“Just give it a try and see what happens.”
– Gary Gilbert, screenwriter and InsideOUT Writers teacher, to incarcerated youth to encourage them to write about their life situation
Run by Hollywood screenwriters, the InsideOUT program teaches formerly and presently incarcerated youth how to write as a way to deal with their life situation. A quiet 15-year-old girl whose parents and brother had died due to violence in her world, told teacher Gary Gilbert, “I’m not a writer” and said she didn’t know where to begin. He encouraged her to give it a try to see what happens, and she wrote, “There’s a bullet where my heart used to be,” a first line that helped her write about her trauma.
Not all of his students are poets like she is, but it’s not about that. The idea is to let people know it’s safe to look inside and see what they find. As Gilbert says, “It’s about them seeing who they are, how they got there, and, if we do our job, about who they can become.”
What do you resist writing about? What might happen if you gave it a try?
No comments:
Post a Comment