Julie Zuckerman
I was taking a fiction class with a teacher who wasn't a big believer in prompts, whereas I have always loved them. Eventually my teacher relented and gave us an optional prompt: write about someone who is “definitely not you” but who does something in which you’re interested. I wrote about an African-American woman who has her own business as a landscape architect. I like gardening, but don’t know much about it. I loved the challenge of writing from this definitely-not-me point of view, as well as the research I put into the story.
I enjoyed writing that one so much, I used the same prompt for my next story. This time I wrote about an 82-year-old semi-retired professor. Again, definitely not me. But I did make him slightly more familiar: he’s Jewish, as am I. His field of study is political science and international relations, as was mine, and the hobby he takes upon himself is baking, about which I know a thing or two. The aging professor I created on the page, Jeremiah Gerstler, is a loveable crank-pot. As soon as I wrote MixMaster, which turns out to be the final chapter in The Book of Jeremiah, I knew I wanted to unravel his life.
I enjoyed writing that one so much, I used the same prompt for my next story. This time I wrote about an 82-year-old semi-retired professor. Again, definitely not me. But I did make him slightly more familiar: he’s Jewish, as am I. His field of study is political science and international relations, as was mine, and the hobby he takes upon himself is baking, about which I know a thing or two. The aging professor I created on the page, Jeremiah Gerstler, is a loveable crank-pot. As soon as I wrote MixMaster, which turns out to be the final chapter in The Book of Jeremiah, I knew I wanted to unravel his life.
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