For our thirteenth episode, we talk to Sarah Combs, author of Breakfast Served Anytime and The Light Fantastic. Sarah shares her love of writing groups, reading "at whim," and offers a writing prompt that works for all levels and genres.
Show Notes
For our thirteenth episode, we talk to Sarah Combs, author of Breakfast Served Anytime and The Light Fantastic. Sarah shares her love of writing groups, reading "at whim" and a writing prompt that works for all levels and genres. If you're gearing up for National Novel Writing Month, you may find her prompt especially helpful.
"It can be pretty scary to have a blank page in front of you and hope to see a novel draft by the end," she says. "So maybe it makes things easier if you think of scenes as the building blocks of a novel. And if you create a scene one by one, then eventually you might have a novel."
About Sarah Combs
Sarah Combs is the author of the young adult novels Breakfast Served Anytimeand The Light Fantastic, both from Candlewick Press. She lives with her family in Lexington, where she leads writing workshops at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning.
Join the Prompt to Page Writing Group Wednesday, Oct. 26, 6:00 p.m.
Spend time working on a cross-genre writing prompt, get feedback, and share writing and publishing tips with a supportive community of other writers. Open to all writing levels and genres (fiction, poetry, memoir, family stories, etc.).
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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.
10_22 Prompt to Page
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[00:00:00] Carrie: 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. Submit your response to the prompt for a chance to have it read on a future episode of the podcast.
Our guest today is Sarah Combs. Sarah is the author of the young adult novels Breakfast Served Anytime and The Light Fantastic, both from Candlewick Press. She lives with her family in Lexington, where she leads writing workshops at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning. Welcome, Sarah. Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:45] Sarah: Thank you so much for having me, Carrie. I'm glad to see you.
[00:00:48] Carrie: Yes, I'm so glad you're here and you're actually here in person. A lot of times we just record virtually, so it's nice to have you here at the library.
[00:00:57] Sarah: I'm thrilled to be here. The library is beautiful. I haven't visited in a long time and I'm just awestruck by how delightful and beautiful the space is.
[00:01:08] Carrie: Oh, thank you. So, full disclosure, you and I were members of a writing group many years ago.
[00:01:32] Carrie: What's your experience with writing groups been like?
How do they benefit writers? .
[00:01:39] Sarah: I love writing groups because you can never plan for the magic that's gonna happen in the space when writers are gathered around the table, lifting each other up and listening to each other's words, and just providing that feedback and that support in the moment. There's nothing like that.
During the pandemic, when we met over Zoom, it just wasn't the same at all. The energy that's in the space at the senior center and at the Carnegie Center, when I lead fiction workshops, it's electric and it's contagious and it's lasting. I take it home with me and use it to propel me through my own work.
[00:02:52] Sarah: Their stories are fascinating. Whether they're talking about their travels or their grandchildren, or in some cases time they've spent in other countries, we've had a couple of immigrants in the group whose perspective has been golden. All of those things. It matters and part of what I love about working with the Carnegie Center, is that I do get to work with seniors and then I get to work with teenagers through the Young Women Writers Project and the Teen Writing Retreat.
[00:03:21] Sarah: So the Center offers that for us all, the chance to be around people who are occupying a different spot on the timeline and what a gift that is to me, to my writing.
I love it.
[00:03:37] Carrie: We are approaching November, which is National Novel Writing Month. And for those of you who don't know, it's a month where many people try to draft a novel in the month of November.
Have you ever participated in Nanowrimo?
[00:03:57] Sarah: I have tried, I have gotten as brave as signing up more times than I can count, but I have never, ever been able to actually complete the mission of writing an entire draft of a novel in 30 days, and hats off to anyone who has ever done it or who wishes to do it. I think it's a great enterprise and just the idea that it's a worldwide phenomenon and that
[00:04:26] Sarah: with writers from all over the place. When I think about the writerly energy that is taking the world by storm during the month in November, it's, it's thrilling. It's so exciting. So I'm completely envious of anyone who's ever been able to make it happen. And, I hope that one day I might be able to make it happen
But for now I'm just in the cheering section.
[00:04:48] Carrie: Mm-hmm. That's okay. And it can lead to some good things too. You were telling me a little bit earlier that just signing up
[00:05:07] Sarah: But in a roundabout way, that novel was born because of Nanorimo.
Although I never got past the brave work of signing up. I did learn through having signed up for Nanorimo about an annual contest called the Young Adult Discovery Contest or Novel Writing Contest, and it's sponsored by the Serendipity Literary Agency. And each year writers of young adult fiction across the country and I believe beyond are invited to submit only a title and the first 250 words of a young adult novel.
[00:05:48] Sarah: So, although I've never finished Nanorimo. Once upon a time, I did set that goal for myself to submit a title and the first 250 words of a young adult novel. And I ended up shockingly, I mean, I've never even won a door prize in my life, , but I won that contest and that was the way that Breakfast Served Anytime came about, that was the door that swung open for me and how grateful and thrilled and humbled I was to walk through that door. And that was how the whole ball got rolling. And it's also funny because of the many, many revisions that book saw from the start of my writing it to the publication process in the end, maybe the title and the first 250 words, those were maybe the only things that did not change multiple times
[00:06:45] Sarah: long process. I encourage anyone to do that. Sign up for Nanorimo. Dare yourself to do it. Sign up for the young adult writing contest. Those things are valuable because in taking that step, you're taking your writing seriously.
[00:07:02] Sarah: And for me, at that time in my life, I had so many reasons to not take my writing seriously.
And by doing that, I was honoring my own work. And I'm so glad I did it.
[00:07:14] Carrie: Yes, well, we are too, and I, I think probably there aren't many novels that were written in naNoWriMo that haven't gone through a lot of revision because a month to write a novel is not long at all.
[00:07:44] Carrie: You definitely shouldn't panic about it.
[00:07:46] Sarah: But the golden gems of wisdom that I get from my friend Gwenda, or for other writers who have it in them to write a draft within that limited space of time.
[00:07:57] Sarah: What you're doing there is just giving yourself permission and a first draft is just you telling yourself the story. So sometimes, I think having that limited space, knowing that you're gonna be doing this for just 30 days, allows you a certain amount of freedom.
[00:08:14] Sarah: I mean, I don't even know if I'm qualified to say this cuz I haven't done it, but the wise voice in my head that knows better is telling me that, that a first draft is just the writer telling herself the story.
And that maybe if you know those parameters going in, then you can give yourself permission, grace, freedom, all those things that writers need and that we don't allow ourselves enough of.
[00:08:35] Carrie: Mm-hmm. And of course that was kind of a prompt too, right?
[00:08:52] Sarah: And there is one in particular that I have used with elementary school writers, with teenage writers, with my talented seniors group, with the fiction writing group that I have lead perennially at the Carnegie Center.
[00:09:12] Sarah: And I love it because it works for writers of all ages. It works for writers of all levels of experience. It works for fiction writers and poets, and creative nonfiction writers, essayists. So I love it because it applies to all different kinds of writing, and it's another one of those that I can just pull out of my writer's toolbox any time when I feel stuck and it'll get me unstuck.
[00:09:43] Sarah: So you just let me know when you're ready.
[00:09:44] Carrie: Oh, yeah, let's, let's hear it.
[00:09:46] Sarah: Okay. When I talk to fiction writers in particular, but really any kind of writers, I talk a lot in these terms that I completely made up. So I've made up these terms. I talk about what I call anchors.
[00:10:12] Sarah: So again, for anybody who might be diving into Nanorimo in the month of November, it can be pretty scary to have a blank page in front of you and hope to see a novel draft by the end. So maybe it makes things easier if you think of scenes as the building blocks of a novel.
[00:10:31] Sarah: And if you create a scene one by one, then eventually you might have a novel. And so the system of emotional and physical anchors helps me create scenes which are in effect the building blocks of a story or an essay, or a poem, or a novel. So what I'll ask writers to do is to take a piece of paper and write down just two words.
One of them will be a physical anchor, a thing, anything, a hat, a shoe, a box, a rake, whatever. Some sort of physical object. And then the other anchor will be an emotional anchor. Because I as a writer, tend to start with a feeling. I start with a feeling. Some writers start with a wholy imagined plot in their imaginations.
Bow down to those folks. I wish, I wish I could do that. Some people start with a character. Characters quite literally start to speak in the ears of writers who then sort of become the conduits for these voices that they're hearing of the characters. That's marvelous too and valid, but I, for whatever reason, always start with a feeling that I'm trying to capture, and then my characters or the story become the way of expressing that feeling.
So that sums up what, for me, the emotional anchor is. Maybe it's grief, maybe it's joy, maybe it's relief or sorrow, or regret or peace. Most often for me, it's longing. That is my go to emotional anchor, longing. I explore longing all day.
[00:12:28] Carrie: Well, it's probably good you write for young adults then, right?
[00:12:34] Sarah: Yes. I, I told myself, I promised myself, I would not go on any tangents while I was speaking to you today, but the writer, Susan Caine, who wrote the beautiful book in celebration of introverts called Quiet.
[00:12:48] Sarah: She has a newer book now called Bittersweet, which is in honor and exploration of that feeling of longing.
So I've never felt more seen in my life. But that's my little tangent. So I'll ask writers to write down on a piece of paper, an emotional anchor and a physical anchor. And then if I'm in a group, if I'm in a group setting, in a physical space. I'll ask them to trade with the person next to them or somebody across the room.
[00:13:19] Sarah: And when I do this in class at the Carnegie Center, I'll set a timer for 12 minutes and invite writers to just write toward or from within or about those two things to marry them in some way.
And if I'm doing it myself, otherwise say I'm, I need to write a scene. There's a scene in my novel or my draft that needs writing and I don't know how to enter the scene. I don't know how to get out, what I wanna say. I'll ask myself, what's the emotional anchor, and then I'll try to attach it to some physical thing.
[00:14:10] Carrie: But, but like you said, anybody, anybody can use that.
Yes. Yes.
So when people work on the words that the, you know, from other people
Yeah.
How does that transform what they're writing?
[00:14:25] Sarah: One of the things that we do during those 12 minute exercise in class exercises that we do, I said, I invite writers to read their freshly baked thing that they've just written.
[00:14:37] Sarah: out loud. Nobody has to, but I invite writers to read out loud what they've just written, and I'm stunned every time about what comes out of that.
[00:14:46] Sarah: in 12 minutes, and I've realized that 12 minutes is the magic number any longer than that. We're all overthinking it. All of us writers are sitting around the table listening to those inevitable voices in our head, telling us to move that period around, or that this sentence is wobbly or that this is no good, or the worst, that nobody's interested in this,
[00:15:07] Sarah: which is false every time. But it's short enough and that you feel, again, that same freedom that comes with knowing that you have a limited time to do something. Sometimes that can be tremendously freeing, so, I'll ask writers to read what they've just written, and in some cases some writers will come out with what sounds like a fully formed piece of flash fiction or a fully formed poem.
[00:15:43] Sarah: and is now a part of the esteemed group of writers at the senior center on Fridays. He submitted at my invitation at the final 11th hour, one of these little gems that had grown out of our 12 minute writing exercise with the physical and emotional anchors.
He submitted it to the podcast that our poet laureate Crystal Wilkinson. creates
[00:16:05] Sarah: And at the end of those podcasts, they invite community writers to share their words. So that's where my students' words appeared at the end, but his voice appeared alongside another of my esteemed senior writers
[00:16:42] Sarah: And what came out of that was extraordinary. Mm-hmm. And I won't say anything else about it in case you wanna go listen to it cause it's a real treat.
[00:16:49] Carrie: Well, I hope that some of your students will submit what they have worked on for this podcast.
[00:17:17] Carrie: So do you have any advice specific to people who are writing for young adults?
[00:17:24] Sarah: I do. There's one question. That I think I and a lot of other writers of young adult literature get, which is what is the difference between a young adult novel and an adult novel?
[00:17:40] Sarah: And I think a lot of times folks will think that it has something to do with subject matter. They'll have in their minds an idea that certain subject matter is more the domain of adult literature, whereas other subject matter is the domain of young adult literature. And to that, I say that YA literature, young adult literature, to me is a no holds barred space.
[00:18:06] Sarah: I think young adult literature, literature is so good at taking on the hard conversations, the complicated topics always and forever. I find that young readers, people who are talking about young adult literature, they are setting the bar for how our conversations should be.
[00:19:03] Sarah: There's hindsight, there's foresight, there's a whole map of adults surrounding the young people, whereas with young adult literature, it's happening now. It's happening from within the experience as the young people are making their mistakes, they're making their decisions along the way without the benefit of hindsight.
[00:19:24] Sarah: You know, it's not a voice of somebody who's older and looking back on an experience that they had as a young person. So that, that to me is the difference. So I hope that helps if anyone's thinking about exploring YA literature.
[00:19:38] Carrie: Well, I mean, YA literature is so popular here at the library.
And of course, it's not just young people who read it, it's
[00:19:52] Carrie: And what about, do you have any final writing tips that you would, you would like to give to our listeners?
[00:19:58] Sarah: Well, there's that advice that I think we've heard on your podcast and all the time from writers, which is read all the time.
That's basic. But what I might add to that, my own special spin on it is that read at whim. Read at whim. I think if you're out there and you're anything like me, you might have a huge pile of books next to your bed or next to your desk or wherever. And the, what is it? The, the tb, the TBR pile.
[00:20:32] Sarah: The TBR pile. But sometimes if the TBR pile gets a little too tall, it gets so intimidating, at least for me, that I just won't read anything at all.
[00:20:51] Sarah: So sometimes to just get the physical TBR pile out of your space, limit it to one book and let it be something at whim.
It may be that you're browsing in this beautiful library here, for instance. And you come across something you've never heard of before, and whatev for whatever reason, you're drawn to it and you think, Oh, but I've already got seven books in my TBR pile. My best advice is to give yourself permission to jump the queue.
[00:21:16] Sarah: If you're called to something in that moment, whether it's because it's fall and you want some delicious fallish book, even though your TBR pile is filled with summer romances that you never got around to. Just give yourself permission to read at whim. Read stuff that you wouldn't normally pick up.
Let yourself be drawn to other genres to writers you've never heard of. That's where the magic is happening. So not only read all the time, but read at whim.
[00:21:45] Carrie: Yes. That's a great, a great tip. It's something that I just have recently been able to do a little bit more of. And it is really, it is really joyful when you just pick something up and end up loving it.
[00:22:13] Sarah: Isn't that the best? That that unexpected magic that you can't plan for? Oh, I love it.
I love it.
[00:22:20] Carrie: Well, thanks so much, Sarah, for joining us today. We really appreciate it.
[00:22:25] Sarah: Thank you so much for having me. What a treat.
[00:22:32] Carrie: Thanks for listening to the Prompt to Page podcast. To submit your response to Sarah's prompt, visit us at jesspublib.org/prompt-to-page. We also welcome you to join the Jessamine County Public Library's Prompt to Page writing group, which will meet on Wednesday, October 26th at 6:00 PM. Register on our website. To learn more about the Carnegie Center For Literacy and Learning, visit carnegiecenterlex.org.
Our music is by Archipelago, an 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.
