July 29, 2025
Unveiling Truths: Ashley Kalagian Blunt's Journey Through Creativity and Resilience (Episode 23)
In this episode of the Living the Dream podcast, Curveball speaks with Ashley Kalagian Blunt, a creative writer and award-winning speaker. Ashley shares her journey from aspiring writer to published author, discussing her research on the Armenian genocide and her experiences living in various countries. She emphasizes the importance of creativity for personal well-being and offers insights into overcoming writer's block. Join us for an inspiring conversation filled with tips for aspiring authors and the healing power of writing.
www.ashleykalagianblunt.com
WEBVTT
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Welcome to the Living the Dream podcast with Curveball. If you believe you can achieve.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Welcome to the Living the Dream with Curveball podcast, a show where I interview guests that teach, motivate and inspire. And today I have a special show for you because I am joined by creative writer, award winning speaker and Armenian, genocide researcher, Ashley Kallagian Blunt.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Ashley also did stand up comedy for a while, so we're going to be talking to her about writing her books about the Armenian, genocide and anything else that she would like to talk about.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>So, Ashley, thank you so much for joining me today.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>Thank you for having me on your wonderful show. I really appreciate it.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Well, why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>Well, I'm originally from Canada and I live in Australia now. I've also lived in, South Korea, Peru and Mexico and I worked there for a few years. I'm now a published author and it took me a lot of years to get there.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>And I also now teach creativity and I really enjoy teaching creativity because I think that, you know, I had dreams of being a published author and writing as a career, but I really believe that, you know, we're all creative creatures. Humans just are creative. Ah. I think as adults we tune that out a little bit and we get out of practice, but it's actually really important to engage with our creativity just for our own personal well being. So even if you're not aiming to have a career in a creative area like I was, I think engaging with your creativity is such a wonderful thing to do.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>And whether that's, you know, writing or visual arts or baking or gardening or, you know, whatever it is, I encourage people to connect with their creativity and embrace it. And, my life is so much richer and so much better because I chose to do that.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>Even though it was in terms of making that a career. That was a very hard road.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Tell us how you got into writing and creativity in the first place.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>Well, I always wanted to be a writer.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>Like when I was a little, little kid, like even in grade one, I wrote little stories and I was always writing like, oh, terrible, terrible, terrible poems through high school, and I wrote a terrible novel through high school. And I, so I thought, you know, that's what I was going to do.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>But then I, my parents wanted me to study something that was an actual job, so I assumed I would kind of do an English degree. And they were like, no, no, no, that's not a job. You need to study something that's an actual job. So I did a degree in journalism. And basically the main thing I learned is that I was not the right type of personality for journalism at all.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>I really didn't like the short deadlines. I didn't like having to interview people who, didn't necessarily want to be interviewed. Like, I love interviewing someone if they're keen to talk to me, but when you're a journalist, you have to get people to talk, especially when they don't want to. And that was just not my. Not for me. So I got out of university at the age of 22 and was like, well, this is, not the career choice for me.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>So I ended up. That's when I moved abroad, and I, you know, still writing a little bit for fun here and there. And then I got married and I moved to Australia. And that's when I got really seriously interested in, researching my great grandparents, survival of the Armenian Genocide.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>And I thought, this is the book I want to write. This is something that's really meaningful to me. I think it's really important, for people to. To know more about and understand more about. And so at that time, you know, I was pretty young. I was 26, 27. I thought, okay, so I've got to just take a couple years, do the research, write this book, and then I'll send it to a publisher.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>They'll, you know, see it's a great book, and they'll publish it and I'll make money, and that's what's going to be my career.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>I had this really, really naive idea of, you know, and I didn't think that would be easy. I knew that would be hard work. But, I thought, I just need to follow these steps and this will happen.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>So I interviewed over 140 people in three countries. Like all of my Armenian family in Canada. My great grandparents were no longer alive, but I interviewed the family to sort of learn about them and their story.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>I connected. By that time, I'd moved to Sydney, Australia, and I did a master's degree in, Armenian Diaspora and Cultural Identity. So to better understand how Armenian people who have never lived in Armenia, how they understand themselves as Armenian, I interviewed a bunch of people in the Sydney community.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>Sydney has a big Armenian community. And, I went to Armenia and I spent two months traveling there, you know, paid for this all myself, interviewed anyone who would talk to me, so anyone who either spoke English or who I could get a translator. And the American Peace Corps were fantastic. They were doing such great work there, and they you know, would translate for me. They connected me with really interesting people. So I ended up that whole trip I just went around to all the different Peace Corps, workers and just met a bunch of fabulous Americans, which I loved. So I had all this material and then I was like, all right, now I'm going to write this book. So I didn't even know, didn't even know. I had taken some M. Writing courses and things. So I'd studied writing and obviously as a journalist I was doing a lot of writing in my degree and it even won a few little awards for my writing. So I thought I knew what I was doing and, and so. But I didn't even know the basics of like, how long should you know a book be from a first time author, like this sort of book. And so I wrote this thing and it was 200,000 words and that was way too long because it should have been more like 80,000 words, maybe 90. so that's my tip out there for the aspiring authors who are listening right now.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>But, and then I started, you know, trying to figure out, okay, now what do I do with this thing?
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>And I was getting feedback on it from established authors. You know, I was paying for manuscript assessments, I was doing some writing courses. And draft by draft, I worked that down to 75,000 words, which was a much better length. And then I was sending that out to unpublished manuscript awards because that's one way you can gain the attention of publishers is to win an unpublished manuscript award in a recognized competition. And it was shortlisted for a few of those, which was really, really rewarding for me.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>And then some publishers read it. But because I was living, I'm living in Australia, right? So I'm looking at the Australian publishing industry and some publishers read the book and they were like, you know, the writing is really good, but there's just no market for, for a book about Armenia in Australia.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>So I spent all this time writing this book and I hadn't even thought about, oh, how am I going to convince people to want to read it? And specifically how am I going to convince publishers to want to buy it effectively? And that was a really important lesson for me. So the next book I wrote, so that book kind of that book sat on a shelf then for a little bit, the next book I wrote, I thought, all right, well what do Australians want to read about?
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>They want to read about Australia. So I wrote a book called how to Be Australian. Very, very different book. Because like you said, I was doing stand up comedy at the time. So this was a very comedic book. A lot of my stand up comedy act, I sort of worked, those jokes into the book. And I wrote this book that is very much for Australians. It's about, it's a memoir of moving here with my husband, you know, and being from Canada, I kind of thought, oh, well, Australia and Canada, they're both part of the Commonwealth. We both got the Queen on our money, we speak English. It's, you know, Australia, is basically just hot Canada. And then I got here and I realized, oh, no, Australia and Canada are actually quite different countries. There's much more different than just the weather. So the book is sort of a learning process of like, like, what makes Australia unique and how do you fit into Australia? And it sort of holds a mirror up for Australians to sort of look at all the weirdness and wack of their, of their country.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>And I was able to get that. You know, I sent that book up to publishers.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>I was able to get that book published and I was able to do events around Australia and connect with Australians. And that was great. Now I still had this other book, my Armenia book.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>And you know, I'd done all this research and I had all this material, and I thought there has to be a way to get Australians interested in this and to make, you know, make publishers want to publish it, make readers want to read it.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>And so one of the things I discovered in my research was that because it was the Ottoman Empire, the Ottoman government that, decided they would systematically annihilate the Armenian communities during World War I, when they were allied with Germany, the Turkish, Turkey rose out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire. Ah.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>So the Turkish government sort of holds responsibility and continues to deny to this day that any of that happened, even though there's so much written, written, documented evidence both in Turkish National Archives and around the world, you know, US Archives, Australian archives, and that's all been, you know, published and written about and studied by academics. And it's all available for anyone who wants, you know, to find that evidence.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>but Turkish government, you know, they've lived in their own reality. They continue to deny this. So in the 1970s and 80s, there was actually a, series of international terrorist attacks. And these took place around the world. And these were Armenian. These were a group, a couple of groups of Armenian men who believed that they could force the Turkish government to acknowledge the genocide by, attacking Turkish diplomats in other countries. So this happened in the United States, across Europe, across the Middle east, and Even here in Australia. So December 1980, broad daylight, the Turkish Consul general and his bodyguard are assassinated like in the middle of the street in this quiet seaside neighborhood.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>And that was a huge. It was a huge event in Australia. And that murder is still unsolved. They know the terrorist group did it, but in terms of the particular individuals, no one's ever been caught and tried. So, I realized this was my hook. I could start there with this event that happened in Sydney and hook Australians into this story. So I wrote a fictional version of this. I fictionalized the men who had committed this attack. And that was my plan, was to write from the terrorist point of view. And the reason why I chose to do that was because when I read about these terrorist attacks, it was the first time I'd ever read about terrorism and connected so deeply with the motives of the terrorists because I was writing about the Armenian genocide and its denial for the same reasons that they had committed these attacks. Now, obviously I didn't agree with their methods at all, like abhorrent actions that they took, but I did understand why they did it, and I wanted the same justice that they wanted. And so I wrote this book from the point of view of the terrorists. I actually went back to university.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>I did another master's degree because I felt that was a very confronting project. And I wrote this as fiction. And then I wove in into the book, there are a few essays waiting to explain that history and how the Armenian genocide was the predecessor to the holocaust of World War II and its continuing role in geopolitics today. So those books came out sort of one after the other in 2019 and 2020. And that was really the start, you know, after it had been 10 years since I started writing that first book.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>But I felt like, yes, I was achieving, finally achieving the career that I really wanted to achieve.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Well, your second book, how to Be Australian, why did you decide to write it as a memoir?
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>Well, it was based on my experiences at first.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>I didn't start it as a memoir at first. I actually started it as, you know, just a collection of fun essays about different topics related to Australia. You know, like I have one on the snakes and the spiders and the sharks and how we got attacked by a giant seven legged spider in our apartment one day. Had to fight it off with a vacuum cleaner.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>but the feedback I got, this is one of the things I've learned as a writer and as a creative, is the more feedback you can get from people who know what they're doing. So you Know, not like your friend or your mom, but like someone who's qualified in that field and can give you informed feedback. The more feedback you can get early in a project, the better you're going to be able to conceptualize it as you go.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>And that was the mistake I made with that first book. You know, I wrote 200,000 words before I got any feedback. It took me two years. This one. I was getting feedback before I'd even written a first draft. Halfway through the first draft, the feedback I was getting was the best parts of the book were the parts that were from my own experience and about my life and that perhaps the simplest way to tell that story would just be as a straight memoir.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>Like, here's the day we start on the day that we arrived in Australia. Talk a little bit about why we came to Australia from Winnipeg, Canada, where it's. It was the winter I decided to leave Winnipeg, Canada. It was a minus 40 degree winter.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>And people always say, is that Fahrenheit or Celsius? At minus 43, they're the same. They equal out. It's a weird math thing.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>So, it was minus 40 and I was like, that's it. Like, I'm leaving the city for good. I will never move back there.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>I want to go somewhere warm with beaches and sunshine and palm trees. so, you know, that's where the book starts. And the book continues on then until my, husband and I ended up getting citizenship here in Sydney. So it sort of tells that journey of how we came to understand ourselves as part of Australia.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Ashley, tell us about your chronic illness. You live with a chronic illness. Tell us about what it is, when you got diagnosed, how it affects your life and all aspects, including your writing.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>Oh, thanks for asking about that. Yeah. So I have chronic fatigue syndrome, which is one of these illnesses that isn't well understood by medical science.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>So there's a lot of uncertainty around it. And there's two ways it can happen to you. One is that something triggers it. Something triggers that change in your body, and that could be cancer, that could be a concussion. That could be some sort of infection like a virus. so something triggers it and it comes on very suddenly. So maybe you had a concussion and you recover from the concussion, but suddenly you're just very, very ill with the fatigue. And the other way, which happens in about 40% of cases, is that it's a gradual change. It comes on gradually and you get sicker and sicker and sicker. And in that case, because it's so gradual, Especially, you know, in my circumstance, I had no idea this was coming and the symptoms were very vague.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>So this insidious onset, which happens in about 40% of cases, is what happened to me. And I had back to back flus.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>And the second time I never fully felt like I got back to 100%.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>So I was like 90%, but, you know, pretty good. But I just didn't fully feel like I had my energy back. And I was, you know, I was a really active and really healthy person.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>Like, I ate pretty decently, I slept eight hours a night. I didn't, I didn't have kids. So I, you know, had a pretty, like, ordinary life.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>and I exercised a lot. Like, I would run for a few times a week. I would cycle to work, I would walk a lot. So I didn't understand why all of a sudden I was just having a lot of days where I was just kind of too sick to do anything. I didn't have any symptoms. I just was so tired I couldn't go and do anything. And I kept thinking, oh, I must be coming down with something. And that was always my explanation. But then I was getting other weird symptoms. Like one of the weirdest symptoms, because chronic fatigue isn't just fatigue. It comes with this whole, kaleidoscope of symptoms that come and go.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>And everybody's experience with it for that reason can be, can be really distinct and different. But one of the symptoms I got was alcohol intolerance.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>So I would have, you know, one glass of wine in the evening, and I would feel like I drank a cup of sand and I would have, you know, a gallon of water and I'd still feel parched. And I just thought, oh, you know, I guess I'm like 33 years old. Like, I guess I'm just getting old and I can't drink as much as I used to.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>but yet later I learned that that was one of the symptoms. So.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>Getting sicker, getting sicker, getting sicker. I started to go to the doctor because there's no test for chronic fatigue syndrome. It's a diagnosis by exclusion. So we had to test for pretty much everything under the sun. We did six months of testing, and by that time, by the end of those six months, I was really sick. I was, in fact, too sick to get out of bed. It affects the body cognitively and physically. So, I had a lot of brain fog. my short term memory was just destroyed. So I couldn't read because I would start a sentence. And by the time I got to the end of that sentence, I couldn't remember what the start was, so I couldn't make any sense of the words in the sentence.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>And, I physically, like, I needed help to get out of bed. Some people end up completely bedbound, and I never quite got that bad. But there was a lot of days where my husband had to help me get out of bed because otherwise I couldn't do it on my own. And, that. So that was, that was 2017, that it really came on full time. And I obviously, all aspects of my life were shut down. You know, I was involved in a public speaking club that I helped to run. I had to quit, that obviously had to quit exercising. I just, couldn't see any of my friends.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>And then with my job, my job.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>Luckily I worked for a really lovely, not for profit organization.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>And they said, look, just come in when you can, when you're able to. We'll have someone looking after your work, and if you could just come in and help her out when you're able. So I was going into work about two mornings a week for, you know, two or three hours, and I would go to work, help this person, and I would go home at lunch, and I would be unable to move for the next 36 hours. Like, it would take me that long to recover from working for two or three hours in an office.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>So that's, that's how bad it was for about a year, year and a half. And since then, I've been very, very gradually getting better. So I'm now at the point where I, can work six hours most days, depending on, you know, where I'm at with things.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>So that's, that's, that's huge for me. That's like, that's a really big deal compared to only being able to work, you know, five or six hours in a week.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>So. But I still have to be really, really careful.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>Like, I think the things a lot of people experience during COVID you know, staying home all the time, not seeing your friends, not being able to do things you really love, not being able to go to the gym.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>That was my life for three years before COVID So by the time Covid came, I was like, oh, yeah, okay, I know what this is. Like, I'm used to it. the one thing, though, I will say is that I was so glad I had developed a creative practice before got sick, because when I was home by myself day after day, you know, my husband was at work and he works long hours. So I would be home a Long time by myself when I was well enough to do a little bit of writing, you know, when I got past that really bad period and I was able to then start doing a little bit again in the day, being able to sit down in the middle of a book that I had started before I got sick. You know, my memoir, how to Be Australian, I started that before I got sick. And I was so relieved to have that to take me away from thinking about the illness, from thinking about my life.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>It was an incredible refuge. And I think that's another reason why I. When I teach creativity, I talk about how healing it can be. And there's actually science to support that.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>You know, I have a podcast where we talk about writing, creativity and health.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>It's called James and Ashley Stay at Home. I do it with another author who also lives with chronic illness.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>And the joke is that we were staying at home before it was cool. and we interviewed an art therapist, and she works with first responders and military personnel who have ptsd. And she talked to us about how engaging people in their creativity, that's strategy that can help them overcome things like post traumatic stress, because it allows you to connect with the subconscious and it allows you to express things that may otherwise be inexpressible. So I feel. I mean, obviously it was terrible. It was terrible luck that I got sick. You know, it was a terrible thing to happen. But on the other hand, a positive that I took from it is that I really, really knew that writing was the right thing for me because it made me feel so much better.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>And it has been there supporting me throughout. And now I've written, you know, my next book.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>I wrote entirely while I've been sick. And so it's taken me a little while. You know, it's taken me three years.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>But, I wrote a book that, you know, I wrote the book that I wanted to read. I wrote a book that I felt was really engaging and really exciting and surprising. And it's a psychological thriller. And now I have agents, you know, I have a literary agent in the US and the UK and here in Australia, and it's going out to publishers. And so I feel like despite the illness or even because of the illness, I still been able to build up my creative career and my creative practice. And I believe it's really, really helped me with my recovery.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Well, let's talk about writer's block. How do people shut down writer's block and unlock their creativity?
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>Oh, that's a fabulous question. So writer's block is it can Depend on the person. There's a couple ways of looking at it. One thing about writer's block is that it might be coming from, a really emotional place.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>And what I mean by that is you might have lots of ideas, but when you sit down to work on them, you might feel like, all the emotions that come with writing are stopping you from engaging with those ideas. So a really common thing is that people feel imposter syndrome. When you start writing, you don't have the skills to, do the kind of writing that you see getting published. Your writing is going to be amateurish. And that can make people feel like, oh, well, obviously I'm not meant to be a writer because I'm not good at it. And, you need to take a lot of heart in pushing past that phase. The only way to get better is to do a lot of practice. Like just, you know, just like with anything, starting a new sport or learning a new skill, you've got to put in the hours and you've got to take classes or figure out, you know, read books about how to develop those skills, figure out how to develop those skills for yourself.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>So your writer's block might be that emotional stuff, that fear of, I'm, ah, not good enough. And every writer has that. Even, you know, lots of established writers. Elizabeth Gilbert, who wrote Eat, Pray, Love, she talks about how that fear of not being good enough and of not being able to make the writing as good as you want it to be, that fear is always with her. And so it's about learning to recognize that fear and telling it to just take a backseat, step to the side. It's still going to be there. But don't let it stop you. Don't let it prevent you. Don't let it control you. And so I think learning about how other writers have had to deal with that, and it's the same for me. I had to deal with that as well. I, think that is really important. The other thing writer's block could be originating from is genuinely that you just, haven't trained yourself to connect with your ideas.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>So you might feel like, oh, I don't have any ideas. I don't know what to write. Like, you know, I've heard people say, I really want to write, but I don't know what. I don't know where to start. I don't know how to start. So first off, you have lots of ideas. Trust me, your brain is coming up with ideas. You're just, you're just not, tuning into them. And so it's just a process of training yourself to tune into those ideas, which is really exciting. So one of the things I teach, and this is, you know, I do creativity workshops, and this is what we do in the workshop is the rules are we're, going to do an exercise. I'm going to set a timer, you know, five minutes, seven minutes, whatever it is. And once that timer starts, you start writing, you start moving your pen or, you know, if you're typing, moving your fingers, and you don't stop until the timer goes. Even if you can't think of anything, even if all you can think of is, I don't know what to say. I don't know what to write.
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> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>I'm stuck. Why am I doing this? That's okay. Just keep going. Because usually what happens is while you're writing out, that while you're allowing yourself to express that idea, your brain will come up with something else.
00:28:07.049 --> 00:28:56.980
> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>And so, like, let's say the prompt is just like, just describe an ordinary day for yourself when you were five years old. What. It could be anything. You just start writing. And maybe while you're writing that you have some great idea about something that happened not when you were 5, but when you were 28. And you're like, oh, wait a minute. I just remember this thing that happened when I was 28. And that could be a great idea for a story, a memoir, a poem, whatever. And you just keep writing about that. And I think, I think my theory is that doing that kind of generative writing allows your. Allows your subconscious to express itself more directly. You're directly connecting with the subconscious, and so you're accessing all the ideas that it's always coming up with. Like, that's all it does all day. Ah.
00:28:57.359 --> 00:29:11.529
> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>So, my students, you know, it's so great to see them because we do these. We do these exercises, and they just have these remarkable looks on their faces because they come up with this. This amazing stuff that they didn't know they were capable of, and it's. They get really excited.
00:29:11.930 --> 00:29:26.440
> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>So I recommend that kind of generative writing. Even if you don't want to be a writer. You know, you want to paint or, like, you want to do theater or whatever it is. That generative writing is a great way to connect with what's going on in your brain and to access your ideas.
00:29:27.000 --> 00:29:34.710
> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>So depending on what aspect, of writer's block is stopping you, you know, it could be both those things, but there are strategies and techniques to overcome that.
00:29:36.789 --> 00:29:42.309
> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Well, tell us about any upcoming projects that you're working on that people need to know about.
00:29:44.630 --> 00:29:47.430
> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>Well, I, like I said, I teach creative writing.
00:29:48.079 --> 00:30:21.700
> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>I do a lot of that on Zoom. I do a lot of Zoom workshops. And that technically means people from anywhere in the world can join, depending on, the time frame, whether it suits them or not. Might be in the middle of the night, depending on what country you're in. But, I do lots of creative writing workshops and author events as well. So, you can Visit my website, ashleycollegianblunt.com and go to the events page and check out, the events that I have upcoming. My two books are available. My first book, My Name is Revenge, which is the one about the, Armenian genocide and the terrorist attack here in Sydney.
00:30:22.420 --> 00:30:29.009
> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>That book is also an audiobook, so that's available, and in terms of upcoming projects.
00:30:29.329 --> 00:30:38.170
> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>So like I said, my next book, my third book is out, with publishers right now. So we're, we're waiting to hear back.
00:30:38.170 --> 00:30:59.349
> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>But I'm hoping to very soon be announcing some exciting publishing news for that next book. but right now that's all under wraps. But I'll be doing, when that book comes out later this year, next year, I'll be doing a lot of events around that, and hopefully, some in the US as well.
00:31:01.920 --> 00:31:08.799
> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Well, you gave out your website, so give out your social media links so people can stay connected with you and see what you're going to be up to.
00:31:09.680 --> 00:31:14.319
> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>Yeah, I'd love to connect with people on social media. I'm definitely the best on Instagram and Twitter.
00:31:16.079 --> 00:31:33.420
> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>Collage and Blunt. You can just go to my website and, you know, click through to everything. I've got all the links there. and I'm, in theory on Facebook, but not using it as much. So Twitter and Instagram are definitely where my best content is. Like I said, I also do a podcast. James and Ashley Stay at Home.
00:31:33.740 --> 00:31:36.220
> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>We interview authors and other creatives.
00:31:36.670 --> 00:31:53.519
> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>we interviewed American author Sarah Centillis recently, and she was talking about her, philosophy of creativity, and she believes that creativity is a radical act. She said that when we engage with our creativity, we can remake the world.
00:31:53.759 --> 00:31:56.000
> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>And she is fantastic.
00:31:56.579 --> 00:32:09.579
> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>So if you, check out James and Ashley Stay at Home, and you can find that through my social media, I share quotes from the authors that we speak to and try to promote the great work that they're doing.
00:32:12.220 --> 00:32:20.589
> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>All right, well, close us out with some final thoughts, any extra tips you might have for writers or anything that I, left out that you want to touch on?
00:32:21.150 --> 00:32:27.250
> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>Yeah, I think just going back to where we started in terms of. In terms of career.
00:32:29.809 --> 00:33:29.329
> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>I started out with that idea that I was going to be a writer and I was going to get published. I was going to make money from it. And so I had a lot of years where I was really unhappy. And actually I really felt like a failure because I wasn't getting published. You know, I didn't have a book out in the world. I would go into bookshops and I'd feel lot of despair. And I think it's because I went in with the wrong mindset. I went in with the idea that all I have to do is write a book and get it published, and then that will change my life. I will then be a writer as my career. And I think that's a really discouraging way to think about creativity. And if I could go back in time, what I would tell myself is, you should do all the writing and try to write the book, but do it because you love it. Do it for that reason first and, you know, make your money elsewhere.
00:33:30.329 --> 00:33:32.700
> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>don't think about this as a career path yet.
00:33:33.900 --> 00:33:53.618
> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>I would give myself five years, maybe even 10 years to develop those skills and, to have fun doing it because it would have been so much easier and so much less stressful. And I think it would have happened faster if I hadn't put that pressure on myself. And I didn't know any better.
00:33:54.499 --> 00:34:02.179
> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>But that would be my key advice to people, is engage with your creativity because you love it first and foremost.
00:34:02.979 --> 00:34:36.800
> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>And then if you want it to be a career, give yourself the time to develop the skills. Like, it's going to take time. We have this idea, I think in popular culture that these things happen overnight and occasionally they do, but that's like the lightning strike. That's like the one in a thousand. Don't bank on that because you'll make yourself miserable. And I've seen so many people do that as I did. but yeah, I really wish I could go back in time and give myself that advice because I would have been much more happier and I would have ended up in the same place, maybe even faster.
00:34:39.280 --> 00:34:50.400
> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>And I think that goes the same for podcasting. Ladies and gentlemen, Ashley Kallagian Blunt. Ashley is a great teacher and a great author.
00:34:50.400 --> 00:35:07.659
> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>So you guys be sure to check out her books and follow rate Review Share this episode to as many people as possible. Also, Android listeners go to the Google Play store and download the Living the Dream with Curveball podcast app. Thank you so much for joining me today, Ashley.
00:35:09.420 --> 00:35:11.980
> Ashley Kallagian Blunt>Thank you so much. It was a pleasure to speak with you.
00:35:12.380 --> 00:35:25.039
> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>For more information on the Living the Dream with curveball podcast, visit www.craveball337.com until, next time, keep living the dream.
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