Creativity comes from right mood, pressure

Hannah Bowden
Hannah Bowden
Hannah Bowden says you can’t just turn on creativity like a tap  — you have to be in the right mood.

And for the Gore High School 17-year-old, that mood is last-minute panic.

"I tend to procrastinate and then at the last minute I’ll push out a piece.

"I find it makes my writing more passionate. It’s better if I do it in one sitting than over a long period of time — just get it all out and let it flow."

It’s a technique which has helped Hannah create an emotive and uplifting piece of writing which has won the 2017 Otago Daily Times Secondary Scene Award for Excellence in Writing.

She said it was inspired by people’s expectations of her and the pressure she felt to be someone that she wasn’t.

"It started to get to the point where I didn’t feel like I was my own person. I was just trying to impress everyone else."

At the time, she said it was not intended to be a message to young people.

"It was just the fact that that was how I was feeling at the time and I needed to get it out."

But looking back on it now, she said there was a message.

"As cliched as it is, the message is: ‘Just be you’.

"It encourages people to break from the moulds that other people set on you, and create your own design.

"Your own self-perception is not always going to fit what other people think of you.

"But sometimes it’s just better to face it and identify what’s brought you to this point."

Hannah said she was delighted with the award and looked forward to building on her writing skills when she returned to school for year 13 next year.

Hannah said her longer-term academic ambition was to study psychology in 2019.

john.lewis@odt.co.nz

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