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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, Episode 50
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Carrie: Welcome to the 50th episode of the Prompt to Page Writing podcast. I'm your host, Carrie Green, a librarian at the Jessamine County Public Library and a published poet. When we released our first episode in August 2021, both the library and the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning had been serving our communities through online programming for a little over a year.
We hoped this podcast would help writers who still wanted to connect with each other during the pandemic. I'm grateful to the Carnegie Center for partnering with us on this project. Our in-person programming has been back for a while now, but I know from personal experience that jobs, commutes, and other commitments mean it's not always possible to attend every reading or workshop you want to.
With help from our guests--novelists, [00:01:00] memoirs, children's book authors, graphic novelists, and even a songwriter--you can take a mini writing workshop once a month. No matter their preferred genre, I always learn something from our guests. I hope you do, too. I've noticed some shared themes among the writers who've so graciously agreed to come on the show.
You won't hear a new writing prompt today. Instead, this episode gathers some of my favorite moments so far. Not all of them, to be sure, but certainly some of the ideas and advice that I've noticed come up again and again. Thank you for listening, and thanks for being part of the Prompt to Page community.
Writers use prompts for different reasons, whether to brainstorm, get out of a rut, or just try something new. In episode two, former Kentucky Poet Laureate Crystal Wilkinson spoke [00:02:00] about her use of prompts.
Crystal: I'm a big advocate of writing prompts. If you could see where I'm sitting now, there are two large bookshelves, and I would say maybe a quarter of the books are about writing. They're craft books that include prompts.
So for many, many years I've read prompts, I've used them. Even when I'm in the middle of something where I think I know I'm going, I will stop sometimes and use a writing prompt. So I think they can be good. They're good for both beginning writers and they're good for advanced writers. I think to help you sort of dig in deeper or to help you sort of look at something in a slant way, look at it a little bit differently.
Carrie: Here's Kayla Rae Whitaker from episode four.
Kayla: There is no worse feeling than being adrift on a blank Word document, frankly. And so having something to fall back on, having a list of [00:03:00] prompts, however outlandish, you know, it's a way to just guarantee, okay, this gives you a better chance of getting something down on the page.
You'll never be exactly lost if you have this sort of grab bag of ideas and just, you know, shots in the dark.
Carrie: Elizabeth Kilcoyne, episode 21.
Elizabeth: Starting out teaching I was like, oh, I'm anti-prompt. And I no longer feel that way at all. I do still struggle with, you know, the sort of grab bag. You reach into a grab bag and you pull out a random plot and then you do something with that.
That's never worked for me and it never really will, I don't think. But I do use prompts and I think as you grow as an author, and particularly if you're interested in a professional career as an author, and you have to generate ideas fairly quickly, prompts are a saving grace. And I think that they serve a huge purpose for me, especially in drafting and the sticky [00:04:00] bits of literature.
You know, like when you're, that part of your manuscript that you keep wanting to turn away from and keep wanting to turn away from and keep ignoring. I feel like writing prompts, when they're the sort of writing prompts that serve me and serve my thought process, I feel like they are always the sort of saving grace that I go to, to move into the next phase of a draft.
Carrie: Gwenda Bond, episode nine.
Gwenda: So I think anytime you can give your brain parameters of any kind, it's more helpful than just starting from nothing. And so like, even if it's just, I'm gonna write a poem and you know, deciding what the subject is, but like the more of those things you can fill in, right, the fewer other options are available.
And so I think that is really the key to developing ideas.
Carrie: And Robert Gipe, episode 37.
Robert: Part of working with prompts is like, you know, you gotta trust the prompt.
You know, like, let it work. And you know, I think the thing is, is that when you're in that kind of process, that a lot of times you're just fishing, right?
It's like you do these, especially when you're doing prompts, you're just kind of fishing for something that works. You know, it might not be that you get a finished piece out of it, but it's a way, you know, that maybe you go back and look at that piece and there are a couple of sentences that have some energy to 'em, that have some heat, that you can then pull them out and start over again and start building off of them till you get something that you feel good enough about to share with others.
Carrie: Think you don't write from prompts? Here's Marcia Thornton Jones from episode 16.
Marcia: Every writer writes from prompts because something prompted every one of us to sit down and pour words onto the page. It could have been a smell or an aroma that automatically transports us back to a memory, or it could be a snippet of [00:06:00] dialogue that we overhear, or it could be our desire to understand some kind of idea or behavior or character behavior, or a big life idea.
Whatever it was, something compels us to make sense of our world through the art of writing, and those somethings are prompts.
Carrie: Other writers also think of prompts more broadly, as Sean Corbin noted in episode 28.
Sean: Everything is a prompt.
Carrie: Yeah.
Sean: If you sit down to write a poem, you don't just sit down and pour it out.
Something had to prompt you to do that, and you know even if the poem came to you fully formed, well, something had to prompt that to happen. Very often I will sit down with nothing and just sort of wander around and space out. Because I know I need to write. But a lot of days it's just not coming, and it doesn't wanna come.
And what do you do? Well, you don't necessarily force it, but you sit down with an open mind, you take a [00:07:00] deep breath, and you prompt yourself visually.
Carrie: Claudia Love Mair, episode 11, agrees.
Claudia: All around you are prompts. There are prompts in the trees and in the clouds, and in your mother's face. You know, don't look at prompts as only being, you know, words on paper or something that you get at a workshop.
Carrie: As does Christopher McCurry, episode 45.
Christopher: You know, a teacher giving a prompt is the same as the world nudging you to write something. Those are prompts too.
Carrie: Between jobs, families, and other commitments, it can be hard to figure out how to find time for writing, but it is possible, especially when you learn to work with the time you do have.
In episode 35, former Poet Laureate Silas House said his writing time was less than [00:08:00] ideal when he first started.
Silas: Often you cannot create the perfect conditions for your writing. So you have to use whatever conditions you have, and I hear a lot of people saying that, that they have to wait for the conditions to be just right.
I think if you wait around for that, you're never gonna get anything written. You know? I mean, I wrote my first three novels with a child in my lap or within earshot. Sometimes you just have to do it, you know? I could have easily just said, well, I have these children crawling all over me, so I can't write.
I was so unhappy if I wasn't writing that I had to write anyway, and I'm really glad that I forged ahead and did that.
Carrie: Here's Jayne Moore Waldrop from episode three.
Jayne: Nothing's ever perfect. That's the thing I think most writers need to know, especially new writers that, you know, it's never gonna [00:09:00] be perfect.
There's always gonna be something that might challenge you time-wise or get in the way. But if you could carve out a little bit of time, either early in the morning or late at night, whatever you can with your, the rest of your life, and also the recognition that sometimes life gets in the way of writing, but if you could even carve out 10 minutes, 15 minutes, and it's really more about the emotional commitment, I think.
That is really important when you're trying to figure out a writing life and how to build one
Carrie: Katerina Stoykova, Episode 15.
Katerina: Learn to write when you don't have time for writing. Because if you learn to write when you don't have time, that shows a lot, and that prepares you a whole lot better for stretches of time when you do have time for writing.[00:10:00]
Because if you don't write, when you don't have time for writing, then you disconnect from your own work and just feel a lot of anxiety. And then whenever you have a few days off, or a vacation, then that's a shock to your system, and then you end up writing nothing and with a lot more sense of guilt and anxiety.
I've seen it happen to many people. I've done it myself. And again, that's the most important thing you can do, to write when you don't have time.
Carrie: And Tammy Oberhausen, episode 42.
Tammy: 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 [00:11:00] 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 just can't get to it, you're at least kind of connecting with yourself in that way.
Carrie: Once you build a creative writing practice and make writing a habit, you might find that the ideas and words flow more easily, as these guests pointed out. Here's Robin Lamer Rajia from episode 31.
Robin: You know, I kind of started out not ever thinking of myself as a writer or a poet and just, just doing the work of living life and trying to get by and then I would find writing just sneaking in kind of in any spare moment. And I just really slowly built the habit of writing around other things already.
That's kind of how I started, so I'm kind of used to sneaking it in here and there, [00:12:00] and then I would say, like my biggest suggestion is, I think ideas and thoughts and little tiny chunks of motivation come to all of us throughout the day and to just not ignore those, even if you're busy or even if you're at work, which I do sometimes.
Just stop and write 'em down and save 'em for later, and get in the habit of not ignoring that impulse toward, like, a creative act.
Carrie: Jacinda Townsend, episode 38.
Jacinda: Writing is a habit and the imagination begets the imagination. And what I mean by that is that if you carve out a certain time of day to write, if you carve out a certain time of day to write, it makes the rest so much easier because what you've done is you've kind of.
I think the hardest part is the creation part, [00:13:00] but the imagination is kind of a muscle, you know? And so, like, my mind just knows, okay, look it's 6:30 in the morning. We gotta, we gotta wake up and make up these people and [unclear] and whatever they're saying. And that makes the rest of it easier.
Carrie: And Leatha Kendrick, episode 46.
Leatha: I think that the idea of creativity as a habit and of knowing that, I think it was William Stafford that said something like, writers don't write because they have something to say, but because they found a means to say things they didn't know that they had to say yet. So to exercise your creativity is to keep it active and alive.
You have to get up and walk to the library and then something can happen. It's not that this thing is bursting to happen in you all the time, but that if you go [00:14:00] and you sit down and you make a space for it, it comes.
Carrie: Guests seem to agree that we writers can be hard on ourselves. Expecting perfection every time we sit down to write can actually work against us.
In episode 22, Noah Ashley Blooms talked about how to care for your creativity.
Noah: Because I've taught for a number of years, I'm in a number of workshop groups, so I spend a lot of time in the company of writers. And one of the things that I have noticed almost universally is that we're very hard on ourselves.
You know, we can be really tough. Creativity grows much better if you are being gentle with it than if you are kind of using shame or criticism, which are tools that I think a lot of us kind of fall into. But yeah, I think our creativity does a lot better when we nurture it gently.
Carrie: Several writers have talked about the need to give yourself [00:15:00] permission to write bad drafts.
Here's David Arnold from episode 23.
David: The thing that you, the books that you read and love and the songs that you listen to and love, or the paintings that you look at and love all sucked at some point. They all, at some point in their creation, I won't say all, but most of them, I have to think at some point in their creation, weren't very good.
And then it was just that the creator didn't stop. It's giving yourself permission to suck because it's going to suck and you kind of have to get through that before it, before it doesn't.
Carrie: Sarah Combs, episode 13.
Sarah: The wise voice in my head that knows better is telling me that, that a first draft is just the writer telling herself the story.
And that maybe if you know those parameters going in, then you can give yourself permission, grace, freedom, all those things that writers need and that we don't allow ourselves enough of.
Carrie: And here's Shawn Pryor with some thoughts about perfection from [00:16:00] episode 12.
Shawn: Don't take it seriously. That's the one thing sometimes as, you know, as writers, too many of us are under the thing of, if it's not perfect off the jump, then it's not going to work.
There is no such thing as perfection, none. If anything, you are limiting yourself and you're stopping yourself from being able to get to where you want to go.
Just put it all out there. No such thing as perfection. Never has been, never will be. And you limit yourself if you think that perfection is the only way that you're gonna be able to tell your story.
Carrie: Sometimes it's hard for beginning writers to believe that anyone else will care about their writing, but as these guests pointed out, the written word can be healing for both reader and writer. LeTonia Jones, episode 19.
LeTonia: You know, I was terrified to really call myself a writer and definitely terrified to call myself a poet because [00:17:00] poetry is the thing that has helped me in my healing journey. And so I was also afraid to put it out in the world. And what if, you know, I lose that tool? You know, what if it becomes a job?
What if it becomes, you know, all these things. And so the advice I think that I would give on the other side of this is, the sooner you claim it, that it is true about you, the better it is for all of us. You know, our words are medicine, and we never know when we have just the medicine that somebody else needs.
And we might think actually it's for them, but typically that is the wisdom that we hold and it's for ourselves. So just trust. You know, when you know it, you know it. And you can say it even though you're terrified.
Carrie: Deidra White, episode 36.
Deidra: I'll wake up in the morning and I'll say, what do I need to say to me today?
And it'll just be a question that's in my mind all day. The [00:18:00] hardest part for me is who I'm speaking to, who is my audience when I'm sitting down to write something. And when I'm stuck, the best thing that I can do is say, write the poem that you need to read.
Carrie: And Amelia Zachry, episode 41.
Amelia: And so to people who are writing about trauma, I think often I hear through our classes we've had at the Carnegie Center, I've had a few classes there, and a lot of the fear comes from, what if no one wants to read this?
What if no one cares about this? What if I share so much that people know this about me now, how will that change things for me? And I think that in my experience, people knowing about my trauma has been a situation where I've been vulnerable. I've allowed myself to be vulnerable openly, and that invited people to be vulnerable in their own experiences.
And so that is the power of the word from [00:19:00] page to the reader, that we can transform that sense of healing to others through our words.
Carrie: Finally, many guests on this podcast have talked about the importance of finding a writing community and engaging with the world. Mariama Lockington discussed this in episode 6.
Mariama: Part of being a writer is also experiencing the world around you. And also engaging with it. So, you know, it's not just being a siloed, you know, writer, tortured writer in a tower, but the more you engage with people and arts and things that you're not familiar with, the more powerful your writing is gonna be.
Carrie: Here's Bryce Oquay in episode 24.
Bryce: And a lot of us, as you know, creators, it's so solitary and it's such an individual process, right? That like, it's very easy for us to settle into this mindset of, I have to lock in and get this thing done, and you can't see me till it's [00:20:00] finished. And it's not healthy.
There's no growth there, there's no alternate perspectives. And doing things like looking for mentors, surrounding myself with groups of artists that are doing what I do and experiencing what I'm experiencing, gave me the ability to kind of jump ahead. Because initially, I made what I made and you know, I shared it online and that was helpful.
But nothing helped me excel more than connecting with other people in a real way.
Carrie: And Elizabeth Beck in episode 39.
Because the nature of writing is incredibly solitary and we spend an enormous amount of time by ourselves. Because we have to. How else do the words get written, right? Going and making sure that you are actively engaged in a community is really, I think, the salvation to your sanity and to your work.
Your [00:21:00] work is gonna improve.
Carrie: Thank you for listening to this special episode of Prompt to Page. Next month, we'll return with a new interview and a new prompt. 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. Thanks to Jim Gleason, former guest Kevin Holm-Hudson, and Scott Whiddon for letting us use their music. Find out more about their albums, Archipelago: Songs from Quarantine Volumes One and Two, at the links on our podcast website.