The Power of Writing Your Own Story
By Amanda Karch
When I was younger, I loved writing fantasy stories—building worlds full of magic and make-believe, all contained within a single notebook. It was a solace to me, to be able to escape reality for a few hours at a time and enter a new world that I was in charge of creating. The characters, the thoughts, the laws, the environment: I held the power to make all of the decisions.
Looking back now, as the author of Poetic Potential: Sparking Change & Empowerment Through Poetry, I realize I have always had that power within me, but with relevance to the real world as well. MY world. It took only a self-published poetry book, a realization, and a year of research, interviews, and personal discovery to get there.
A Self-Published Poetry Book
When the coronavirus pandemic hit in 2020, I found myself with more free time than I had ever had before. Poetry had been a love of mine for years, but life always got in the way of pursuing it more. I decided I was going to take on the project I had always wanted to complete: publishing a book.
Five months of writing and commitment was what it took.
Balancing a full-time internship with nighttime writing sessions, teaching myself how to format the interior of a book, scheduling out my time to the hour in order to fit in my classes and cross country practices along with writing—it was a full-time job figuring out how to get this all done at once. But, in October 2020, I held in my hands a copy of Her Favorite Color Was Sunshine Yellow, my debut poetry collection. And I felt complete.
A Realization
While publishing HFCWSY and simultaneously taking a poetry class for my undergraduate degree at Babson College, I had the big “AHA” moment everyone dreams of.
Poetry was what helped me find my voice.
While I was writing more and more poetry, my confidence grew. I took on leadership roles in class projects, I read my poems in front of twenty other students without my voice wavering, and I fought often for opportunities to better myself and improve my situation.
As I spoke to other poet and writer friends, I realized I was not alone in this journey. Poetry was a source of healing, of empowerment, of advocacy that I had yet to discover. All of a sudden, I was seeing the signs everywhere, beginning with why I started writing in the first place all those years ago.
A Year Of Research, Interviews, And Personal Discovery
That was the inspiration behind Poetic Potential. It sparked a year of (once again) balancing academics, sports, and a social life with a new project: a nonfiction book. Every Friday, you could find me in the campus Starbucks for hours at a time, laser-focused on my computer screen with fifteen research tabs and Word documents open at once.
I pored over scientific articles about how writing affects parts of the brain and our emotions. I searched through online forums to see anecdotal stories of how poetry affected people. I sent email after email to people in the nonprofit, Instapoetry, and spoken word communities. Phone and Zoom interviews were conducted, stories written up and woven together. But the most important takeaway was my own personal discovery.
After digging through situations in my own life, recounting how writing had helped me in different ways, I realized I had grown so much as a person. Much of it stemmed from my desire to put words onto a page to heal, to understand myself, to work through emotions, and to grow.
Defining Empowered And Poised
To me, being empowered and poised means being confident in your own story. I used to write fiction because I did not want to live parts of my story and I preferred to make up my own. But now I write poetry and nonfiction because I am owning my narrative. I have the power to tell my own story and I know my story matters. My voice has power and my words have power. Once I realized I had the confidence to use those tools, I started writing and speaking fiercely, never looking back.
If you’d like to connect with Amanda, you can find her at www.akkwriting.com or on Instagram at @akkwriting.
