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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.
PtoP Ep 25 Rowe edit 1
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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 Rowe.
Christopher's stories have been published, reprinted, and translated around the world, and he has been a finalist for many internationally recognized awards. His most recent book is a novella from Tor.com publishing The Navigating Fox, which received a starred review in Publishers Weekly. Locust Magazine said that Rowe's stories are "as smooth and heady as a good Kentucky bourbon."
Welcome, Christopher, and thanks for joining us.
Christopher: Thank you, and I'm so happy to be here.
Carrie: So, I read in an interview that you enjoy writing first drafts on a manual typewriter.
Christopher: I wrote my entire first novel [00:01:00] on a manual typewriter.
Carrie: And do you still turn to the typewriter?
Christopher: I do not, I have since turned to, I write longhand a lot.
And for, you know, for second and subsequent drafts, I try to recreate the typewriter experience with a mechanical keyboard. The one I use now is called a QWERTY writer that even looks like a typewriter and has a return, return, a carriage return arm and everything on it.
Carrie: And what about that appeals to you?
Christopher: I like the tactile sensation of feeling like I'm physically making something as I write a manuscript.
Carrie: Here at the library we've had, some events with typewriters like we have pulled one out for National Poetry Month where people can write poems, and I can imagine that it would be very challenging to write an entire manuscript with one.
Christopher: You know, by the end of that process, I was writing 30 pages a day.
On a manual typewriter.
Carrie: Wow. Well, that's [00:02:00] impressive. Now, your, your wife, Gwenda, appeared on the podcast a while ago, and I seem to remember her saying that you were a fan of prompts. Is that correct?
Christopher: I have very successfully worked from prompts. I don't always use them. I don't always use them either as a, as a writer of my own work or as a mentor and instructor of others.
But I do think they're valuable and I think they're a, they're a great tool. They're not the only tool I use. I don't always use it, but they're a great tool.
Carrie: So when do you tend to use them?
Christopher: When I'm stuck, and then I, and then I solicit them from others. Most successful story in terms of, readership and translations and reprints that I ever wrote was a novelette called the, The Voluntary State.
And I was going for the 1st time to a very prestigious peer review workshop. I was not that far into my career. I was very [00:03:00] nervous. It was 2 weeks before the workshop and I had nothing. And I was sitting in a chair in the corner of the apartment we lived at then, and I was talking about, I have nothing, I'm a fraud, I'll never get anything done for this workshop, it's going to be terrible whatever I do, and she said, okay.
There's a car on top of a hill and the door is open. That's all, that is all she gave me. And I wrote a story that has been translated, I think, into a dozen languages, was the finalist for several major awards, is still in print in many different places. And which, you know, the New York Times took the trouble
to review a science fiction short story and say that it had the most compelling imagery of the year of any work that work of fiction they had seen. I think I've written better stuff since. Of course, I would think that, but it was the 1st, really my mentor and guru, Terry Bisson, a [00:04:00] Kentucky writer,
long resident in California, after he read it, he wrote me and said, welcome to the bigs. And that is, that was my entree into the publishing, the wider publishing world. It was that story. And it all came from that prompt.
Carrie: Yeah. So that's a pretty important, important role that the prompt had. And what do you think it was about that specific prompt that kind of unleashed that story in you?
Christopher: Well, I had to think about, Why the door was open. I had to think about, is there anybody there? I had to think about where the hill was. I had an image, but I needed character and incident. And I had an, because I had an image, I had something to build character and incident on and setting as well. And it just flowed.
It's a very strange story. Another Tor. com novella titled These Prisoning Hills, [00:05:00] which is a line from a Jane Still poem, is part of that same world that that came from. I wrote a short novel in my collection, that was in that same world, so I've, I've stuck with that, that, that. That has stayed without, you know, over 20 years now, and I'm still working off that prompt.
Carrie: Wow. So that was a very effective prompt for you.
Christopher: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Carrie: Would you like to talk about the prompt that you brought for us today, or prompts, if you have them?
Christopher: It's a prompt. It's a singular one. And it's one that I use usually with people who are not more experienced, but more confident in their writing.
Because I like to subvert things. I don't want to subvert confidence, but I want to subvert comfort. So, my prompt is this. Think of a character, scene, incident, or setting that you're working with. Think of one that you've been developing. Think of one that you're already writing about. And write me a page about [00:06:00] it, in which every single thing is a lie.
Carrie: Hmm. Interesting.
Christopher: And then, after I've read the page, I want you to tell me why what you've written is not the truth, should not be the truth, or could not be the truth about what you've based it on.
Carrie: So I'm curious what kinds of things people write about, or find about their writing based on that
exercise.
Christopher: Alright, first off, I'll be honest and say that even the more confident writers are often resistant to this idea. Often resistant to this prompt. Because it's a challenge, you know. You've made decisions. Writing is a series of decisions. You've made some. And I'm asking you to reverse those decisions.
With very little thought and very little time. Because I think that if you're going to write from a prompt at all, in any circumstance, you should just go with it. I think you should not, you obviously have to shape your writing, [00:07:00] but if you're going to trust the prompt, you have to trust yourself to work with it.
And so what happens when I, set this challenge to writers, and I've used it myself, and I've significantly changed projects because of what I've learned about them after I've used this prompt. What they learn is that the decisions they thought were cast in stone are not. They, they, they realize that there's more to learn, they realize there's more to think about, they realize that they can go deeper, they can ask that next question which is, always something you should be doing when you're writing.
You should never stop. No matter what your writing process is, if you're a very fast, clean first drafter, that's great. But at some point, I want any writer to stop and ask themselves, why did I make this decision? Is there a better decision? And if there's not, if you can defend that decision, that's great.
Good for you. But if you have an inkling, if you have a [00:08:00] notion, however slight that there's a better decision to have made there, think about it. At the very least, think about it. I'm very intentional in my writing. I think, I think my writing at least benefits from that. You know, I say that, but I'm a very fast drafter.
But I only am a fast drafter after a lot of slow thought.
Carrie: Yeah, it kind of, it sounds like it really... That is a good revision tool, that prompt, as well, because it kind of helps you to re see what you're writing.
Christopher: Yes. Absolutely.
Carrie: And you mentioned that you are a slow thinker. Is that thought process something that happens, like, sitting at a desk, or is that something that happens, you know, over time, like, doing different things, or, you know, I'm just curious what that looks like.
Christopher: It looks pretty boring. It usually involves me sitting at my desk with my feet propped up with my cat Phoebe on my lap looking like I'm this far from falling asleep. I do think when I take walks, I do think when [00:09:00] I frustratingly often stop and think while I'm reading somebody else's work, you know, reading a novel or something like that.
I'll suddenly realize that I've been running my eyes over pages for, you know, a half a chapter when the whole time I've taken nothing on board because I've been thinking about my own, my own, you know, the next scene or my own next project or whatever I'm working on. But yeah, I'm quite intentional about it.
I, I will sit in a chair and think, you know, for an hour or two, you know, without even taking notes, usually without taking any notes, because I have to do a lot of, I have to do a lot of, I have to lay a lot of groundwork. I have to, even though I write very fast when I am drafting, even though I have a facility for, for ideation, on the fly.
None of that happens if I haven't prepared myself to let it happen.
Carrie: Yeah, and I feel like that's something that is not always, [00:10:00] maybe people feel that that isn't being productive, or even that word productive is maybe not the best word to use. So it's good to hear of writers who are actively doing that.
Christopher: I was talking to, just before we started this recording, I was talking to a good friend of mine who's a brilliant writer, about the word product. There's an Alexander Chee quote that I will mangle if I try to reproduce it exactly, but something along the lines of product and processor at the same time.
And I, same thing. And I believe that many writers, artists in general, are resistant, rightly so, of using that word when it comes to their work. It's not because it's not an appropriate word, it's because the word has been, the word is perverted in the general discourse, right? You know, people think a product is a box of something that you buy at the store.
So a book is a box of words you buy at the store. And, which is a shame because the word has great utility. And I think especially for [00:11:00] beginning writers, especially for student writers, thinking of outcome, thinking of, as I said earlier, the pile of pages, the, the physical pile of pages you will have at the end of this process, if you actually print them out and some people don't, is useful, you know, it's, it's a, it's a good way to think about things that there is a, there is a discreet, thought out intellectual and artistic creation that is going to be witnessed and studied and understood and comprehended, or in some way be taken on board by, and again, this is another word that can be problematic by an audience.
Right? And thinking about it in those terms, if you're careful is very, very helpful to me. And I think it'd be very helpful to other people too. It's a productive way to. Productive, it's a productive way to see an end point, which is useful for many people to know that, okay, I can [00:12:00] vision a finished thing here.
I know there is a end to this process, in which this product is there ever going to, to exist. And once it exists, it can be encountered. And that's what we all want as artists, is for our work to be encountered.
Carrie: Lots to think about there. So I know you have a new book out. Do you want to share a little bit about that?
By the way, the cover is fantastic.
Christopher: Yeah. It's it's called The Navigating Fox. It, you mentioned in your introduction that it received a starred reviewed, a starred review from publishers weekly this past week, it got a really great review from, Booklist and then it received a 2nd start review from Library Journal, you know, in terms of pre publication, it's the best reviewed thing.
I've been very lucky my career in terms of reviews and critical attention and award attention. Extremely lucky. I've never. Never wanted for anything in that department at all. But this is new. This is, [00:13:00] the big national general trades giving me fantastic reviews. I'm very appreciative of. Very lucky.
There's a whole team of people behind that happening. But The Navigating Fox is a book about a Navigating Fox. It's in a world in which I've published one previous short story, on the Tor. com website, which is the top market in science fiction and fantasy short fiction. And that short story was called Knowledgeable Creatures.
And I've taken the title of that short story as the whole overarching term for all the stories and novels and novellas I'm going to write in this world. And so Knowledgeable Creatures are animals just as you think of them. So this is a fox. It looks like a fox. He doesn't wear clothes. He doesn't stand up on his back feet, but he is a reasoning intelligent language using being and there are many
knowledgeable creatures throughout this world, which is kind of a historical fantasy world and each of them have [00:14:00] an adjective associated with them. So, like, if you're a knowledgeable orangutan, you're a professorial orangutan. If you're a knowledgeable crow, you're an agute crow, et cetera, et cetera. He is the only navigating fox and this story is a quest for him to learn the secret of his identity.
It is a caper. It is an adventure. There's a lot of politics in it. There are a lot of complicated relationship dramas. There's a lot of magic. There's a lot of, a lot of world building. I will, something I'm proud of is my world building and I like to, to have readers dive into a setting and I think I accomplished that pretty well with this one, but the, the book, by the time this airs, it will be out.
It's called The Navigating Fox. It's from Tor. com's novella program and it's about 160 pages long. It's got a great cover, got great reviews, a lot of people, if you, if you [00:15:00] read the, Redwall books by Brian Jakes, I believe it's pronounced, it looks like Jacques, but I believe it's pronounced Jake's, as a young person, this is, this scratches that itch as an adult, I think, and I don't know, but there's a lot going on there, and I'm really proud of it.
Carrie: Well, congratulations and especially on all those great reviews.
Christopher: Thank you.
Carrie: So do you have any writing advice you'd like to give our listeners?
Christopher: Work exactly as often as you need to. If it cripples you to write every day, don't try to write every day. If it excites you and energizes you to write every day, write every day.
Establish a practice. Discipline yourself. None of this is news to anybody who has ever thought about writing or read about writing. Trust yourself. Scare yourself.
Carrie: Excellent. Well, thank you, Christopher, for joining us. We really appreciate it. Thank you.[00:16:00]
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 Quarantine Volumes 1 and 2 at the links on our podcast website.