Novelist Jacinda Townsend believes that "writing is a habit, and the imagination begets the imagination." Having a set writing routine helps her create because "the imagination is a kind of muscle." 

On this episode, Jacinda explains the steps she takes each morning to fire up her imagination, including using writing prompts.

Her favorite prompt to share focuses on pacing. Her students generate such strong work with this exercise that some have even published their finished pieces.

About Jacinda Townsend

Jacinda Townsend is the author of Trigger Warning (Graywolf, 2025) and Mother Country (Graywolf, 2022), winner of the 2023 Ernest Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. 

Townsend's first novel, Saint Monkey (Norton, 2014), winner of the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize and the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for historical fiction, was an Honor Book of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. 

A former broadcast journalist and elected official, Townsend has written nonfiction for Al Jazeera and The White Review.