“BREATHING THROUGH OUR WORDS”: REFLECTIONS BY AUTISTIC AUTHORS ON THE POWER AND POTENTIAL OF CREATIVE WRITING

Research within the autistic community suggests that creative writing may have the potential to enhance a sense of belonging, build self-confidence and improve management of distress and overwhelm for some autistic people. This study explores this further, working with three writers from the UK-wide Beyond the Spectrum initiative that engages published autistic authors to facilitate creative writing workshops for autistic people. Participants in the study created a piece of ‘free writing’ (i.e. not edited or crafted) to explore how their autism impacts their writing experience, and this was then subjected to ‘poetic transcription’ by the researcher, herself an autistic senior academic. Findings include that these autistic writers value the intensity of their autistic interests as a source of material and of intense focus within their writing, that autism impacts their creation of character, writing supports processing of memories and sensory stimuli and – importantly – is a source of satisfaction, empowerment and joy. Ways that writing, including the use of poetic transcription, may be a valuable source of communication and expression for some autistic people are considered.