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.
Brought to you in partnership with the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning.
Listen to Episode 37
Novelist Robert Gipe believes that when you use writing prompts, “you’re just kind of fishing for something that works.”
If you’re lucky, you might end up with “a couple of sentences that have some energy to them, that have some heat.” Robert says those sentences can help you build a piece of writing “you feel good enough about to share with others.”
Try your luck with three of Robert’s favorite writing prompts. According to him, these prompts use form “as a way of letting your unconscious drive the content.” Listen below!
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About 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 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.