Ep 173: [Interview] Patrice Gopo on Meaning Making on the Page and Studying the Craft

At Breathe Christian Writers Conference, held October 12 and 13, 2018, I interviewed three authors who served on the speaking team. We discussed all things writing, like their writing challenges, their writing process, and their advice for writers. All for you.

I’m sharing these conversations with you, mixing them in with my standard short solo episodes.

You heard from Shawn Smucker in episode 171. Today, I bring you the second interview: a conversation with Patrice Gopo. We discussed her work as an essayist and meaning-making on the page. She gives us an inside look at her writing process, including several techniques she’s used study the craft of writing as well as the importance of feedback.

I begin by reading her bio as we sat down to talk, so you’ll get the official info at the start. Today, enjoy getting to know and learn from Patrice Gopo (and check out multiple resources below).

Patrice Gopo’s essays have appeared in a variety of literary journals and other publications, including Gulf Coast, Full Grown People, Creative Nonfiction, and online in The New York Times and The Washington Post. She is the recipient of a North Carolina Arts Council Literature Fellowship, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is the author of All the Colors We Will See, an essay collection about race, immigration, and belonging. Her book is a Fall 2018 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection.

Resources:

• Patrice’s Writing Resources: to help you develop as a writer – recommended classes, conferences, coaches and editors, craft books, and community
• Sign up for her newsletter and receive an essay from the book along with the discussion guide: https://www.patricegopo.com/subscribe/
• Patrice’s website: patricegopo.com
• Patrice on Instagram: @patricegopo
• Patrice on Facebook: @patricegopowrites
• All the Colors We Will See, by Patrice Gopo [affiliate link, which means I will receive a small compensation at no charge to you if you click through to check it out and purchase]
• All the Places We Call Home, Patrice’s debut children’s book (releases June 2022) [affiliate link]
• All podcast episodes

Patrice Gopo Interview: Transcript

Ann Kroeker

Today, you’ve joined hundreds of established and emerging writers who are discovering ways to reach their writing goals and have fun by being more curious, creative, and productive. You’re listening to Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach. This is episode 173, an interview with Patrice Gopo on meaning making on the page and studying the craft.

At a writing conference held October 12th and 13th, 2018, I interviewed three authors who served on the speaking team. We discussed all things writing, like their writing challenges, their writing process, and their advice for writers. All for you. I’m sharing these conversations, mixing them in with my standard solo episodes. You heard from Shawn Smucker in episode 171.

Today, I bring you the second interview, a conversation Patrice Gopo. We discussed her work as an essayist and making meaning on the page. She gives us an inside look at her writing process, including several techniques she’s used to study the craft of writing, as well as the importance of feedback. I begin by reading her bio as we sat down to talk, so you’ll get the official info at the start. Here is Patrice Gopo.

[00:01:25.220]

Ann Kroeker: Patrice Gopo’s essays have appeared in a variety of publications, including Gulf Coast, Full Grown People, and Creative Nonfiction. She’s the recipient of a North Carolina Arts Council Literary Fellowship, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is the author of All the Colors We Will See: An Essay Collection About Race, Immigration, and Belonging. Her book is a fall 2018, Barnes & Noble: Discover: Great New Writers Selection. Thank you for being here, Patrisse.

Patrice Gopo: Oh, thank you so much, Ann. It’s great to be here.

Ann Kroeker: So we’re in a conference setting, and so our listeners are going to hear a little ambiant noise in the background, but I think that’s appropriate. I think so. Two writers talking about writing at a Writers Conference.

Patrice Gopo: Exactly. It is perfect. Yes. Thanks so much for having me on the show.

Ann Kroeker: Well, it is an honor to have you. You are an accomplished writer and so young. I would love to go back in time a little bit and tell me a little bit about your writing beginnings.

From Chemical Engineer to Writer

Patrice Gopo: Absolutely. So honestly, I am not a person who always thought I was going to be a writer. I often tell people that I came into writing through the back doors. So I actually studied chemical engineering in undergrad, and I went to graduate school, and I got an MBA and a master’s of public policy. And that, long story short, ultimately took me to South Africa, where I met my husband. And when we got married, we were living in South Africa, and I no longer had a work permit, so I couldn’t do the work that I originally was doing.

And it was right about this time that I was reading this online women’s magazine, and I remember reading it and thinking, I wonder if I could write something for them. And I went to the submission guidelines, and I read the guidelines, and I pitched them a piece, and they accepted it. And that was the beginning. And I ended up writing several articles and things for them after that. And it was along the way, as I was writing that, that I thought, “I really enjoy this. I enjoy this a lot. There is something that I’m very passionate about here.”

Writing Personal Stories on Topics I Care About

[00:03:30.150] – Patrice Gopo: So previously, my work with my MBA and my master’s of public policy as I was involved with community development and social justice issues, things that I care about a lot, stories around racial equity and racial injustice and things of that nature. And what I found with writing is that this was an opportunity to tell personal stories about the topics that I cared about deeply.

I found myself writing about my own particular stories growing up as the Black American daughter of Jamaican immigrants, I was born and raised in Anchorage, Alaska, and just grappling with identity formation and where one fits in society and my experiences with race relations and racial injustice.

Discovering Essay Writing as Meaning-Making on the Page

I was writing these stories, and I started taking classes because I wanted to become a better writer. I was interested in improving my craft. So I discovered I really enjoyed writing, but I wanted to find better ways to tell the stories that were just burning and bubbling up that I wanted to share. And so I started taking classes and I discovered essays, so I didn’t really know what an essay was beyond the five-paragraph variety that you learn about in school.

Yeah, right? I see you nodding there. Yeah, so I didn’t really know what an essay was beyond that. And as I was writing these personal stories, I stumbled into essays, and I thought, this is what I love. I love this exploration of personal stories, this meaning-making on the page that you’re trying to figure out. You’re trying to answer questions about your life and come to a better understanding understanding of maybe your experience or just the experience in the world and what might be happening. And so that’s really how I got into the whole field of writing. And I started writing essays. I started publishing essays, and it snowballed until eventually I now have this collection of essays that is out there in the world now.

[00:05:20.080] – Ann Kroeker: It’s fabulous. I am so excited for you. And the fact that it happens so organically…Yeah, I think that’s a good word for it. It’s a It’s beautiful, but it may be a little… You don’t have a formula that somebody can follow.

But if we backed up a little bit, you discovered your interest in the essay work. Tell me a little bit about those early stages. Imagine there’s some writer who’s considering that, but they don’t really know how to get into that. Not that you have to tell them where to go and how to use submittable. We can share that information with them some other way. Yeah, right. How did you talk about the path?

Take a Class or Hire a Coach to Grow as a Writer

[00:06:00.070] – Patrice Gopo: Yeah, absolutely. I think for me, the path really was deciding to take some classes. That was my biggest decision when it came to writing. And it took me about, I think maybe a year and a half into my experience writing when I thought, Hey, I want to learn something about this. I don’t want to just sometimes write something that works really well and not have any understanding of why it’s working well, because then I don’t even know how I can try and maybe attempt this again.

And so I think that was the thing. I didn’t have a background in writing, but I just knew I had powerful stories. I had ability. I mean, I had some level of ability to write. But I also thought there’s so much more here to know. And so that’s what I often will talk to people about who are interested in growing as a writer, is that it’s really helpful to either take a class or work with a writing coach or read a book about writing. I remember in the early days, I particularly read quite a lot of craft books around writing. And I actually have on my website, it’s patricegopo.com.

I have a tab that has writing resources where I list some of those things because I like to help people also find out what were the resources I use that were helpful for me. But yeah, I definitely look for all sorts of ways to study the craft of writing.

[00:07:23.220] – Ann Kroeker: We will provide a link to anything that you would be useful that we share with people. So I’ll put that in the show notes. But let me ask you, is there a type of place that they could go to take classes? You were in Alaska at the time?

[00:07:36.580] – Patrice Gopo: No, I’m in North Carolina. So I did. I grew up in Alaska, but by this time, I was living in North Carolina. And I had a young child, particularly in this stage, I had a young child, and then ultimately had two young children. So online classes were really the best way for me to go. So I did. I took a variety of online classes through several different organizations.

You Don’t Necessarily Need an MFA to Be a Better Writer

Ann Kroeker: So it wasn’t necessarily you were not getting your MFA?

Patrice Gopo: I was not. No.

Ann Kroeker: So do you have your MFA?

Patrice Gopo: I do not have my MFA.

Ann Kroeker: And yet you are a published essayist with an essay collection coming out.

Patrice Gopo: Yes. Yeah. It’s out, actually. It’s out already. It’s out now.

Ann Kroeker: I think that’s something important to know, that you don’t have to.

[00:08:12.100] – Patrice Gopo: No, you can. That could be a path you could take. You could. You absolutely could. And I did. I actually looked into it at some point, and I just thought, this is not feasible for my life right now. And I also… I just talked to different people, and I thought, you know what? I think some of the goals that people who are in MFA programs have, say to teach in academia or things of that nature, that wasn’t my goal.

My goal was really just to become a better writer. And so I felt like I wanted to cobble together different things that existed out there. So I did. I took quite a few online classes. There was a teacher that I worked with in Charlotte, in North Carolina, where I live, who had some in-person courses. So I did that.

At some point, I ended up hiring a writing coach and working with a writing coach because there were some particular areas that I wanted to identify more of my weaknesses so I could be improving upon them, which is sometimes It’s sometimes a bit harder in a classroom setting to really hone in on that. Those were just some different things.

[00:09:06.800] – Patrice Gopo: And like I said, I kept reading books and just reading in general. I think that was one thing over time that I started understanding how people were writing essays and how I could be unpacking an essay. If I read an essay out there in the world that I really liked, I could then study the structure of it. I could then study some of the techniques they were using and see what’s happening here that I could maybe use in my own work.

Ann Kroeker: Did you do that in a really specific way? Did you have a method?

[00:09:35.130] – Patrice Gopo: Yeah, I do have a method for doing that.

Ann Kroeker: Can you share your method?

Essay Deconstruction with Patrice Gopo

Patrice Gopo: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I’ll share. So what I often do is when I see an essay that I really like, I will either make a copy… If it’s in a book or something or a magazine or whatever, I’ll make a copy of it or I’ll print it out.

And then I take three different colored pens and I will go through and I will mark the sections that are purely scene in the essay. So scenes.

And then I’ll mark sections that are summary in the essay, and then I’ll mark sections that are pieces of reflection. So people thinking about it, contemplating the musing side of an essay.

And so I then will go through and I can see color-coded what’s happening in the piece. And so that way I can see, why do I like this so much? What’s the balance that they have in terms of the scene summary? How are they pacing it? Because when you can break it up like that, you’re able to see the pacing of the piece more quickly.

You can examine the beginnings and the endings and see, are they ending on an image?

[00:10:35.040] – Patrice Gopo: I really like pieces that end on an image, personally. And I discovered that along the way that I find that to be something that I enjoy, and I find that it works well. So yeah, I definitely will unpack it.

Another thing that I will do is I will then go into each paragraph and identify what might be happening. Are they flashing back in time here? Are they going forward? Are they introducing a new thread here? Just to outline what’s going on?

And so, yeah, so deconstructing it. So I often think that that’s the side of my brain that excelled at engineering is what I’m bringing to the writing life.

Reading and Analyzing like an Engineer

Ann Kroeker: You are, you’re reading like an engineer!

Patrice Gopo: Yeah, right. So I’m analyzing it. So I bring all those things. But I think that’s part of the creative process is… And I don’t think you have to do that all the time for everything. And it’s not that when I start writing, I literally think, “Well, I’m going to do this and do that.” But I feel like when you just add that information to your mind, it’s there. And then your subconscious will work in ways that it needs to, to bring it about in the time that it needs to happen.

Ann Kroeker: Do you remember ever doing this whole process? I love it. I love it. I love the color coding.

[00:11:43.030] – Patrice Gopo: And I should give credit. Those were not my ideas. I learned those from my teachers and coaches and things like that.

Ann Kroeker: So you’re reading like a student, and you’re reading like an essayist. So you’re almost the same part of you that loves to explore ideas. Is it actually analyzing and exploring the essay?

Patrice Gopo: Yeah.

Ann Kroeker: And you’re bringing that little engineering element. Yeah, I love that. You’re bringing all of you to all of your work.

Patrice Gopo: Yeah, absolutely.

Ann Kroeker: But tell me about, if you can remember, maybe something where a technique you wouldn’t have maybe figured it out on your own. You saw it done, you color-coded it, and then you applied it. Oh, right. Maybe you learned a transitional technique?

The Power of the Flash Forward

[00:12:17.170] – Patrice Gopo: Yeah. Actually, that is very good. Those exercises are great for seeing how people transition. So I definitely would say I’ve studied transitions.

But one thing that I feel like I started doing more, and I probably even do it too much now, is I discover the flash forward. So oftentimes we think about when we write flashbacks, so we go back in time. But sometimes we know the story that happened because we’re the writer, but it’s on the page, we can orient ourselves wherever we want.

So every now and again, when I’m writing, I like to just flash forward and say, “This is going to happen in the future.” And then I bring it back to the current time. And I just enjoy that. And I think it can maybe disrupt the narrative in a way that can be very pleasing for me as a writer and also as the reader. But you have to be careful because you can’t do it too much.

Ann Kroeker: Does it spoil it? Do you feel like it spoils it? Do you lose suspense?

[00:13:13.870] – Patrice Gopo: No, I don’t, because I think what happens is you use them strategically. And so you’re basically wanting to comment maybe on something that you discover in the future, but you want it to apply to the scene now. And so you flash forward and just tell the reader, this is going to happen. But If you want, I can pull out my book and give an example of this.

Ann Kroeker: Are you allowed to read anything in your book?

Flash Forward in Action

[00:13:34.390] – Patrice Gopo: I can read a short section. Yeah, I’ll pull out a really quick sample. This is an example from an essay where I talk about my parents’ divorce. My family and I, we are getting our pictures taken. It’s at Christmas time, and we’re getting our pictures taken, a family portrait. And so I say this paragraph that orients us in the scene of us taking the pictures. So it says:

Christmas music bounces in the background, mixed with the rumble of waiting voices. “Move in. Your faces almost touching,” the photographer says, as she snaps an image. Then she stretches us into a row, and with the help of stools and boxes staggers our heights into a descending staircase.

(And now, here’s where I’m transitioning to the flash forward.)

In a week or so, I will find a slim package with our family prints waiting on the stoop. Sikai, that’s my daughter, will sit near me as I tug at the cardboard to release our memories. Later, I will hold up the two eight by tens of our family for her to choose between. Which one should we display? I will say to her.

(I’m going to skip a paragraph down to the transition back.)

[00:14:46.390] – Patrice Gopo: And here is where I say: But today, after we sit for the portrait, we leave through the side entrance of the mall.

And so the whole point there is I’m sharing something that’s going to happen in the future. So you get this picture of what’s going to happen. And there’s actually even a moment of reflection in this paragraph that I skipped that is helpful for the scene itself to see what’s all embodied in this scene that’s happening. But I wanted that detail that happens in the future for them to see this idea.

My daughter, when she picks the picture, she says, I want this picture. We’re all looking ahead in this one, which is so metaphorical on so many levels. And I just wanted that, but I didn’t need us to literally get to that point in the essay. So I just did this quick little flash forward, and I learned that reading other people’s work.

Ann Kroeker: Did you write it that way, having studied? Did you write it that way the first time, or did you come back to it with a revision?

Getting Ideas from Other Essays

[00:15:43.160] – Patrice Gopo: Golly, that was a revision. Can I tell you this essay took me months to write because it was going all over the place, and I didn’t know what it wanted to be or how it was going to end up there. And I remember when my daughter said that line about, “I want this one, we’re all looking ahead.” There was something in me that I thought, “This belongs in this piece.” But I couldn’t quite figure out how it was going to fit in without making the narrative too messy and bringing us, having to have more details than we need it. And then it was like, oh, we just need it to…

Ann Kroeker: …and you had a quick flash forward! You had a tool because you had read enough essays. It has shown you how to do it, and how they did it. Exactly, right. And it gets a tool in your tool belt.

Discover Ways People Are Doing Things, and Try It Yourself.

[00:16:22.970] – Patrice Gopo: Yeah, exactly. And so that’s what I think of. I often think of those things you find and discover ways in which people are doing things, and then you can try it yourself.

One thing I love to do is if I’m reading something and I see a wonderful sentence that I really like, I will write the sentence down, and then I’ll try and deconstruct the sentence and see what’s going on, and then try and write my own sentence that follows that structure.

Ann Kroeker: So, “I like the way they open this with a prepositional phrase”?

[00:16:51.510] – Patrice Gopo: Yeah, exactly.

Ann Kroeker: So you’re diagramming sentences?

Patrice Gopo: Kind of, yeah, right. Exactly. But just the deconstruction to find out, “Why does this sound so nice? What’s going on here? How are we…” Maybe they’re comparing two ideas within one sentence. And it’s this nice balance, and it’s repetition or something.

I think, “Okay, let me try this myself and see what other,” Obviously, you take something different. Don’t use the same thing they’re writing about, something completely different, and just see what you could do to emulate the structure.

Ann Kroeker: So creating almost like a sentence template.

Patrice Gopo: Yeah, right.

Ann Kroeker: So you’re talking…sort of the macro level of analyzing an essay all the way down to the micro level of the sentence.

[00:17:32.240] – Patrice Gopo: Yeah, true. But I’ll say this, I don’t do it for every sentence when I’m analyzing an essay. It’s just ones that jump out, then I think, “Oh, that’s really nice. We should take note of that. They did something clever here.”

Ann Kroeker: You have this lifelong learner approach as a writer, specific to your writing.

Patrice Gopo: Maybe one day… Yeah, maybe somewhere.

Ann Kroeker: Well, you’re teaching it now.

[00:17:53.850] – Patrice Gopo: Yeah, right. Yeah, right. Definitely.

Ann Kroeker: We were at an event where you were on a panel, and you shared with the group that night that you have a technique where you pull images when you’re working. Tell me about that. What’s the situation that you would do that?

Collaging an Essay

[00:18:09.430] – Patrice Gopo: Just explain that? Absolutely. And I’ll say this, this idea actually came from a class that I took, too. One of my teachers introduced me to this idea of collaging something as you might be beginning a project.

Oftentimes when I am working on an essay, particularly a larger one that maybe feels unwieldy in a bit, you’re just not quite sure what it’s doing. Sometimes I will just take a break, or maybe just even from the beginning, because I know it’s going to be a bit like yet, I will then take a whole bunch of old magazines.

I have these stacks of old magazines, and I’ll go through, and I will just clip images that appeal to me, or I will clip maybe phrases that are in the headline, whatever it might be. I’ll take all these images, and then I’ll take a piece of poster board, and I’ll arrange all of this stuff in a collage. And I’m not doing it with any intent that these images must represent something or it stands for something or any of that nature. I’m just clipping things that I feel drawn to somehow that I might not be able to explain.

[00:19:13.800] – Patrice Gopo

And then I just arrange it in a collage, and I’ll stick them on my wall, and I will use those to help inspire me as I am writing. And I just trust that my mind has done the work to find the images, see the images, pull them out, and then I’ll be writing along. And maybe I might get to a point where I feel stuck on the metaphor, what it is that I’m really trying to say here. And I will often just glance up at these, I don’t know what you call them, vision boards, collages, whatever they are, and just look for some form of inspiration to keep going. And I often have found metaphors within it, or maybe a new word comes to me just looking there. And so it’s just part of trusting that the mind is making all the connections it needs to be making all the time, and we need to just live aware that it’s out there happening.

[00:20:04.790] – Ann Kroeker

So you would do this with every essay? Or the big unwieldy ones.

[00:20:08.250] – Patrice Gopo

I think big ones, yeah. And then for my essay collection as a whole, I did a really big one for my essay collection as a whole, because I felt like all these essays were thematically working together. And I wanted to have a similar sense of inspiration when I felt like, well, where does this really go? Does this essay belong here? What other essay do I need to write that still needs to provide linkage in this collection that allows it to be a fully formed collection?

[00:20:36.070] – Ann Kroeker

That’s really interesting. Visual with the words. I think that’s a fabulous technique. Thank you for sharing it. If we could figure out who to give credit to.

[00:20:44.320] – Patrice Gopo

Oh, yeah. Well, my teacher is Marine Ryan Griffin. She’s the one. But actually, I think she got it from someone else. Maybe it’s just the goodness floating around in the creative world. I don’t think it was…

Maybe it was Sue Munk-Kidd that she heard it from because it was more about fiction. I remember her telling us about it, and it was really about fiction. And I applied it to… Took it and transformed it to fit my own essaying life. Is that a word, essaying? Essaying, it’s a picture. Yeah, so I think it definitely is.

But I think that’s one thing about writing. We sometimes feel like the act of writing must always be literally writing, but writing happens in so many forms. That’s what Carolina was talking about the other day or yesterday, is that writing happens when we are taking walks. It happens when we’re just… and for me, that is a way to step away from the writing and do something maybe different that still influences the writing, but it’s a different pathway in your brain, perhaps working.

Where Does an Essay Begin?

[00:21:46.470] – Ann Kroeker: Where do you find your starting points? Where does an essay begin for you?

[00:21:51.760] – Patrice Gopo: Usually it begins with an image or a scene. So there might be some image or scene that I’m experiencing, and that’s usually where I will start writing something. Sometimes it will also begin with maybe a question about something in life that’s happening. But I would say by and large, it begins with some image or scene. And my I’m wondering, “Why does this matter to me? Why is this staying with me?” Or something like that.

[00:22:20.620] – Ann Kroeker: What would you say is driving that? Is it curiosity? Is it passion? What is your driving force?

[00:22:26.760] – Patrice Gopo: Yeah, right. I don’t know. I think it is probably… So to give an example of a recent one, something I’m working on now, and I don’t know what it’s going to become.

My husband brought me home a chocolate bar a couple of weeks ago, and he’s been bringing me chocolate bars…basically our entire marriage, he brings me these chocolate bars. And we were standing in the kitchen and he gave me this chocolate bar, and I took it, and I was grateful. I’m grateful when he does it. And I was just standing there, and I started remembering other moments of him giving me these gifts along the years. And I started writing about some of these other scenes.

So there was this image of this chocolate bar, and I thought, “How interesting. We’re about to celebrate 10 years of marriage. How interesting that a chocolate bar is like a theme that’s run through. What does that mean?” And it might not mean anything except— This is in the works.

[00:23:28.020] – Ann Kroeker: This is not done yet.

[00:23:29.110] – Patrice Gopo: No, it’s not done. And so I’m just exploring it. So I’ve just been writing about it. And I wrote about that day when he brought it. And then I wrote about the first chocolate bar that he gave me. And then I wrote about there was this other thing associated with it.

[00:23:43.590] – Ann Kroeker: And yes. These were the scenes. Are you writing scenes?

Writing and Capturing Scenes

[00:23:45.570] – Patrice Gopo: Yeah, just writing scenes. I’m writing scenes.

Ann Kroeker: Where do they live?

Patrice Gopo: In a composition notebook in my bag.

[00:23:51.260] – Ann Kroeker: Okay! Just old school.

[00:23:52.550] – Patrice Gopo: Yeah. I’m just capturing them there. And I’ll go back. And usually, when I have plenty of time, I type them up fairly quickly, but I haven’t had a lot of time lately. So they’re just gathering in my notebook and I’ll go and type them up. And then what I’ll do is I’ll probably print out each little freewrite as a scene by itself on a page by itself. And then I’ll print them out and start arranging them and seeing what might be forming here.

[00:24:17.670] – Ann Kroeker: And that’s spread out on a big table?

[00:24:19.570] – Patrice Gopo: Yeah, on the floor, on the floor in my bedroom. I’ve spread it on the floor in my bedroom, and I start looking and seeing what’s happening, what are some of the common themes that are emerging.

[00:24:28.560] – Ann Kroeker: So you’re very tactile.

Revision Activity: Reassemble Paragraphs & Retype the Essay

[00:24:30.550] – Patrice Gopo: I do enjoy. One of my favorite revision activities is you take an essay that you have written and then you cut up all the paragraphs so that you can then start moving paragraphs around if they need to be moved. I just think there’s something really helpful about being able to physically do it.

Or the other thing I often will do in earlier drafts, is when I am doing a new draft, I’ll type it all up again. So I don’t just go in and make the change. I’ll actually retype the whole essay.

[00:25:03.470] – Ann Kroeker: Revisit every word.

[00:25:04.390] – Patrice Gopo: Yeah, because I do think in there you… Oftentimes it’ll stay, but sometimes you’ll realize, “No, this isn’t actually the right sentence here. This isn’t what I want it to be, or it doesn’t make It makes sense.” But I don’t think you will see that as readily if you don’t retype it.

[00:25:19.600] – Ann Kroeker: This is really helpful, I think, especially if somebody is new to this or they want to enter into this to get the process. It sounds like it takes time. [Patrice: It does.] But I feel like when I’m listening to you, I don’t feel like you treat it as laborious.

[00:25:35.850] – Patrice Gopo: No, I don’t. I don’t. I think it’s really interesting. I think, there’s another essay that I write about in the book, and it concerns… So I told you I’m a chemical engineer. That’s what I studied. It’s chemical engineering. And so there’s this essay. It’s called “Role Model, or Black Girls May Have…” What is it called? “Role Model or Black Girls May Have Dreamed of Engineering Because of Women Like Me.” It’s a really long essay. And so I remember when I start… I’m sorry, the title is really long. The essay is not so long. But I remember when I started writing it, I felt like there was something I needed to say here about being a black woman, being an engineer, but then leaving the field of engineering and my experience with that.

Revision Reveals What We Really Want to Say

Patrice Gopo: I started writing, and I was writing these different scenes. And it was only through the revision process that I started realizing what it really was that I was experiencing, what it really was that I was feeling, what I really I wanted to say about this topic. And one of the things I discovered as I wrote that is there’s a layer of guilt that I feel about having left that field of engineering and left that field where I was actually a role model for many other young black girls.

[00:26:45.120] – Patrice Gopo: And I don’t think I would have gotten that if I had just not gone through all these layers of revising and shifting and changing paragraphs around. And yeah, so that was really, for me, that was very remarkable because I thought, oh, wow.

[00:26:59.580] – Ann Kroeker: It benefited you?

[00:27:00.390] – Patrice Gopo: Yeah, to see that, to understand that. How would you describe that?

[00:27:02.860] – Ann Kroeker: Is it healing? Or revelation?

[00:27:06.320] – Patrice Gopo: Yeah, I think it’s a revelation of sorts of something that I live with. And it’s fine. [Ann: And you wouldn’t have done that without writing?] I don’t think so. It took the writing. Yeah, it did. It took the writing.

Do You Write for the Art First…or for the Reader?

[00:27:15.840] – Ann Kroeker: For the writing that you’re doing, are you thinking of the reader? Or are you thinking of the art? Tell me, how do you view your writing? And there’s no right or wrong answer. I’m just curious.

[00:27:21.990] – Patrice Gopo: I think I tend to think of the art first. Yeah. I think of the art first as… [Ann: And the readers have found you.] Yeah. Readers have found me. And I think it’s wonderful. And I am thankful for the readers and the ways they’ve engaged in the work. But I would say when I consider writing, it certainly is very much the art that happens first.

There were a couple experiences when my book was being edited as it’s going to production to be a book. And I remember getting a few comments from my editor saying, “Patrice, this is so beautiful right here, but we’re really not sure what it means.” And I thought, fair enough, because I’m not positive either, but it is beautiful. I agree. Is that a “kill your darlings”? I mean, I think so. Where you had to rethink it. I think so. Yeah, you did. You had to. But I think there was something there that I just thought, this sounds so lovely together. It’s something…

[00:28:24.820] – Ann Kroeker: So this is a poet in you. I think we love to play.

[00:28:26.030] – Patrice Gopo: I know, right. Exactly. So not that I don’t think of my reader. I don’t want to say that, but…

Ann Kroeker: So in the book, they called you to clarify it, and you did.

Patrice Gopo: Yeah, I did. I mean, I clarified things because I don’t want people to be confused. That’s not what I’m trying to do. There’s a level of communication with the art. I think when I initially start, that’s what often happens. And then that’s why feedback is really great, because people can help catch those things for me, because I might think, “Oh, well, it’s fine. They’ll figure it out.” But no, sometimes they don’t figure it out.

When to Seek Editorial Input

[00:29:01.940] – Ann Kroeker: Well, with your book, you have an editor because that’s built into the process. But the essays that you submit to journals don’t have that built in until you get an acceptance. And then you might have light editing, you might have heavy editing. Before that process, what eyes are looking at your work?

[00:29:18.810] – Patrice Gopo: I really do appreciate having multiple eyes look at my work. Oftentimes I might hire someone to look at it, hire an editor at different stages, maybe a copy editor if I feel like the essay is really almost done, or maybe I’ve hired developmental editors before. I have some friends where we will exchange things.

I’ve been in an online writing critique group. We’re not really doing it right now because we all just got so busy, but we were going pretty strong for a couple of years. So you would share it. And we would share manuscripts with each other, which is great because I’m a real big proponent of—by giving feedback, you’re learning as a writer. I think it’s really great to be in some space where you are exchanging manuscripts or something with each other.

I definitely appreciate having feedback from people, because I am convinced there’s only so far we can get just on our own. I mean, we can produce something very good, even great. But I think the input of others can really allow us to get to another point.

Ann Kroeker: Do you think that it accelerated your path by having that built in?

[00:30:33.630] – Patrice Gopo: I think it certainly helped. Yeah, I think that certainly helped my path. Now, I don’t want to say that you always have to do that. I’m cautious of that. And I’m also cautious that all feedback is not the same. So not every piece of feedback is going to be useful or helpful. And you have to be careful. I have been in situations that I feel are a bit toxic, where the feedback has just not been very useful and actually, in a way, made me feel bad about my writing.

Ann Kroeker: Did you step away?

Patrice Gopo: Yeah, I basically can’t. I can’t do that. But I think I felt that I was mature enough to recognize that that was happening. And what it made me think is I just felt bad for people who maybe aren’t at a phase where they’re mature enough to recognize in their writing life. They just haven’t done it enough to know, “Oh, this is what’s happening.” This person is just not a good feedback person for my work. Because I think in the beginning, you’re just so new and fragile and fresh at it.

[00:31:30.340] – Ann Kroeker: And you’re holding your heart out, really, in some cases.

[00:31:33.990] – Patrice Gopo: Exactly. Right.

[00:31:34.970] – Ann Kroeker: How did you find your editors? Listeners want to know practical things at times.

[00:31:38.590] – Patrice Gopo: I have some friends who do it. One of my writing coaches was actually one of my teachers in an online class, and I just asked if she worked with clients, and she did. So wherever you’re getting it…on my website that I mentioned earlier, where I have this Writing Resource’s tab. I list all the people who are there.

Meaning Making

[00:32:05.300] – Ann Kroeker: Excellent. So let me ask you, you mentioned you used the phrase “meaning making.” Tell me what that means to you.

[00:32:12.100] – Patrice Gopo: When I think of this idea of meaning making on the page, it’s the side of us where we’re trying to understand what’s happening in our lives or in the world. Why does it matter? And that’s what I think of when I think of this meaning making. We take an incident and then we delve more deeply into it to try and see what is the significance of it. Why is it important? Why am I remembering my mother serving me a breakfast when I was five, on an ordinary day?

Writing Essays with Purpose

[00:32:48.200] – Ann Kroeker: To what extent do you write with purpose, though? I know you’re writing about race, but it’s often flowing out of your personal experience. How much do you set out with some purpose for an outcome?

[00:32:58.940] – Patrice Gopo: That’s a really good question, and I think it varies from time to time. So I was talking about that piece related to engineering, and I knew that it was going to deal with race and me as an engineer. So I knew that that was going to happen.

Another really good example is in the summer of 2016, after Philando Castile’s death in St. Paul and Alton Sterling’s in Baton Rouge. That’s actually the start of the essay, in fact, that what I just said. I felt like I wanted to respond to what was happening. And I remember there was a moment where I was in this art gallery, and somebody said something to me. And I remember that moment. I thought, “This is going to be an essay.” And so I felt like when I started working on it—I knew that that piece was going to deal with police shootings of unarmed black men, and it was going to deal with my own personal experience being married to a black man. I knew that stuff was going to happen. I didn’t know how it was going to happen, but I knew that this was the idea of what was unfolding here.

Ann Kroeker: How long did it take you to write that?

[00:34:03.430] – Patrice Gopo: That one actually came out very quick. I mean, it’s a very short essay. It’s only 500 words, and I wrote it over the course of maybe two days.

[00:34:11.260] – Ann Kroeker: And does it live somewhere?

[00:34:12.990] – Patrice Gopo: We can look at it. It’s in my book.

Ann Kroeker: It’s in your book? Yeah, it’s in my book. Yeah, it’s in the book. So yeah, it’s there. So I do feel as though I often have a sense of what is happening. But I think the big thing is that with writing essays, you want to be careful of feeling like you know the outcome of the essay. You know what where it’s going to end, you know the direction it’s going to be. You have a message.

Leave Yourself Open to the Outcome of the Essay

[00:34:36.000] – Ann Kroeker: You might suspect you’re going, but you leave yourself open. Is that what you’re saying?

[00:34:38.980] – Patrice Gopo: You do. You leave yourself open. And I feel as though when I teach classes and I tell students about this is that there can be a starting point, and usually I draw it on a whiteboard, but I’m not going to go.

We’re looking at a whiteboard. I know we’re looking at a whiteboard. There can be a starting point. And then maybe you have this imagined ending point. And what I encourage encourage people to be is just flexible and open that the imagined ending point might not actually be it. That way your story could maybe start at this point and move in a different direction.. [Ann, for listeners: She’s pointing down.] Sorry, move down in a different direction and arrive in… Away from a straight line. Yeah. Or maybe it begins at the starting point and doesn’t go in the straight line to the ending point. It goes in this curvy path and winding path, and then actually does end up at the point you thought it might, but in a way you didn’t think it was going to get there. And so I feel like there’s just a sense of flexibility.

[00:35:34.060] – Ann Kroeker: Sort of a discovery.

[00:35:35.260] – Patrice Gopo: Yeah, exactly. I’m going to discover as I go. Well, that is what… To write an essay, it’s a discovery process. You’re going to discover something new about yourself or new about the world or just knew about what’s the situation you’re in or whatever it may be.

[00:35:49.540] – Ann Kroeker: Do you tend to write scenes first? Like scenes?

[00:35:51.480] – Patrice Gopo: Sometimes I do. Sometimes I can write chunks of reflection, too. I’m like, reflection. I usually have to cut it out. [Ann: You’re a thinker.] I like to reflect a lot. But I do tend to start with the scenes first. And then usually the last thing that comes is maybe the summary portions, which is filling in the gaps between scenes. So that’s just me. I mean, people can do however they want. I’m just saying what I have found for myself.

[00:36:21.260] – Ann Kroeker: So you would probably never use an outline. Like that five-paragraph essay you mentioned. That’s a thing in the past.

Model Essays Offer Structure

[00:36:31.180] – Patrice Gopo: Here’s what I will say. This is probably the closest I can get to an outline. Sometimes if I have something that I’m working on that I know this is a topic I want to write about, but I’m not sure all that I want to say about it, I might take a model essay and I will then study exactly what happens paragraph by paragraph.

This I learned from a book that I read. It’s called the Writers Portable Mentor, and they suggested (this is on my website, too). She suggests basically paragraph by paragraph, look at what this author is doing structurally in each paragraph. So if here she is meditating on the weather or something, you meditate on your topic. Have just a paragraph where you… That’s maybe not the best example.

If maybe in this paragraph, she’s giving facts about autumn. I’m looking outside and seeing the leaves. If she’s giving facts about how leaves turn in autumn, then in your first paragraph, you’re going to give facts about whatever your subject is that you’re exploring. And so you see what happens in each paragraph. And then you try and do similarly with your subject.

[00:37:38.080] – Patrice Gopo: Obviously, your subject. So you’re not going to use any vocabulary or any language, anything. The only thing you’re looking at is modeling the structure. [Ann: And then it’s like a template.] Yeah, exactly. And then once you have that, at least you have a draft. And you can start making it your own at that point. So I have definitely done that. And I feel like that maybe is the closest thing to an outline that I will sometimes do, as I might think, “Oh, well, here, maybe let me try writing about this here.”

I did that with a couple of the essays in the book. There’s one that concerns my relationship with my sister and I, both being the child of immigrants, being black Americans, but us having different identity formation paths. And yeah, I did it in that. And there are sections where I think my model essay was talking about hummingbird facts, and I’m talking about facts related to bananas or something like that.

[00:38:29.710] – Ann Kroeker: Wow, that is so useful. That is so useful.

What Are You Most Pleased With? What Do You Struggle With?

[00:38:33.180] – Ann Kroeker: Here are a couple of questions. What has most pleased you with your writing? I would say proud, but I don’t want to necessarily plug the word pride in there. Maybe you could answer it that way. What are you most pleased with?

[00:38:44.340] – Patrice Gopo: What are you most pleased with? I think what I get most pleased about is when I feel like an essay is reflecting what is actually going on in my head. And I feel like it’s not very often that that happens. But every now and then I’ll read a piece and I think, yeah, this is what I was actually envision when the ideas started forming and it’s become that thing. And that just makes me really excited when that happens. And I think it makes me want to continue with the work because I know it can do that.

[00:39:26.720] – Ann Kroeker: That’s really good. I probably should have asked these in in a different order, but what is something you struggle with most?

[00:39:34.940] – Patrice Gopo: Honestly, I’ll say right now I’m struggling with time. My book just came out. There’s a lot of things related to getting my name out there in the world. And I’ll say I personally am a person who actually has a lot of fun with it. I have a background in business, so it’s fun for me. I enjoy it.

But at the same time, it is very time consuming, and there’s a lot involved. And I just feel in the last couple of months, I have not been writing in the way that I tend to write with. So I’m looking forward to a little break around Christmas and things where I’m going to be able to do a bit more.

[00:40:09.340] – Ann Kroeker: What are some activities? Speaking? [indicating the event we were at where she had just spoken]

[00:40:10.750] – Patrice Gopo: Yeah, speaking.

Ann Kroeker: I think you do podcast interviews. Here we are, which is great. They’re fun. Or you do interviews on blogs or interviews, like publicity interviews with media and things? It’s just all the stuff that you have to keep showing up for.

Patrice Gopo: Yeah, exactly. That took that hour.

[00:40:29.960] – Ann Kroeker: Yeah, here we are.

[00:40:31.270] – Patrice Gopo: It’s going to be 45 minutes, maybe, here. And then I also… One of the things I’ve been doing quite a bit of is creating some public spaces for people to converse about some of the topics in the book, so public conversations. So I’ve been having these different

Ann Kroeker: In person?

Patrice Gopo: Yeah, in person. So they’ve happened at churches or bookstores or different places like that where we’re exploring some of the topics in the book. So I’ve had a couple public conversations about the nature of interracial friendship. A friend and I have chatted about that. We did one about—somebody else and I, we did one about race and faith in the New South. So I’ve done these different things, and they’re really exciting for me. I enjoy that work, but it’s also not writing. It’s not writing.

[00:41:10.360] – Ann Kroeker: So at the heart of you is the writer.

[00:41:12.340] – Patrice Gopo: Yeah, I would say it is. Yeah, it is. But I also recognize that my book is a pathway for people to engage in issues they really want to be engaging with and thinking about. And so I want to honor that and make spaces for people to do that, too.

Are you an Essayist First? Do You Have a Plan?

[00:41:26.920] – Ann Kroeker: Do you think of yourself and do you self-identify as an essayist first and foremost, or have you broadened it?

[00:41:33.520] – Patrice Gopo: That’s a really good question, Ann. I don’t know. I’m not sure. I do sometimes feel like I’m in a phase of maybe becoming something beyond the essayist. And I have been Identifying myself as that for several years now. And I wonder if there might be something else that is creeping in. But I don’t know. But you don’t know yet? I don’t know yet. I’m open, though. I’m open to what it can all become, because I think.

You know what I think at the heart me is I really enjoy stories and personal stories, and I believe that they’re important for our society and our world, that we have spaces where personal stories can be out there. And so I don’t know what it will be for me to help facilitate that in the world.

[00:42:15.850] – Ann Kroeker: But you’re open. It seems like you’re living your life much as you approach an essay or a sense of discovery. Isn’t that wonderful?

[00:42:23.070] – Patrice Gopo: Yes. I love that. I think you’re right.

[00:42:25.780] – Ann Kroeker: There’s no big plan here.

[00:42:27.700] – Patrice Gopo: I don’t have this huge overarching I’m not following a coaching plan. No, I think I’m one step, next step. [Ann: You’re writing your way into it.] Yeah, writing my way into it, living my way into it, whatever it might be. Wow.

Write the Next Thing

[00:42:38.960] – Ann Kroeker: Might we all do that? I mean, as writers, we can follow programs. We can follow plans, we can take advice, but in the end, we’re just writing the next thing and making sense out of our lives, making meaning out of our lives and the world around us.

[00:42:55.420] – Patrice Gopo: I love all of that. Oh, thank you so much. I appreciate that. You’re welcome.

[00:42:58.870] – Ann Kroeker: Do you have any parting words for writers? Advice for writers. Yeah.

Be in the Words (Read)

[00:43:02.800] – Patrice Gopo: So advice for writers. I would say a couple of things. I think continue to be in the words, and by that, I mean reading. Like, I prioritize reading the words out there in all sorts of ways, however that might look.

I also think we can always be learning something new, or even if we’ve already learned it before, we can learn it again in a new way. And so I feel like I’ve been writing essays for years now, and I’ll still every now and then take an essay class because I feel like it reminds me of stuff that I’ve either forgotten or just haven’t used in a while. And they’re like, “Oh, right.” So I think just to be in that posture of learning is really important.

Be Clear Why You’re Writing

And I think the last thing I would say to writers is, figure out why it is that you’re doing this so you feel very clear about why I’m in this game, because I think the writing life is a place where it can be so easy to compare yourself to others because you feel like, “Oh, I should be doing what they’re doing.”

But actually, I think us being clear about why we’re doing it for ourselves will help to eliminate some of that, but maybe not completely get rid of it, but just help us to feel more firm in what it is that we’re going about doing and what we might be after, or why we might be in this writing life.

[00:44:25.300] – Patrice Gopo: So I think for myself, in that regard, it was important for me when I realized, actually, the art, the words, really mattered to me. And because of that, I may not produce at the rate of someone else because it just takes me a lot of time, personally, to formulate these things. And that was helpful to realize that actually I’m living out a different writing story than maybe somebody else is living.

[00:44:47.360] – Ann Kroeker: I love that. Thanks. I think you have brought some practical tips and then just a heart of a writer to my listening audience.

[00:44:57.910] – Patrice Gopo: Oh, thank you.

[00:44:59.560] – Ann Kroeker: Thank you for your time.

[00:45:01.240] – Patrice Gopo: I appreciate it. Yeah, this was great. I enjoyed the conversation.

[00:45:04.720] – Ann Kroeker: The main place I can find you is…

[00:45:06.820] – Patrice Gopo: Yeah. So my website is patricegopo.com. And then I am on Facebook at @PatriscopoWrites. And then I’m on Instagram and sometimes Twitter @patricegopo.

[00:45:17.700] – Ann Kroeker: Excellent. And then we’ll send them some links. We’ll put all that in the show notes. And then the name of your book.

[00:45:23.440] – Patrice Gopo: Yes. It is called All the Colors We Will See: Reflections on Barriers, Brokenness, and Finding Our Way.

Ann Kroeker: That’s excellent. Thank you. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Patrice Gopo: Thanks, Ann.

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