16 Prompts inspired by Kiese Laymon and David Ramsey – Jessie van Eerdan
Submitted by: Jessie van Eerden
Prompts inspired by readings.
Two prompts to choose from after Kiese Laymon’s “Da Art of Storytellin’: A Prequel”:
https://oxfordamerican.org/magazine/issue-91-winter-2015/da-art-of-storytellin-a-prequel
- Laymon finds in OutKast a kind of permission, convincing him “there was something to be gained, felt, and used in imitating sounds from whence we came,” a validation as a black Southern artist, of his work and his material.
In whom have you found your permission as a writer? (Or, if you don’t like the language of permission: pathway, confirmation, sense of your fuller self “loved and imagined”…)
- I love the framing of the essay with the Grandmama character and how, when the narrator returns to the frame at the end, he describes his own essay’s description of her work as a buttonhole slicer: “this essay about her artistic rituals of labor vis-à-vis OutKast.” Write about someone’s “artistic rituals of labor” with the attention you’d pay to an art piece, with an ekphrastic perspective.
A prompt after David Ramsey’s “I Will Forever Remain Faithful”:
https://oxfordamerican.org/magazine/issue-62-fall-2008/i-will-forever-remain-faithful
Someone else’s story can unlock your own…
First, choose an “alter ego” popstar or musician, someone in whom you see yourself, or a popstar or musician you’re obsessed with—maybe some musical artist who has helped you “survive” as Ramsey says Lil Wayne helped him….
Second, list turning points in your life when you also were likely listening to this musician (moments of loss, change, success, joy, experiment, betrayal, reboot, spectacular failure…).
Third, circle one of the turning points to focus on, the one that somehow has the most resonance with the emotionality or texture or allure of this popstar’s presence.
Start writing:
Leave white space between each section on the page; if you keep going with this, pay attention to strong images or phrases that have potential for repetition between sections:
First section: Describe only the musician’s sound…. (feel free to make use of synesthesia—mixing up the senses—as in: Tom Waits in “Mule Variations” sounds like the shit-and-sawdust smell of a henhouse stirred up.)
Second section: Write the turning-point moment in one terse narrative summary sentence. (As in: The day my husband left, I took the job at the strip club.)
Third section: Describe the musician’s body of work more generally (albums, transitions, critical reception, popularity or lack thereof….)
Fourth: Start to retell in scene the turning point, but don’t finish it—leave it hanging.
Fifth: Describe the musician’s physical appearance & physicality on stage or in the media….
Sixth: Continue the turning point in scene, picking up where you left off, maybe with more interiority, but—still—don’t quite finish.
Seventh: Give some biographical facts and history you know about the popstar, where they grew up or what has happened in their life (random is okay—maybe you know they like to eat Lucky Charms).
Eighth: Close out the turning-point scene somehow, even if it closes jaggedly.