@writing
A space for writers to create, connect and share.
Bowie Rowan
@bowie · 2:08
Creating Beautiful & Thrilling Structures with Steffan Triplett
So to get us started and talking this essay, I will share a few questions below, and I'm really looking forward to hearing what you have to say and seeing how this conversation evolves
Bowie Rowan
@bowie · 0:30
To get us started. I'm wondering if you would say a bit about how this piece came to be. I know it's an essay that you were working on for quite a while and that it's sustainable story that's been with you for quite a while. So when did it go from being an experience that you were sorting through to an essay that you just knew you had to write, right
Bowie Rowan
@bowie · 2:03
And also the story of how one of your closest friendship changed after you came out to her and what blows me away every time with this essay is still how concise and compact of a read it is. Even though the stories you're telling are so full of history and complexity, I feel like I get just the right amount of everything I need in order to understand both the history of this place and also your personal history and how it impacted you
Steffan Triplett
@steff48 · 1:44
And then when given an open prompt to write about whatever memoir experience was on my mind, this just poured out of me. It was the first thing that I submitted in this workshop with other College students. I was terrified because it felt so personal, and also I had so many ideas about it. And I thought I was like, this could maybe be something interesting that people want to read, but also so unpleasant and also a little scary. But I just felt like there was something there
Steffan Triplett
@steff48 · 1:14
So after I graduated and after I finished that workshop, it was an essay that I kept returning to, kept editing and fine tuning. I feel like most of the crucial elements were there in that first draft because I could sort of see how I wanted it to moved structurally, which I'll talk about next. But I did need some fine tuning, and it did take some growing and some maturing in the next four years for me to feel really good about it
Steffan Triplett
@steff48 · 1:47
Thank you so much for asking me about structure. It's funny, because I knew when I first sat down to write this, I could tell that there were a lot of plates spinning, a lot of things that I would have to balance in writing this essay. I remember talking about it with my instructor and my classmates saying that I feel like this essay is really high concept, like the way you talk about a movie or TV show that just feels very high concept and needs some explaining
Steffan Triplett
@steff48 · 2:27
So my goal was to write all of that night, including all of the friendship elements that were transpiring and also had transpired in the past, but also to capture the creepiness, the isolation and the eventual terror that happened that night
Steffan Triplett
@steff48 · 4:58
And so now I'll iterate how I see the structure because I think that might be useful for you to hear how I'm thinking about it, how it always stuck with me. But I knew that this this piece would go back and forth from the present and also have some flashbacks. I wanted to talk about the first time my friends and I had seen the spook light. We had made this trip a lot of times in our boredom, in our free time in southwest Missouri
Bowie Rowan
@bowie · 1:13
I also appreciated you mentioning one of the instructors that first encouraged you to keep working on it because I know for me a few of my essays are short stories very much were influenced by having at least one person saying, Keep going. And I think that's especially essential early on or for pieces that we're so emotionally entangled with that it can be hard to trust that eventually there may be something, some moment of clarity or a time when you feel like the structure really finally comes together
Swell Team
@Swell · 0:15
Bowie Rowan
@bowie · 1:21
I know for me sometimes looking at other pieces, even if my essay or short story is wildly different in structure, can sometimes be a source of inspiration. Or there's something about that piece that I'm trying to make happen in my own work as well
Bowie Rowan
@bowie · 4:39
This next question. I have been kind of tangled up in my own brain about it. So bear with me as I try to piece together my thinking here. So there were several things you might mentioned that still all connected to me in some way. And the first piece of that is the piece about horror. And I loved how you talked about the many horrors throughout this piece that has to do with the intersection of place and identity and race and sexual orientation
Steffan Triplett
@steff48 · 4:48
That essay I've always been drawn to and how it pulls the writer in to the mundanity of her everyday life and then juxtaposes it with this really awful event that happened. And you go back and read that piece and you see sort of the breadcrumbs and the clues that she left. And that was exciting to me from a storyteller standpoint point of view. So yeah
Steffan Triplett
@steff48 · 4:04
I'm glad that you brought up this idea of myth, too, and not just in this idea of the spooky, because, yeah, it's interesting. There's a time where I thought I saw this light, and I didn't know I couldn't tell you if I fully believed in it or not. I don't think I cared at the time. I didn't care
Steffan Triplett
@steff48 · 4:37
Like this shape and structure was there for most of its existence, and something about that feel so natural, and that's why I feel okay, sort of having a reader experience these maybe negative, not fun emotions to sit with it's because it poured out of me in this way, in a way that just feels so sincere and the sincerity of those overlapping connections that, like 1 minute
Steffan Triplett
@steff48 · 2:39
I've never actually been interviewed about this essay. I know I have a friend and some colleagues that have taught it in their classes before, but I did not sit in on those conversations, so I don't know necessarily what comes up. And really the responses I've had from this essay are from other writer friends who have seen drafts of it or read it in workshop and had things to Say or when it first got published, and I was trying to promote it online
Bowie Rowan
@bowie · 1:06
And I just want to say thank you so much for being so generous and thoughtful with your time and taking the emotional and intellectual energy and looking back at this piece and talking about it with me. I have just felt really nourished by looking at and talking and thinking about and feeling our way through it together. So thank you. Okay. Let me think about how I want to phrase this first question
Bowie Rowan
@bowie · 2:07
Now, if you think you would do anything differently in this essay, I ask out of curiosity because I'm sometimes stunned looking back at things I've written years ago and being like, wow, who was that that wrote that, right. I know it's me, but also I feel like such a different writer. Now. I don't think I could have written that same piece I wrote two years ago now. And I'm curious if you've experienced that at all with this piece
Bowie Rowan
@bowie · 0:36
And then lastly, I would love to hear just a bit about what you're currently working on, what your heart and mind are feeling most connected to at the moment in relation to to your writing. And then lastly, if you would be willing to maybe read a paragraph or two that has particularly stayed with you from this essay, or maybe something that you're currently working on that you feel most excited to share. I'm really looking forward to it