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A JCPL librarian interviews published writers about their favorite writing prompts—exercises that can help inspire, focus, and improve your creative writing. Whether you’re a beginner or a pro, a novelist, essayist, or poet, you’ll find ideas and advice to motivate you to keep writing. A partnership with the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning.
Prompt to Page Ep 41: Amelia Zachry
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Carrie: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Prompt a Page podcast, a partnership between the Jessamine County Public Library and the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning. I'm your host, librarian and poet, Carrie Green. Each episode, we interview a published writer who shares their favorite writing prompt. Our guest today is Amelia Zachry.
Amelia is the author of Enough: A Memoir of Mistakes, Mania, and Motherhood. She began writing her debut memoir after finding her voice, shedding silence and fear. Enough reveals secrets of sexual assault and subsequently a bipolar disorder diagnosis. She is an advocate for mental health and sexual assault awareness, supporting causes to dismantle rape culture and normalize mental health.
When she's not writing, she can be found sculpting Raku-yaki [00:01:00] pottery, or hiking with her husband and two magnificent daughters. Amelia currently resides in Nagoya, Japan. Welcome, Amelia, and thanks for joining us.
Amelia: Thank you for having me. Konnichiwa from Japan.
Carrie: Yes, I think you are our first international guest, so we appreciate you joining us all the way from Japan.
Amelia: Well, international guest with my heart in Kentucky.
Carrie: Yes, yes, so you have, you did live for a while in Lexington, but you've lived all over. So you, you're, you're from Malaysia originally, right?
Amelia: Yes.
Carrie: And then you've also lived, I think, in Canada and Australia?
Amelia: Yes, I lived in Japan before and then in Canada and then, I came to America.
Carrie: Okay, so I'm just curious, has living in so many countries, has that impacted your writing in any way?
Amelia: I think it's been a [00:02:00] very eye opening experience every time I went to a new place to see the culture and the people and the way we interact with the world and to find our similarities and then to find our differences and how we're all just really doing the best we can.
And I think that's helped build my confidence when I'm writing, knowing that there is a universal reader, per se, to know that everyone experienced life in the similar manners that we do, and so our experiences can resonate, a lot of times resonate with a lot of people.
Carrie: Your bio mentions that you began writing your memoir after finding your voice.
I'm just curious how you found that voice? Was it through writing or was it through some other means?
Amelia: I think when I say I found my voice it's really a realization of my sense of self [00:03:00] and where I was and what I've been through and where where I have arrived and where I was going to and to know that I had a say in what was going on in my life and I had something to say to the world.
I realized that I wanted to share with the world this experience that I've been through and to know that if I could touch one other person's life, then I would have done something with, then it would have not been for naught.
Carrie: Mm hmm. Absolutely. So you, you were writing about pretty traumatic experiences.
What advice would you give to other writers who might want to write about traumas that they have faced?
Amelia: I think trauma is really a universal concept, right? Most of us, most of us I say if not all of us have had some kind of trauma in our past, some kind of pain, some kind of suffering that we've been through.
And [00:04:00] the idea of sharing it to the collective is an idea of being in a space where we can then collaborate with another person, even if you can't see them, even if they're reading, even they're just reading your words, they're feeling them and they're in, they can then be prompted to heal, to walk in healing and to be able to shed the fear and shame that comes with trauma, the guilt that comes to trauma and the pain that comes to trauma to be able to then stand up and walk the journey of healing instead of being suppressed by this pain and being weighed down in the sense by all the pain and suffering.
And so to people who are writing about trauma, I think often I hear through our classes we've had at the Carnegie Center, I've had a few classes there. And a lot of the, fear comes from, what if no one wants to read this? What if no one cares about [00:05:00] this? What if I share so much that, I share so much that people know this about me now.
What will, how will that change things for me? And I think that in my experience, people knowing about my, my trauma has been, been a situation where I've been vulnerable. And I've allowed myself to be vulnerable openly, and that invited people to be vulnerable in their own experiences. And so that is the power of the word from page to the reader, that we can transform that sense of healing to others through our words.
And. When you say no, no one's going to care, a lot of people say no one's going to care about trauma. Trauma is so unique to me. Yet, you'll be so surprised. I was so surprised in my experience after sharing my trauma. I thought that my experience was unique to me. But I had so many people come up to me in conferences, in book festivals, in events that I've been to, readings and stuff that where people came up to me to share [00:06:00] that they experienced the same experiences that I had and they resonated with that.
So you never know what it is that the reader takes away with them, but all you can do is to share your truth. And that's what was the main idea behind my class at the Carnegie Center, Owning Truths Through Memoir, is to be able to own your truths and stand in your truth no matter who the recipient of that truth is going to be.
Carrie: Yeah, that must give you a very powerful purpose in sharing your work with people.
Amelia: It has. So I've done a lot of work outside of writing while writing paved the way for me to open up. I guess I opened up Pandora's box when I, when I decided to publish my book with all my truth and, um, scariest things that have happened in my life.
And I was so afraid, but I published my book, hoping that one person would read in one person would get something from it. Right. But what came from it was the pathway to being a speaker. At several events where, mental health [00:07:00] events where I went and spoke about my truth and spoke about my, the same things that I've spoken about in the books in the context of, real life and how that applies to our life and how it can apply to everybody else's life and how I found a purpose to then, I knew that my voice had a purpose.
That was bigger than myself and I was ready to take on that challenge and join that fight and normalize mental health for everyone. And so I think that sense of purpose came from originally writing and being brave enough to say that this was something I had to say and I was going to say it. And then it kind of channeled into things, grew into things where I was able to touch more and more and more people.
Through different ways that I didn't expect in the beginning.
Carrie: Yeah, yeah, that's great. And thank you, thank you so much for sharing your story. So what role do prompts, writing prompts, play in your writing process? Did you use them as you were writing your book?
Amelia: So honestly, prompts are [00:08:00] not my go to when I write.
But I do, I do in times of need turn to prompts, and I think I use different kinds of prompts to write, like, and in different stages of the writing, the writing exercise, I find that different types of prompts help me. So my main go to is music. I read this, quote the other day and I find it very, applicable to my practice, where art is the passing of feelings from one human heart to another.
Leo Tolstoy said this. And so to know that my art is going to touch somebody else's heart. I feel like my writing has a lot to do with emotions, a visceral experience for the reader to be able to feel and see and touch and taste and smell all the things that I'm experiencing in any given moment in time in any scene that I'm writing.
And so. I need to get into an emotional space. Whatever it is, like, I don't need to be sad to write something sad, [00:09:00] or I'm not saying like sing a happy song before you write something happy, but I feel like I listen to music that evokes emotions, stirring, that gets me in the headspace where I'm able to be emotional and channel that emotion into my writing in order to bring those emotions onto the page.
So I use a lot of music. I listen to a lot of Celtic music, which I love. Julie Fowlis is my favorite and I listen to a lot of Celtic music from her because, well, one, I don't know the words. So it doesn't distract me, but it's full of these emotions that it stirs up emotions for me and I feel things and I get this stir and then I feel like I can write.
I can now, I can now pour that out onto the page. But so that's, that's when I'm usually writing. That's how I get started writing. But there are a lot of times where I'm sure a lot of people experience writer's block. Where I'm sitting down and I know I have to write and I [00:10:00] kind of have an idea of what I want to write about but I can't get to it or it's the first line is not coming to me and it's not coming.
So I find using a writing prompt allows me to purge the noise in order to organize my thoughts and allow space for productive, creative ideas to flow instead of, being stuck in a space where I didn't know where to start. Right. So I, I do use prompts in those, situations to get me going.
And I feel like when writing those prompts there are less, I think people, a lot of writers focus on writing meaningful text, right? We want to write the meaningful text and every time we sit down we think that something profound is going to come out onto the page as we sit down and write the words. But that's not the case all the time.
When you're writing every day and you're writing, you're writing a long book, it takes a lot to generate those ideas into profound experiences on the page, but I feel like writing prompts in these situations where you're stuck allows for a free flow of ideas, which are, these are [00:11:00] throwaway write ups, right?
Things that you're not going to keep. Most times you don't keep it. Sometimes, sometimes I do go back and see like, Oh, that was a good idea. I can use, but a lot of times it's just to purge. It's a less. Less attachments to the writing. When it's just a prompt and you know it's just an exercise to get you warmed up, to get you going, you feel like it's okay to purge whatever thoughts that come to your mind and be able to write whatever it is that comes to your mind and then you can throw it out.
I feel like that allows for free flow of ideas. And another time I use prompts sometimes is when I'm practicing a craft. If I want to use, I want to experiment with a new craft, I try and use that form of craft and then free write into something that, I use the prompt to free write that craft idea to kind of own my skills.
And that, that happens. Like, for example, in my next book, I'm experimenting with the second person form. You, the you form, right, to allow the readers to step into my skin and feel the [00:12:00] experiences that I'm experiencing on the page. And so, for several weeks before I actually sat down to write my chapter, I was writing in the you form.
I would just look out the window and see what was happening outside the window, and I would write. I would write, oh, you walked out of your house, and you walked into your car, and you did this, and you did that, and you did whatever. And so I practice my, my art form that way, with a prompt. So, yeah, prompts can be very interesting to use.
I'm, I'm not a very disciplined writer. I don't time my, my writing. I wouldn't say I'm not disciplined, I guess I am, I am disciplined, but I don't time my writing. I know a lot of people do free writing, you write for 10 minutes, whatever comes up for 10 minutes. I usually just keep going till you stop, till you really have, the well has run dry and you are done, and then you stop.
So sometimes that's 3 minutes, sometimes that's 45 minutes. And so I feel like that's, [00:13:00] that's the way I process my writing exercise.
Carrie: Yeah, I mean I'm glad you mentioned that because everyone is different. Sometimes it helps people to have that timer because then they know there's an end point.
Amelia: Yes.
Carrie: But that doesn't necessarily work for everyone.
Amelia: Yeah.
Carrie: So do you have some specific prompts that you wanted to share with us?
Amelia: Yeah. So what, so like I talked about the five senses, right? Getting into the five senses and being able to transfer that onto the page is not something that's easy because to recall memories, so I'm a memoirist. So when I write, I write from memory and I go back into that space and time where I can see what's happening.
I can feel what's happening. I can feel the air on my skin or the sweat on my neck, or I can smell what's in the air. I can taste, I can share all these, all these things and I, I like this prompt where, it says write about a [00:14:00] moment your heart felt weightless. So it's this idea of nothingness, right?
How do you feel nothingness? And how do I then share with you my five senses when the thought of us writing about something is about something that is vacant. And so I love going into that space and generating those feelings from the idea of weightlessness. So that's my favorite prompt, right about the moment your heart felt weightless.
Another one is to stir up my emotions. To feel, to feel deep things and feel deep things strongly. I found this one where, you write about having been utterly abandoned. This feeling of loss and grief and pain and suffering and to write. And that comes from so many different places, right? It gives me deep feelings of grief.
It sometimes revisits trauma and revisits pain in the way that I need to be able to [00:15:00] project those feelings onto my page. And it awakens the senses to meet me where I am at that moment in time. And this can change every time I come back to it. This is a prompt that I use again and again and again and again, because every time you are in a different space in life, your interpretation of that situation, or the meaning you derive from those situations, or the feelings, emotions, or thoughts, or perceptions that come out from your experience, changes with your experience in life.
And so, even though this sounds like you're, you might be writing about the same experience. You can be writing about the same experience. I didn't have to, thankfully and not thankfully for me, I have a lot of painful experience to draw from, feeling utterly abandoned, but as a writer, I'm able to go back and look through different lenses every time I experience something new in my life.
And so that's a good one to go back to, to bring out those deep feelings. And I also write, I wrote a memoir and I'm [00:16:00] writing another one, but I also write a lot of op eds and, articles for magazines and such about mental health. And I think even in those, they're all very memoir esque in form.
And I find that writing those are a little different than writing a book, that I have the whole story that I've outlined and I know where I'm going with it, but whenever I'm writing these things, I usually point at topics of a matter of discussion that I'm addressing.
And so to get into that. I still want to retain my strength as a memoirist, allowing the reader to step into my skin and experience the experience in order to learn the lessons that I'm trying to project onto the pages. And so, from that, I usually say, How do I feel about this? This thing that I'm about to talk about.
How do I feel about it? I know what I think about it. That's why I want to write this article. I feel like I have something to say. I have something to teach. I have something to share. And that people are going to get something [00:17:00] from this. But how do I really feel about this? And then draw out my feelings about the thing that I can be able to then use those in the, in the writing to make it an emotional piece, even though it's a factual piece.
Carrie: Right.
Amelia: Yeah. So those are my three, I think, that I use, I go to every now and again.
Carrie: Yeah, those are great. And it's interesting, that last one, well, really all of them are kind of touch on emotion in some way.
Amelia: I am a very emotional writer. I think if you read anything that I've written, it's, it's very, very visceral.
It's a very visceral experience. I feel like in my, maybe my, my mode of communication through the pages is emotion.
And so I center my writing a lot around sharing those emotions, but also I'm writing about emotional things. And I'm also checking my emotions and, being able to learn more about the emotions.
And that's, [00:18:00] that's the part of memoir that's amazing. The part of memoir that I love, which is it's a very healing experience, going back through your experiences and using emotion to feel and process those emotions on the pages with a reader, which makes you, although it's a very solitary exercise, writing, it becomes a very communal experience.
Carrie: Yeah, I, I love that way of thinking about it. And I think that is true even for people who are not writing memoir, you know, a lot of writers begin writing because they want to communicate in some way with other people. And I think reading is a way of communicating too, as you kind of touched on there. Do you have any final writing tips that you'd like to give our listeners?
Amelia: The biggest one I could give any writer out there is that know that you are a writer. If you are writing, you are a writer. I think that that was something that I took a very long time to come to terms [00:19:00] with, that I was a writer. I wrote a book, but still didn't feel like a writer. I wrote articles, still didn't feel like a writer.
I talked to people about being a writer, didn't feel like a writer. I think as the sooner you accept the fact that you are a writer, your writing comes freer, it becomes liberated. And you're freer, you give your permission to write as a writer. And I think also the, the one thing that we all have to do as writers is to write.
It doesn't matter if you need to use prompts, if you need to just go from, jump from different sections of what you're writing about. I think people get stuck in the idea of like starting somewhere and then growing that story and being able to follow that train of thought to the end. I think sometimes our memories or our experiences come in different pockets of time.
And whenever you feel like it comes to you, again, emotions, you feel the emotions to write some about something you feel strongly about it, go ahead and [00:20:00] put that on the paper, just keep on writing whatever it is, whatever you're doing, wherever you are, just keep on writing.
Carrie: And that really, that idea of, of not sticking to a linear timeline with your writing, that's something that actually our last guest talked about, Jessica Handler.
So you are in conversation with Jessica as well. So, thank you so much for sharing your wonderful prompts and your own experience with writing. We really appreciate you being with us.
Amelia: Thank you so much, and I'm so glad that this, this is an amazing, program, and I hope that people have gotten something from my little sharing today and write with emotions.
Carrie: Absolutely.
Thank you for listening to Prompt to Page. To learn more about the Jessamine County Public Library, visit jesspublib. org. Find the Carnegie Center for [00:21:00] Literacy and Learning at carnegiecenterlex. org. Our music is by Archipelago, an all instrumental musical collaboration between three Lexington based university professors.
Find out more about Archipelago, Songs from Quarantine Volumes 1 and 2 at the links on our podcast website.