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A JCPL librarian interviews published writers about their favorite writing prompts—exercises that can help inspire, focus, and improve your creative writing. Whether you’re a beginner or a pro, a novelist, essayist, or poet, you’ll find ideas and advice to motivate you to keep writing. A partnership with the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning.
PtoP Ep 34 Lambert
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Carrie: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Prompt to Page podcast, a partnership between the Jessamine County Public Library and the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning. I'm your host, librarian and poet, Carrie Green. Each episode, we interview a published writer who shares their favorite writing prompt. Our guest today is Sandra Gail Lambert.
Sandra writes fiction and memoir that is often about the disabled body and its relationship to the natural world. She's the author of the recently released My Withered Legs and Other Essays from the University of Georgia Press, the Lambda Literary Award nominated memoir, A Certain Loneliness, and two novels, The River's Memory and The Sacrifice Zone: An Environmental Thriller.
Her work has been published by the New York Times, The Sun, The Paris Review, Uncharted, and Orion Magazine. She lives with her wife in [00:01:00] Gainesville, Florida, close to her beloved rivers and swamps. Welcome, Sandra, and thanks for joining us.
Sandra: Thank you, Carrie. I was so glad to be invited.
Carrie: Well, we're really glad you are here.
And, just for full disclosure, we met, I think it was 2008?
Sandra: Yes, that's when I met this wonderful poet at the Atlantic Center for the Arts writing residency. It was so great.
Carrie: Yeah, that was, that was such a good experience. And I am originally from Florida and it was , it's in New Smyrna Beach, which I didn't even know that it was there until I applied for the residency.
And of course you live in Florida . So um, anyway, yeah, it was a good experience.
Sandra: It was.
Carrie: So you started writing seriously in your forties. What advice would you give to other adult [00:02:00] writers who might just be starting out.
Sandra: There's a lot of, erasure of, an emerging writer who's not young. Um, you know, there are, all the, awards for emerging writers are for young, it's assumed they're also young.
That's changing a tiny bit, but not that much. There's the five under 35 debut authors. That's an emerging writer award and you have to be under 35. You know, there's nothing. So you have to consider yourself emerging. And for me, I didn't have a background, academic background. I didn't have any training in writing.
So I, tried to learn from wherever I could. I applied to residencies that when I had no idea what they were and mostly I got rejected, but sometimes I got accepted and I just, yeah, I would go to every author presentation of whatever genre in my area and just show [00:03:00] up and I read what I could and I became the type of reader,
I'd always been a reader, but where I think, okay. How did she make that dialogue work that way, or how come this plot is interesting, but that last book I read, it sort of was a slog. You know, like I started trying to learn, from everyone, from all the literature and types of writing that were, that were around me.
Carrie: Yeah. And I think that, you know, there are some writers like myself who maybe, you know, I got my MFA when I was young, but I didn't actually publish my first book until I was in my forties. So, you know, it's not necessarily getting, you know, it doesn't necessarily matter when you got your start. It could just take a while to get published.
Sandra: Yeah, and I think there are benefits to being older. I don't know if this was true for you, but you know, it's a rough and tumble world out there trying to [00:04:00] get published I mean it is there's so much rejection and there's so much feedback that is not necessarily accurate or kind in a way and when we're older we just have tougher skin and we had I had more of a sense of who I was in the world So, you know someone could tell me you know, the way I wrote about my body wasn't right, and I just think, you know, you're wrong.
And, you know, but then I would look for something in their critique that was helpful to me, that helped me be a better writer without paying attention to their, their attitudes or assumptions or prejudices against me. So I just think that's helpful in that way.
Carrie: Yeah, you're right. And, and that was actually one of the questions I was going to ask you about.
So thank you for bringing it up. And while there are some people that have like, like people who have disabled [00:05:00] bodies or people of color who might have, you know, extra, things that people might attack or make assumptions about, learning how to untangle useful criticism is really something that everybody has to learn.
Sandra: Yes, yes. Because, I was, I so much wanted to learn how to be a better writer. I wasn't going to let, those attitudes or whatever you wanted to call them, interfere with that. I wasn't going to let them steal that opportunity away from me. So I don't know if I could have done that when I was younger.
Um, separated it out or not be wounded in a certain way that I don't mean I didn't get wounded, but you know, I could just take it in stride. You know, it wasn't the first time, you know, and, so I thought that was a good thing about being older, even within the context of not being sort of considered real, like an emerging [00:06:00] writer who wasn't young is not, wasn't even considered sort of
like, we didn't exist almost. It wasn't, but you know, in other ways it was helpful and it was just what happened for me. So it wasn't like, I, I chose it either way.
Carrie: Yeah. Yeah. I wanted to ask you also for the sake of listeners who might be considering this themselves, you decided to self publish your recent environmental thriller, The Sacrifice Zone, which you published serially on Substack and then also released as a Kindle e book and, uh, you know, we've certainly had other writers on here who have self published.
I have self published a chapbook myself. Can you share what led you to that decision?
Sandra: It, it had to do with getting, turning 70. Absolutely. , It, you know, the, the way I write is in the literary genre and self publishing is anathema, or whatever that word is, to [00:07:00] the literary genre. It's so not okay. And I fought a long time against being the assumption that I was self published, you know, like I would be in a group and there would be a question about self publishing and everyone would look at me and I think, why are they looking at me?
I'm not self published. I'm, I'm like, I don't know. You know, respectably published, you know, and I'd be very proud of that. The university presses that published me that, you know, The Sun or New York Times, whatever. And, I had, you know, I had to have this, attitude about it. And then I turned 70 and I had, I, I thought about what do I really love?
And I really, from a little girl, I had loved science fiction so much. You know, there weren't any books about disabled people other than, you know, tiny, than, you know, the, the one in the, um, that Christmas book. I can't even remember the name of it, but the little, you know, the guy, young kid with the crutch [00:08:00] and the Christmas, um, play.
Yeah, Christmas Carol. So, um, but in science fiction, there were all sorts of, you know, that wasn't called disability, but With someone that had to wear an exoskeleton because they were from a high gravity planet or whatever, you know, so I found myself there. There was no judgment about it. And I thought, I'm 70.
I'm going to write whatever I want to write. So I wrote, it's not quite science fiction. It's more a thriller, but it's the closest I could sort of move into that genre stuff at the beginning and I don't have any connections in that area. And I thought I'm 70. I don't have to be respectable anymore.
I can just do what I want. And Substack was starting to push, you know, serialized work on their thing. And I did that. And frankly, it's a very low bar, but I earned more money from that book than I did from anything else that I've published so far. [00:09:00] So, and for a while I didn't list it in my credits because I still had that,
ooh, it'll make me look bad when I'm applying for some fancy residency. But now I just put it at the bottom of my email along with everything else. And I, you know, it has to do with. It had to do with turning 70 and just not, you know, caring what people thought anymore.
Carrie: Yeah. Well, that is very freeing.
Sandra: Yeah, it is so far.
Carrie: Why don't we kind of start talking about prompts and, um, what role have prompts played in your writing process?
Sandra: Oh, I, you know, I am such a not, I don't outline. I don't, you know, but And, and I write creative nonfiction and fiction. So, the fiction is easy enough to think of what is the prompt in my head.
And, it's the classic prompt in science fiction, the "what if" [00:10:00] prompt. But I think it works for almost all fiction. You know, what if I fell in love with my boss and it turned out he had his ex wife in the attic? What if, you know, like all fiction has some what if problem. And of course in science fiction it's hugely what if, you know.
What if, you know, the United States turned into Gilead or, you know, like Handmaid's Tale. So, so that's, that's where, where I start. I mean, the truth is I don't start there and I start with some emotional moment that I want to either start with or get up to, some, some crisis of emotion, transition and change. But in the, nonfiction.
I do a couple of different things. One is whenever I travel, I keep trip notes and the trip notes have everything. They're just a yellow pad where I scribble what happened that day or for two days [00:11:00] ago. And it could be everything from, What flowers are blooming, you know, like if it's a kayak trip, what the tides were, what argument I had with my wife on the trip, you know, it's just, you know, any anxiety I had, the butterflies I saw, it's just a mishmash of everything.
And, um, sometimes I come home and I write an essay from that. And sometimes it's 10 years later, but I still have those old yellow pads with the drip notes. And sometimes the essay is specific to an event, you know, has a beginning and an end. It's a kayak trip. I mean, of course it's not about, you know, it's about more than that, but sometimes, like I did a one about this
thing where we went and with some expert on the Santa Fe River and, and learned about turtles. Well, I got in and I was swimming in that river, and I thought, and it made me think about swimming in my whole life from the time I first learned to swim, [00:12:00] you know, in a pool in Norway in the winter when it was cold with a physical therapist and, no, actually with an Olympic retired Olympic person.
And, and how that was different in the States, it would've been with a therapist and I just did this meandering, but not really meandering thing about the importance of swimming and water in my life. But that came from me writing, just a quick, you know, unfocused description of what was going on in the moment with no expectations around it.
Carrie: Right. And did your use of prompts, because I know you, you know, you talked about starting off going to writing conferences and workshops and, and those are places where you're often given prompts. I mean, I remember at the Atlantic Center for Arts, our, our poet, the wonderful poet, Kelly Cherry, she gave us prompts in class.
Did you kind of start out using those or were you always sort of a [00:13:00] writer who drew on your own notes and things like that.
Sandra: I always was that way. I had, and, and, it, when I get a prompt, like it, I mean, I go to these conferences expecting to have, be taught. And when I'm given a prompt, I get all annoyed, like, well, what if I don't want to write about that?
And I have this sort of chip on my shoulder or annoyance. And then. Not every time, but almost every time the prompt is really productive for me, but I don't do them myself for some reason. I don't know why, you know, I went to another one where they said, you know, write, write, uh, just draw. I thought draw and that, you know, draw, like, uh, the picture of your house when you were growing up.
And I'm, I'm just annoyed, like, which house? We lived all over, you know, we were in the military. And I'm just fighting, I'm fighting, I'm fighting. And then, and then I got a really good piece out of it. So you just never know. [00:14:00]
Carrie: It's so funny that you, mentioned drawing the house, because it hasn't come out yet, we're recording a little bit ahead of time, but the the previous episode, that is the prompt on the previous episode.
But yes, I, I understand. I, I often resist them myself. But yeah, hopefully people find some use, don't fight it and find some useful things here. So would you like to talk about your favorite prompt or?
Sandra: My favorite prompt is as I mentioned a little bit before, it's the natural world, you know, like okay, so we're in the season right now.
We're a little past spring here in Florida, but if I was out kayaking, it would be the season of yellows and purples. That's what the, you know, there would be the pickerel weed and the composites and the, you know, [00:15:00] those with those with the two main colors that would be blooming everywhere. And the sulfur butterflies, those yellow butterflies would be everywhere.
And using the image of those two colors, I could do a lot with that, not just about that moment, but just about purples and yellows and the mix of colors. You know, I could just, let that, I'm gonna write that down 'cause I think I wanna do that anyway. So I always, two things I go back to are prompts from the natural world that, either are memories or that are happening right now around me or my body.
That's another one, you know, sometime, and I use that one for fiction or for nonfiction. And I'll think, okay, I have this character and I don't know what to do with them. And, but what's their body like, how is their body feeling? How does it move? I mean, does it ache anywhere? Does it feel really good and [00:16:00] full or is it enjoy, you know what?
Like if I go there, I find out. It prompts me to continue to, to fill out that character and, from there, work into the plot with that character.
Carrie: Great. So you've given us several, several different prompts through our conversation. So we have, "what if." And the natural world. And I like that idea of color.
So maybe picking out two colors and writing about them. And then, the body.
Sandra: The body.
Carrie: What is the character's body feeling. Were you going to say something else?
Sandra: That's the main one. That's the one that has really made me a writer, is that one. And if I get lost, I can always just return to that. And it, either as an original prompt or as Oh, what happens next?
Or I'm lost or I don't know what to do. If I just return to that, [00:17:00] for me, that's helpful. Other people, it might be a mental state or just anything else. But for me, it's always a body. I mean, disabled people write a lot of things, a lot of different ways, from the most philosophical academic to, you know, like raunchy stuff, you know, but we never leave.
Uh, I've never seen where we leave the body out of the equation. And so, I think that's one of the strengths of whether we're write, whether I'm writing about a disabled person or not, that's one of the strengths I think that we bring to writing.
Carrie: Yeah, absolutely. I know from my own experience that when you're healthy and you have an able body, you don't always, you take it for granted.
You don't think about it as much, maybe, as someone who constantly has to think about that.
Sandra: Which, you know, is a whole part of your writing that is lost [00:18:00] because you just don't think about it, you know, when it's going on, you know, you know, it's, it's, you know, the feeling of health or youth or, you know, excitement about, you know, moving through the world in that way, it just gets assumed and left out.
Carrie: Okay. So do you have any final writing tips you'd like to give our listeners?
Sandra: I think, especially as, as I get older, this is even more true, but don't, I don't write about, write, you know, they're always saying, Oh, you have to write in the morning, you have to write so many words a day, you have to write this, you have to write that.
And that changes throughout your life. And it's really important for me to figure out what my regular way of writing is now. I was recently thinking how I just don't quote have the discipline. This is something that's big to me to, [00:19:00] you know, do those six hours a day and then six hours the next day and then six hours the day after.
And I realized that, you know, I am the supreme queen of discipline now, if I do three hours a couple times a week, you know, like you have to, you just, you get it, you get a ton of writing still done, but you have to adjust. And there are many things, a job, kids, whatever, physical beings, anything. And so just work your writing in a way that feels Don't pay attention to what other people tell you you have to do.
Carrie: Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Sandra. I really appreciate you being here. Yeah.
Thank you for listening to Prompt to Page. To learn more about the Jessamine County Public Library, visit [00:20:00] Jesspublib.org. Find the Carnegie Center for Literacy and learning at carnegiecenterlex.org. Our music is by Archipelago and all instrumental musical collaboration between three Lexington based university professors.
Find out more about Archipelago: Songs from Quarantine Volumes One and Two at the links on our podcast website.