10 Minute Writer's Workshop

10 Minute Writer's Workshop, produced for NHPR by Sarah Plourd, rests on a simple exchange: an author explains how the work gets done, and Virginia Prescott steers the talk toward specifics. Episodes typically open with the guest's own voice, announcing the show before Prescott introduces herself. From there, it is about method. Jennifer Egan, reached at her home in Brooklyn, says she tends to begin with a time and a place, and that is often all she needs. Her books keep changing shape, from a gothic novel to a short story composed of tweets to the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Visit from the Goon Squad, described as a kind of novel as concept album. Her reason is simple. Writing takes her out of her own life, so each new book has to be a world she has not already lived in, and Manhattan Beach carried her back to a time before small screens. Dan Brown runs on a strict schedule: up at 4 a.m., a breakfast smoothie and bulletproof coffee, and a computer that freezes for 60 seconds every hour so he can do sit-ups or push-ups. He talks about places too, from a spiral staircase that made him change a plot so a character could die there, to the tourist bureaus that send him glossy books of their cities. Barcelona, he notes drily, hardly needs his help. Manoush Zomorodi comes at creativity from another angle. Her book Bored and Brilliant grew out of her own experience of confronting digital interruptions, and she asked her audience to help her find out what letting go of them would mean. She went to neuroscientists to understand the wandering brain, and describes the default mode, the state of folding laundry or spacing out, as the place where two unrelated ideas get smashed into something new. Jeffrey Cranor and Joseph Fink, the creators of Welcome to Night Vale, appear in an onstage interview from the Boston Book Festival, talking about It Devours, their second novel based on the podcast. They recall the strange half-fame of being discussed on Tumblr and Twitter while still working day jobs, and explain why they refuse to write toward a demographic. Prescott's sign-offs carry some personality: the Zomorodi conversation ends with a wish for a new year of bold creativity and a good dose of boredom, and the Dan Brown episode points to Misa Charles Darwin, vocal music by composer Gregory Brown, who is Dan Brown's brother. For a first listen, 'Workshop 60: Manoush Zomorodi' suits anyone wrestling with attention, 'Workshop 57: Dan Brown' covers the discipline behind a bestseller, and 'Workshop 59: Jennifer Egan' shows how a new book finds its time and place. Not every entry in the feed is a workshop episode. It also holds a speaker-series conversation with Malcolm Harris and Erik Baker about Harris's book Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World, one that turns to schooling and universities in California, and an episode of Pretty Big Deal with Ashley Graham in which Whitney Cummings talks comedy and codependency.