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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 with Tammy Oberhausen
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Carrie: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Prompt to Page podcast, a partnership between the Jesamin 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 Tammy Oberhausen.
Tammy is the author of The Evolution of the Gospelettes, a novel published in 2024 by Fireside Industries. She earned bachelor's and master's degrees in English from Western Kentucky University and an MFA in creative writing from Spaulding University. While working as a book editor and teacher and raising two daughters, she kept coming back to a story about a family of gospel singers that wouldn't let her go.
After three decades of developing her craft and writing and rewriting that story, the Gospelletes finally [00:01:00] made their debut. A Kentucky native, she lives in Bowling Green with her husband. Welcome, Tammy. Thanks for joining us.
Tammy: Thank you, Carrie.
Carrie: So, I want to preface my first question by saying that I am someone that I think works what some people might consider slowly.
And as you mention in your bio, it took around thirty years for your novel to be finished and and published and I'm just curious if you think there are benefits to working at that pace?
Tammy: Yes, and I probably would not want to do that again. For one thing, I don't think I have 30 more years to to write.
Maybe I do, but yeah, I definitely think, you know, I started the book in the early 90s and if I had finished it and published it, then it would have been a very different book than it was. You know, when it, when it came out last year, I hope that I had gained a little wisdom along the way. [00:02:00] So yeah, I guess that is, that is the benefit of working slowly.
And it just, I think a project just takes the time that it needs to take. You know, we can, we can try to move it along. We can try to make it easier on ourselves in various ways. And I think we should when we can, but sometimes, project just takes the time it takes.
Carrie: Yeah, exactly. Is there anything that you might have done differently, or would do differently the next time?
Tammy: Definitely. You know, a lot of the reasons that it took so long are just kind of having to do with, where I was in my life, you know, in my career and with my family, and all the things I had going on, but I do think that there are things that writers can do to help push themselves along and one thing is really getting into a group, whether it's going to an MFA program or we're working with a group of writers who can really give you feedback and encouragement and keep you accountable.
I think [00:03:00] that that's really important. That's one thing that you can do.
Carrie: So you were mentored by Silas House, who I think also requested that you submit to Fireside Industries, and I heard you in another interview talking about some of the things that he did, like buying a pair of the shoes that one of his characters, um, would have worn and wearing it out in the woods, so I was just curious, If you had done anything like that in the process of writing your book, or if there were maybe other exercises that you picked up from Silas, that you took on as you wrote the book.
Tammy: That was a really, important one to me because, you know, if you're writing a character, you want to get as much interiority as you can and, and be inside that person's mind, that person's thoughts and their [00:04:00] experience. So the example of him wearing the shoes and walking around, you know, what, what does it feel like to be that kid wearing that, those shoes walking around in the woods. With this, with my novel, I am not a gospel singer, but I did grow up listening to gospel music.
So, you know, I would listen, I would listen to some of the music. Just to kind of get back into that, that place that the characters would be sometimes I would sing along with them, you know, to just kind of experience what that is like. So, I think that's a great thing to do, whether you're writing fiction or or any kind of writing is to really find a way to embody that whatever you're writing about or that character that you're writing about.
Carrie: So, what about writing prompts? Do they play a role in your writing process?
Tammy: Most of the time I don't use prompts, but there have been moments when I felt stuck or uninspired and usually I kind of have to wallow around with it for a while and feel bad. And, and [00:05:00] then I'll remember, oh, I have, you know, this whole bookshelf of, of craft books that I can rely on.
And so I'll pull something out and, and find something that I can do that will help get me unstuck. So, yeah, don't wallow too much, get, get the prompt and go with it.
Carrie: Would you like to go ahead and share the writing prompt or prompts that you wanted to talk about today?
Tammy: Yes. So I've listened to other episodes of this podcast and I've heard a lot of really good ones.
And many of them I actually used when I, I used to teach creative writing in high school. And so there were, there were many that I have used before, but I wanted to come up with something different. So here's one that I don't think anyone else has mentioned. Lately, I've been exploring the connections between dreams, like nighttime dreams, and the imagination and creativity.
If you think about it, what happens when we dream? We are [00:06:00] creating people and places and things and events seemingly out of nothing. Just like when we write and of course sometimes our dreams are mundane. But if you really start to, I'll say harvest your dreams you may be surprised at what your imagination is coming up with and when you know when you're sleeping, it's just like incredible images, characters even whole plot lines can come in your dreams. And I'll give you an example of one that I had recently I dreamed it was like I was watching a movie really because I didn't know who these people in the dream were, they weren't people that I knew, but I saw a woman get out of a car on a country road, and the person driving drove away, and I watched her, she walked up to a house, and there was a little girl in the yard, and I knew somehow that the woman was the little girl's mother, and that she had left and hadn't seen her since she was a baby, and she was talking to the little girl, [00:07:00] and then an older girl came out of the house, and to tell the younger sister to come in and eat and the older girl recognized that that was her mother.
And so immediately I just had this intriguing scene. I have no idea where it came from, but I had all these questions. Who are these people? You know, where has this mother been? Why did she leave? Why did she come back? Who was the person driving the car? How did the daughters feel about her? You know, how's the father going to react?
So it was like this whole plot just kind of came from this, this scene in a dream. And the really cool thing about using dreams as prompts is that your dreams tell you what your concerns, your fears, your obsessions, your passions are. It's like a personalized prompt, you know, that you're getting in your dream.
So that's one that I'm, I'm just starting to explore and I've been reading a lot about it and discovering how many artists have, have [00:08:00] used dreams. Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein based on a dream. Robert Louis Stevenson dreamed of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde before he wrote them. Stephen King got his idea for Misery from a dream.
Edgar Allan Poe said his nightmares fueled his stories. James Cameron, he dreamed the idea that became the Terminator movie. Paul McCartney said that he dreamed the entirety of the song Yesterday. It just came to him in a dream. He feels like it, he didn't even write it, that it was written and given to him.
So, I mean, we all love that. We all, we all want it to be given to us. So, yeah, I just, I love the idea of working with that. I discovered a poet named Alice Notley, who said that she writes from her dreams and she said that her dreaming self is in a lot of ways, a better poet than her awake self. So I really love that.
Carrie: I mean, how do you keep a journal like a dream journal or, [00:09:00] you know, how are you thinking about ways to capture the, cause you know, sometimes they're so fleeting. You remember them and then they go away. Like, how do you hold on to those long enough to write about them?
Tammy: Yeah, that's the hard part is remembering the dreams, you know, I think most people, you might have one or two dreams a year that you remember when you wake up that you really can recall and tell somebody about.
So I do have some tips for how to, how to do that. Number one, I know it sounds kind of woo, woo, but set an intention when you go to bed, like I'm going to remember my dreams. Tell yourself, I'm going to, I'm going to dream something that's good and interesting and helpful, and I'm going to remember it.
Somehow, you know, you just, you're subconsciously, I guess your brain is just saying, okay, I have an assignment. And I'm going to do that. So that's one thing. And then in the morning, when you wake up, the best thing you can do to remember your dreams is not to jump out of bed and start your day. So that's a hard one for those of us who have [00:10:00] to get up
early because we have, you know, kids or we have a job that we've got to get to early. We can't lie around for five minutes thinking about our dreams. So if that's the case, you know, maybe you can do this on weekends, you know, when you have a little more leisure to, to lie around. But yeah, lying there and not moving, not rolling over, staying in the same position somehow.
Even just rolling over starts to make those dreams dissipate. But if you can just lie there for a minute in that position and think about it, and if you can get a hold of a little detail. Sometimes, if you can just think about that detail for a minute, it's like pulling a thread and you can start to remember, okay, I was here before that.
And then after that, I did this and you start to unravel the whole thing and it comes to you. And then the next step is really important if you want to use it, you know, in your writing and that is to write it down. So after I've thought about it and, and gotten it in my head, I will usually type it into the notes on my [00:11:00] phone.
You know, if you wake up in the night. And you want to remember that dream. I think it's a good idea to have maybe a pad and pen next to your bed so that you don't have to turn on the light or turn on the screen and wake yourself up too much. Just kind of jot down a few notes and hope that you remember what you were talking about in the morning.
But yeah, getting it down immediately is really helpful. And then the next thing that I do is, you know, when I have time to get to my computer, I actually have a word document that I keep my dream journal in, and I will type it up in more detail and just, you know, it's that alone is a good exercise. Just kind of writing up the details of that dream as much as you can.
And then, you know, the final step is, you know, choosing one to write from. You may have one that really sticks with you. It immediately catches your attention and you want to write about it. But if not, you know, just hold on to that record of your dreams. And then sometime when you're feeling stuck, or you need a little [00:12:00] inspiration, go back and read over them.
And almost inevitably you will find something that, oh, that's kind of interesting. I think I could actually use that.
Carrie: Yeah. Those prompts that you're giving yourself that your unconscious is giving yourself. I know some writers, they like to write first thing in the morning, like, you know, still kind of in their pajamas or whatever, you know, go straight to the desk as a way of sort of holding on to that dream space.
Do you work that way or do you kind of come back to it later?
Tammy: Now that I'm retired, I like to work in the morning. I agree. I mean, I have, I think it was Toni Morrison that I heard say that she would, she liked to work in the morning and it was like she was still in kind of in that dream state. And that is my preference now that, now that I'm retired now, I will say that when I was working full time and had kids it was just not possible. I know a lot of people will say, get up an hour early in the [00:13:00] morning and and get your writing time. And I've, I've found that I was just too exhausted at that, that early, because if you have kids that get up at five o'clock in the morning and you have to be at work, you know, by seven, that's a pretty early, you know, time to be trying to think straight.
But yeah, I like, I like mornings when it's, when I can do it on my own timetable.
Carrie: Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's definitely the ideal.
Tammy: Right.
Carrie: So you were on a panel with my husband at the Kentucky Book Fair. That's where I first saw you. So I thought that I would steal one of his questions, which was you know, if you could name a few songs that might have been on a playlist for your novel, what would those be?
Tammy: Oh, I wish I could remember what I said.
Carrie: Oh.
Tammy: Well, one that comes to mind that I have a playlist for my novel on Spotify and on [00:14:00] YouTube, and one that comes to mind is The Eastern Gate by, The Happy Goodman Family, because it is about, you know, the lyrics are, I will meet you in the morning just inside the Eastern gate over there.
And it's kind of, to me, it captured the love that the family had for each other. They have a lot of, they're called the Gospelettes. This family has a lot of. Love for each other and they also have a lot of, disagreements and trouble along the way, but I think that that song kind of captures how loyal and loving they are and how much they, they want to see each other.
They want to be together. You know, that's one. What else? Will the Circle be Unbroken is,
Carrie: Oh, yeah,
that's a classic
Tammy: classic. Yeah. That kind of has the same, same idea of, you know, the family, will we always be together? That's, that's one that I really enjoy.
I could probably think of some others if I, I mean, I have [00:15:00] close to a hundred songs or maybe over a hundred songs on my playlist.
Carrie: Yeah. Well, so can people find that playlist on your website?
Tammy: Yes, it is on my website, tammyoberhausen. com. And, you can go to either Spotify or YouTube.
Carrie: Great. So do you have any final tips you'd like to give to our listeners?
Tammy: I think the really important thing for me that I had to learn was the importance of connection for writers.
I think there's a tendency to kind of be isolated when you're a writer. You know, you're alone in your thoughts in your room, but it's important to connect. I mean, with other works, like, you know, read a lot. So connect with other writers through reading, with other writers locally, if you can, or in a group for, you know, that encouragement and accountability, that's very important and also just kind of [00:16:00] connecting with yourself and your own work by, you know, there were many days, weeks, months that I was not able to write for various reasons because of things that were going on and
one thing that I remember reading, I think it was the writer, Heather Sellers wrote about this, that she would just pull out her work at night and kind of touch it and read over the last few lines that she wrote. It's like a way of just touching base with your work and remembering it and, connecting with it so that you don't forget about it because, you know, if there are days when you, when you just can't get to it, you're at least kind of connecting with yourself in that way.
Carrie: Yeah, that's a great tip. I love Heather Sellers. She's a, she's a great writer and a great teacher of writing, I think.
Tammy: Yes, I think that I read that in, I'll probably have it here, Page after Page or Chapter, Chapter after Chapter, a couple of books that she wrote [00:17:00] about writing. Yeah.
Carrie: Well, thank you so much, Tammy, for joining us.
We really appreciate you being here.
Tammy: Thank you, Carrie.