I’m also interested in that phrase “terrible beauty” that you use. I guess I want to dig even deeper into how you wrote this book, and how did you stay with material? It sounds like a text chain helped as well too, friend support. But how do you stay with material that is painful or shame-laden or unruly in some ways where, again, maybe you’re not quite sure about your own motivations and you’re trying to understand them? How do you stay long enough to find the beauty, maybe the lyricism, without softening the truth?

00:16:32.080 | Suzanne Roberts

You know, I think for me, it’s always, always focusing on the process, the writing, the act of writing itself, the verb, right? Not the noun. Because if I go into something and I think, okay, I’m just gonna see what I can say here, you know? And I know when I’ve gotten it. I know when it turns into the thing that I imagined for it, or maybe even better, that I didn’t imagine for it. So when I go in, and I think this is really important, especially for people who say, well, I’ve got writer’s block, I’m blocked. Well, go in and don’t think about what’s gonna come out the other side. Just think about the process of it. I mean, if you’re a marathon runner, you’re out there running every day. The races are only every couple of months or maybe even twice a year or something. You’re only doing the race seldomly, right? The book only comes out seldomly, but the practice is what’s important. And so if you just keep working it and are invested in that process, then I think that it will end up becoming the thing that you’d hoped it would become.

00:17:40.960 | Rachel Thompson

It’s so hard, isn’t it, though, to go in without expectations? It’s, like, the challenge.

00:17:46.160 | Suzanne Roberts

One of the things I think about a lot is the sort of instant gratification of social media. I can write a little, like, post or something and have, you know, 100 people like it, and then I get, like, this, you know, hit of endorphins or serotonin, whatever. And I think it’s really dangerous for a writer because you’re not going to get that writing a novel. It’s going to take 10 years, and nobody is going to like it until you’re finished. And then maybe you won’t have very many people who like it, or maybe they’ll like it and they won’t tell you right away. So I think it’s dangerous to get addicted to that kind of instant gratification because you’re never going to get it as a writer.

00:18:26.100 | Rachel Thompson

Yeah, and it’s distracting from the art of writing too, because it’s about what you are here to say. And it’s hard, it’s hard in this time, especially with social media, not to be caught up in, again, expectations, other people’s expectations of you or other people’s interests in what, what you have to say, but that might not be what you want to say in your writing.

00:18:48.000 | Suzanne Roberts

Right.

00:18:49.130 | Rachel Thompson

As I mentioned at the outset, you’ve written across decades, across forms. What is something maybe that you can think about from years ago that you used to believe about being a writer that you don’t believe anymore?

00:19:02.230 | Suzanne Roberts

You know, I love this question, and nobody has ever asked me this question before, so I really appreciate it. I’ve always kind of believed the same things, but then I realized if I go way back to when I was a little girl, things have changed a lot. And I need to go way back because my introduction to being a writer happened when I was a little girl. My dad was a writer, and he was a very unhappy person. And so when I was a child, I loved to write. I loved to make little books. I loved to tell stories. And I had this idea, this incorrect idea, that being a writer meant that you were going to be a miserable person because my father was a miserable person. But now that I’m older, I realize that my dad had a lot of trauma as a child. His mom died in a plane crash when he was 12. And back then, you know, you didn’t go to therapy for things. You just kind of soldiered on. And he turned instead to drinking. And, of course, drinking a lot of alcohol also makes you a really unhappy person.

00:20:04.780 | Rachel Thompson

So…

00:20:06.260 | Suzanne Roberts

So he was a really unhappy person, and he was a writer. And so when I went to college, I didn’t even consider majoring in English or literature because I wanted to be a happy person. I wanted to be outside. I wanted to be social. And I didn’t want to, like, sit in a room and, you know, drink rye and bang on a typewriter. Like, I thought that was miserable. And what I now realize is that, had he dealt with the trauma, had he dealt with the drinking, he would’ve written more and he would’ve been really happy. And so you can be a writer and be a really happy person. You can be a really social person. You can be a really outdoorsy person. And these are all things that are so important to me. We always talk about, oh, it’s so lonely. You do it by yourself. I don’t do it by myself. I have a writing group. I go to conferences. I’ve got students. Some of my very best friends in the world I met through the writing world. Most of my very best friends in the world. And so I think when I was a little girl, I believed that it was a sad, lonely profession, and it’s not at all.

00:21:13.620 | Suzanne Roberts

And so that’s really changed for me.

00:21:15.540 | Rachel Thompson

That’s really beautifully said, because I think even if we didn’t have a father as you’re describing, we still have Hemingway as an example, you know, all greats, that it’s like, well, this is, you have to suffer in some way. And so I think, yeah, it’s just really great to hear how that’s changed for you. And I totally agree. I mean, writing has been a beautiful way to build community and meet people that have similar passions and interests. And for me, it’s a lot of the best people who are involved in this crazy thing that we do. Yeah.

00:21:45.760 | Suzanne Roberts

And, you know, we all suffer, right? Like, life is, I mean, you know, I sound like the Buddha, but life is full of suffering, right? That is the definition of life. And the older you get, the more you suffer because your loved ones die and your body falls apart and all the things happen. But the writer, I think, is in such a fortunate position because the writer at least can make art from the suffering that we all feel. So I feel really, really lucky. I feel like the luckiest person in the world. Yeah.

00:22:14.230 | Rachel Thompson

And even more than that too, like, I mean, making, or what is making art, is also making meaning as well too. And understanding ourselves is such a tool for going back, especially if you’re writing from life or memoir. And I think most writers, even fiction writers, are writing from some kind of experience within them too. But the ability to go back and re-examine things and see new perspectives really is a blessing as well too, to put it back in semi-religious terms.

00:22:40.050 | Suzanne Roberts

Yeah.

00:22:41.070 | Rachel Thompson

I asked, and it’s completely optional, but would you be willing to bring a writing prompt for listeners from the spirit of 52 Writing Prompts or from the book itself?

00:22:51.170 | Suzanne Roberts

Absolutely. And because we talked about writing trauma or writing difficult topics, this is a great one for that. Often when I’m teaching a workshop on shame or on grief or on writing, you know, difficult things or writing about your family, right, I often will start with an exercise that I adapted from a life drawing class. So my friend Phyllis Shafer is a painter, and I took a life drawing class with her. And to warm up, she had us draw, you know, the figure and then erase it, draw the figure and erase it. And even if we loved what we had drawn, we had to erase it because, again, not the product, the process, the warm-up, and all of that. And so this is kind of a warm-up exercise, but it’s also really freeing. So the exercise is that you write a sentence: “It would be much too dangerous or difficult to write about X.” And then I usually will say to write, “It would be much too dangerous or difficult to write about X because…” Because when I’m with students, I want them to share the “because” with me, right? Because the “because” is often external. Like, I’m afraid for my reputation, I’m afraid of what my family will think of me, I am afraid of being arrested, I’m afraid of losing my job, whatever it is.

00:24:12.270 | Suzanne Roberts

And I don’t ask them ever to share X, right? That’s secret. Sometimes that “because” is internal, like, I don’t wanna face that, or I don’t wanna feel bad about myself, or whatever it is. So you write, “It would be much too dangerous to write about X because…” and then, after you’ve sort of looked at the “because,” you actually go ahead and you write about the X. So you set your timer, and I think the timer is really essential, especially if you say you have writer’s block. You can write for 20 minutes. Like, you can make 20 minutes a day to write. So you set your timer for 15 or 20 minutes, and you really write into the dangerous, difficult thing. However, you know, at the end of it, when the timer goes off, you are going to rip it up.

00:24:59.750 | Rachel Thompson

Mm-hmm.

00:25:00.630 | Suzanne Roberts

So you write the difficult thing, you write the thing that you don’t want anyone else to see. You write the most horrifying things from your life. Or, you know, if you’re working in fiction, maybe you’re writing something really difficult socially, politically, whatever it is. And then the timer goes off, and you just rip that thing up, and you have to rip it up. Or if you’re working on a computer, you delete the whole thing. And it’s really freeing and it really helps. And I think that if you started your writing practice with that every single day, you would become a really interesting and deep and thoughtful writer.

00:25:39.310 | Rachel Thompson

That’s just a wonderful prompt. Thank you for that. I want to try it.

00:25:43.160 | Suzanne Roberts

Well, let’s go hang up. I think you should, and I will too. And we’ll know that we’re both doing it together, separately.

00:25:51.050 | Rachel Thompson

Yeah. Speaking of community and doing things together, very cool. Is there anything else that you want to leave creative writers with today, especially those who are trying to stay faithful, is the word I’m pulling for this, to the work over a long life?

00:26:07.010 | Suzanne Roberts

Yes. I think that, first of all, to be a writer, to say, “I am a writer,” all you need to do is write. You do not have to publish a word. You do not have to have books out. If you write, you are a writer. Emily Dickinson wrote 1,800 poems in her lifetime, only published a handful. She was definitely a writer. Walt Whitman self-published Leaves of Grass, right? And he was definitely a writer. And so I really believe that it’s important to recognize that you are a writer and that you have every right to tell your story. And also that you don’t have to write every single day. You know, I think that there’s this whole myth of, like, oh, writers get up in the morning and write from 5:00 to 7:00 a.m. Like, that’s just not true. Like, there are a lot of days that I have things to do. I’ve got classes to teach, I’ve got places to travel, and I don’t write. I am a binge writer. And so I’ll take, like, a week or two weeks and just write every day during that time. I’ll go away to do it, or sometimes I invite friends over to my house who are writers, and we write together here.

00:27:13.410 | Suzanne Roberts

So, you don’t have to follow any set plan. You just have to find what works for you. I think that there’s enough in the world that’s gonna make you feel bad about yourself. Don’t make yourself feel bad about yourself for not writing. It will come. But the inspiration will only come if you are actually working.

00:27:33.540 | Rachel Thompson

Mm-hmm.

00:27:34.020 | Suzanne Roberts

So that’s my parting advice.

00:27:36.630 | Rachel Thompson

I love that. And I think, yeah, there’s some damage to that idea of having to write every day. So I’m glad to hear you call, to call that out. Where can listeners, people listening to the podcast, find you and read Animal Bodies and learn more about 52 Writing Prompts? I actually was trying to look up when it is actually coming out as well.

00:27:56.530 | Suzanne Roberts

So interestingly, the book 52 Writing Prompts: Inspiration for the Creative Writer is already shipping. It’s officially out October 1st. You know, it’s a university press, so they don’t embargo the books like big presses do. So the second it was ready, they started shipping it. So listeners can get it right now from the University of Nebraska Press. And until October 1st, there’s a discount code that I can share with you.

00:28:23.730 | Rachel Thompson

Great. I’ll put it in the show notes as well.

00:28:25.970 | Suzanne Roberts

Yeah, it’s 6ROBERTS40, and it’ll get you 40% off, which is my author discount. It’s a really good deal. And the book is really inexpensive, which I’m so happy about because I was hoping, you know, students would be able to afford it. And I’m still sending out themed writing prompts. This last month, the theme was accountability at 52 Writing Prompts, which is my Substack newsletter. I also have a website with links to all my books and links to a bunch of articles. And I do a lot of travel writing too. And workshops. And that’s my name, suzanneroberts.net.

00:29:02.650 | Rachel Thompson

Okay.

00:29:03.150 | Suzanne Roberts

Yeah, I’d love to hear from listeners and see if they did the rip-it-up exercise and how it went.

00:29:08.360 | Rachel Thompson

Yeah, for sure. And all of this will be in the show notes for this episode, and it will be out before your book, the official October 1st launch, so people can take advantage of that discount code. I just wanna thank you. It’s great to meet with you, connect, and talk about writing today.

00:29:23.720 | Suzanne Roberts

Thank you so much for having me. I, I loved your questions. They were great, and it was wonderful to meet you.

00:29:29.650 | Rachel Thompson

I love, love, loved Suzanne’s rip-it-up prompt because it makes the practice, not the product, the point, and reminds me of mindfulness practices like mandala making. I want to try it this week, and if you also try it, let me know. Maybe we’ll find that removing the possibility of an audience lets the writing go somewhere new. After the recording ended, by the way, and before we said a final goodbye, Suzanne turned her generous teacher’s attention to my memoir in process and gave me some very welcome advice. So she’s not wrong about how she loves giving advice, solicited or not. But in my case, it was very, very welcome. And you’re not going to hear that in the episode, but I just felt it worth telling you because it says so much about who she is. She really does love helping writers, and she is a deeply generous writer and teacher. So look for Suzanne’s new book, 52 Writing Prompts: Inspiration for the Creative Writer, from the University of Nebraska Press. You can use the code 6ROBERTS40 at the University of Nebraska Press website to save 40%. And you can find Suzanne, her book, and her 52 Writing Prompts Substack through the links in the show notes.

00:30:37.400 | Rachel Thompson

I’ll also make sure that that discount code is there so it’s clear. Thank you so much for listening to Write, Publish, and Shine. If this episode helped, please subscribe, and if you have a moment, leave a review. It just helps other creative writers find the show, and it is one of the simplest ways to support my work here. This podcast is hosted by me, Rachel Thompson, with sound editing by Adam Linder. To learn more about my work supporting writers, you can visit rachelthompson.co, and when you’re there, sign up for my weekly Writerly Love Letters.

I record this and most every episode of this podcast on El Muzina Bedouin lands in South Sinai, Egypt, which I acknowledge as part of my formal land acknowledgement for each episode. As I have in numerous episodes since 2023, and will continue to do, I will add that a UN Commission of Inquiry and leading human rights experts have recognized the genocide in nearby Gaza, Palestine. I continue to call for an end to this genocide and to all genocides, several of which are currently ongoing, and stand in solidarity with Palestinian people and all occupied peoples.