Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Elizabeth: Hello and welcome to the Intuitive Writing Podcast, a production of the Intuitive Writing Project, a writing-based empowerment program for girls and gender- expansive youth. My name is Elizabeth Perlman and I created this organization twelve years ago because it was what I wanted and needed when I was young—a safe, supportive space to speak my truth and have it heard. But since the girl inside of us always needs to speak and be heard, we also have writing programs for women and this podcast will feature one of my favorite Gen-X writers.
If you are a woman who would like to try writing with us, know that the first class is always free. There are so many things we have to do. We want this to be something you choose to do, purely for the joy of it. Also know that we use the Amherst Writing Method, one of the most nurturing and empowering writing systems I know of. You can read more about the Amherst writing method on their website and in Pat Schneider's groundbreaking book, “Writing Alone and With Others,” but the basic principles and the ones that guide all our classes are 1: everyone is a writer with important stories to tell. 2: everyone has their own unique voice, a voice that needs to be heard. And 3: our voice will grow stronger and clearer, clearer the more it is supported and positively affirmed. As I always tell my students, my hope for you, for everyone on earth, really, is that you always feel empowered to speak your truth and to know that it matters.
For today's podcast, our 21st podcast, I'm so happy and honored to have a conversation with my beloved colleague, friend, and favorite comedy writer Gretchen Cion, one of the most amazing, delightful, and hilarious people I know. I first met Gretchen before the pandemic. Unbeknownst to us, it was exactly one month before shelter in place, but as soon as kids were stuck at home with more time to write, I needed another teacher and was so honored and excited to bring on Gretchen, who has been one of our greatest rock- star teachers ever since. Here's a bit about her background.
Gretchen cion is a multi-genre writer, filmmaker, and educator, currently teaching with us at the Intuitive Writing Project and also at Berkeley City College. She has a Master's of Education from Hunter College, a Master's of Arts in English, and a Master's of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, both from San Francisco State University. Her essays have appeared in Transfer magazine, Sky Island Journal, and Brevity. Her first short film, Full Crow, was a semi-finalist at the Bowdoin International Film Festival. Her most recent work is an essay collection for “Shame and Other Fun Feelings” for which she has endless material.
I just have to comment about this essay collection because it may be one of my favorite titles ever. When I first read it, I busted out laughing. And especially the comment afterwards that you have endless material. I feel like I myself have lived my entire life with the non-fun feeling of shame. But of course, I have never said it as pithily or as funnily. And I was thinking, that is really the purpose of comedy, I think, and what you do so well. All great comedians take things that are painful or tragic, and they triumph over the pain with humor. And I think you do that brilliantly in this collection. So, without further ado, we're going to introduce Gretchen, amazing Gretchen, with our usual three question intro. If you would start by telling us your pronouns and your favorite genre of writing, when you can write whatever you want, and then if you have a memory of your first memory rate of being really excited about writing or something you have written.
[00:04:27] Gretchen: Well, first of all, Elizabeth, thank you so much for having me here today.
I have said this to countless people. This is by far one of my favorite jobs that I've ever had is working with the Intuitive Writing Project. So thank you so much for creating this organization. Thank you so much for creating the space today for us to talk, because I think I could still days and days on talking about writing and writing, in particular with the Intuitive Writing Project. Okay, so my pronouns, she, her favorite genre. Very hard to pick. And so I'm not gonna pick. I equally love nonfiction. I love writing essays. And then I also love the, like, the permission slip with fiction where you can go in whatever direction you want. That's really hard for me to pick. So I'm gonna cheat and say, non-fiction/fiction.
[00:05:26] Elizabeth: You are truly multi genre!
[00:05:30] Gretchen: Yes! I would feel like I was cheating on the other if I didn't say, that's true question. It was that. That first memory. And it's really interesting because I didn't start my own personal journey of writing until I was like 40. I taught writing for a really long time, and I taught the craft of writing. And I wrote for those classes so that I could use my own writing as mentor text.But I didn't identify as a writer until probably ten years ago. And so, interestingly enough, probably one of my first favorite things that I wrote was my college essay when I was 18. It was the first time that I, for, like, academia, got to actually write, like, a personal essay, and I forgot how much I loved it. And actually, now that I am in this position where my kids are getting near that age where, you know, I have a senior, that's starting to apply for colleges, my mom reminded me of my college essay, and, like, she remembered everything about it, and how I leaned so hard into comedy in that piece. She said, that was the first time I realized what a beautiful writer you were at 18 until 20 years later.
[00:07:09] Elizabeth: Oh, that's so interesting. I can't believe I did not know that about you. But it's so validating to hear that story cause I have a similar story. I also didn't accept myself, or think of myself as a writer until in my forties, also. And I think it's cause we didn't have the Intuitive Writing Project when we were growing up.
But so much of writing is you… when you write by yourself, it's the inner critic. And if you only write by yourself, you just don't know. I mean, you were obviously right out of the gate, a hilarious writer. Your mother recognized that when you were 18, you had the confidence to write comedy for a college essay, which is so audacious and awesome. But you probably hadn't had people giving you the feedback reflecting back to you until that moment that you were a writer. So how could you know?
[00:07:58] Gretchen: Absolutely. And so much of it was tethered to…I didn't have teachers. I had teachers that are encouraging me how to really nail that essay on, you know, contemporary tales. But, like, there wasn't the creativity that, you know, we didn't have the opportunity to write in that creative way, at least in the eighties and nineties.
[00:08:24] Elizabeth: Totally. It wasn't prioritized. Do you still have the college essay anywhere?
[00:08:32] Gretchen: I think my parents probably do, to be honest. I don't know. It's interesting. It's about, you know, so many times you write about, like, your personhood and, like, you know, values that you have. And I wrote about, if you want to know this, I wrote about being three or four years old, and we had to turn in our station wagon with, like, the wood paneling, returning it for a new station wagon. And I ended up kicking the car salesman because I didn't want to give up our car. It's horrible. I'm not condoning violence. But it was like my toddler reaction to change. And the piece was really kind of centered, anchored in the idea of change, what it is, what it can be, and like, the fear of it, but also the joy of it, as I was on the precipice of life about to go into college. But I anchored the story around those emotions. And then I wanted to put like a strong vignette of personal experience that would resonate with the readers.
[00:09:44] Elizabeth: I just have to say, hashtag college essay tip. That is one of the best tips ever. Start with a really fun, interesting, compelling, dramatic anecdote, which is, why I bet colleges were so grateful to get an essay that was funny and deep because there's a lot of essays that are not funny and probably very stressful to read.
[00:10:06] Gretchen: It is such a stressful time, I think, for our students to be applying for college because there's such competition. And so I think that is probably one of the most important things is to remember. It's about your voice, it's about you. And think about the stacks, the stacks of essays these colleges are going through. So if you've got something original and fresh and that's authentically you, that's going to shine.
[00:10:34] Elizabeth: That is a perfect segue to having you read your piece. Because the reason I'm having you read this particular piece, by the way, all of Gretchen's writing is amazing. And you should check it out on her website, gretchencion.com, which we will in the show notes. But I want you to read this piece because you're talking about your class, which you created for our program, Poetic Playlist. And we want to talk more about that. But I think one of the things about your class, similar to most of our, all of our classes, is that when you write every week, you do build that authenticity, creativity-muscle where you are able to access those authentic stories. Because remembering things happens through writing. Sometimes you start writing and you're, like, not even remembering. You don't remember what happened. And then you start writing and it comes back to you.
[00:11:27] Gretchen: Yes.
[00:11:28] Elizabeth: So, okay, so the piece that I want Gretchen to read, and again, all of her stories are great, but we're going to just read this one for today. It's called “Hit Play, Tapping the Power of Song.”
[00:11:44] Gretchen: All right. Thank you. Here we go. Okay. Here we go.
“Just listen,” my friend said, handing me her headphones.
At thirteen years old, I sat on the steps of my junior high school while Martin Gore of Depeche Mode spoke directly to my soul. Martin had me at that first word of his tragic yet electrifying lyric— “fragile!” With puberty and unrequited crushes and pimples strewn across my face, I too knew what it meant to be fragile daily. Tears brimming from having been seen, I promptly went out to Bill’s Records and bought “Black Celebration” on cassette.
With time, the intensity of music and my love for it lured me into writing. By then, I had graduated to The Smiths. I would crack my journal open and rant away mostly in the form of really bad poetry. I certainly wasn’t alone as a teenager in this practice, waxing poetic on my disdain for the world or a less-than-loyal boyfriend. Morrissey pierced my melodramatic heart. It wasn’t until I started writing essays as an adult, though, that I realized how vital music could be to kickstarting my creativity.
I’ve found songs from my life to be the container in which my stories are kept. Turn up some Janet Jackson, and I’m breaking and popping at a house party in New York City circa 1999. Pop in some “Wagon Wheel” by Old Crow Medicine Show, and I’m feet-out-of-the-window road-tripping, singing along with my husband and kids across West Texas in the summertime. When writing about these memories, I put the music on and let myself go into a deep, full body remembering that’s transportive.
While working on my essay collection, For Shame and Other Fun Feelings, I was struggling to find the emotional resonance of a specific memory at the crux of my piece. “Bambeléo” by Gispy Kings opened the floodgates, dropping me right back into my twenty-two-year-old, self-conscious self and the basement apartment in San Francisco where I betrayed my truth for group acceptance. Sure, the song left me a little raw from the pain it contained, but its time-machine quality, delivering me into details of the moment, was worth it.
Songs, no doubt, are portals to the past, but it’s not all about the memories. Dig into some new tracks and be ready for the ideas they deliver. I teach a class called Poetic Playlist to girls and gender-expansive youth through The Intuitive Writing Project. Each week, I introduce lyrics by beloved songwriters. We discuss both craft elements and the lines that resonate with us. Then I present a prompt connected to an idea, the song’s theme, or a direct quote from the music before we go off and write together.
Years into leading this class, I’m still amazed by how readily a song presents a prompt after one read-through. Inspiration abounds, usually tethered to an explicit truth worth exploring. While listening to, say, Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill,” one might consider who or what in the writer’s life is worth an uphill battle. Part of what I love about using songs as prompts is how the music can make us feel and how it can affect and inspire each of us in completely different ways.
I’ve come to depend on the warmth and serenity music can provide when I write. My fingers freeze on the keyboard without it. I become one of Pavlov’s dogs. Cue the music, cue my creativity. It’s as if the music moves to the forefront, while my writing becomes a secondary, less precious, out-of-the-spotlight kind of thing. Nothing to see here, just some words coming together. With the daunting silence filled, my fingers fly.
Lofi Girl is instrumental to my practice, literally. No lyrics, just a steady string of beats that sets a layer of calm in my space. As an educator, I routinely use chill tunes to welcome my students into the classroom, to accompany group discussions, and as a backbeat setting for in-class writing time. Everybody seems to like a little backbeat.
Could I write without music?
Possibly, but why would I deprive myself of the richness of reflection, the imaginative sparks, or the cocooned tranquility song can offer? We all have our writing practices. Some thrive in a closet of silence while others need community to stir their creative flow. For me, I’ll lean into the power of a playlist every time.
[00:16:34] Elizabeth: It is so fantastic on so many levels. Of course, I objectively love this piece just because of the theme, but also the way it is written. It brings in all of your comedy and your profundity and your poetry all mixed into one. What we always do in this podcast is we give the kind of feedback we give in class, which is the Amherst Writing feedback, and that is we focus on what was really powerful and strong for us as a listener. And Gretchen, you and I have talked about this, and it's something that I say to my students all the time. When you're listening to someone's reading, it's a very different experience from like, it's the opposite of being in that inner critic place. I always tell girls, listen to the words like you listen to music, because when we listen to music, it's this noncritical experience of letting it wash over us. And that's why this, I mean, your class Poetic Playlist is so ingenious on every level, because music—music is words that have sounds with them, rhythms with them. I mean, it's just poetry. So I'm gonna highlight… I'm gonna say a couple of things I love. I love the whole piece, obviously, but I'm gonna read back some lines that just really hit home for me.
I love when the writer—we talk about, um, the person reading as the writer or the narrator, because that makes it. This is their art, and we're talking about their art— I love how the writer mentioned Depeche Mode, who I was also obsessed with, and I love that line, “Martin had me at that first word of his tragic yet electrifying lyric, fragile. With puberty and unrequited crushes and pimples strewn across my face, I, too, knew what it meant to be fragile daily.” Not only do I love that for me personally, but I feel like this piece contains your DNA as a teacher. You're not only talking about what you teach, but it's how you teach. You as a teacher, deeply understand your students, your young writers, because you're connected to your own inner writer. And I think that's the magic. It's one thing to just say, connect to your inner child, but to actually really remember and feel what it felt like when you're an adult, that that is why your students love you. It's that magic of remembering that feeling, and you capture it so well. I love the line. “When writing about these memories, I put the music on and let myself go into a deep, full body remembering. That's transportive.” I love a “deep, full body remembering,” and I feel like everyone who hears this line will feel it in their own body, because that's what music does. It's not just an intellectual memory. It's not just like, here's a photo. I've never heard that described that way before. I love that line.
And speaking of going back in time, I love the line, “the song left me a little raw from the pain it contained, but it's time machine quality. Delivering me into details of the moment was worth it. It's totally a time machine.”
[00:19:49] Gretchen: 100%.
[00:19:50] Elizabeth: That's it. Like, we always want to go back in time.
Music is so brilliant, and then songs, no doubt, are portals to the past. “But it's not all about the memories.” I love this line. “Dig into some new tracks and be ready for the ideas they deliver.” And, of course, this gets into what you do in this class and what you do with our students by choosing, you carefully curate the music because you are a great, you know so much more music than anyone else I know, so you're pulling from this vast repertoire of songs, but you're choosing them carefully because there's different feelings you know they're going to evoke and the lyrics are going to bring up different things.
So I want to come back to that in a second. I love how the writer said, “I'm still amazed by how readily a song presents a prompt after one read through. Inspiration abounds, usually tethered to an explicit truth worth exploring.”
And then I also want to talk about, we're going to break this down after I finish giving feedback. The other piece of this, it's not just how you create these magical spaces for your writers, but how it creates a magical space for you and your own writing. I love the line. “I've come to depend on the warmth and serenity music can provide. When I write, my fingers freeze on the keyboard without it. I love this line. I become one of Pavlov's dogs. Cue the music. Cue my creativity.”
[00:21:23] Gretchen: Yes.
[00:21:24] Elizabeth: Like, that's why we write in community, is because we do need kind of like a signal. Like, okay, you're safe now. Now you can write. And I love how you do that for yourself with writing. And of course, the last paragraph, the whole thing is a kicker. I mic drop to the whole thing. I love it. I 100% relate to every single part of it. But the line that stood out the most for me was “some thrive in a closet of silence, while others need community to stir their creative flow. For me, I'll lean into the power of a playlist every time.” Mic drop. That's great.
[00:22:03] Gretchen: Oh, this is so fun. By the way, I, like, I moderate this part. I'm guiding the writers in this part. But I'm like, wow, this feels amazing. Yes, please.
[00:22:18] Elizabeth: It's interesting. I'm glad you said that. It's funny. I forget because when you're doing it, when you're facilitating, you're not thinking about how incredible it feels to be mirrored. And that's like a psychological term. Like, I remember somebody told me about that in the nineties. Like, you want to mirror people, mirror back what you heard them say, but that always feels so weird and awkward if you actually do it in a conversation. But in a writing class, it's amazing because, like, when you write alone, even if you've sort of tamped down the inner critic, there's no woman or girl that I've ever met who, while writing, is like, “this is genius.” We do not think that what we've written is that great. We're like, “it's fine.” So when somebody picks up on these lines that you're like, “it's fine,” and then magnifies them, that's how girls get so excited and empowered, because they're having you, an amazing, badass writer, listening to them and reflecting back, like that line.
[00:23:25] Gretchen: It's so interesting. I just want to, like, one point on that.
It's so interesting because right before this interview, I was in a writing group, and I had just crafted five different beginnings to this chapter, and I felt pretty strongly about one, but I wasn't sure. And Ian, my husband, came by and I said, what? Five? Like, here's five. Which one resonates with you? And he's like, I'm dying with number five. I'm like, I'm already laughing and pulled in, and I was like, oh, good. Like, I thought that was great, too, but I didn't. I didn't want to have. When you're in it, when you're alone, right, without that other, you know, writing, it's very much. You're writing in a vacuum, right? So you can think, like, decent, but when someone, like, gives you their feedback, my gosh, then it's like that inner critic's out the door and you're like, yes, I can do that.
[00:24:20] Elizabeth: Yes, that is. It's so true. And it may be different for men. I can't speak to the male experience. I can only speak to the female experience. But I feel like women generally undervalue and question their writing across the board. We're like, “it's okay.” Or maybe even be more negative. This is why this program is for girls, because girls, more than anyone, I feel like we need that mirroring and that validation, because otherwise we're going to think it's nothing. When it's amazing.
[00:24:52] Gretchen: When it's amazing. Yeah.
[00:24:53] Elizabeth: Yeah. And you've had this. So let's talk about your class. Um, when you. You pick these, you carefully curate these songs. Um, every class, do you do. I can't remember. If you do one song or two, what do you do?
[00:25:05] Gretchen: It's funny. So it's a two hour class, and I always plan for two. My students will laugh and say, oh, my gosh, really? Aggression. Because lots of times, we just get to one because there. And it's really. It's not because we're spending an exorbitant amount of time on the song and looking at the lyrics and in discussion about it, although we do, you know, we do. We'll dig in. It's because we're spending so much dedicated time on each other's writing. And really we get into, really, we get into, like, some really interesting conversations.
And, you know, everybody, I would say, as the years have gone on and we've had some students that have written since the inception of the class that are still there and then other people coming in at different points, but there's such a growth in the richness of feedback once they've been in the class for a while. And so we all get so excited to kind of look at, like, if there's one particular writer that is, has a keen sense on, maybe they're always, like, commenting on the richness of sensory detail. Like, so maybe they're talking about, oh, I love the, like, the visual or the whatever. You know, they might be tethered to that. Well, then other people want to kind of sit in that feedback and think, oh, wait, I also want to, like, let me look specifically for some of those auditory senses that are being displayed in these pieces. So I honestly think it's because we spend so much time talking about each other's work.
[00:26:45] Elizabeth: Yeah. Which is that that is another unique thing. It's like having you really, you and I talk about, too, how it's… we're racing to fit everyone in. Six people is the max. We cannot have more than six. And because we want to go deeper, because we as writers, you do need to go deeper. When you submit your writing to a contest, you might get a little feedback, maybe, but I love how you describe that. The feedback actually, in a way, becomes its own writing prompt, that it inspires girls to try different things and take risks. We might have talked about that on the other podcast, but I think, yeah, the example of each other is really inspiring.
[00:27:27] Gretchen: Right? And they're all sitting again. And, I mean, essentially, they're all sitting as, like, mentor text. Right. And then we're having this conversation around it. Um, I can't tell you how many students have reported, how many writers have reported back to me that when they go to school, their teachers are like, how do you know how to talk about this? Like, how do you know how to give this kind of feedback? And, you know, and they'll link it back to Intuitive Writing Project, like, well, we do. I do this once a week in my writing class, so it is.
And, you know, I just came out of that MFA program, but it has been… for me to have this practice, have our classes each week while I was in grad school, like, there were things that I was talking about in grad school that I was also talking about in poetic playlist or creative connection. So the writers are…. I mean, I love to see their growth and their ability to really look at a piece and give that kind of. You know, and it's positive feedback, but that doesn't mean it's one kind of feedback. Right? There's such a richness to it. And so. Yeah, that's a very long answer.
[00:28:40] Elizabeth: No, that's perfect. That’s perfect. Which also makes me think about. I mean, I think it's worth pointing out, like, what you just said, that we as grown women bring into class the content that we're currently working on learning from and share it with middle school, high school aged girls, and they pick up on it. I bring in college level stuff all the time, and they're totally picking up on it in a second. I feel like you've told me stories about girls who have said, I mean, don't you have a young writer who is. That has won his poet laureate of her school?
[00:29:15] Gretchen: There is. Yeah. One of my writers for the city of Austin is one of the. They have. I think, like, there's, like, a team of. I might be totally wrong, but there's, like, a team of poet laureates. Team poet laureates. And I think it's been two years now that they've been involved in that program. So they were selected from a large, you know, pool of applicants. Yeah.
[00:29:45] Elizabeth: That's totally a credit to you. It's you. You hold this space, and you make it fun. I mean, people can tell from just hearing you, you are a delight. You are so fun to talk with, and you make it safe. And that's not easy. That's. I mean, this is the goal of our whole organization, is to make it feel safe. And part of it is the small class sizes, but you need someone to mirror back the things that are awesome.
[00:30:11] Gretchen: Yeah.
[00:30:11] Elizabeth: So, um, there's that great quote that, um. I can't remember who said it. Never internalize criticism from someone who can't also recognize what you're strong at, because it's easy to criticize. I mean, anybody can criticize. That's. Our whole society is about criticism. I think the point of it is that it actually takes much more discernment and perceptivity to notice people's strengths. And that's what makes somebody qualified to make any other comment. So the other thing I wanted to talk about is how you as a writer have grown from your own, from holding these classes, and from learning, like, how you need music. So this is a big question, and you can answer it however you like. Is, over the years, when you've dealt with your own creative demons and figured stuff out, what is something… what do you feel like is one of, or some of your greatest discoveries over, you know, in the last decade about writing? Or you could answer it as, what do you know now about writing that you wish you'd known sooner?
[00:31:27] Gretchen: Well, first of all, with the identity of being a writer, I didn't start to really see myself as a writer, like I mentioned until, like, ten years ago. But it was such a part of my life before this. Like, in my childhood, I remember having the locked diary, you know, with the key, and you didn't want anybody to get to it, and you put all your things down there. And I had journals in high school where I was really kind of parking a lot of my own unpacking of emotions that I was experiencing. And I wish that I could go back and tell my younger self, like, you are a writer. You are putting pen to the page, and you are a writer. So I wish I would have had that, like, kind of identity.
[00:32:17] Elizabeth: Aha.
[00:32:20] Gretchen: Sooner in my life, for sure. I wish I had saved all that writing. I'm like, I have no idea what the writing is. And I'm like, why didn't we have Google Docs back then? Like, if only we had had a place to really store that.
I would love to go back. I mean, because, like, for me, also, like, direct quote. I mean, I would just use it as material, right. About my little, like, nine-year-old self. Like, you know, writing about some crush I had or whatever. Like, but that is not to say, uh, and it's. Oh, it's okay. I'm taking a direct line from. Is it Anne Lamont? Bird by Bird.
[00:33:14] Elizabeth: Oh, you were right, I think. Anne Lamont. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:33:22] Gretchen: I think, um, yeah, shitty first draft, right? That she kind of, like, coined that? Yes. And Lamont. Okay. So going back, having now knowing Anne Lamont and knowing about the concept of shitty first draft, I would love to be able to go back to my younger self. Just get it down, girl. Don't worry about it. There's so many good nuggets in there. And also the way of just capturing, like, so much of what I write about in the. For Shame and Other Fun Feelings there. It's all, like, tethered to my childhood, my life as a teenager, like, all of these things. They would have been even richer pieces if I could have. I mean, it’s not to say they would be better, but I do think if I had had all of that down, it would have been really, I mean, just fun to go back to think, informing. I would think.
[00:34:23] Elizabeth: I mean, in your speaking, everything that you've learned for yourself is so applicable. Sorry to keep bringing it back to the organization, but what we do is give girls permission, to get it on the page. You can't edit it and make it better until it's on the first page on the page. And it's really that first draft. That is what usually comes out in class. And I'm sure you see this, like, my first drafts when I was in high school, I don't have them, either. I wish I could find them, but they were not great. And I think I've noticed that the level of writing among girls over a couple weeks, their first drafts are amazing. Do you notice, like, it's just a first draft, but it's so good?
[00:35:06] Gretchen: I mean, and a lot of the times, like, people don't necessarily go back and revise in our class. In my classes, at least. I mean, I encourage them to, but there's not a necessary. I mean, I think it's you, honestly, it's like working the muscle. Like, for example, this piece, I did work with an editor on it, with Brevity on some pieces. But I'd met the editor, Andrea Firth. I had met Andrea Firth, who's with brevity, a couple weeks before I wrote this piece, and I was telling her about poetic playlists, and she said, oh, you should definitely write a piece for Brevity. So that was really my first draft. Like, I got it out, and this is what came down. For the most part, it was edited, but for the most part, that first draft is what just kind of came out of me, and I hit submit, and that's because I have worked this muscle so much that it's not to say, I mean, I am constantly revising, constantly editing, but a lot of times, you'll write something and it comes out, and that's how it's going to be, and that's great.
[00:36:21] Elizabeth: Oh, my God. When it comes out like that, and I feel like the secret recipe for having it come out like that, as we're saying, the first time, is the permission to write whatever and to not be worried like you were writing about in the piece. Like, you know, when you're listening to music, the words don't feel as precious, and so you can just let them come out. It's really everything that I've discovered is it's us just getting out of the way. If we're thinking about it and, like, trying to grind away, like, with a math problem. Oh, my lord. But if we stop thinking about it, listen to music, do something, just remember, it doesn't matter. No one else is going to read it, then it's awesome. And it speaks to. I mean, you and I feel very strongly about the wisdom and power of teenage girls. Teenage girls are amazing. They're so wise, so insightful, so deep. They, you know, are really questioning, existential questions about who they are and why they're here. And it comes out in their writing. They don't need... We don't have to teach them to write. We just make it safe for them to write and to talk about it because they’ve got it. And, boy, I wish we had that.
[00:37:35] Gretchen: I know. Talk about the time machine. Go back and give that to myself. Yeah.
[00:37:40] Elizabeth: God, it really is. And it's so simple, too. Like, it's not a surprise that I think a woman, Pat Schneider, was the one that came up with this method because it's very kind and nurturing, and so much of school is the opposite of that. And it's hard to maintain a sense of who you are when you're constantly being criticized. Absolutely. But that brings me to the next question. When. So, whether somebody has written with us before—or is just hearing this podcast for the first time and is like, what the heck is the Intuitive Writing Project?—what advice would you give to someone is struggling with anything from writer's block to just not even being able to get started? I feel like your piece that you just wrote is kind of one of your ways of giving advice. Listen to great music. But what advice, just off the cuff, would you give to someone who's struggling with their writing?
[00:38:40] Gretchen: There are two things I think that are, like, super important. One is protect and make sacred your writing time. So whether it is in class with us or outside of class, whatever that might look like for me, I especially as, like, the school year ramps up and I have more of my, like, job and teaching responsibilities, I have to, like, create time in my week that is precious, that is sacred. That is the time for writing.
I have to just protect that. That's step one, protect your time. Step two is let yourself just fill that time with whatever it might be. So it might be that you are just like, free writing, right?
If you're stuck, I say, like, I use music for sure. I also use photographs. I use nature. I like, just try to use all the things that, all of the little stimuli that's floating around in our world use that as inspiration. So really finding ways that you can listen to what's being, like, stirred inside you to write.
I was just mentioning, I just came from a writing group, and I'm deep in a revision of first chapter of a book, which is kind of like the most important part because you got to hook them and you got to stay with them. And I've been really, I've had a couple of different pieces of feedback from people in the industry, and so I have a specific charge that I have to do, a specific energy that I have to bring to that first chapter. And so for me, and I feel myself getting stuck in that because, you know, revision is like, probably one of the harder pieces.
What I'll do is I'll try, like, alternate beginnings. So I'll just say, okay, I'm going to look at it this way. I'm going to write 50 words going in this direction. Then I'm going to do try to write 50 words going in a totally different direction. So shifting perspectives is one thing that I'll do, but, yeah, I think space. Keep your writing time sacred. Show up. Just show up and make it sacred and then just generate whatever it is you're going to generate... Don't be precious about it. Be precious about the time, but don't be precious about what you're generating.
[00:41:11] Elizabeth: Oh, that whole thing you just said is like, I want to quote, but it's going to be a long quote. That whole thing is the most amazing quote on writing advice ever. And what I love about, we've talked about this before, too, that it's not just that you're an amazing teacher, which you are, but you are amazing example of a writer who is actively writing and producing their writing in the world. Because girls need to see, like, what does that look like? And it's one thing to go to class, but what does that look like? When I get older, being a writer in the world. Not that, I mean, you can become a doctor and have great writing skills or an engineer and have great writing skills, but some of our writers are going to be writers, and you're modeling for them what that can look like, how joyful and delicious it is when you get to write.
Okay, so going back to your piece one last time, the very first paragraph, you wrote about your 13-year-old self. Which brings me to my favorite question. Um, you and I are much further away from our 13-year-old self than some of our students. But it still feels like it was just yesterday. What would you say to your 13-year-old self if she appeared just out of the blue? Not necessarily about writing. You gave us some what you wish you'd known earlier, but more just like kind of life knowledge, if you could impart to her. And maybe it's not advice. Maybe it's just like, you're doing great. What would you say to your 13-year-old self?
[00:42:54] Gretchen: It's gonna be an amazing ride. Just get ready.
I would just cue myself up. Like, you are not gonna believe the ride that you're about to go on. Yeah. I would just, like, affirm, like, it's cool, girl. We got this. Because I do feel like I've just been really fortunate to kind of have the confidence in myself to just get out there and do the thing that feels like it's what I need to be doing. I moved around a lot when I, after college, and I was a big adventurer. And I think so much of that living life, so much of living life has helped inform my writing, as well.
And it's a real, like, I get giddy when I write about these experiences, like, being able to, because it is, again, I'm using that phrase, that time machine quality. But there's something about being able to go back and write about a specific time in your life. When you sit down and you start writing about it, you are that self once again.
So it's. It's like such an exhilarating process. So I would just tell her, girl, we got this. Just you do.
[00:44:15] Elizabeth: That's awesome. The last thing I want to do is just make you more known to everyone because, well, someday you're going to be super famous with no help from me. But as you're leading up to that, I want people to know about you and go to your website, which is very simple. It's gretchencion.com which we will include the link in the show notes. And I highly recommend that everyone watch your first short film, “Full Crow,” the way that it's described on the website, which is hilarious because I've seen it and it's so good. “Full crow explores the delicate reciprocal relationship that exists between humans and crows, ultimately investigating the question, how far is too far?”
[00:45:07] Gretchen: Oh yeah. Enjoy that.
[00:45:08] Elizabeth: That one was, by the way, thatwas created during the pandemic, so there's a lot there. And I will say I don't for you film fans out there, if you have watched any Christopher guest, I use the Christopher guest framework where there is not a script but there's points that are. So that is, there's a lot of non-scripted, but it's organized around a general outline and then there's freestyle. So yeah.
[00:45:44] Elizabeth: Would you call it, would it be classified as a mockumentary?
[00:45:48] Gretchen: Because it's very hundred percent a mockumentary.
[00:45:53] Elizabeth: It's very profound, actually. I am a big lover of crows and so I love this movie. Everyone should go watch it immediately. It might crash your website.
Also, the last thing I wanted to ask was about your book, Shame and Other Fun Feelings. I am so excited to read it. I feel like it's going to become my new favorite book. When is it coming out? When can we find it?
[00:46:19] Gretchen: That is a great question. So before I finished writing for shame and other fun feelings, I wrapped this novel that I'm working on called Cuddlers. So currently I am looking for the right agent to shop Cuddlers around to publishing houses. So for shame and other fun feelings. While it is the most recent work, there's another one. That's another one of my, you know, it feels like my, my first baby. I got to get that one out in the world first. So look for Cuddlers and then For Shame and Other Fun Feelings. I probably will put some of the essays from For Shame and Other Fun Feelings out on submission to other literary magazines during that time. That is one thing when it comes to writing, you have to be persistent and you have to be patient.
[00:47:16] Elizabeth: That's also great, getting your work in the world.
[00:47:18] Gretchen: Yeah.
[00:47:19] Elizabeth: And that's what I mean, too, about you being a role model and example is that we know as writers, it's so talking about shame. It's so easily, we're so easily humiliated and shamed by rejection every time one submits for work. But you can't give up. I love how you say patience and persistence and just keep going. And so you're exemplifying that. And so you're such an inspiring role model. Yeah.
[00:47:46] Gretchen: Thank you. I was going to say also really give yourself, like, let yourself feel the joy and the honor that comes with a positive rejection. If you're giving rejection with notes, that's amazing. I just got it. I got a rejection from The New Yorker last week, but it had, they had some nice comments on there about my work. So you know, it's nuanced. It's not all like complete rejection or not. It's nuanced thing. So just be gentle with yourself as a writer.
[00:48:25] Elizabeth: Oh, best advice of all. So you're hearing her here first. A year from now, year and a half from now, Gretchen may be blowing up the airwaves. She may be on Oprah's favorite things list, but you heard her here first.
I'm so happy and grateful that you could talk with us today. You're so wise and inspiring and as always, hilarious. Thank you, Gretchen.
[00:48:54] Gretchen: Thank you. Thank you so much. Elizabeth.
