PtoP Ep 37 Gipe2 edit1
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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 Robert Gipe.

Robert Gipe won the 2015 Weatherford Award for Outstanding Appalachian Novel for his first novel, Trampoline. His second novel, Weedeater, was published in 2018. His third novel, Pop, was published in 2021. All three novels are published by Ohio University Press. In 2021, the trilogy won the Judy Gaines Young Book Award.

From 1997 to 2018, Gipe directed the Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College Appalachian Program in Harlan. Gipe is [00:01:00] founding producer of the Higher Ground Community Performance Series and has served as a script consultant for the Hulu series, Dopesick, and a producer on the feature film, The Evening Hour.

Gipe resides in Harlan County, Kentucky. He grew up in Kingsport, Tennessee. Welcome, Robert. Thanks for joining us on Prompt to Page. 

Robert: It's great to be here. Thanks for having me, Carrie. 

Carrie: So, our last two guests, Silas House and Deidre White, both talked a little bit about oral histories. And, I know that you have used oral histories some, as well, or worked with them.

Can you tell us a little bit about that and how they, I guess, informed your writing life? 

Robert: Yeah, I worked, as it said in the bio from, for a community college for a long time, for 20 some years in Harlan County, Kentucky. And my students and I, back around the turn of the century, had started a project [00:02:00] to conduct oral histories in the community, and then, turn them into a play, and we've done ten of those plays at this point.

So early on, we were collecting oral histories by the hundred, and so, spent a lot of time, as a teacher, thinking about how to help students talk to their friends and families in ways that in our case, we were, we're looking for stories, for narratives. And so I think that that really was pivotal to the way I started, creating novels.

All three of my novels are in first person, various characters. One character, a woman, is, is a speaker in all three. And then her daughter is in the third one. And there's a A man, another man in the second one, and then another man in the third one. But all of them are kind of conceived as received narrations from some [00:03:00] offstage or, you know, not mentioned recipient of the stories, basically in the same way that, that an oral historian or somebody recording an interview receives a story.

And so then. You know, so the whole idea is that the stories are, are received orally, even though the reader encounters them for the first time on the page. 

Carrie: And did that kind of influence, I guess, your experience with oral histories, did that influence how the dialect or the dialogue is written on the page?

Robert: Yeah, pretty much. I think that, you know, I always kind of imagine, you know, it's very central to me to have the books, read aloud. And so, yeah, catching the, the patterns of speech, and a lot of times it's [00:04:00] less about dialect and then it is about syntax how, how sentences are organized and, you know, just the rhythms of speech.

And I think that, you know, for me, it was less about spelling, you know, to get the reader to sound things out the way they were supposed to hear 

than it was about the way sentences are constructed. I think, you know, of course, a big thing is with oral is just a rhythm and pace. And I think that, you know, several, a couple of the narrators speak quickly.

I think that, you know, one of the things I was thinking about as I was writing is that these narrators are actually talking to create the text and someone was taking it down. And so, you know, our, the speed that we deliver words changes based on, how comfortable we are with, with who we're talking to or what, what [00:05:00] we're saying and how we feel about what we're saying, whether we're happy to, share whatever it is we're talking about or how much anxiety is created by sharing whatever it is we're talking about.

And I think all of that entered into, you know, the thinking about the writing of the words. 

Carrie: And then the books are also illustrated novels, and they use your drawings to kind of punctuate the text. What led you to incorporate those drawings into your work? 

Robert: Well, I think, you know, the answer that kind of goes with what we're talking about here is that, you know, they, all of the drawings are of a character facing forward, you know, towards the audience and, towards the reader, and all of them include a line, you know, that, that isn't excerpted from the narration, it just is part of the narration, you know. [00:06:00] Sometimes lines are illustrated, and so, you know, every drawing is a picture of a person, is a picture of the narrator delivering a line that's a part of the text.

And so, you know, the idea when I first started using that was that if, I got a publisher and they didn't want to use the pictures. I just could, you know, take the words out of the pictures and type them up. And then that would, you know, it would work without the pictures, but by including the pictures, I think, you know, what my hope for it was is that would kind of reinforce the orality of the text and, you know, and that you would, you know, You would be reminded that someone was actually talking to you because you could see their mouth, if not moving, you could see it open, if that makes sense.

Carrie: Mm hmm. And so, the drawings, do you do that after you have the text, or do they happen kind of in conjunction with each other, or how does that work? 

Robert: Well, [00:07:00] yeah, I mean, you know, a lot of times when you're writing, I just kind of draw, like I'm sitting here drawing now. While I'm talking, you know, it's like, you just kind of compulsively draw in, especially the characters.

And, you know, and they're talking to you as you're writing. But generally the way the kind of final texts work out, you know, you have the text all in, in words and text and then you go back, and it was interesting the first couple of books I just went through and picked out what I thought were, the most dramatic lines.

In fact, I was thinking I couldn't figure out how to state it simply, but since it's come up this, next weekend, I'm going to be at a literary festival and I have to teach a workshop. And one time I was talking about the illustrations and, you know, I used to work at Appalshop and one of the things I learned from one of the old school editors of, in this case, audio was that, you know, when people are [00:08:00] talking, there's always, you know, one line or two lines or repeatedly lines of, of good, of good talkers, good storytellers, where it really kind of gouges you in the ribs.

It's either funny or it's tear inducing or dramatic. And you know that one of the ways that I learned to edit audio was just to go through and pick out the gougers and then build the rest of the story around them so that your work had a certain amount of drama and, you know, that there were things that made people sit up and listen in it.

And so I used that idea when trying to figure out which pictures, which lines needed to be pictured. And I think the other thing that went into it that said in the speech was that, you know, my father was always, it was just kind of an endless torrent of, of advice and, you know, moral instruction and instruction on how to do things.

And so, you know, it became [00:09:00] pretty easy to tune out after a while because it just was, you know, it's endless river of instruction. And so a lot of times he would just stop us and say, you know, look at me, listen to what I'm saying. And we'd have to look him in the eye while we were, he was communicating, whatever it was.

And so, you know, another guide is like, well, what are those lines that, you know, I as the author want to say to the reader, look at me, see what this. Listen to what I'm saying. And so you actually look the, the speaker in the eye and in the book. And so, anyway, so I'm going to be doing a workshop at this festival on how to pick, you know, take a piece of writing and pick out the gougers as a way, because it's a, the festival is kind of centered on graphic novels and illustrated novels.

And so. 

Carrie: Uh huh. Uh huh. 

Robert: But yeah, so, did that answer your question? 

Carrie: Yeah, it did. Thank you. Yeah, no, it's, I like that term gouger, [00:10:00] I, I do editing myself, you know, obviously for this podcast and for others, and I've done oral histories, and I feel like, that is something that I tend to look for too, but I, I didn't really have a, you know, a term for it.

So I like that. I like that idea. 

Robert: That's the technical term for it, at least in Whitesburg. 

Yeah, I first heard that attributed to a guy named Jeff Kaiser, who was a roadside theater guy and just a person who worked at Upshot. 

Carrie: Okay. Well, thank you, Jeff Kaiser. 

Robert: Exactly. 

Carrie: So, what about prompts? Do they play any kind of role in your writing process?

Or have they in the past? 

Robert: I think it, you know, I think it's important to, I, I still get, I don't kind of on the daily, you know, use, use probably every once in a while I will, but I've gone to so many workshops and participated in so much. I never went to school for [00:11:00] writing.

But I, I definitely have gone, I go to the, Hindman Appalachian Writers Workshop at Hindman Settlement School about every year. And so of course, that's a really good workshop for kind of generative prompts. And then I took a extended novel workshop with Darnell Arnoult and she's very much into generative teaching.

But, I was going to share a couple with you that I got at a Hindman Workshop with George Singleton, who's a fiction writer, primarily short story writer in South Carolina and great, great teacher. 

Carrie: Yeah, my husband actually studied with him at Winthrop University in South Carolina. 

Robert: Yeah, well, then y'all may already know these, but, 

I've been reading a lot of, Linda Barry, who's kind of a graphic, comic, comic maker and novelist and works a lot with images, but she's, for people looking for prompts, she's written a [00:12:00] lot of books about creative process and like dredging up stuff from your memory and your imagination. And, you know, and she's, she's got a lot of prompts around, you know, kind of recovering your childhood and the details that make for good, lively writing.

And it's like, I've done a lot of that, but they're the ones I was going to share were they're both about just kind of taking your mind off of what you're, you're actually thinking about taking your mind off your content as a way of letting your unconscious drive the content.

And specifically they are, George had us, you know, we took a writing prompt and it was to, write a 500 word sentence. You just couldn't end your sentence. You just had to keep it going. And so, you know, your mind starts to focus on how to, keep that sentence going as opposed to exactly what you're saying.

And then the other one that he gave us in the same workshop that I [00:13:00] loved was, see, and this as a thing I haven't asked him, but I've, I've used it before. And I don't know if there was any science to the numbers he gave us. And that was that he just rattled off about 12 numbers between, you know, four and 25.

It's like, it was like, all right, write these words, write these numbers down. 4, 12, 7, 18, 6, and then you would go on for about 12 or 15 numbers. And then you had to write a piece where each sentence in sequence was that number of words. And so like, if the first one is four is, I went home yesterday and then the next one is 12, you got to come up with a 12 word sentence, which a lot of people bucked at.

But, you know, I think this is a thing that is, is part of working with prompts is like, you know, you have [00:14:00] to, you got to trust the prompt, you know, like, let it, 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.

And that, which kind of leads me to another one of my favorite prompts is that Darnell Arnoult used to give us. It's like she would give you an activity like, making supper, or, going out after dark. And so, and then you would have to make a list of 25 verbs that had to do with that activity.

And then, you had to go back and, choose the ones, the way she put it, that had the most heat. Like, which verbs were the most interesting, or just kind of gave off the most energy when you went back and looked at them. And then write a paragraph where you use those sentences as the verbs, but it, and the only thing the paragraph can't be about is the [00:15:00] activity that was the source of the verbs.

Carrie: Mm hmm. 

Robert: You know, it's kind of the same with, with those exercises of George's, 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 them, 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, that, you know, you feel good enough about to share with others.

Carrie: The first two especially, and I have used similar prompts as the last one with the kind of a word bank in my own work, but the first two to me really, as a poet, those would be the kind of things I would be attracted to because they're kind of giving you a form that you have to work within, and sometimes that allows your, your content to sort of come out unconsciously.

Robert: Those are probably [00:16:00] more challenging prompts to fiction writers than they are to poets because a lot of poetry is, is, is about working within structures. 

Carrie: Mm hmm. 

Robert: Yeah. Where we're just, like, wallering all over the place. Yeah. 

Carrie: Right. Right. 

Robert: Without apparent boundary. 

Carrie: So, do you have any final writing advice that you'd like to give our listeners?

Robert: No. I, just I just feel sorry for them as I do myself. No, I, I wish them well. I hope that, it works out the way they want it to. And if it doesn't, that's why we all get together to talk about it, to cheer each other up. Give each other ideas, steal from each other, 

Carrie: That's right. 

Robert: Et cetera. But, no, I just wish them happy trails to stick with it.

Stay in community. Let other people help you and know what works. And, and of [00:17:00] course the best writing advice always is, you shouldn't write unless you can't not write. 

Carrie: Yeah. 

For sure. 

Robert: Unless it's a compulsion, just leave it alone. 

Carrie: Well, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. And thank you for sharing your favorite prompts.

Robert: No problem. Have a good one.

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 1 and 2 at the links on our [00:18:00] podcast website.