Embarking on Eudaimonia; with Amanda Saint who pens The Mindful Writer

An Intimate Interview Series on Life's Big Questions by Ta Hiron

We welcome Amanda Saint today, a creative writing teacher who believes in the transformative power of storytelling. As the founder of Retreat West and WestWord, she aims to foster love, peace, and unity through mindful writing. Amanda writes, "The Mindful Writer" and "The Tao of Storytelling," encouraging deep exploration of the human experience.

Amanda's mindful approach to writing emphasises compassion, empathy, and connection, aiming to bridge divides. Through "The Mindful Writer," she helps others deepen their connection to themselves and their craft. In "The Tao of Storytelling," she links the ancient wisdom of the Tao Te Ching to modern life, offering insights, short stories, and writing prompts. Amanda's work inspires those seeking to slow down and connect more deeply in a fast-paced world.

Welcome Amanda, If you could distil your life philosophy, what would it be, and why is it meaningful to you?

I had to think for a really long time about this one. But I believe that it can be distilled to: “Be kind.” It is meaningful to me as I see a real lack of kindness in our world. I grew up in a family that wasn’t kind to each other and in a town that had a really rough and violent element to it. In the 1990s, I noticed on some of the TV programmes I watched and radio shows I listened to that it had become cool to be cruel about people. I think this lack of care for others shows a deep-seated lack of self-love and that we all need to be kinder, starting with how we think about ourselves. When I learned to like and be kinder to myself, I found that I was able to be more open-hearted and compassionate to everyone. 

The times we live in are very divisive and it seems like the default way to interact with people who don’t share the same nationality, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, beliefs (the list could go on and on) is to judge, blame and attack. Which is stoked up by the mainstream media, social media and many books, films and TV shows. So, my approach is to not engage with those things and instead use my writing, and all of my interactions with people, to be as kind and understanding as I can. 

Can you share a transformative experience that challenged your perceptions or beliefs about who you are and what you are capable of?

The past twelve years of learning about different ideas from science and spirituality about the nature of our reality has been completely transformative for me, rather than one single experience. It started when I moved out of the city in 2012 and went to live in Exmoor National Park and found all the ideas I had about who humans are and how we got here, which were programmed into me in church (which I didn’t really ever believe) then in school, challenged by spending a lot of time in nature for the first time in my life. 

Exmoor National Park where I would walk every day and feel my mind opening to the mystery of the world. Photo by Amanda Saint.

I had a tenuous belief in the Big Bang, and all that supposedly followed that, but always had questions about where did the singularity come from. But then I started to realise that nobody could be sure about anything. Seeing the patterns everywhere in nature, and understanding that I was a part of it, made it all seem unlikely that everything was completely random. This set me off on a journey of exploration into quantum physics, Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Gnosticism, and many other subjects, which is ongoing and has made me understand the only thing I can be certain about is that I can’t be certain about anything.

Now I embrace the mystery and that I can’t ever really know but I have been enjoying exploring the many theories that there are. I think the most transformative statement I have come across in my learning is said to have been made by the Jesuit Catholic priest, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), “We're not human beings having a spiritual experience. We're spiritual beings having a human experience.”

What I have learned, and what I have experienced through qigong and meditation, have led me to believe that this is probably true. Which has made me realise that I’m capable of so much more than I believed for most of my life. I used to be afraid a lot of the time, and now I’m not. Now I am amazed by being here, by the things I see and feel, and by the fact that I can’t even be sure that any of it is really real! I am also better able to accept and respond to whatever comes my way more mindfully, rather than having huge and mindless emotional reactions like I used to. 

Photo by Amanda Saint

Can you tell us about the origins of your novels, As If I Were A River and Remember Tomorrow; was there a question/s you were trying to answer/explore, and/or where the idea first came from?

In both stories, families and relationships are at the heart of them. The ways in which we hurt and heal each other and find ways to move on, together or apart. How we learn to love ourselves, and forgive those who hurt us. 

My first novel, As If I Were A River, came from a few different signs. I’d always wanted to write a novel but had just started going to creative writing classes and was writing short stories, while I thought about what novel to write. Then the universe brought me three signs in the space of a week and a character appeared in my head. It was 2010 and I was living in London at the time, freelancing as a communications consultant in the City a couple of days a week and working as a freelance journalist at home the rest of the time. The first sign came when I was on the way to work: a small piece in the free paper you get on the Tube, about a man in his 50s that had gone missing. 

A couple of days later, I was walking past Liverpool Street station on my lunch break and there was a woman wearing a sandwich board with missing persons posters on it. That night my husband was out and I decided to watch some TV and there was a documentary about people who had loved ones go missing. By the time I went to my next creative writing class that weekend, the protagonist, Kate, had come to me and I started writing her story then. It starts on the night her husband vanishes and I wanted to explore how a person could find their way again when the life they thought they were going to have disappeared overnight.

Remember Tomorrow came from a character that appeared in my head while I was still writing As If I Were A River and, I realised when I started writing the novel, from my work as a freelance environmental journalist, which I did for over a decade. A woman, Evie, who was living in the future but being persecuted for witchcraft. 

When the time came to write it, I knew the reason she was in this situation was connected to humans not learning from the past, or from the present, and it became a post-apocalyptic novel. We hadn’t fixed our unsustainable ways and our world as we knew it had ended. Evie was a herbalist and initially, when doctors and hospitals were no more, her skills were revered. But over time, old superstitions resurfaced and she was accused of devil’s work and her life was under threat because of it. With her grandson leading the witch hunt against her.

Can you share a pivotal moment or experience in your life that sparked your passion for writing and made you realise it was something you needed to pursue?

I always wanted to be a writer. From the moment I learned to read, I was a complete bookworm. I grew up in a chaotic home and books were my refuge. I could stay in my room and be transported to other worlds that were less scary and where everything always turned out okay in the end. When I was in primary school I wrote stories constantly, and plays, but then when I went to secondary school I stopped. I didn’t get started writing fiction again until I was in my mid-30s but had been working with words since I was in my late 20s. I worked as a science magazine editor, then in communications and web editor roles, before going freelance as a journalist and communications consultant. 

Novels and short stories taught me so much about the world, about being human, and so many writers touched my heart and mind that I wanted to do the same with my words. So I finally got back to fiction writing in 2008 and haven’t stopped since. Then in 2012 I started my own creative writing venture to bring fiction to the heart of how I live and work.

You teach writing through workshops and online courses. Could you share a teaching that helps participants connect with their inner wisdom?

I encourage people who write with me on my courses to trust the characters and themselves, to dig deep into what they’re writing and uncover why the characters need to tell this story and why they are telling it through them. To follow their instincts and let the story unfold rather than plan everything out at the start. 

Since launching the Mindful Writer in early 2023, I have started the A Year of Mindful Writing course, which starts every six months. The first group started in January 2024 and they have all said that the work they are doing is the best they’ve ever done and that how I teach, and the space I create, gives them courage. I don’t know if that connects them to their inner wisdom or not, but the work we’re doing together feels deep and important for us as writers, and as humans.

For the past seven years I have been teaching a year-long novel writing course that I designed, wrote and deliver with my friend, Craig, who writes as C.M. Taylor. The course was written at a different time in my life when my feelings about writing and the publishing industry were very different. So I have decided that the course starting this September is the last one and instead I am now running an adapted version, The Mindful Novel Course, which is all about my slow writing approach and really looking deep inside ourselves to connect authentically with the characters and story. I’m really looking forward to working with writers in a new way, which I hope will enable them to bring their inner wisdom to the page.

What 3 books have been the most impactful for you to read and why?

Choosing just 3 has been really hard! 

Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within by Natalie Goldberg had a huge influence on the kind of writer I am and also was one of the first books that made me realise writing was a mindfulness practice. I wrote about it here.

Reading the Tao Te Ching has had a huge impact on how I think, feel and be in the world and I have read many different translations. I used to have all of these questions about life that I desperately wanted answered but reading a chapter a day of this ancient wisdom over the past several years has helped me to let that need for answers go. I started to notice that humans’ propensity to name groups of people, things and events, to label eras and eons, put everything into categories, and believe we had found the true answers, no matter if someone had a different view, was a big part of the problems we have created for ourselves. I finally realised that all these names we had for different things are just ones we had made up. They didn’t have to be considered the definitive truth or reality.

The Heart of Buddha’s Teaching by Thich Nhat Hahn is another favourite. I don’t consider myself a Buddhist but I do read a lot of Dharma teachings and do live aligned with them. This book helped me to understand how I can bring the wisdom into my everyday life without having to feel like I need to call myself anything. 

Any final thoughts/story to leave us with:

Thank you for letting me share my thoughts with you about my writing and teaching. My life’s purpose is writing my own stories and working with writers to use storytelling to help us bring more love and compassion into the world and create a better way of being human together, and I appreciate having the chance to share this with your readers.

Thank you Amanda, for sharing so much of your journey and insights with us. Sharing your love of storytelling and your dedication to fostering compassion, empathy, and connection through writing feels like an invitation into a cosy place I want to be in. It was particularly enlightening to hear how your personal experiences have shaped your approach to mindfulness and kindness.

I got goosebumps reading about your book As If I Were A River. I am definitely adding that one to my summer reading list and I adore the cover and title, both add to the intrigue. Remember Tomorrow, sounds like an interesting take on how the world could evolve, now also on my reading list I cannot wait to find out how it unfolds.

Thank you again for your thoughtful contributions and for sharing your wisdom with our audience. Your work inspires me to slow down in witing, a concept I am feeling pulled into. Thank you for bringing kindness to the world. I, too, aim for kindness and agree it is always a good choice.

Thank you kindly for joining us here and sharing so generously.

A direct link to subscribe to Amanda is at the end of this page.

P.S. Embarking on Eudaimonia signifies a journey towards living a life of fulfilment, purpose, and flourishing.

"Eudaimonia" is a Greek term often translated as "happiness" or "flourishing." In philosophy, particularly in Aristotle's ethics, eudaimonia refers to the state of living well, achieving one's full potential, and experiencing a sense of fulfilment and thriving in life.

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