About
Debbie Jeffery
The Story of OutPour
We’ve all experienced ‘flow’ at some time – when we’re so engrossed and immersed in an activity that we forget everything else and lose track of time.
Often, though, we feel distracted and unfocused. This was me, for pretty much my entire life. As a bored student at school, college, and university, staring out of the window, and then as a journalist, writing for the national press.
Words were work. They needed to be counted, to meet someone else’s brief, to make the deadline and match the publication’s brand identity. Contained, controlled and uncreative.
I’d long ago given up on my dream of writing fiction. With no spare time, my days were filled with joyless writing and words were churned out for money.
Whenever anything major occurred, though, I would feel inspired to write a poem, filling an old red book I’d bought when I was eighteen and which I still have now. Life events and memories were captured in these outpourings, and the poems arrived quickly and urgently, almost from nowhere, overflowing straight onto the page as a form of therapy. I never showed anyone these poems – they were a diary of my life’s lowest points and full of emotion.
It was when my mum died in 2018 that something strange happened. One poem was simply not enough to soak up all my grief, and so I spent every Saturday morning for a year writing until I had a novel, with a cast of fictional characters acting in a psychological thriller about hypnotherapy. For the first time in my life, I was able to write fiction without over-thinking and planning, and then the floodgates opened.
After a lifetime of feeling creatively blocked and frustrated, which manifested in anger, and as resentment at others who were living a more creative life, I started writing every day: songs arrived on the page in minutes, accompanied by melodies, which I asked musicians to develop before being released on streaming platforms such as Spotify and YouTube. My second novel flowed without pre-planning, each character already fully formed and named.
I read The Artist’s Way book by Julia Cameron and kept a notepad beside the bed, ready for her concept of ‘morning pages’ – a daily brain dump of thoughts and feelings to help unblock creativity.
I halved my journalism workload to allow time to catch up on all the creative writing I’d spent a lifetime missing out on, too busy overthinking and worrying about other people’s opinions. My stories, poems, and songs had been percolating for so long and were solely for me – not written for money or reviews. Not for sale.
I felt alive, driven and slightly afraid of all the latent creativity I’d been repressing, but also desperate to discover what else this source could bring and where it might take me. Could I help others to find their flow? Might my own experience prevent another from enduring the frustration and anger of not being heard, at feeling bottled up and off kilter?
And so OutPour was born, and I became midwife to others’ words – strewn across the page. Tears, laughter, revelations. Incredible and life changing. I had finally found my purpose.
“I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say” – Flannery O’Connor
The Magic of Creative Flow
Everyone has a story to tell, and everyone deserves the chance to tell that story. Outpour means ‘to flow out’, but often our words become bottled up inside us.
Fear of comparison and of not being good enough can hold people back from trying to write. But what if you just wrote for you? How might that feel? What if it wasn’t about the end result but something else entirely?
People tell me categorically that they cannot write, have never written, and have no interest in writing. And then they produce the most heartfelt, jewel-like poem or piece of prose that leaves them gasping – unsure where the words came from – shocked and proud of what has appeared on the page before them when they weren’t even trying!
It’s an astounding process, finding flow. Tapping into a huge powerhouse of potential hidden inside us that spreads out into every area of our lives, bringing increased confidence, improved relationships, understanding, relief, direction, and a sense of wholeness.
By not over-thinking and just writing, something magical happens. Among the gibberish, key words appear that turn into sentences and become our story. The secret is to forget everything we’ve been taught and just write.
OutPour is more than just writing to express feelings – it’s a way to tap into hidden reserves of intuition, resilience, and inner strength, by letting go and trusting ourselves.
Saying Thank You
Yes, thank you speeches at awards ceremonies are always boring and overly long, but there are some people and organisations who I really do need to thank for all their help and support while OutPour was being developed.
Firstly, to my long term friend, mentor, and business coach, Sandra Robinson, of Forward Steps Coaching (www.forwardstepscoaching.co.uk) who has been my sounding board, Guineapig and general cheerleader, and was pivotal in helping to unleash my own creativity.
I was also lucky enough to work with the incredibly knowledgeable Hannah Reynolds of Devon Communities Together (www.devoncommunities.org.uk) when she mentored me as part of the New Start Devon enterprise support, which included a boot camp for developing ideas into enterprises.
Thanks also to the Devon Mental Health Alliance (www.mentalhealthdevon.co.uk) for their Innovation Fund – a grant which enabled me to fast-track OutPour, including building this website, pulling together the various ideas and concepts into a viable social enterprise.
Then, meeting Lindie Whitfield, CEO of Newton Abbot-based charity Wellbeing in Action (www.wellbeinginaction.co.uk) provided an incredible opportunity to collaborate with an existing organisation, who generously offered OutPour space in their wellbeing centre and the chance to become involved in their work, offering workshops and one-to-one sessions to those most in need.
Finally, to Angela Holmes (Devon Partnership NHS Trust) who has been my mentor from the start, encouraging, making suggestions and generally keeping me going!