THE SYNCREATE PODCAST: EMPOWERING CREATIVITY
HOSTED BY MELINDA ROTHOUSE, PHD
WELCOME TO SYNCREATE, WHERE WE EXPLORE THE INTERSECTIONS BETWEEN CREATIVITY,
PSYCHOLOGY,AND SPIRITUALITY. OUR GOAL IS TO DEMYSTIFY THE CREATIVE PROCESS,
AND EXPAND THE BOUNDARIES OF WHAT IT MEANS TO BE CREATIVE.
SUBSCRIBE / FOLLOW US ON SPOTIFY, APPLE PODCASTS, YOUTUBE
OR WHEREVER YOU GET YOUR PODCASTS
HOSTED BY MELINDA ROTHOUSE, PHD
WELCOME TO SYNCREATE, WHERE WE EXPLORE THE INTERSECTIONS BETWEEN CREATIVITY,
PSYCHOLOGY,AND SPIRITUALITY. OUR GOAL IS TO DEMYSTIFY THE CREATIVE PROCESS,
AND EXPAND THE BOUNDARIES OF WHAT IT MEANS TO BE CREATIVE.
SUBSCRIBE / FOLLOW US ON SPOTIFY, APPLE PODCASTS, YOUTUBE
OR WHEREVER YOU GET YOUR PODCASTS
EPISODE 7: THE SYNCREATE STORY
WITH SYNCREATE CO-FOUNDER CHARLOTTE GULLICK
CLICK ON THE EMBEDDED PLAYER BELOW TO LISTEN:
One of our primary areas of focus at Syncreate involves honoring the power of collaboration and community in the creative process. So I’m thrilled to bring you my recent conversation with Charlotte Gullick, my Syncreate Co-Founder. Charlotte is an author, novelist, memoirist, and educator. Her first novel, By Way of Water, was chosen by Jayne Anne Phillips as the Grand Prize winner of the Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Awards Program. Her nonfiction has appeared in a number of prestigious literary journals, including The Rumpus, The Best of Brevity, The Los Angeles Review, and Hippocampus.
Charlotte and Melinda first met in Austin when we were both teaching at Austin Community College. We founded Syncreate several years later, in 2013, to provide creativity coaching, consulting, workshops and retreats, and we co-wrote a book on the creative process called Syncreate: A Guide to Navigating the Creative Process for Individuals, Teams, and Communities, which came out in 2021 and won a Silver Nautilus Award for Creativity and Innovation.
We recently traveled to Ashland, Oregon for the 2023 Creativity Conference at Southern Oregon University, where we presented ideas for our next book on creativity and community. We recorded this podcast episode together in Ashland, and the conversation gave us an opportunity to reflect on our work together helping to empower creativity over the last 10 years.
If you enjoy this episode, you might also like our conversation in Episode 3: Creative Polymathy with Musician, Photographer, and Podcaster Michael Walker.
Charlotte and Melinda first met in Austin when we were both teaching at Austin Community College. We founded Syncreate several years later, in 2013, to provide creativity coaching, consulting, workshops and retreats, and we co-wrote a book on the creative process called Syncreate: A Guide to Navigating the Creative Process for Individuals, Teams, and Communities, which came out in 2021 and won a Silver Nautilus Award for Creativity and Innovation.
We recently traveled to Ashland, Oregon for the 2023 Creativity Conference at Southern Oregon University, where we presented ideas for our next book on creativity and community. We recorded this podcast episode together in Ashland, and the conversation gave us an opportunity to reflect on our work together helping to empower creativity over the last 10 years.
If you enjoy this episode, you might also like our conversation in Episode 3: Creative Polymathy with Musician, Photographer, and Podcaster Michael Walker.
episode video clips
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episode-specific hyperlinks
Charlotte’s Website: www.charlottegullick.org
Charlotte’s Novel: By Way of Water
Syncreate Website
The Syncreate Book
Austin Community College
Creativity Conference at Southern Oregon University
Charlotte’s Novel: By Way of Water
Syncreate Website
The Syncreate Book
Austin Community College
Creativity Conference at Southern Oregon University
episode transcript
Melinda: Welcome to Syncreate, a show where we explore the intersections between creativity, psychology, and spirituality. We view creativity broadly, and one of our primary goals is to demystify the creative process, while expanding the boundaries of what it means to be creative. I'm Melinda Rothouse, and I help individuals and organizations bring their creative dreams and visions to life.
Charlotte Gullick is a very important person in my life. She's an author, novelist, memoirist, and educator. Her first novel, By Way of Water, was chosen by Jane Ann Phillips as the grand prize winner of the Santa Fe Writer's Project Literary Awards program. Her nonfiction has appeared in a number of prestigious literary journals, including The Rumpus, The Best of Brevity, The Los Angeles Review, and Hippocampus. Charlotte and I first met in Austin when we were both teaching at Austin Community College, and we felt an immediate connection.
A few years later, in 2013, we put a name to our collaboration, Syncreate. Our vision was to help foster creativity in others. We refined our ideas with input from our collaborators. Dreux Carpenter and John Best. One of my proudest accomplishments with Charlotte was co authoring a book, which came out in 2021, called Syncreate, A Guide to Navigating the Creative Process for Individuals, Teams, and Communities, which won a Silver Nautilus Award for Creativity and Innovation.
Charlotte left Austin in 2022, but recently, we were together again in Ashland, Oregon, for the 2023 Creativity Conference at Southern Oregon University. At the conference, we presented ideas for our next book on creativity and community. We recorded this episode together in Ashland, and as you'll hear, it gave us an opportunity to reflect on our work together. I started off by asking Charlotte what most stood out to her about our collaboration and our work helping to empower creativity over the last 10 years.
Charlotte: That's a big question. So many things come to my mind. It's great. As I reflect on our time together and creativity, what first comes to mind is how the creative process is for everyone, and that it's actually through community that we find our creative confidence and that we can do our best work in relationship to other people. And what's so joyful to me about that is that it overcomes the myth of the solo artist. And that we don't have to be tortured and we don't have to suffer in order to receive and create our best work.
And you know, to be kind of funny / cynical, like a lot of those people who we think of like the tortured artist in the attic, they probably weren't doing their own laundry. Probably someone was making lunch for them or they weren't eating, you know? And so the idea that we hold up a single person and we don't look at the circle of support that is part of that creation. For me, working with you has helped me see how vitally important it is that we expand thinking and our perspective on what it means to create and how we do it.
Melinda: Yeah, so one thing I want to share is that when we first came together through ACC and started meeting and talking about creativity, we felt between ourselves with, each other, this very special kind of synergy. You know, you can do a lot on your own as a creative, but you can do so much more. In collaboration, and that's where the name Syncreate came from, was kind of this blending of synergy and co-creation. And a part of what we're doing is like the energy and excitement that we feel in our collaboration together, we're trying to then share that with others in community.
Charlotte: And to add to what you just said, when people come together, it's almost like you can have accelerated creativity. And that there's also this notion of syncretic, right? That there's a third thing that happens when people work together and you juxtapose ideas and the energy that comes, Like, on a molecular level, there's a buzzing that's going on.
Melinda: Definitely. That brings up so many things. But, you know, we've been attending this creativity conference, so it's been fun to get this infusion of different ideas, and it really brings home the interchange of ideas that happens when we interact with and collaborate with other people, like we just did a presentation yesterday, and then we got some really important feedback that we wouldn't have gotten otherwise if we remained just working by ourselves about how to kind of deepen and refine our thinking.
Charlotte: It's so remarkable and energizing, if not a little disappointing. You know, we talked about this on the plane ride here, but just like the difference between humility and humiliation. And for me, sometimes when I get feedback, there's the ego that says, oh, you should be ashamed that couldn’t have figured that out by yourself, and the ego's job is to make sure we don't look bad, but can also keep us stuck. And then for me, like when I get feedback on a project or an idea, like we got yesterday, it's, you know, I'll have a wave of humiliation. Like, oh dang, I couldn't figure it out on my own. But then the humility of like, oh, I can't do this by myself. And so like to have a multifaceted approach to our concept, we need other people.
Melinda: Absolutely. Yeah. I love that. And, you know, I'm always telling that to clients, whether it's. It's, you know, writers or creatives or my leadership clients, it's like, you know, receiving feedback from other people is a huge gift. And when we do have the opportunity to receive feedback, we can maybe freeze up or feel defensive or self critical.
But actually if we can figure out how to receive it, you know, understanding that any feedback that we get, whether positive or negative, is going to help us refine our thinking. And then ultimately I always tell people, kind of like they say in AA, take what's useful leave the rest. You know, as the creator you get to parse what feels most helpful to you, but just being able to take that in is so important.
Charlotte: I also think that timing is really important and how resourced we are. And I think because I'm a writer, I do tend to write things down. But there are so many mediums to kind of process feedback. But knowing like, okay, what's the one thing that's most useful for me right now? And like I'm gonna work on that and then there may be other things. For me I’ll be like okay, here's five things I got from our conversation yesterday, but I'm only gonna focus on one ‘cause I can't take it all in right now, right? And it's not to say the feedback isn't good. It's just that maybe down the road, I'll take it in more deeply.
I have a story when I teach creative writing, I tell students like when you get your feedback from someone on, you know, like you do workshop, a couple of things: one is write your responses, particularly for writers. It's important to put yourself back in the author seat. If you get 10 people who've given you feedback on a piece of writing or a piece of art or a dance piece or whatever your medium is, come back to that feedback in maybe two weeks because it will live in your head probably more negatively than it was actually the truth of it is.
Melinda: Absolutely. We have this inherent negativity bias. So any feedback we take in, you know, there might be 70% positive and 30% constructive, or what we might think of as negative. And we're going to fixate on that 30%. That's just the way our brains are wired.
Charlotte: It's so interesting because what we take in as the negative, actually, where is the growth? Right? So, there's where the constructive feedback is, how am I going to improve something? It's not by focusing on only the positive. And we need the positive so that we have the confidence, and a foundation to take in the growth points. I think it's really important to remember is that negativity can loop in a way that tells us that what we're doing is wrong or not good enough, but it's actually when we have the time and we're resourced that that's where our growth is.
Melinda: And you know, we talk a lot about growth mindsets, and seeing failure as opportunity in creativity studies. We've been hearing all these presentations; you've got to be willing to fail. And get up. And start again. And refine.
Charlotte: I also think undoing the myth of you have to be in a terrible relationship with yourself in order to create or to lead. And the kindness with which you treat yourself is how you're gonna treat others and your creativity. I remember asking someone for feedback on a project that I was working on and we met in a coffee shop and he gave me great feedback and you know we stood up and we hugged and we said goodbye and I was walking away and I was like, I guess I have to give up on this project.
And then what was interesting is because he had given me really concrete, deep feedback. And I think what happened was that I didn't know how to meet the challenge of that feedback yet. And I took it in as defeat. And by the time I got to the car, I was like, oh, it's not that the project isn't any good, it's just that I don't know how to answer or respond to the feedback that he gave me yet.
And so like teasing out that wave of like, oh, I guess I should give up. And then, oh, it's, I don't know the plan yet.
Melinda: Right. And you touched on this earlier, but there's this unfolding process. Like we might feel the sting of a particular piece of feedback in the moment. But if we can have patience and kindness with ourselves to see how that unfolds and how we integrate it over time.
Charlotte: I just think that's so important. And that's the other thing at the intersection of like psychology and creativity and spirituality is just trusting process. It's so huge, but we don't see a lot of examples of how you trust process.
Melinda: Right. So we see the end product and we just think there's this like magical, you know, black box in the middle. We don't see how the hours and days and years it takes to get to a finished product and what all is involved with that.
Charlotte: We have to sit in uncertainty and ambiguity. And I think it's really easy to step away from that and like, oh, I'm going to fill that. For me, I'm like, I'm going to look at Instagram. Like students, like protect your sitting and drooling, like the not knowing is where you get to connect to your core. And find the answers. And its patience.
Melinda: Yes. So much here. So you mentioned earlier the power of story, storytelling narrative, and I'm curious to hear a little bit more how that's showed up for you in your own life. You do a lot of writing. Both in your fiction, memoir, essays about the place and circumstances in which you grew up. And we've talked a lot about kind of the healing power of creativity and writing and crafting and re-crafting our own narrative. So, I'm curious if you could say maybe a little bit about how storytelling and narrative Has helped you heal in your own life?
Charlotte: That's a great question. Lot to it. Um, you know, I think part of what storytelling does for me is it keeps me connected to where I came from. Um, and being like a first gen college student coming from a very, very working class background, I've changed a lot since where I came from, and I wanted that change, but I also want to be loyal to where I came from.
And one of the things that we had was story, the story of survival, you know, those kinds of things. So it's something that allows me to stay true to where I come from, both geographically, Northern California, town of 200, the Redwoods, cattle. You know, salmon, like it's all, it helps me stay connected to that place so I can be an anchored person, but also like, who am I? And how does my story get to change?
I don't need to be wedded to the kind of stories that kind of re-injure yourself and that's where I am with my writing right now is working with a somatic. therapist. My first session with her, I started to talk about my first memory and she just said, hey, let's slow down here. What does the body need?
And I've written, really slowly worked on an essay that I feel really cool about. And it's called How to Approach a Horse, and the idea that how we approach our trauma determines our relationship to our trauma and our healing. And for me, that's very much like how you approach a horse. The spirit with which you approach a horse will determine your relationship, so I'm kind of doing this marriage of the approach.
Melinda: Yeah. So just to tease that out a little bit more, maybe people who aren't familiar with horses, right? The idea is that, you know, if you're trying to say tame a horse or just connect with a horse for the first time, you're not going to rush up to it, you're not going to make any sudden moves. You're going to approach slowly, gently. That's in turn how we can approach ourselves.
Charlotte: Absolutely. And like for me, I have a line in this essay: “Just because I was ripped by these stories doesn't mean I need to rip them into the world.” I can change the way I relate my story in a way that heals me rather than keeps me injured.
Melinda: Totally, and I think that's potentially so helpful to so many people. So can you think of a concrete example where you have shifted your narrative around a particular aspect of your being?
Charlotte: So yes, because I am a writer, thinking about language, my grandfather, um, passed when I was in community college, and using the word “passed,” I would typically say “killed” because he was killed by a drunk driver. And there's a part of me like “you remain loyal to that injury,” but what am I doing to myself every time I relate that story, and maybe am I also making other people hold it with me by being kind of severe in the telling? Um, but what I want to emphasize is that he was so wonderful and creative and an unconditional source of love.
And I have a limb difference and I was trying to play the piano and he's like, “There's one-handed pianists in the world. You can do it!” And like, I can, the way, just the difference between the word “passed” and “killed,” the connotations, the physiological rippling. And you know, there's a part of me like, you have to stay loyal! But does that loyalty come at a cost? And I can emphasize what was so good rather than the nature of the loss.
Melinda: Yeah. So how do we kind of frame and re-frame our experiences, particularly painful, even traumatic experiences. It's like what they say about forgiveness, you know, forgiveness isn't ultimately about the other person. It's about ourselves and how we can choose to move forward so that we're not holding on to that pain, that injury, that trauma. You know, we're not condoning what happened. But we're softening within ourselves.
Charlotte: Absolutely. So well said. And the thing that came to me the other day when I was getting that massage was like, oh, I can hold on to the wisdom and not the wound.
Melinda: Yes. That's beautiful.
Charlotte: And that like to be in creative agency and healing for me is really spiritual. And also changes the way I teach, the way I relate to people, the way I relate to my own processes. That's pretty dang cool.
Melinda: It is cool. What's a project that you're working on now that you're most excited about?
Charlotte: So, I have had a novel that I worked on for a really long time, and I don't have the wisdom, the... What do I want? The distance on it yet. And so that's hard. My partner said maybe it's an issue of climate and not craft, because it's looking at Native identity, and that so many people have written in that space who aren't in that space, culturally, socially, emotionally, and so it's a really tricky project. And so, where I have shifted (not giving up on that project at all), so I just don't, I haven't, don't have the insight yet, and it just takes time.
Melinda: Well, and can I just say briefly, we both work with so many writers, and I think writing particularly, it takes a long time, especially if, I mean, any kind of writing, fiction, memoir, nonfiction, whatever it might be, but it's really important to recognize, back to honoring the process, that sometimes it takes a long time to be able to figure out how to write our stories. And that's not a bad thing.
Charlotte: And I think that's really challenging for people who write and speak. You know, there's the craft of writing and then there's the tool of writing. And so the craft takes a long time. And I think sometimes people like well, particularly with memoir, like well, I lived it so I should be able to write it really easily. And I think it's actually the opposite, because you've lived it and it's in your body, finding language for it is that much harder.
Melinda: Absolutely. And that makes me think of another thing I'm often telling my writing clients is that, you know, if you're a sculptor, you get a block of marble, you have your raw materials, and then you start chipping away at it, roughing it out, you get to the fine detail. If you're a writer, you have to cough up your own raw materials, right?
And so that first draft, just getting the ideas out, which then you go back and craft and shape, and sometimes that is the hardest part. Just getting something out onto the page or the screen, and then there’s many further steps after that.
Charlotte: And that makes me think about, um, talking to folks, and I don't know where I read this, so I would love to give accurate attribution, but that we have personas when we write. And the three personas that we can think about are child, architect, and judge. And the child is the persona that will take any risk and say, of course we can fly to the moon on horses, or, you know, color outside the lines. The child will say what we're not supposed to say in society. So that first draft is like voicing your own truth.
And then the architect is the one who's looking at the structure and the sequence of information. And the judge is evaluating everything saying, is this the right word? Is, are you even allowed to say that? And if you sit down to write and you have all three personas present, you'll often become paralyzed.
Melinda: Right, so it's how do you differentiate, and actually I just made a connection between the Syncreate process: Play, Plan, Produce—child, architect, judge—and how we need each of these different facets in the creative process, but we need to know when to use each one.
Charlotte: So rightly at the child or Play draft, that's about divergence, right? You get to, anything is possible. And then I think Planning is a combination of divergence and convergence, and then Produce is primarily about convergence, but you may have to go back and brainstorm. And the idea that we have the facility and the agility within the creative process to recognize what kind of thinking do I need here? I mean, you and I, that's how we did the book, right? Is it like, what kind of thinking do we need today? And I think that's so empowering because you have options.
Melinda: Yeah. So back to your project.
Charlotte: So I am working on a collection of essays called. Socially Insecure: Essays at the Intersection of Class, Place and Health. And I got some really great feedback from an agent a couple of years ago; she said I love this, but could you include more data so that it becomes a wider comment on macro dynamics is really focused on, um, again, it's really one family story, so it's micro, but can I move back and forth with more agility between larger patterns about health inequities in the United States?
And that was feedback that someone gave me. And I was like, oh, but now I'm so excited about it. And while the data that I'm looking at is very intense, you know, just this concept of weathering, like what does it mean to live in an unjust society and what does that do to us on a physical level? And generally it's people of color, you know, the idea that college gives you a leg up in terms of finances and health may not necessarily be true for some people.
And that's part of a larger national dynamic and not necessarily related to an individual's choices, and that's so hard in the United States for us to be like, you know, the opportunity's here, why can't you rise to it? I'm really excited about it because it feels like the value that I offer the world is making connections in that way. I'm just like, self-care, um, I don't read the really heavy data on Mondays. Yeah, I have no-trauma Mondays.
Melinda: Yeah, yeah, that's great. We were talking with a lady here at the conference who challenged her students to take a total break from social media and the news for a week and notice the difference in their state of mind.
Charlotte: And there's one other thing about this project is I'm giving myself a lot of permission to tell stories in different ways. So, a lyric essay or a segmented essay or a numbered essay and it's like they're kind of what we talked about at the beginning; there's so many different facets of something, and how can you explore those facets? So while the subject matter is intense, the form is energizing.
Melinda: And that comes back to this idea of experimentation, which we talk about in the Syncreate book. One of our early chapters within Play is allowing ourselves to experiment with telling our story or doing our creative work in different ways. So I love that. So we're kind of at the end of our time here. Any last thought you'd like to share?
Charlotte: Well, you know, based on part of what we were talking about yesterday, it's just helping folks think about who's in your creative circle and that you're never alone as a human. And all humans are creative. And maybe the exercise of mapping it out: Who are the people that you trust and believe in your creative projects or your, what you bring to things? Like, you know, how can you say thank you to those folks and that gratitude is so important in healing and creativity and community. And then to move away from scarcity thinking is we really are in abundant circles. Um, and it's hard to remember that when you're stuck in your creative project, and maybe what's something you could do for somebody else that can help you get unstuck?
Melinda: Absolutely. Yeah. So really kind of countering this idea of the myth of the solo artist and, you know, we may have collaborators that we're working with; we may not have overt, immediate collaborators, but we do have all the people in our community that support us, you know, so really thinking about this theme of interconnection and all the ways, whether it's like, where does our food come from? Who are the people we're interacting with, even in the most casual way in our day to day lives?
How do we find inspiration, whether it's in nature, or from other people, or things that we're reading or listening to? That's all part of our creative context, our creative environment, and ultimately our creative community. So I think people that are struggling, whether you're stuck creatively, whether you're depressed, whatever it might be, like one antidote is reaching out to your community, whatever that looks like for you.
Charlotte: Absolutely. And you've heard me say this a lot the last few days, but I think actually to decolonize ourselves is to connect with other people and to recognize that we are healthy when we are in community.
Melinda: Absolutely. Well, thank you so much, Charlotte.
Charlotte: Thanks for having me.
Melinda: I'm so glad we're getting to do this together in person! And if people want to find out more about you, where and how can they find you?
Charlotte: I have a website, charlottegullick.com, and I'm on the socials, semi-active. I have a lot of essays that are out there if people want to check them out. Thanks for having me.
Melinda: Thanks so much.
Thanks again to Charlotte Gullick for the conversation, and for her pivotal work bringing Syncrete to life. You can learn more about her at www.charlottegullick.com and at www.syncreate.org. We'll link to these in the show notes.
This episode was produced by Mike Osborne with production assistance by Christian Haigus. Follow us on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn, where you can also find out more about Syncreate. Thanks for listening, and see you next time.
Charlotte Gullick is a very important person in my life. She's an author, novelist, memoirist, and educator. Her first novel, By Way of Water, was chosen by Jane Ann Phillips as the grand prize winner of the Santa Fe Writer's Project Literary Awards program. Her nonfiction has appeared in a number of prestigious literary journals, including The Rumpus, The Best of Brevity, The Los Angeles Review, and Hippocampus. Charlotte and I first met in Austin when we were both teaching at Austin Community College, and we felt an immediate connection.
A few years later, in 2013, we put a name to our collaboration, Syncreate. Our vision was to help foster creativity in others. We refined our ideas with input from our collaborators. Dreux Carpenter and John Best. One of my proudest accomplishments with Charlotte was co authoring a book, which came out in 2021, called Syncreate, A Guide to Navigating the Creative Process for Individuals, Teams, and Communities, which won a Silver Nautilus Award for Creativity and Innovation.
Charlotte left Austin in 2022, but recently, we were together again in Ashland, Oregon, for the 2023 Creativity Conference at Southern Oregon University. At the conference, we presented ideas for our next book on creativity and community. We recorded this episode together in Ashland, and as you'll hear, it gave us an opportunity to reflect on our work together. I started off by asking Charlotte what most stood out to her about our collaboration and our work helping to empower creativity over the last 10 years.
Charlotte: That's a big question. So many things come to my mind. It's great. As I reflect on our time together and creativity, what first comes to mind is how the creative process is for everyone, and that it's actually through community that we find our creative confidence and that we can do our best work in relationship to other people. And what's so joyful to me about that is that it overcomes the myth of the solo artist. And that we don't have to be tortured and we don't have to suffer in order to receive and create our best work.
And you know, to be kind of funny / cynical, like a lot of those people who we think of like the tortured artist in the attic, they probably weren't doing their own laundry. Probably someone was making lunch for them or they weren't eating, you know? And so the idea that we hold up a single person and we don't look at the circle of support that is part of that creation. For me, working with you has helped me see how vitally important it is that we expand thinking and our perspective on what it means to create and how we do it.
Melinda: Yeah, so one thing I want to share is that when we first came together through ACC and started meeting and talking about creativity, we felt between ourselves with, each other, this very special kind of synergy. You know, you can do a lot on your own as a creative, but you can do so much more. In collaboration, and that's where the name Syncreate came from, was kind of this blending of synergy and co-creation. And a part of what we're doing is like the energy and excitement that we feel in our collaboration together, we're trying to then share that with others in community.
Charlotte: And to add to what you just said, when people come together, it's almost like you can have accelerated creativity. And that there's also this notion of syncretic, right? That there's a third thing that happens when people work together and you juxtapose ideas and the energy that comes, Like, on a molecular level, there's a buzzing that's going on.
Melinda: Definitely. That brings up so many things. But, you know, we've been attending this creativity conference, so it's been fun to get this infusion of different ideas, and it really brings home the interchange of ideas that happens when we interact with and collaborate with other people, like we just did a presentation yesterday, and then we got some really important feedback that we wouldn't have gotten otherwise if we remained just working by ourselves about how to kind of deepen and refine our thinking.
Charlotte: It's so remarkable and energizing, if not a little disappointing. You know, we talked about this on the plane ride here, but just like the difference between humility and humiliation. And for me, sometimes when I get feedback, there's the ego that says, oh, you should be ashamed that couldn’t have figured that out by yourself, and the ego's job is to make sure we don't look bad, but can also keep us stuck. And then for me, like when I get feedback on a project or an idea, like we got yesterday, it's, you know, I'll have a wave of humiliation. Like, oh dang, I couldn't figure it out on my own. But then the humility of like, oh, I can't do this by myself. And so like to have a multifaceted approach to our concept, we need other people.
Melinda: Absolutely. Yeah. I love that. And, you know, I'm always telling that to clients, whether it's. It's, you know, writers or creatives or my leadership clients, it's like, you know, receiving feedback from other people is a huge gift. And when we do have the opportunity to receive feedback, we can maybe freeze up or feel defensive or self critical.
But actually if we can figure out how to receive it, you know, understanding that any feedback that we get, whether positive or negative, is going to help us refine our thinking. And then ultimately I always tell people, kind of like they say in AA, take what's useful leave the rest. You know, as the creator you get to parse what feels most helpful to you, but just being able to take that in is so important.
Charlotte: I also think that timing is really important and how resourced we are. And I think because I'm a writer, I do tend to write things down. But there are so many mediums to kind of process feedback. But knowing like, okay, what's the one thing that's most useful for me right now? And like I'm gonna work on that and then there may be other things. For me I’ll be like okay, here's five things I got from our conversation yesterday, but I'm only gonna focus on one ‘cause I can't take it all in right now, right? And it's not to say the feedback isn't good. It's just that maybe down the road, I'll take it in more deeply.
I have a story when I teach creative writing, I tell students like when you get your feedback from someone on, you know, like you do workshop, a couple of things: one is write your responses, particularly for writers. It's important to put yourself back in the author seat. If you get 10 people who've given you feedback on a piece of writing or a piece of art or a dance piece or whatever your medium is, come back to that feedback in maybe two weeks because it will live in your head probably more negatively than it was actually the truth of it is.
Melinda: Absolutely. We have this inherent negativity bias. So any feedback we take in, you know, there might be 70% positive and 30% constructive, or what we might think of as negative. And we're going to fixate on that 30%. That's just the way our brains are wired.
Charlotte: It's so interesting because what we take in as the negative, actually, where is the growth? Right? So, there's where the constructive feedback is, how am I going to improve something? It's not by focusing on only the positive. And we need the positive so that we have the confidence, and a foundation to take in the growth points. I think it's really important to remember is that negativity can loop in a way that tells us that what we're doing is wrong or not good enough, but it's actually when we have the time and we're resourced that that's where our growth is.
Melinda: And you know, we talk a lot about growth mindsets, and seeing failure as opportunity in creativity studies. We've been hearing all these presentations; you've got to be willing to fail. And get up. And start again. And refine.
Charlotte: I also think undoing the myth of you have to be in a terrible relationship with yourself in order to create or to lead. And the kindness with which you treat yourself is how you're gonna treat others and your creativity. I remember asking someone for feedback on a project that I was working on and we met in a coffee shop and he gave me great feedback and you know we stood up and we hugged and we said goodbye and I was walking away and I was like, I guess I have to give up on this project.
And then what was interesting is because he had given me really concrete, deep feedback. And I think what happened was that I didn't know how to meet the challenge of that feedback yet. And I took it in as defeat. And by the time I got to the car, I was like, oh, it's not that the project isn't any good, it's just that I don't know how to answer or respond to the feedback that he gave me yet.
And so like teasing out that wave of like, oh, I guess I should give up. And then, oh, it's, I don't know the plan yet.
Melinda: Right. And you touched on this earlier, but there's this unfolding process. Like we might feel the sting of a particular piece of feedback in the moment. But if we can have patience and kindness with ourselves to see how that unfolds and how we integrate it over time.
Charlotte: I just think that's so important. And that's the other thing at the intersection of like psychology and creativity and spirituality is just trusting process. It's so huge, but we don't see a lot of examples of how you trust process.
Melinda: Right. So we see the end product and we just think there's this like magical, you know, black box in the middle. We don't see how the hours and days and years it takes to get to a finished product and what all is involved with that.
Charlotte: We have to sit in uncertainty and ambiguity. And I think it's really easy to step away from that and like, oh, I'm going to fill that. For me, I'm like, I'm going to look at Instagram. Like students, like protect your sitting and drooling, like the not knowing is where you get to connect to your core. And find the answers. And its patience.
Melinda: Yes. So much here. So you mentioned earlier the power of story, storytelling narrative, and I'm curious to hear a little bit more how that's showed up for you in your own life. You do a lot of writing. Both in your fiction, memoir, essays about the place and circumstances in which you grew up. And we've talked a lot about kind of the healing power of creativity and writing and crafting and re-crafting our own narrative. So, I'm curious if you could say maybe a little bit about how storytelling and narrative Has helped you heal in your own life?
Charlotte: That's a great question. Lot to it. Um, you know, I think part of what storytelling does for me is it keeps me connected to where I came from. Um, and being like a first gen college student coming from a very, very working class background, I've changed a lot since where I came from, and I wanted that change, but I also want to be loyal to where I came from.
And one of the things that we had was story, the story of survival, you know, those kinds of things. So it's something that allows me to stay true to where I come from, both geographically, Northern California, town of 200, the Redwoods, cattle. You know, salmon, like it's all, it helps me stay connected to that place so I can be an anchored person, but also like, who am I? And how does my story get to change?
I don't need to be wedded to the kind of stories that kind of re-injure yourself and that's where I am with my writing right now is working with a somatic. therapist. My first session with her, I started to talk about my first memory and she just said, hey, let's slow down here. What does the body need?
And I've written, really slowly worked on an essay that I feel really cool about. And it's called How to Approach a Horse, and the idea that how we approach our trauma determines our relationship to our trauma and our healing. And for me, that's very much like how you approach a horse. The spirit with which you approach a horse will determine your relationship, so I'm kind of doing this marriage of the approach.
Melinda: Yeah. So just to tease that out a little bit more, maybe people who aren't familiar with horses, right? The idea is that, you know, if you're trying to say tame a horse or just connect with a horse for the first time, you're not going to rush up to it, you're not going to make any sudden moves. You're going to approach slowly, gently. That's in turn how we can approach ourselves.
Charlotte: Absolutely. And like for me, I have a line in this essay: “Just because I was ripped by these stories doesn't mean I need to rip them into the world.” I can change the way I relate my story in a way that heals me rather than keeps me injured.
Melinda: Totally, and I think that's potentially so helpful to so many people. So can you think of a concrete example where you have shifted your narrative around a particular aspect of your being?
Charlotte: So yes, because I am a writer, thinking about language, my grandfather, um, passed when I was in community college, and using the word “passed,” I would typically say “killed” because he was killed by a drunk driver. And there's a part of me like “you remain loyal to that injury,” but what am I doing to myself every time I relate that story, and maybe am I also making other people hold it with me by being kind of severe in the telling? Um, but what I want to emphasize is that he was so wonderful and creative and an unconditional source of love.
And I have a limb difference and I was trying to play the piano and he's like, “There's one-handed pianists in the world. You can do it!” And like, I can, the way, just the difference between the word “passed” and “killed,” the connotations, the physiological rippling. And you know, there's a part of me like, you have to stay loyal! But does that loyalty come at a cost? And I can emphasize what was so good rather than the nature of the loss.
Melinda: Yeah. So how do we kind of frame and re-frame our experiences, particularly painful, even traumatic experiences. It's like what they say about forgiveness, you know, forgiveness isn't ultimately about the other person. It's about ourselves and how we can choose to move forward so that we're not holding on to that pain, that injury, that trauma. You know, we're not condoning what happened. But we're softening within ourselves.
Charlotte: Absolutely. So well said. And the thing that came to me the other day when I was getting that massage was like, oh, I can hold on to the wisdom and not the wound.
Melinda: Yes. That's beautiful.
Charlotte: And that like to be in creative agency and healing for me is really spiritual. And also changes the way I teach, the way I relate to people, the way I relate to my own processes. That's pretty dang cool.
Melinda: It is cool. What's a project that you're working on now that you're most excited about?
Charlotte: So, I have had a novel that I worked on for a really long time, and I don't have the wisdom, the... What do I want? The distance on it yet. And so that's hard. My partner said maybe it's an issue of climate and not craft, because it's looking at Native identity, and that so many people have written in that space who aren't in that space, culturally, socially, emotionally, and so it's a really tricky project. And so, where I have shifted (not giving up on that project at all), so I just don't, I haven't, don't have the insight yet, and it just takes time.
Melinda: Well, and can I just say briefly, we both work with so many writers, and I think writing particularly, it takes a long time, especially if, I mean, any kind of writing, fiction, memoir, nonfiction, whatever it might be, but it's really important to recognize, back to honoring the process, that sometimes it takes a long time to be able to figure out how to write our stories. And that's not a bad thing.
Charlotte: And I think that's really challenging for people who write and speak. You know, there's the craft of writing and then there's the tool of writing. And so the craft takes a long time. And I think sometimes people like well, particularly with memoir, like well, I lived it so I should be able to write it really easily. And I think it's actually the opposite, because you've lived it and it's in your body, finding language for it is that much harder.
Melinda: Absolutely. And that makes me think of another thing I'm often telling my writing clients is that, you know, if you're a sculptor, you get a block of marble, you have your raw materials, and then you start chipping away at it, roughing it out, you get to the fine detail. If you're a writer, you have to cough up your own raw materials, right?
And so that first draft, just getting the ideas out, which then you go back and craft and shape, and sometimes that is the hardest part. Just getting something out onto the page or the screen, and then there’s many further steps after that.
Charlotte: And that makes me think about, um, talking to folks, and I don't know where I read this, so I would love to give accurate attribution, but that we have personas when we write. And the three personas that we can think about are child, architect, and judge. And the child is the persona that will take any risk and say, of course we can fly to the moon on horses, or, you know, color outside the lines. The child will say what we're not supposed to say in society. So that first draft is like voicing your own truth.
And then the architect is the one who's looking at the structure and the sequence of information. And the judge is evaluating everything saying, is this the right word? Is, are you even allowed to say that? And if you sit down to write and you have all three personas present, you'll often become paralyzed.
Melinda: Right, so it's how do you differentiate, and actually I just made a connection between the Syncreate process: Play, Plan, Produce—child, architect, judge—and how we need each of these different facets in the creative process, but we need to know when to use each one.
Charlotte: So rightly at the child or Play draft, that's about divergence, right? You get to, anything is possible. And then I think Planning is a combination of divergence and convergence, and then Produce is primarily about convergence, but you may have to go back and brainstorm. And the idea that we have the facility and the agility within the creative process to recognize what kind of thinking do I need here? I mean, you and I, that's how we did the book, right? Is it like, what kind of thinking do we need today? And I think that's so empowering because you have options.
Melinda: Yeah. So back to your project.
Charlotte: So I am working on a collection of essays called. Socially Insecure: Essays at the Intersection of Class, Place and Health. And I got some really great feedback from an agent a couple of years ago; she said I love this, but could you include more data so that it becomes a wider comment on macro dynamics is really focused on, um, again, it's really one family story, so it's micro, but can I move back and forth with more agility between larger patterns about health inequities in the United States?
And that was feedback that someone gave me. And I was like, oh, but now I'm so excited about it. And while the data that I'm looking at is very intense, you know, just this concept of weathering, like what does it mean to live in an unjust society and what does that do to us on a physical level? And generally it's people of color, you know, the idea that college gives you a leg up in terms of finances and health may not necessarily be true for some people.
And that's part of a larger national dynamic and not necessarily related to an individual's choices, and that's so hard in the United States for us to be like, you know, the opportunity's here, why can't you rise to it? I'm really excited about it because it feels like the value that I offer the world is making connections in that way. I'm just like, self-care, um, I don't read the really heavy data on Mondays. Yeah, I have no-trauma Mondays.
Melinda: Yeah, yeah, that's great. We were talking with a lady here at the conference who challenged her students to take a total break from social media and the news for a week and notice the difference in their state of mind.
Charlotte: And there's one other thing about this project is I'm giving myself a lot of permission to tell stories in different ways. So, a lyric essay or a segmented essay or a numbered essay and it's like they're kind of what we talked about at the beginning; there's so many different facets of something, and how can you explore those facets? So while the subject matter is intense, the form is energizing.
Melinda: And that comes back to this idea of experimentation, which we talk about in the Syncreate book. One of our early chapters within Play is allowing ourselves to experiment with telling our story or doing our creative work in different ways. So I love that. So we're kind of at the end of our time here. Any last thought you'd like to share?
Charlotte: Well, you know, based on part of what we were talking about yesterday, it's just helping folks think about who's in your creative circle and that you're never alone as a human. And all humans are creative. And maybe the exercise of mapping it out: Who are the people that you trust and believe in your creative projects or your, what you bring to things? Like, you know, how can you say thank you to those folks and that gratitude is so important in healing and creativity and community. And then to move away from scarcity thinking is we really are in abundant circles. Um, and it's hard to remember that when you're stuck in your creative project, and maybe what's something you could do for somebody else that can help you get unstuck?
Melinda: Absolutely. Yeah. So really kind of countering this idea of the myth of the solo artist and, you know, we may have collaborators that we're working with; we may not have overt, immediate collaborators, but we do have all the people in our community that support us, you know, so really thinking about this theme of interconnection and all the ways, whether it's like, where does our food come from? Who are the people we're interacting with, even in the most casual way in our day to day lives?
How do we find inspiration, whether it's in nature, or from other people, or things that we're reading or listening to? That's all part of our creative context, our creative environment, and ultimately our creative community. So I think people that are struggling, whether you're stuck creatively, whether you're depressed, whatever it might be, like one antidote is reaching out to your community, whatever that looks like for you.
Charlotte: Absolutely. And you've heard me say this a lot the last few days, but I think actually to decolonize ourselves is to connect with other people and to recognize that we are healthy when we are in community.
Melinda: Absolutely. Well, thank you so much, Charlotte.
Charlotte: Thanks for having me.
Melinda: I'm so glad we're getting to do this together in person! And if people want to find out more about you, where and how can they find you?
Charlotte: I have a website, charlottegullick.com, and I'm on the socials, semi-active. I have a lot of essays that are out there if people want to check them out. Thanks for having me.
Melinda: Thanks so much.
Thanks again to Charlotte Gullick for the conversation, and for her pivotal work bringing Syncrete to life. You can learn more about her at www.charlottegullick.com and at www.syncreate.org. We'll link to these in the show notes.
This episode was produced by Mike Osborne with production assistance by Christian Haigus. Follow us on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn, where you can also find out more about Syncreate. Thanks for listening, and see you next time.
