- Particularly for me growing up, I had a speech impediment, so I was writing to communicate my ideas.

And then I was also struggling to do that, just on an auditory scale.

So for me, I learned how to speak by writing poetry.

And so those types of art forms are very integrated in my life.

- Well, how did that work?

How did that help you?

(Amanda laughs) - Great question.

Well, for example, some things that I would do would be, let's say, listening to the "Hamilton" soundtrack.

I had a very difficult time saying all of the R sounds and "Hamilton" has "Aaron Burr, Sir," "Alexander Hamilton."

And so if I can rap, if I can do those poetics at that speed and with their intonations, that was helping me figure out how to say the sound.

Also, if I'm writing a poem, when I was younger, what I used to do is I would eliminate words that I couldn't say and try to find synonyms, but it got very difficult if I couldn't say R's, and I was talking about girls and the world and earth and just all of these things I could not say.

And so instead of eliminating my voice, I decided to keep those words in the poem and every single time that I performed them, use that as an opportunity to practice that sound.

And so if I'm reading the poem and the word girl was coming up, I would see that in red text in my head, warning me we need to gear up for this.

And so that's just one of the ways in which written text, spoken word, poetry, really helped me find my voice, in more ways than one.