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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.
Prompt to Page, Ep 45: Christopher McCurry
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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 Christopher McCurry.
Christopher is the author of Open Burning and the Gospel of God Boy. In 2015, he co-founded Workhorse, a publishing company and community for working writers. He's creator of the Poetry Gauntlet and the Young Writers Conference and lives in Lexington, Kentucky with his wife, daughter, newborn son, and two dogs.
Welcome, Christopher. Thanks for joining us.
Christopher: Thanks for having me on the show. This is wonderful.
Carrie: Can you tell us a little bit more about Workhorse Writers and the programs that you offer with [00:01:00] it?
Christopher: Yeah, absolutely. Workhorse started a little over, or almost 10 years ago, depending on when I consider it, like, officially started.
But we, we began thinking about how can we serve writers who aren't getting an MFA, who have families who are caretakers, who are older, you know, these writers that are underserved and then started thinking about like products and services that could help them. And some of the first things we did was like classes and workshops, like pretty traditional trying to, you know, pair writers with celebrated and acclaimed writers like Crystal Wilkinson.
And we moved more towards like a workshop model. So that's the Poetry Gauntlet, but a workshop model that's accessible to, to people who have full lives, you know, families, careers, things like that. So. That's a year long process instead of a semester process so that you can really invest and get immersed [00:02:00] in poetry, and you try to write a hundred poems in a year and you meet 12 times with the 10 to 12 other writers.
And then we also, Workhorse also took over Lexington Poetry Month from Accents Publishing around the same time, and that's one of the most accessible ways to get published and to get into a community of writers. It's online. You write 30 poems throughout Lexington Poetry Month, and the writing challenge is to, you know, post five poems to the website.
And so that helps, you know, even young people get into their writing and the publishing side of things. So, we do stuff like that. We currently have a, a literary journal as well called Yearling for the next step up in the kind of trajectory of a writer. So it professionalizes people a little bit more for them to send it to an editor.
And that editor, Manny Grimaldi gives feedback. And we're working on a mentorship program, so we just do anything that we think will serve the community of people who [00:03:00] are, you know, already plugged in in some way.
Carrie: Mm-hmm. And you and I are both working writers.
Christopher: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Carrie: What are, what are some of the, I guess, maybe the challenges and the benefits that you see with, you know, having that full-time job, but also trying to get your writing done as well?
Christopher: Yeah, well, I mean, I wouldn't say writing is ever easy, but some for some who are fortunate to through their life choices or for their talent or you know, their hard work or whatever, they found themselves in positions to have more time than others to focus on their craft or jobs that kind of facilitate it.
But when you don't have that, you're always negotiating, I think. Like, okay, well if I spend time writing now, then what am I gonna have to do later as it relates to our jobs or our families, or things like that. So like it means maybe not immediately grading an assignment from my students so that I can get the idea [00:04:00] out onto the paper, or, you know, taking a moment of time in the evening away from my family after work to submit something, you know?
Carrie: Mm-hmm.
Christopher: It, it, it definitely means juggling, juggling more for sure. And there are so many different things you can do in the writing community. You write, you can submit to publication, attend readings. So you kind of also don't get to, you know, fully invest in all of them, I think, you know, so I think it can create a kind of an anxiety, an nervousness or anxiety about like, am I doing enough or present enough or supporting others enough.
And then, I mean, I didn't even talk about reading, you know, that's another, you know, so like all those things you're just trying to slot in and I think, you know, it can create pressure can, you know, which is not necessarily a bad thing to be a working writer if you're really after it. And it can also put you, you know, in places where there are stories, like important [00:05:00] meaningful stories, if you're a working writer.
So there are pros and cons.
Carrie: Mm-hmm.
Christopher: You know, the stories I hear from my students or I, I participate in as a teacher. Like those are real life human things that I want to show up in my writing. So. I think, I think that's what it is. And then, you know, working writers are, I think we're kind of scrappy, so we do podcasts like this one.
So thank you for doing it. Um, and, and we get after helping each other, you know, that's what we're into. Mm-hmm. Um, like lifting each other up because we know we, we need it. So I think that's, that's what it means to me.
Carrie: Absolutely. Well, thank you. Yeah. I mean, and you definitely don't need to feel guilty about not participating in the writing community.
Christopher: Well, I think that like I, in the past couple of years, especially, I haven't gone to readings and, you know, open mics as frequently as I did before Covid, I kind of like lost the practice almost like mm-hmm. And [00:06:00] so that's just like part, you know, kind of part of it. Mm-hmm. You know, being there to support others and hear new work, so you just can't do it all, you know, you just gotta kind kind of navigate that.
Yeah. If. And maybe if you were getting paid to do it all, you could do it all. 'Cause you'd have 40 extra hours in the week. But yeah, so.
Carrie: Right. Yeah. We, we do do what we can.
Christopher: Yeah, absolutely.
Carrie: And what about writing prompts? Are you a fan of using writing prompts?
Christopher: Yeah. Oh, absolutely.
Carrie: Can you talk a little bit about that?
Christopher: So, one, writing prompts are just fun to create and give to people. You know, they're like little puzzles. Mm-hmm. And, I write them all the time for my high school students. I mean, I basically, you know, write, they have 180 of them a year when they're with me. So I'm always trying to think of new ways to, you know, unlock not just ideas, but also energy like that comes out of, and, you know, there are levels of them for me [00:07:00] anyway.
I like the ones that are just like, reflect or pull out this information so that you can look at it on the page. But I also like the ones that are kind of trying to teach you skills while also prompting you. And so those are the ones that I use with adults in workshop that I have more time with to prompt them to write so that we can talk about what's happening in our brains as we work through the prompt.
And how does it make, how does it make us a better poet or writer in general? So, you know, a teacher giving a prompt is the same as the world nudging you to write something. Those are prompts too. So, yeah, I love prompts. Long-winded answer to just say, I, like, I really love prompts.
Carrie: Well, do you, I mean, you mentioned the nudge from the world, which I agree.
I think that is a writing prompt as well. Do you ever use writing prompts to write your poems? Like beyond the, the nudge.
Christopher: Mm-hmm. Oh yeah, absolutely. I couldn't, you [00:08:00] know, point to one off the top of my head, but if it's kind of weird or experimental, usually it's a writing prompt that someone's
given me in a class or something like that, or that I've pursued, I find like the most engaging ones for me, and I know it's different for everyone, are the ones that have some structural elements to them that, and I'm talking mostly about poetry. I guess I should have asked like about are we, are we talking all genres here?
Are we talking mostly poetry? But for poetry, I like the ones that like are structural, you know?
Carrie: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I think, I mean, even with other genres, I think structure can be a form of prompt as well.
Christopher: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Carrie: But I, I, I think as poets, yeah, we're probably more tuned to that.
Christopher: Yeah.
Carrie: Yeah. So the podcast is for writers of any genre, so.
Christopher: Oh, cool.
Carrie: You don't have to just stick to talking about poetry.
Christopher: Perfect.
Well, and I think that's meaningful for, for all the writers. You know, like sometimes the most fruitful writing [00:09:00] prompt for a poet would come from a nonfiction, you know, writer of some kind. And same thing for prose or short stories or novelists, like definitely.
We had , Robert Gipe in our class the other day, and he was, you know, like write a story about where you would hide a body or go through the process. And I was like, well, this, you could write this any way you wanted and you could write a poem or a short story or a novel, you know, based on that. So.
Carrie: Mm-hmm.
Christopher: Yeah. That's great.
Carrie: Yeah.
Christopher: Cool.
Carrie: So would you like to share your,
Christopher: yeah.
Carrie: Your writing prompt?
Christopher: I would love to. I would love to. So this is one that I developed for the gauntlet. And it is about, it starts off being about just diction or the skill of using your individual word to create some juxtaposition and some texture and energy across your poem.
So I would have writers, if you are following this prompt first, make a list of your different roles and [00:10:00] responsibilities that you have in life. So, for instance, you might be a mother, a librarian, a sister, but sometime in your life you might have also worked at a video rental store as the assistant manager.
You might have also been a video gamer and really got obsessed with this one game and had this specific role or character that you played. So anyway, you make a list of those roles. After you've done that, then you write words down that are particular to that role. Maybe like a list of five. So for instance, for me, I'll take teacher and I'll take skateboarder and those are my two roles.
Well, words related to teacher are teaching are some fun ones, like look for the interesting ones that don't have any overlap. Zone of proximal development. So it doesn't have to be this one word, but you know, something like that. Walkthrough, assessment, you know, just good sounding words. And, and then [00:11:00] for skateboarding, like there are gonna be different sounding words.
There's like rail and kink. And disaster. And, and so you make, you put these words on the list and here's the prompt. You now have to write a poem and use all 10 of those words from both lists. How are you gonna put zone of proximal development next to the word kink in a poem? Mm-hmm. You know, and you write this poem about whatever it is that you wanna write about.
And so it, it really doesn't suggest a topic. So you might have to pick a word out of the list that you start with, you know? Or you can pick one of the roles and begin there and go down. So, for example. I used a bunch of skateboarding words to talk about testing day, you know, and moving through back and forth between the words.
So that's a diction exercise if you want. Make a list. Mm-hmm. And I'll try to repeat it here without all explanation, but make a list of words from two of the roles in your life and write a [00:12:00] poem that uses all of the most interesting words from both of the lists. And the more different the roles, the better.
Okay.
Carrie: Yeah. No, I was gonna say that. That the teacher and the skateboarder, that is an interesting juxtaposition.
Christopher: Yeah.
Carrie: So I think that's, that would be a good contrast with those two roles.
Christopher: Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's a fun one. And, and like you could take this to the next level if you're a teacher and have two people pair up, and then the two of them write a combined poem with their lists.
Mm-hmm. And that is, you know, even kind of more meaningful in a way. 'cause it shows you how other people are thinking about a word that you might have a preconceived notion about like the word rail or kink. Like those have specific skateboarding connotations. Oh. Or even a more specific one, snake.
So snake in skateboarding is when you accidentally cut someone off. And so you snaked their line. And so that doesn't [00:13:00] mean much to anyone who doesn't skateboard or go to skate parks, but you know, so if you're, if you're riding with someone else and you're having to explain this, and they're like, oh, okay, that's interesting.
And, and so it helps you talk about language a little bit in a fun way, I think. Yeah. So.
Carrie: Yeah. Yeah. No, that does sound like a fun buddy prompt.
Christopher: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Carrie: To do
Christopher: so I have an extension as well to the prompt.
Carrie: Yeah.
Christopher: And activity. So, so one of the things I also like to teach, especially like adult poets, is about language acquisition.
Like where we go to get new words and, 'cause it's kind of difficult, you know, it's like, well, if we aren't actively researching things. But even if we are, they tend to align with things that we're already interested in. So if you've done the first prompt, the second or extension, extension is go to the library and go to the nonfiction section and pick some book about a topic that you know nothing about, [00:14:00] and use that book and collect 10 to 20 words that
you don't recognize, don't know. And, write a poem using those words or start learning them and incorporating them in some way into a poem that you've already written. So, you know, in the past we've had books like Fishing Lures, a book just about fishing lures, you know, and like people pick it up and they're like, I don't even know.
And they go in there and they find all these wonderful words that people use to describe fishing lures or like the home gardens of African American people in the South that are like, not necessarily plant-based, but are like about collecting items and displaying items in these little gardens and like how they, the history of that and like don't know anything about it, but there's all these great words in there.
So you combine the first prompt, which is about the diction that you already can access. Those words you can already access, and then you extend it by going like, okay, let's go to a place. That I have no [00:15:00] experience and no words from, and, and gather those words, acquire those words, and, and in the process research something.
So yeah. And it also uses library, so I wanted to share that one.
Carrie: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.
Christopher: Yeah.
Carrie: It's also nice because you also might be building in, you know, metaphors to mm-hmm. Your topic that, that you wouldn't have otherwise thought to use because you're using that language from a specific discipline.
Christopher: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yep. A hundred percent. That is actually the next, next lesson after, you know, we talked about getting words. Yeah. So on down the road Yeah. We start talking about, well, how do you, you know, pull these into metaphors and similes and symbols and all that good stuff? Mm-hmm. And, and so now you can see that I kind of just like
the, the type of prompts that are having us work skills as well as, um mm-hmm. You know, just telling us something to write about, so. Yeah.
Carrie: Yeah. Well that makes sense given your [00:16:00] profession.
Christopher: Yeah.
Carrie: Your role.
Christopher: Yeah.
Carrie: Well, do you have any final writing tips that you'd like to give our listeners?
Christopher: Whew. Yeah. Writing tips.
I think, I mean, I've been working a lot with young writers, recently, and, and so I've, I, I've been thinking also about the juxtaposition about, you know, adults and young people and what changes between like, being young and like really motivated and being obsessed and like, you know, they'll write a hundred thousand words about, you know, anything it seems like, and they're like
kind of resistant to, well, we need to try to put this in a box or form or some, or like a book. You know, like, how much are people willing to read about this topic that you're writing, this whole fantasy system that you've built and made, and you know, and we need a plot like that we can follow. Um, and they're kind of resistant to that.
Not, not all the way [00:17:00] they're great, like, but then adults, they really want all the boxes. You know, they're like, how can I, how can I put this in a way that other people are gonna wanna read it? And they kind of miss, I think out on that energy that's like, I can, I'm gonna write until my arm falls off. You know?
Carrie: Right.
Christopher: And I think that's really interesting. So my tip would, I guess be, or my thought would be like, wherever you are on that spectrum, you kind of need a little bit of both. You know, you need to mm-hmm. Dip in and see what other people are doing, but if you are fully invested in like, what are other people gonna be wanting to read or how do I get this published or, you know, then you need to think a little bit more about the, the energy you're bringing to your piece and the excitement.
And if you're too much like, well, I'm just gonna write a 400,000 word opus of some kind in whatever form, then, you know, it could behoove you to learn a little bit of the [00:18:00] skills to, you know, make it readable, I guess I would say. And then, and then, lastly, just like talk to people, you know.
Mm-hmm. And, and reach out and have a community and have fun. That's what I would say right now in my life. Yeah.
Carrie: Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for sharing your great prompt and your extensions of the prompt.
Christopher: Oh yeah, yeah, no problem.
Carrie: Um, we really appreciate you being here.
Christopher: Yeah, thanks so much for having me on.
This was wonderful. Thank you, Carrie.
Carrie: Thank you for listening to Prompt to Page. To learn more about the Jessamine County Public Library, visit jesspublib.org. Find the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning at 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 [00:19:00] Quarantine Volumes One and Two at the links on our podcast website.