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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. 49: Rachel Elliott
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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 Rachel Elliott.
Rachel is an author, illustrator and cartoonist. Her debut middle grade graphic novel, The Real Riley Mays, was released in May of 2022 and became both a Stonewall Honor book and a Sid Fleischman Humor Honor Book. If you love secret codes, parallel cat universes and dude-ish girls who act out humorous death scenes, you'll want to read this book.
She is now working on two different graphic novel book series for two different publishers. Rachel grew up queer during the 1980s in [00:01:00] rural Oklahoma. She has worked as a volunteer "zooteen," a plaster caster, a crumpet baker, and a children's museum grant writer. She now lives in Kentucky with her wife and teaches comics writing at the University of Kentucky.
She's a big fan of dance music, tacos, cats, comedians, and her niece's ice hockey team. In her spare time, she plays badminton with her wife and draws Martin Short way too much. Welcome, Rachel. Thanks for joining us.
Rachel: Hi. It's a joy to be here with you, Carrie.
Carrie: So, I have to admit, I was thinking of you last night when I watched the latest episode of Only Murders in the Building.
Rachel: I'm on a deadline, so I haven't drawn much from the new episodes, but it gives me something to look forward to because [00:02:00] drawing Martin Short makes me happy no matter what's going on in the world. So I just know there's a little, like a jar on the shelf of future happy.
Carrie: Yeah. It's good to have that in your back pocket these days. And I enjoyed looking at them. On your website you have like over 400 drawings?
Rachel: It's ridiculous. [Laughter] 400 and something, 500. I think it's like 538 drawings of Martin Short, not on the website
Carrie: oh wow. Okay.
Rachel: in my sketchbook somewhere. The weird side to it is I might, I might actually keep count. I don't know.
Carrie: [Laughter] I mean, that's definitely commitment. And I loved, you also had a little zine on your website where you tell the story of giving him
Rachel: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Carrie: some of your drawings.
Rachel: Well, we hung out. We went to his [00:03:00] show with Steve Martin in Louisville. And we hung out by the stage door. And for a long time, you know, I thought that's the traditional thing to do, isn't it? Not that I get a chance to go to theater super often. So we did, and we had to hang out for a while and I had like a little zine I had made that had some drawings of him and Steve Martin, and when they got in their car, they paused [Laughter]
to sign some autographs and another fan helped me hand it, along with my wife, they helped hand it to him because I was too nervous.
Carrie: Sure. [Laughter] That's understandable. Well, that's great. So we are excited that you're leading a workshop for teens here at the Jessamine County Public Library next month. It's going to be on Thursday, November 13th at 6:00 PM. Can you tell us a little bit about what you'll be doing in the [00:04:00] workshop?
Rachel: Well, I'm really looking forward to this workshop too. We're gonna start with creating comic characters through drawing, and it's a game called Animal, Emotion, Occupation. So basically you make a list of those things and I bring some dice and we roll the dice and you know, you can come up with an angry cat baker or-- the participants come up with better
animals, emotions, and occupations than I would on my own. And then after we draw some, we pick, we pick some to kind of, and we fill out a questionnaire for them. And it doesn't take long until everybody has some stories in mind for that particular character. So we'll see. We'll see how much, if folks wanna move on to making four panel comics about that character, we can do that.
If folks are just like, I wanna make 9 million characters, we can do that. Whatever you wanna do [00:05:00] in the time that we've got, we'll have as much fun as possible.
Carrie: Yeah, that sounds like fun. That sounds, I think as a grownup, I would like to do something like that too.
Rachel: You can, you know.
Carrie: we'll have to offer it for adults sometime too, I guess.
Rachel: Yes. It's a great like, intergenerational kind of thing too. I was at an event in Oklahoma where I'm from, and there were some 20 something year-olds and some like 10 year-olds at the same event, and we did this together and everyone had a blast because the 20 something year-olds
were loving the characters the 10 year-olds made up and vice versa. There was no age difference really going on.
Carrie: Yeah. Yeah. And that's also, I mean, that's a great prompt. So kind of, is a good thing to lead us into talking about prompts. [00:06:00] So obviously you use prompts in workshops. Do you ever use prompts in your own writing and drawing?
Rachel: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I wanna give that animal emotion occupation prompt, that's from a book called, Drawing Comics Lab by Robin Chapman, who's the editor at Macmillan's First Second Books, which is like one of the first comics for kids, traditional publishers. You know, that they just do comics for kids, and there's a lot of other cool stuff in that book.
It's mostly drawing type prompts. And, I think my ideas for stories, like they tend to come from drawing in my sketchbook. And I feel like I'm a draw-er before I'm a writer, you know? And I don't have a lot of confidence in my writing, to be honest.
So I think prompts really help me make that move from drawing a [00:07:00] goofy kid, drawing a talking animal, you know, into like, okay, well what, other than drawing them doing 5 million things, what is this story about?
So, some of my favorite prompts are things from Lynda Barry, who's a cartoonist, an author, an illustrator. And I was at a workshop that she was teaching in Indiana and she was doing this particular series, this particular activity that I think in her books is called the X Page.
And it's like some other prompts that other authors have talked about on your show. It's similar to it, where you list some memories that come to mind from a word and then you draw an X on a page and then Lynda Barry asks really specific questions that bring up sensory details, like what year is it?
What does the air smell like? Is anyone with you? Where is the light coming from? [00:08:00] And you answer those really quickly. And then you write for like seven and a half minutes. And I was in the middle of writing for like just seven and a half minutes. We had done this several times, and the more times you do it, the more you write, you know.
Any prompt, like the first time you do it, you're like, what is this? [Both laugh] This is the silliest thing I've ever done, and it just gets better. But so we're partway into it. We're really good. It's like, you know, the third day of doing this and with a couple minutes left, she asks, what did you not know then that you know now?
And it totally changed the scene I was writing about. I think I was writing about sometime in high school where all of my classmates were pranking a teacher, and it was goofy. But that question made me realize, like, oh, a few weeks after this, the Oklahoma City bombing happened.
And we didn't know that, like, we weren't really gonna have [00:09:00] class until summer. We were gonna be watching TVs with news nonstop. With really kind of violent imagery and stuff on it. And that's not, this is not like where I like my writing to go, where it went for that moment, you know? [Laughter]
Carrie: Yeah.
Rachel: And what it did do was it took this scene with these goofy adolescents where you're like, why are they being like this?
You know? And then kind of flipped it over and you think about those characters in a different way. Do you know what I mean?
Carrie: Mm-hmm.
Rachel: Like, you know that they're gonna change or mature or, or at least kind of go, oh, I wish we could have normal class again. You know?
Carrie: Right.
Rachel: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think about that question a lot that, what does the character not know that they will know later?
And I thought about that with Riley Mayes a lot. Because she's a, it's not like she ever says what's going on with her, [00:10:00] but she realized that she has a crush, like a celebrity crush on someone who also happens to be a woman. And at multiple points in the book, I had to ask myself, does she know this yet? Does she?
Is she gonna learn it? What does she not know about gay people? What does she not know about what her friends think about gay people? And it really helped a lot with a character that has big transformations to kind of stop and think about that regularly.
Carrie: Yeah, and I think probably the fact that she's a child, that probably has that extra layer of, what does she know and what doesn't she know that kind of helps,
Rachel: right.
Carrie: That question.
Rachel: Yeah. Yeah. In the book, she's in fifth grade. As much as, as much as we can be like, well, I was once in fifth grade, Also, I'm gay. [Laughter] [00:11:00] It doesn't mean that my fifth grade is anything like, you know, her fifth grade would be that particular year. So, I mean, it's pretty, I think that's sometimes one of the exciting things about writing for kids is that
we all were kids, but childhood is always different and we always have to do like a little bit of research to figure out like, what do kids know? And what are they gonna know? And what does my main character kid know? There's a moment where Riley goes in, sneaks into the library at her school
to use the computer, and she's trying to use the computer to look at social media posts and she can't. But then she at some point types in like a Google question that's phrased awkwardly I think it's something like, if I'm gay, will it ruin my life? And she can't get results [00:12:00] back because there's a safe search filter on the computer.
Which at the time was like the peak of anti-gay censorship in library world. [Laughter]. So, even that question kind of helps, you know, like, what can they find out? Like what do they not know? And also why do they not know that?
Carrie: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. And so it's interesting to me too, because I've had several writers on the podcast who have talked about how drawing is an important part of their process, even though they don't consider themselves an artist, a visual artist.
Rachel: Right.
Carrie: And how it kind of helps them see their story or see the seed in a different way. And it seems like it kind of works the reverse for you. Who's more naturally to
Rachel: Someone has to prod Rachel to use words. [Laughter]
Carrie: But I mean [00:13:00] like that we are all kind of drawn naturally, one way or the other, but we have the capacity to do both.
Rachel: Right, right. Yeah. And I love that so many authors have talked about drawing because I think well. When I hear people say, oh, I can't draw. I won't even have you see what I'm drawing.
Like I love just about any drawing I ever see. There's always something awesome about any drawing. It doesn't matter what it is. I love that so many folks have turned to using drawing to move their story along, but it also makes me wanna go, where are those drawings at?
Carrie: Right. [Laughter]
Rachel: Like every person that comes on I'm like, I want to see that! [Both laugh]
Carrie: Yeah, me too. We should, I should start asking them to submit their drawings.
Rachel: Wouldn't that be an awesome book? Drawings that writers made to help themselves write that they didn't want you to see?
Carrie: Yeah. [00:14:00] Yeah. It would. I have my own stash of drawings I wouldn't want anyone to see either. So I guess I'd have to edit it so I didn't have to be in it. [Laughter]
Rachel: Oh, I see. [Laughter]
Carrie: Do you have other prompts that you wanted to talk about today?
Rachel: That was my specific one I was thinking of with that question. Yeah, pretty much.
Carrie: Okay. Well, I have some other questions for you.
Rachel: Sure.
Carrie: So there have been at least three documented instances of challenges to your graphic novel.
What do you wish that more people knew about book censorship?
Rachel: Oh gosh. First off it's happening much more every year in like exponential increasing amounts. I know, I realize like when talking via a library [00:15:00] podcast sometimes I'm like, I'm not sure folks know about these things.
But yeah, it increased a lot right around when my book came out and not just in doubling or what, like 10 times over, over a couple of years. And so it's increased a lot. That's one thing folks need to know.
If, if anybody ever says like, well, there's actually fewer challenges this year than last year, that can be because the books have already been removed.
So it doesn't mean that those books got put back, but I think most people, I know polling like shows this too, is like that most Americans, like 70% oppose any efforts to remove books from public libraries.
So I think what's happening is we need to use the strength that these polls show that we have. So it's a very small minority of people who will request that a book be removed or that access to it be limited.[00:16:00]
While they're making that request, the reality is a majority of people don't want the book removed. And they want their kids to have free and unrestricted access to books. Kids read more when they have free and unrestricted access to books. It's what I grew up with as a kid. I don't, when I went to the library, my librarian, her name was Cornelia Sifferman and
Carrie: Oh, that's a great name. [Laughter]
Rachel: Yes.
She looked like a librarian in an old movie, like from Desk Set with Katharine Hepburn, because I think she'd been working at the library since the year that movie came out.
Carrie: Oh, wow. [Laughter]
Rachel: And she was like the kindest, most wonderful person, and I could go to her with any kind of question. If it was a question about a book or just like a curious kid question, and if the answer wasn't in the kid section, she'd walk me over to the adult section.
Even if I was like seven, because she, there wasn't a problem with that, [00:17:00] and I think that because of her, I grew up reading a lot and learning a lot, and I think when kids get to have the library as, libraries are like one of the few places in the world where a kid gets to choose stuff, you don't need money to, you don't need money to get the stuff, the books, the DVDs, the audio books, the computer access.
How many places in the world are like that? So I guess I wish that people knew that it doesn't take much of us speaking up to keep the library free and to keep access for books open. And so if you or your kid appreciates a book or appreciates all the
fantastic things that you get to do at the library and you've got like five minutes, it's always good to do a little bit of advocacy, send a postcard, make a phone call. Go ahead and just [00:18:00] tell your librarian, like, thanks for lending me out this book. Send notes to the library board members, city council members, school administrators, even if you feel like book banning's not a problem in your community, go ahead and write to them and say, I'm glad it's not.
I'm glad we have free access to these books because then the more people who do that, the more that they'll see that the majority of Americans, the majority of Kentuckians, wanna read whatever they want and they want their kids to get to read whatever they want.
Carrie: Yeah, absolutely. That was all beautifully said.
It is often, unfortunately, it's the angry voices that people hear the most, and so hearing support of, you know, L-G-B-T-Q displays in libraries or, you know, anything that you like in the library is,
Rachel: anything at all
Carrie: is important.
Yeah.
Rachel: Yeah. But it's like book banning is [00:19:00] something that affects diverse books a lot.
Books by non-white authors, Black authors. L-G-B-T-Q folks. Freedom to read is for everybody. And benefits
Carrie: Exactly.
Rachel: everybody. And I also appreciate what you said about people hearing about angry voices. And I think one thing that kind of holds me back from being an advocate is I'm not a huge fan of conflict.
Believe it or not. So I tell myself, okay, advocacy sometimes is about spreading the love and showing appreciation. And I feel less. And if you are like that,
Carrie: yeah.
Rachel: If anybody listening is like that and it's like, I just don't wanna wade into a fight, you don't have to look at it that way. You can just say, I wanna wade into like, just showing my appreciation.
That's my attitude towards it.
Carrie: Yeah. Yeah. That's great. So do you have any final tips [00:20:00] that you'd like to give our listeners?
Rachel: I guess that I'm just happy that folks listen to this podcast and work on their own writing along with it. And it's just such a joy to listen to it and I hope whatever you're working on right now goes great.
Carrie: Great. Well, thanks so much for joining us and we look forward to that workshop, Inventing Comics Characters here at the library on November 13th at 6:00 PM, and registration is required for that.
Rachel: Register! [Laughter] It will be fun. I look forward to seeing everybody.
Carrie: Thanks for listening to the Prompt to Page podcast. To learn more about the Jessamine County Public Library, visit jesspublib.org. To learn more about the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning, visit carnegiecenterlex.org. [00:21:00] Our music is by Archipelago an all instrumental musical collaboration between three Lexington based university professors.
Find out more about Archipelago: Songs from Quarantine Volumes One and Two at the links on our podcast website.