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. We are dedicated to giving young writers a safe, encouraging, non-critical, unconditionally supportive space to write their story, speak their truth, and assert their voice, both as writers and as leaders.
For a bit of background, my name is Elizabeth and I created this program eleven years ago because it's what I wanted and needed when I was young, a supportive place to be truly seen and heard. That's why we use the Amherst Writing method, a radically nurturing and empowering writing methodology I wish everyone learned in grade school. You can read more about the Amherst 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 of our classes are number one, everyone is a writer with important stories to tell. Number two, everyone has their own unique voice, a voice that needs to be heard. And number three, our voice will grow stronger and clearer the more it is supported and positively affirmed.
In our classes. Everyone writes together, everyone shares their writing, and then everyone takes turns giving each other grounded, positive feedback. By that I mean we repeat back and lift up the words, lines, phrases or concepts that really resonated for us. Since we can't violate the sanctity of our classes by recording what goes on there, these one-on-one-or-three people conversations are designed to provide a little glimpse, a microcosm of what happens in the classroom. You can also read about our and read our students words as they were published on our blog, The Intuitive Voice, with the link below. If you enjoy listening to one young reader read their words and talk about it, imagine how powerful it is when six young writers are reading their words and giving each other positive, affirming feedback. It's pretty life-changing and there is a lot more I could say about it, but I'll let these young writers speak for themselves.
On behalf of all the writers at the Intuitive Writing project, I want to thank you for supporting their voices, for being present and really listening to the wisdom, insight, and brilliance of young people.
Today, I am so honored and excited to be talking with our very own brilliant Sarah Hawkins about her writing and her creative writing process. Sarah, thank you so much for being here today. I wanted to start by having you tell us your age, your pronouns, and when you first started writing with The Intuitive Writing Project.
[00:03:09] Sarah: I'm super excited to be here. I am 18 years old. I go by she/her pronouns, and I have been writing with The Intuitive Writing project for about six years, I believe. Six or seven years.
[00:03:25] Elizabeth: That is amazing. I want to just mention—because I think it's noteworthy— that you started in the community where we have our in-person classes and then your family moved and so you have continued despite distance online and our Zoom classes, which is so awesome.
So I was going to ask next if you could give us a little anecdote about what you remember. I know it's been a while, but what you remember from your first year or two, when you were just a wee thing in middle school, an anecdote about writing?
[00:04:02] Sarah: Yeah. I don't know if there's an exact moment, but I do remember my middle school group, maybe my 7th grade group, and I just remember always being so excited to go to the class because it was a great group of girls who I really enjoyed writing and sharing with. And it was super comfortable because they weren't people I saw in my everyday life, but they were all just super open and sweet. I was the youngest, but they were always open to me, which was amazing.
[00:04:41] Elizabeth: Oh, that is so lovely. I think that does make a difference when it's not people you go to school with, so it feels safer and it's just like a fresh energy, a fresh perspective.
[00:04:54] Sarah: Completely. Yeah.
[00:04:55] Elizabeth: I love that you're a younger person in your family, so you're used to being the younger one, I guess.
[00:05:02] Sarah: Yes.
[00:05:03] Elizabeth: But you were a great sport about it. I love that you were willing to write with older girls, slightly older. So… I always say this with all of our visiting writers, but it's very hard to pick one piece to talk about, just one piece, because really all of your writing together is a much more eloquent… it captures who you are more perfectly. But we're just going to pull one piece to read today and it's called Ephemeral. And if you would, read your poem to us today.
[00:05:37] Sarah: Yes.
The soft breeze rattled the trees. As the grass swayed, the water rippled and distorted my reflection.
As I stared back at myself, the world was quiet. Nothing existed outside of this moment. A perfect moment of serenity away from everything.
I reached out toward the water, almost to capture it. But as my finger touched, there was nothing left to grab.
[00:06:08] Elizabeth: So beautiful.
And I want to say that you are one of our poets who is so skilled—you have a skill I do not have—which is to tell a powerful story succinctly. You always use the perfect amount of words and I think it's actually really hard to do. Several lines that jumped out at me that are just so impactful: “the water rippled and distorted my reflection as I stared back at myself.” I love that idea. And I should mention to listeners that I think one of the prompts for this, actually, the prompt for this was to write a self-portrait, a poetic, verbal self-portrait. And we had talked about how weird it is that we live in this culture where we can always see ourselves. There's mirrors and cameras and photos everywhere. But if you think about it, for most of human history, especially prehistory, there were no mirrors, there were no cameras. That was before people painted portraits. The only way somebody could see themselves was in the reflection of water. But, of course, water ripples and distorts your reflection. So who are you, then? How do you know yourself when that's all you have, is to look through the distortion of water? And then I just ove how the serenity and the peace that the narrator is experiencing, partly because there isn't this reflection, this perfect reflection, staring back at them. They have to go inward more, and it's more about their inner experience versus the outer experience.
And then towards the end, I think the writer captures the ephemeral nature of life and everything, and even identity, that you can't really hold on to it. We were here for a moment, and then we're gone, just like water. “I reached out toward the water almost to capture it. As my finger touched, there was nothing left to grab.” Also, the word capture is interesting because we often say a photograph captures someone, which is kind of creepy. Now that I say that, why do you want to be captured? We can't actually capture the spirit or the essence of someone or of life. Who we are is so complex, it can't be captured in an image or even physically in any way. So I feel like this whole piece is existentially powerful, and that leads me to ask you about your creative process.
When you started this piece… a lot of times one starts writing, or before one even starts writing, one doesn't know what to write about or just feels stuck. So first I want to talk specifically about your experience writing this piece, and then I want to talk about just writing in general, because you've been doing this for almost seven years. If not seven years. Uou have a lot of experience. You definitely have your 10,000 hours by now. (10,000 hours of anything is what makes you an expert.) So you are an expert at writing at this point. So what was your creative process with this piece?
[00:09:34] Sarah: With this piece, I think I was kind of having trouble getting started. So I was looking at the different prompts, and I think I kind of combined a few prompts almost. I believe there was a prompt about self-portrait. There was also a prompt about perfection, I believe.
And I also love to listen to music as I write. So I was listening to music, and it's kind of strange, but I listen to sad music a lot of times while I'm writing, and it kind of helps me get in the mood to write, I guess. And I think I just kind of started writing. I was writing about nature because I think it was one of the prompts was about nature, self-portrait. That was combined, I believe. So I started to write about nature, and then I started to kind of combine it with the perfection prompt.
[00:10:39] Elizabeth: That's right. I'm glad you pointed that out. I always throw out so many prompts, I can't remember them. But, yes, that was part of it. What is perfection? I mean, it's a ridiculous concept. I don't think there is such a thing. Either everything's perfect or nothing's perfect. So it's sort of an abstract concept, and you can't ever quite capture it. You can't quite get to whatever that level is. It's impossible. If you look at nature. Nature is a perfect example of how the river may look beautiful, but it's constantly moving. Whatever was perfect in the moment, it's gone, and it's gone on to the next moment. So that's perfect metaphor. And I love that you say you listen to sad music. I do, as well. In fact, I feel like when we used to meet in person and we'd have somebody, like, DJ for the class, the universal preference was sad music. I don't know what it is about sad music. I think it puts you into more introspective kind of space. Like, you kind of go in more. Also, you can't have words because then you start writing the words from the song. Do you feel like your sad music is a little slower? Do you think that's part of it?
[00:11:58] Sarah: Yeah, I think that's definitely part of it. Sad music, I think, is slower, and I agree. It kind of puts you into an introspective mode. I think it also, when I'm listening to sad music, I think I'm thinking more, and when I'm listening to very rap or pop music or something like that, I'm singing along to it, and it's kind of, like, making me more energetic, almost. But when I'm listening to sad music, it's kind of calming me, and it's putting me into a mode where I'm able to write.
[00:12:42] Elizabeth: That's so insightful and that you're right. Most popular music, and I think about this from a sociological standpoint, most pop music that's on the radio is very energizing. And if you think about, we live in a culture where we're all expected to go-go-go. So it's interesting that music is often like—because music is medicine, music, like all the arts, affects us deeply—so when most of the time we do need go-go-go music, whereas doing something creative, like writing or painting, you need to slow down. And I love that. I actually just had this thought that it would be cool if you had a Spotify playlist that you like to listen to, if we could include it in the show notes, because it could be inspiring for people to also listen to whatever you listen to. Because I do think the whole culture supports us in being active, doing-doing-doing, but it's harder to find support in the culture to support us in being quiet, reflective, introspective. Which actually brings up another topic that I really wanted to talk about with you in particular, and that is the issue of writing for mental health and just mental health issues in general, as you and I have talked about. And I'm going to have you talk a little bit about your work, what you do. It's just so amazing and inspiring. As everyone knows, tthere is a mental health crisis for—I mean, honestly, I think everyone in America is having a mental health crisis— but it's especially bad among young people, and particularly teenage girls, and gender-identifying youth. And I think part of it is this pressure to go, go, go, do, do, do, work, work, work. So much homework, so many activities and boxes you're expected to check off and outside of these classes, classes like ours (I know we're not the only people who have creative writing classes), but unless you take a class where you actually are with people who are sitting together to be creative, it's really hard to find time for it. And so I wanted to ask you about how writing has helped you from a mental health perspective. I mean, writing is no substitute, obviously, for therapy and that sort of thing, but it's therapeutic. And I was going to ask, since you've done it for now almost seven years, how has it supported you? How is the writing process helpful?
[00:15:21] Sarah: Yeah, I think it's very helpful. And it is very therapeutic. I think, when I'm having a bad day or something like that, just sitting down and writing out my thoughts, no matter what they are, is so helpful. And, yeah, I just feel like sometimes it can be hard for me to process my feelings or talk to people. I have trouble talking to people about my feelings, so writing them out is just such an amazing way of getting them out somehow. If it's not speaking, it's writing them down. And it's also something that I do tell other people to. I like to be like, if you're having a bad day, go write it out if that feels like something you could do. Because I do think it's such a therapeutic way to express your feelings.
[00:16:31] Elizabeth: Yeah, I totally feel the same way. Even though I'm technically an extrovert, I think feelings are so complicated and intense, it is hard to talk about them. And I often find that I can't even figure out what I'm feeling or why I'm feeling it until I write about it. Yes, there's something about writing. I used to use the metaphor of… it's like the pen is like a straw into your soul. It just draws things up out of your soul that you didn't even know were there.
[00:17:04] Sarah: Totally.
[00:17:05] Elizabeth: Because I think that if somebody asks me how I'm doing, my answer is not going to be very deep. No, but my writing will. Yeah.
[00:17:15] Sarah: I'm so much more honest in my writing than I think.
[00:17:18] Elizabeth: Maybe that's part of it. It's because we're all sort of conditioned to, especially as women, that we feel like we don't want to upset people. We don't want to say the wrong thing. So maybe we sort of unconsciously edit ourselves a little when we talk. But when we write, we can be totally authentic. Especially if you're writing by yourself. Nobody has to read what you wrote. It's just for you.
[00:17:43] Sarah: Exactly. Yeah.
[00:17:45] Elizabeth: I think it is incredibly powerful. Also, I know I've said this before, but there is science that shows that when you name something, when you give something that's like this big, complicated, overwhelming feeling, a word or a phrase, it actually moves in your brain from the back part of your brain, where it's just like raw emotion, to the front part of your brain, your frontal lobe. And the frontal lobe, as we all hear about this all the time, the frontal lobe is our rational brain. It's our most evolved brain. So when you name something, you take an overwhelming thing and you literally wrap your head around it. You make it understandable, and you package it and make it make sense, whereas before it was just overwhelming.
[00:18:30] Sarah: Yes.
[00:18:31] Elizabeth: So that is very powerful. I wanted to just have you talk just a little bit because I think your writing has sort of led you on this path and then I think to the work that you're doing, you bring your writing, and that is the work that you do with young people with YouthLine. Could you just talk briefly about that?
[00:18:52] Sarah: Yes. So I am a peer-to-peer responder for Youthline, which is a crisis help and support line for teens. We support ages up to, like, 24, and people can text or call or chat in, and I'm just there to support them in any ways I can, to them finding their own solution or their own support. We're not really meant to be a long term solution, but we are meant to be a tool for them to find their own support and their own solution and path to the solution, I guess.
[00:19:52] Elizabeth: It’s such a powerful organization. And I'm going to include the link to this in the show notes because I want everyone to know about it and to use it because it's really important and an incredible organization. The fact that you found them and wanted to, it's brave work, to do this. I mean, you're having to hold the pain and panic of other young people. It's pretty intense, and I know they gave you really great training for it, but it takes a special person to do it. I wanted to know about what made you feel that you’d like to do it, when you first heard about it. It's kind of like how firefighters run toward the fire when most people run the other way. It's similar. You're running toward the pain versus running away from it. Most people, if you start talking about emotional problems, they are like, “get away from me,” but you are not afraid. You face and hold other people's emotional pain. What inspired you to apply for the job?
[00:20:59] Sarah: Well, my mom heard about it because it's based in Portland, but they have a branch in Bend. And so she found out about it and thought it was something that I might want to do because she knew that. I do love talking about mental health, and I feel like it's such an important thing to be able to talk about. I think what drew me to Youthline, I think, is just the fact that I felt like mental health was so important to me. And I know how hard it is to talk to people, tou know, sometimes about mental health. But to strangers, it is much easier. And when I started volunteering for them, it's such a great environment. The supervisors and the other volunteers, they're all just amazing people. So it really makes me want to go in every week and sit and talk about all this different stuff and talk to all the different people reaching out to us. I think there's not one reason why I wanted to do it, because it can be hard, but it's so rewarding. Yeah, it's a big subject for me, so I could talk about it for hours, but I find it to be an amazing organization that I love to volunteer with.
[00:22:33] Elizabeth: They are so lucky to have someone like you. You're such a wise old soul, and you're so compassionate and understanding, and those are gifts that you will be able to help people with your whole life. Your whole life will be a gift because of who you are.
I think for the listeners who are interested in writing, it's similar. I love how you talk about how it's offering people tools to find their own answers, which is totally what The Intuitive Writing Project is about. It’s like, I'm not here to tell you what to think. I'm here to give you space so you figure out what you think and what you want to do. I know I say this all the time, but I truly believe everyone is their own expert and their own teacher. And I think, at least for me, I learn from myself through writing. It's amazing how it happens. And that's what I love for you all, is I feel like every time you write, you find some sort of insight. That's what you need. So I was wondering if you could offer, just throw out some suggestions for young people who are even just from having a bad day, being annoyed about something, to having a couple of bad weeks, what kind of things would you recommend that people write about that you have found helpful? What kind of prompts or writing types of writing are helpful for you?
[00:24:01] Sarah: Yeah, I would say nature is a big one. I wrote in kind of a poetic form, but I try not to confine myself to a specific thing. I kind of just let the pen take me and I just kind of follow it. So I would say, yeah, a big one is just not letting one thing confine you.
[00:24:35] Elizabeth: So it sounds like also not having an expectation that it should be a certain way. Just let it come out however.
[00:24:42] Sarah: Yeah, that's a good way to put it, not having expectations. And then I would say I write about mental health a good amount. And I would say also just writing about whatever's on your mind. Just start with whatever the first thing that pops into your mind and go with it, because the chances are a lot will come out from that.
[00:25:12] Elizabeth: Right? So this is the final question, and this is the eternal question for anyone who does anything creative, is what do you do when you've started a project and then you just go blank? Or before you even start, you're blank. What are things that get you unstuck? Because we all get stuck. It's part of being human, I think.
[00:25:34] Sarah: Yes, I would say listening to music is a big one. And then you have told me to do this a lot, and it is really helpful, actually. And it's just like writing out random things that kind of pop into my mind until I get something flowing. The chances are that I'm going to start with one thing and then it will totally go a different direction. That's what usually happens with my writing. But I think just being happy or being proud of yourself for just, like, trying, just because it's not perfect, just because it's not what you wanted it to be in the beginning, doesn't mean it's not good, doesn't mean that you failed. But I think it's just like about kind of letting it go a bit and just writing out how you're feeling and not holding those expectations. To write a specific way or write about a specific thing, or compare yourself to other writers. Don't do that. Just be proud that you tried to write. And I think that will help you continue to write.
[00:26:59] Elizabeth: I love that. I mean, everything that you're describing, funnily enough, for free writing also applies to life. Like, don't compare yourself to others. Don't expect yourself or your writing to be a certain way. You also mentioned that whole perfection thing. I think what I've noticed over the last eleven years of doing this is what trips people up the most is what we learned in school, that writing is also used in academic settings. And unfortunately that often spoils it for people because then they associate writing with writing an essay, which does have to be “perfect.” And I think that's where we get stuck. So anytime I love the idea that you just let go, that there doesn't have to be any kind of structure. It doesn't matter if you can't spell. I still can't spell. I still come up with words that spell check doesn't even recognize because they're so far off. Who cares? You just let it flow. I love that you said, just let it flow out of you without judgment and trust. I think that, I know this comes up a lot in class where you or others will write something and you'll have a judgment about it, as we all do. We always judge ourselves. That's, like, human. And then you read it out loud and everyone is like, “oh, my God, that was amazing.” Because we're so hard on ourselves. So as much as possible, like, not judging it, letting it come out, and knowing that it doesn't even matter if it's good or bad. I mean, that's, I think, your point as well. It doesn't matter what it is. It's being proud of yourself, like you said, for just doing it, getting something out. And the reason I truly believe that it doesn't matter if AI can write an essay, is AI cannot replace for us the emotional experience of writing, regardless of what it is… So last thing, what is your favorite thing to write about?
[00:29:04] Sarah: My favorite thing to write about, I would say, probably looking back at most of my writing, majority of my pieces are probably about mental health. So I would say mental health, which is a huge passion of mine. So it makes sense that that be something that I write a lot about.
[00:29:29] Elizabeth: Yeah, I think that's brilliant. And that's what you do so eloquently and beautifully. You can read all of, well, not all… (We don't publish everything that you all write because some of it is too personal. But occasionally you write something that feels like it could be shared with the world.) So some of your amazing writing is on our blog at intuitivevoice.org, and it's incredible. All of your writing is so beautiful and so moving and you're so talented. Thank you, Sarah, for coming today and just being who you are.
[00:30:00] Sarah: Thank you. I'm glad I got to be here with you today. Bye.
