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 20 Jackson-Brown
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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 Angela Jackson-Brown.
Angela Jackson-Brown is an award-winning writer, poet, and playwright who is an associate professor in the creative writing program at Indiana University in Bloomington. She also teaches in the graduate program at the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing at Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky.
She is the author of Drinking from a Bitter Cup, House Repairs, When Stars Rain Down, and The Light Always Breaks. In October of 2023, Angela's next novel, Homeward, a follow up to When [00:01:00] Stars Rain Down, will be published by Harper Muse. Welcome Angela, and thanks for joining us.
Angela: Thanks so much, Carrie. Thank you for having me.
Carrie: So I know that you are the keynote speaker for the Carnegie Center's upcoming Books in Progress conference, which takes place from June 1st through third. Can you tell us a little bit about what you plan to talk about?
Angela: Oh my goodness. Well, thank you for asking, I'm very excited about being a part of this event.
I always love to go back to Kentucky and I will be speaking on the topic of recognizing your authorial voice in a world full of noise. We often think about the voices of our characters, but sometimes we forget that we are also as writers establishing our own individual voices. And so just wanna give people some tips on how to kind of bring that voice out of themselves.
Carrie: Mm-hmm. Great. And, and speaking [00:02:00] of, I guess, about how you bring your own voice out, I read in a couple of interviews about how important researching and outlining is for you in your writing projects. And you said that you like to work out the kinks before you actually sit down and write. Could you tell us a little bit more about that?
Angela: Absolutely. I have. I've always been a very organized person. Even when I was a child, I was very adamant about everything having a place and everything being in its place. And so when I started writing seriously, I realized that I needed that same sort of organization. So I spend probably a good,
I'd say seven to to eight months, really planning the next book project simultaneously while I'm, I'm working on one, but I devote the mornings to writing and the afternoons to researching future [00:03:00] projects. So I just spend a lot of time getting to know my characters and really feeling out where the story needs to go.
Carrie: Mm-hmm. I guess in some ways that might, that research might serve as a prompt for your writing?
Angela: Absolutely. In fact, that was the prompt I was going to share with you a tool that I use.
Carrie: Okay.
Angela: When I'm trying to figure out the people in my fictional worlds.
Well then
Carrie: it might be a good, a segue then if you would like to talk a little bit about that.
Angela: Absolutely. So when I tell my students that they need to get to know their characters or rather when I would tell them in the past, they would always get this blank look on their face. So it was like, what do you mean, get to know my characters? So I devised this plan that for a period of five days, I usually spend more time, but I give my students five days and every day pick a [00:04:00] different subject matter to talk to your characters about, asking them questions about, say for example, ask your character, tell me about the first time your heart was broken. And
when I would ask my characters that all of these different thoughts would just kind of come into my mind of what that might look like for them. And sometimes I would end up using that material and sometimes it would just be there to inform me as a writer. Things that, say, for example, if their heart got broken by a a, a love interest.
I know that they might have residual effects of that as they move into new relationships. Maybe I never talk about it on the page, but it always sits with me as I try to tell their story as honestly as possible. So I tell them five days and every day talk about a different subject with your characters and see what you get from it, and [00:05:00] maybe it's material you can use and maybe it's just material that you file away for your own knowledge.
Carrie: Mm-hmm.
So what are some of the other subjects that they might talk about with their characters?
Angela: Sometimes I ask them about, you know, what was your happiest childhood memory? Or what was a memory that you don't necessarily want to to think about, but that you feel comfortable sharing with me? Sometimes I'll ask them, you know, something silly.
Tell me the, the last time you laughed out loud. And again, I get all sorts of rich little nuggets from asking them that. Sometimes I will ask them. Okay. So in in this fictional world, you're a doctor. If you could have been anything else, what would you have chosen? And again, sometimes I'll find out my character would have wanted to have been an artist, but because maybe they came from a background where artists are not valued, they decided to go [00:06:00] into a medical
field. Well now I've got that little nugget where maybe on the weekends my character sets up their, their easels and they paint for hours because that's where their passion is. And now I've got scenes that I never would've had if I would not have sat down and just asked questions of my, my characters.
Carrie: Yeah.
Great. And I know you write in multiple genres poetry, fiction and playwriting. Is that, do you do that with all of those genres or do you do it a little differently depending
on the genre?
Angela: I would say I do it more with my fiction and my plays just because I really, sometimes I because my poetry is generally more personal.
I don't necessarily have to do the same kind of digging that I do when I'm writing about people that I really don't know. You know these? Mm-hmm. And I tell students, our job is to get to know these people [00:07:00] and to find out things that ordinary people wouldn't be able to find out. And then share those in a way that is accessible to an audience.
So I really do feel like I'm just sort of the, this conduit between the characters and the readers and what can I do to make the journey for both as easy as possible? Mm-hmm. So, you know, I just want to, you know, make sure that whatever I'm doing puts me in the best position to tell the story in the best way possible.
Carrie: Right. Well, do you have any writing advice that you would like to give our listeners?
Angela: I think the, the best advice I can give is to write every single day, and that doesn't mean sit down every day and write for three hours, but it does mean every day pick a time and write for 15 minutes. And then if you have another 15, write
for [00:08:00] another 15 minutes. But make the commitment that every day you're going to show up to the page. Because if you don't show up, the stories don't get told.
Carrie: Yeah. There have been other writers who have, who have talked about that, and I think that keeping it really short, that short commitment is, is really helpful because, It's so hard to find an extended block of time for most of us.
Angela: Right.
I mean, we're all busy. There's very few of us who can say we're, we're full-time writers. Most of us have other jobs, you know, we have families, we have friends, we have other obligations. So we have to figure out how to, I say put the writing first. So when, if you looked at my calendar right now, you would see the first thing on my calendar every single day.
It's my writing. I always block it out and I make a commitment to never double book myself, you know? So for example, if, if we, if [00:09:00] we tried to schedule this during my writing time, I would just, I would've said it, I'm sorry, I can't meet with you then. Because I'm already committed to something and, and what we often do is we will sacrifice the writing for everything else.
You know, so if someone needs us, we'll say, oh, okay, well I just won't write today. And I always say, no, I'm going to write. And so how do I make everything else fit around the writing because it's that important to me.
Carrie: Mm-hmm. Those are great words of wisdom and in how to keep your writing going.
Angela: Absolutely. I mean, if the goal is just to write as a hobby, then I tell people, write whenever you want to. Mm-hmm. But if you, you really are committed to being a published author with a, with a career, with longevity, it's absolutely important that you treat it like you would your job. You have to show up.
Carrie: Mm-hmm. Is there anything else that we haven't talked about that you would like [00:10:00] to? Mention?
Angela: Well, I, I would just strongly urge everyone who's near Lexington, Kentucky to attend the Books in Progress conference this summer. It's going to be an amazing conference. There's so many wonderful authors who are gonna be sharing their wisdom and their knowledge, and I hope I get to see a lot of people there getting support for the projects that they're working on.
Carrie: Were conferences like that important to you in your development as a writer?
Angela: Oh my goodness, yes. Until I went for, to Spalding where I actually graduated with my MFA, I would go to these conferences. I would put in my budget every year, you know, X amount of dollars for conferences because the, cuz I knew how important it was for me to get,
get out and hear what people who were doing what I wanted to do, what they had to say [00:11:00] about it. Mm-hmm. In fact, I met my agent at a conference. Mm-hmm. I always tell people, you know, as much as we like to be tethered to our computers and our notebooks and our desks, it's good to get out and, and just hear other writers tell you that they are going through some of the same things.
Sometimes it's not, it's not a misery loves company, but it's definitely validation that the things that we feel, the insecurities, the, the lack of faith in our writing, that it's not unique to us. That all writers, even those that are winning prizes and are out there and seem to have it all together, they struggle too.
Carrie: Yeah, absolutely. Our previous guest, LeTonia Jones. Mm-hmm. Mentioned that when she, when we interviewed her almost the exact same thing. So it's, see, it's, yeah. So that's another common theme. Well thank you so much Angela for [00:12:00] joining us. And we look forward to the Books in Progress Conference and to seeing you then.
Angela: Thank you so much, 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 Quarantine volumes one and two at the links on our podcast website.