Archives for July 2017

What is Calling You to Attention: Write it out to Make Positive Change in Your Life Now

July 31, 2017 by jjscreativelifemidwife

Last week I wrote for five minutes using this prompt image I created.

Mondays are my day to “pay attention” oftentimes after weekends which are prone to distraction.

I have only made minor edits to my “in the moment” writing using the #5for5BrainDump method.

There are so many distractions as I sit here and attempt to write for five minutes about awakening love for my writing process. I see a broom and want to sweep, I look at the clock and I want to assemble lunch for my children and get out into the money making flow “hurry it up hurry it up hurry it up!” I heaer in my inner ear. Oh, Lord I can’t do it all – my anxiety reaches for my throat to shut my voice – my writing voice – down.

Five minutes. That’s all.

My fingers continue to move, on the keyboard focused.

Reawaken love for the process.

Let go of end result. Welcome bad or mediocre or lukewarm results. (Youch!) Yes, even lukewarm.

Awaken to the process being enough. This is so un-pilgrim-esque: there must be results. My inside habits shriek!

There must be a something in order to continue I can’t just continue for a nothing that makes no sense.

*Note to self: the results come from the on-going practice. When I re-read this five minute writing, I discover content possibilities even in this short chunk of writing. I find instantly solutions for people who seek my programs, my coaching, my books and courses.

Oh, yeah, there’s that.

Process is worth all of the wonder and exhilaration of what other peole call “results” that I have had as a part of writing for five minutes a day – being on a best seller list or having twenty five people pay a thousand dollars to hear me speak.

People are pushing me and I am welcoming it.

My community is rising up to greet me and say “Bring your work forward with and for us” it is almost surreal, beloveds, almost surreal.”

If it was a job.

Is it still less than five minutes?

I hear the coffee pot call me, the coffee pot that has been creating really tasty coffee lately.

I think of the squirrel and planning and play. And me. And love. And movement.

And applause. All that in five minutes.

Now it is YOUR turn to write. Ready?

Set your timer for five minutes. I use the online timer under this link here.

Now look back up at the image and either hand write the prompt or type it into a document. Press go on your timer. No editing, no forethought, just writing. Now.

You’ve got this… What is calling for my attention is….

Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world. She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed media artist whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people’s creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming in soon!

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

Reawakening Love for The Writing Process Itself

July 28, 2017 by jjscreativelifemidwife

It is one of the most powerful questions you may ask yourself: “What do I really, truly want in this wild and wonderful life I’ve been given?”

As writers, we may ask specifically about our writing, “What do I really, truly want to create with my writing? How do I want my writing process to feel?”

We may ask, “How may I awaken my love for the writing process?”

I wish I could tell you the answer naturally rushes out in a beautifully crafted message right from my subconscious to my keyboard.

It doesn’t usually happen like that. Instead, a process we come to know as even more delicious than instantly having an answer takes place and instead of just “getting an answer” I give myself room to fall back in love with writing.

Stay with me so you may deepen or fall in love all over again with both your creative process AND your life. I will share with you what I wrote in five minutes. I am taking that risk, I am allowing you into my own writing perfect imperfections. It is scary for me AND I am willing to go there because it is so important for each of us.

“When love awakens in your life, it is like a rebirth, a new beginning.”

John O’Donohue

I started to write:

Think outside of the realm of romantic love now.

If I reawakened to the love in my writing life, I would discover… my words have more merit and meaning than I had originally believed. In fact, I haven’t believed deeply enough in eons. Or at least a long time. Eons, that’s a bit of hyperbole.

Isn’t it funny how a moment in time may feel like eons? It may feel like hyperbole too. Maybe we should write about love AS hyperbole. Maybe we should write about love being someone else drinking the yummilicous coffee I made for myself. Or stealing the chocolate bar (for myself) or… enter your weird quirk here.

“My sun sets to rise again.”

Robert Browning

Settling in, I think about Nutella sandwiches. I think about my slouchery as a mother. I think “What will my babies eat if I don’t map it out?”

= = =

There are so many distractions as I sit here and attempt to write for five minutes about awakening love for my writing process. I see a broom and want to sweep, I look at the clock and I want to assemble lunch for my children and get out into the money making flow “hurry it up hurry it up hurry it up!” I hear in my inner ear. Oh, Lord I can’t do it all – my anxiety reaches for my throat to shut my voice – my writing voice – down.

Five minutes. That’s all.

My fingers continue to move, on the keyboard focused.

Reawaken love for the process.

Let go of end result. Welcome bad or mediocre or lukewarm results. (Youch!) Yes, even lukewarm.

Awaken to the process being enough. This is so un-pilgrim-esqu: we are trained to insist upon results that are only in our favor. “There must be a something in order to continue I can’t just continue for a nothing that makes no sense.”

Writing this is not a nothing. Writing these words is definitely a something.

Process is worth all of the wonder and exhilaration of being on a best seller list or having twenty five people pay a thousand dollars to hear me speak.

My community is rising up to greet me and say “Bring your work forward with and for us” it is almost surreal, beloveds, almost surreal.”

Is it still less than five minutes?

I heard the coffee pot call me, the coffee pot that has been creating really tasty coffee lately.

I think of the squirrel and planning and play. And me. And love. And movement.

And applause. (My timer applauds when my time is up.) All that in five minutes.

= = =

Now it is your turn to take today’s prompt and write from it. You may write once or you may write several times.

“How may I awaken my love for the writing process?”

Remember to set your timer for five minutes and after your time is up, spend fifteen to thirty seconds writing what you are grateful for either from the writing experience or from your life in general.

The world is waiting for your words: let’s get them on the page now.

Be sure to follow me so you may continue to stay close to this sort of writing inspiration to keep your writing flowing and your life moving in the direction your heart seeks.

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

How to Write Anywhere from Random Inspiration, an Old School Pencil plus a Sprinkling of Word-Love

July 27, 2017 by jjscreativelifemidwife

I wrote the majority of the poem below at one of Bakersfield’s quirkiest fast food drive-thru windows. They make fabulous veggie breakfast burritos, so my intent to feed Emma and take a moment or two of solace was met when I stumbled past my to-do list for a moment of writing play from a page of a college text book published the year I was born.

I wrote with a very appropriate yellow, number two wooden pencil. I wrote in cursive and asked my sixteen-year-old son if he could even read cursive. “Kinda,” he said from the back seat as I showed him my fledgling work of art.

Any tiny slice of these moments this morning would never entered into the minds of the faculty of Louisiana Polytechnic institute when the pored over the just right content and the most highly regarded readings for college freshman who were born while Europe was being flattened by hate and might and fervor.

When this writer-poet-word-lover started making art and word prompts from book pages purchased at library book sales and SPCA Fundraisers, word-lust and art collided to create… what you’ll find below.

By the way, a fun way to create writing prompts on the go is to use a daily newspaper. Circle three words from an article and use those words to inform your content in a poem or a paragraph, a tweet or an Instagram story.

Now, for this poem:

Blue Waltz and Brillcreem – (She loves the words exactitude and abstraction together)

Exactitude met abstraction in two lines in a 1950’s textbook

staunch and quirky, measurable and a running-off-the-table’s edge

puddle straddling similar yet always slightly or eons apart concepts,

Can you see them? free range and structured words abandoned,

unpolished: abstract exactitude – sweet and savory, Abbott and Costello

letters whose sole aim was to assist today’s dead or nearly dead then adolescents figure

out what language really meant.

Language: still alive and forever

captured because this poem is being written now, decades later

and you are in fact reading or hearing this

language habadashery, stitched earnestly into a semblance

of something – hopefully not completely unpleasant.

The wonder, the strength of the academic lust mixed with brill creem and

Blue waltz, cardigans and denim, cuffs turned up at the bottom –

Nothing but ephemera now. Intangible abstraction, once fragrant

Exactitude mixed with optimism and blind hope-filled ambition

###

It isn’t brilliant poetry AND yet it felt so good to write. The process opened me to some fun language I may continue to play with perhaps as a stand alone prompt or two or perhaps, I’ll take this poem on a “revision date” and feel full with it.

My bet is YOU have writing that would benefit from a revision date as well.

I just had a thought we might create a time of “revision date night” and pull out works such as these to fine tune and prepare for publication. Definitely worth considering.

I’ll close with a video I just created to inspire your writing using the sense of smell. Since this post was inspired by a drive through window and this video was inspired by the smell of pancakes, let’s move there for a moment now.

Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world. She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed-media artist whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people’s creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming in soon!

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

The Power of Attention: Use It to Improve Your Writing Now

July 25, 2017 by jjscreativelifemidwife

What is something you feel called to pay attention to, even if just for five or ten minutes or an afternoon or a day?

Let’s pay attention to how our words desire to flow for a sentence or a paragraph.

I’m going to pay attention to how my neck feels. I am going to pay attention for five minutes without concern about where this writing or this attention moves because in the world I inhabit, there is no wrong with this process, there is simply writing.

Inhale: There is no wrong or right, there is simply writing.

Exhale: No wrong, purely write. For five minutes. Begin.

‘I am going to pay attention to how my neck feels. I am going to sit here, at my desk and lower my head as if praying and feel how it is to.. and as I paid attention and relaxed my neck my hands fell away from the keyboard and I almost instantly fell asleep.

Perhaps that is why I tend to hold on so tight, because I don’t want to fall asleep.

How does one fall asleep and pay attention at the same time? Mothers of newborns do this all the time but then again we never seem to sleep really well then we just sort of… kind of sleep. Maybe paying attention serves as a reminder of how sleepy I am and how good it feels to rest.

I am going to pay attention to the good stuff in my notebooks that sit around, waiting for me to scoop them up and glean the goodies, like this one: I write to make peace with the things I cannot control.

I write to create textured, purple fabric in a world that often appears flat with grey or black or white only.

I write to experience a daily act of improvisation.

I write as though I am whispering into the ear of the one I love. ß timer says “stop – fingers off the keyboard)

When I re-read my words a week later I discovered with a giggle originally that final sentence read “I am whispering into the “war” of the one I love” perhaps because my subconscious felt the need to remind me I haven’t felt at peace with the person whose ear I have whispered to for many years now.

Perhaps paying attention includes making peace with open, compassionate diligence.

Are you ready for your turn?

Where will you focus your attention for a mere five minutes?

Set your timer for five minutes and write. Move your pencil, pen or fingers on the keyboard.

Write.

Take a mini retreat in the canyon, perhaps… or in a local park.

performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed media artist whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people’s creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming in soon!

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

What could be easier? A DIY Writer’s Prompt with a Gratitude Focus

July 24, 2017 by jjscreativelifemidwife

How about the simplest form of thematic writing prompt possible?

All four of these quotes from powerful, creative women focus on gratitude and appreciation. Read all of the quotes and choose one as your prompt.

Write it (or type it) into you notebook or into a document.

Read the quote aloud.

Re-read the quote silently and/or aloud three more times, taking a deep cleansing breath between each reading of the quote.

After the third breath, set your timer for five minutes. let your pencil or pen flow across the page as if it is in conversation with the speaker/writer of the quote. Allow your highest, deepest self (or whichever self is running your show today to put into words whatever needs to be said.

“Silent gratitude isn’t much use to anyone.”

Gertrude Stein

“The best way to show my gratitude is to accept everything, even my problems, with joy.”

Mother Teresa

“Appreciation can make a day – even change a life. Your willingness to put it into words is all that is necessary.”

Margaret Cousins

“Let Gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayers.”

Maya Angelou

Writing at Gertrude Stein’s House

the announcement of new programs coming in soon!

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

This Exact Gratitude: Origin Unknown – Result? Remarkable

July 24, 2017 by jjscreativelifemidwife

The date of this exact gratitude list that gave birth to this (nearly over) mini-retreat/soulful social media quiet time is unclear. I remember sitting in my car, scribbling the list it – but exactitude? It won’t matter in the long run. It doesn’t even matter now, a week or so later.

I wrote:

I am grateful for the ability to communicate.

I am grateful for the beauty of words.

I am grateful for the people who read the words I toss, cry and mindfully set down upon blue lined paper.

I am grateful for whatever it is I manage to create today (because I know I will. Eventually anyway.)

I am grateful to know I will not judge quantity or quality or relevance of the words and objects I create today.

I am grateful I am able to move my pen across the page. I am grateful words fall off the tip so effortlessly.

I am grateful there are papers to catch the words I write in cursive (and it looks pretty!) I’m grateful for pencil sharpeners.

I am grateful for crape myrtle trees and finches and mourning doves.

I am grateful for enthusiastic young people (I sound like an old farm-hand) who just got promoted who still have a vision for their lives that includes accepting whatever happens with grace and building upon those circumstances, whichever, with grace.

Today I am grateful for the years I have been writing and sharing consistently. That “old stuff” is so current, so accessible and ready.

It created the plan and execution of that plan. Edit to evolve and the mighty, beneficent yes shines through.

My mission is to daily “gather our word-love community to collaborate and create a ritual, path, method to save/preserve/curate and continue to breathe heart into our collective life work.”

Daily, recognize and claim my place as a singular and sacred expression of life itself and a gift from the divine to the world – meant for taking action with passionate gratitude to join the flow because I know this world is a place of healing, wonder and wholeness where all know each one is welcome.

= = =

Since I re-visited this time of creative process last Wednesday, I have repeated these declarations and oh, have they ever helped me not only in my daily direction, but also in casting my future and present vision.

This exact gratitude list may have unknown origins, but the continued growth and rebirth as a result of gratitude is blanketing my life. It is grounding me and lifting me toward heaven.

It’s been a while since I felt like this.

Today I am remembering and standing on this strength to continue as I declare daily: I recognize and claim my place as a singular, unique and sacred expression of life itself and a gift from the divine to the world – meant for taking action with passionate gratitude to join the flow because I know this world is a place of healing, wonder and wholeness where all know each one is welcome.

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

Check out the links above to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

Into Silence: Choosing Quiet in Order to Discern What’s the Most Effective Next Step –

July 17, 2017 by jjscreativelifemidwife

“That perfect tranquility of life, which is nowhere to be found but in retreat, a faithful friend and a good library.”

Aphra Behn

She was right. Aphra Behn, I mean. She was actually right in more ways than one.

She was right to make a living via writing: the first woman to do so writing in English, Her writing was seen as bawdy and improper and therefore – in my eyes – absolutely perfect and appropriate.

She wrote to get out of debt. She wrote because her other way of making money; as a spy for Surinam, didn’t quite work out as she had hoped.

She was also right in her assessment of taking personal retreats when one needs to experience tranquility, which is what I will be seeking over this next week.

I am taking retreat to assess, to plan, to care take myself, my children, my home and my business.

I will be publicly silent and privately, intensely sacred.

I can’t imagine not checking in with my “people” – and I know when I come back in a week I will feel refreshed, revitalized and more likely than not have a whole batch of fresh content and ideas to share with you about writing, the creative process and leading your most remarkable life.

Now we both have something to look forward to, yes?

With Great Love,

Julie

Take a mini retreat in the canyon, perhaps… or in a local park.

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

Check out Julia’s social media links above to follow her channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

Writer’s Affirmation in Practice – “My Writing Flows Easily”…..

July 13, 2017 by jjscreativelifemidwife

This is an example of what happens using the #5for5braindump method of writing. I needed to write and it wasn’t flowing so I borrowed an earlier affirmation and instantly the words flowed and had a new insight right at the end. Fantastic!

“My writing flows easily. I deserve to feel excellent about what I create now and always.”

I know there is a disconnect between my satisfaction and my completion of my creative projects. I know it is garbled and jagged and twisted where it used to be easier to sort through and act like the Nike Slogan, “Just do it” and I also know – with absolutely clarity – my creative production and satisfaction was much higher when I took moments in time to create with laser-beam intensity.

“My writing flows easily. I deserve to feel excellent about what I create now and always.”

I allow myself that intensity when I let go completely of other people’s needs and allow the deep contentment of focused writing (conversation, love-making, sketching) even if it is only for a five-minute time segment, my whole being perks up when I say “YES! Take five and create, do, make something now, with love passion and focus.”

What throws me off is my cluttered workspace and I can’t find THE exact pencil or the notebook that has that just right quote or…. For my daughter it is when her absolute right outfit is in the laundry basket rather than hanging up in her closet, ready to be worn.

I almost stopped to “think” when actually I think what I was doing was critiquing myself either for not being a better laundress or a better daughter-laundress trainer. Literally that thought has made my stomach gurgle.

See how easy it is to get caught up in self-recrimination?

My five minutes are up.

Even though my stomach hurts now and it didn’t before, I feel better.

“My writing flows easily. I deserve to feel excellent about what I create now and always.”

Writers & Creatives: Passionate Detachment MAY be Your Best Friend –

July 6, 2017 by jjscreativelifemidwife

I started writing this as a five minute brain dump (#5for5BrainDump) and then discovered… I hadn’t started my timer. Nonetheless, I loved the content so here it is – unedited and raw but about ten minutes worth.

I wrote from the quote you see below –

“Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be obtained only by someone who is detached. ”
― Simone Weil

Passionate Detachment is a theory/term I made up roughly fifteen years ago from a conversation with a painting contractor while we talked about small running backs one hot day in Bakersfield.

I’m sure there are similar concepts but I enjoy the paradox and how it sounds, the variety of vowels and consonants.

Passionate detachment: going for your goal with all you’ve got and not being attached to the results of your efforts. Be entranced, delighted and full throttle, like the five-foot-six-inch high school running back who puts his head down and runs right through the huge defensive linemen and heads toward the end zone without worrying about the two-hundred-pound tackle launched in his direction.

Sports analogies work in the US.

It is the painter who splashes paint for hours on end on her masterpiece, not concerned with commercial endeavors yet knowing if this painting resonates with the right audience and her art dealer gets this painting in front of the right people it will change EVERYTHING and yet she just goes for it – she may have visualized and strategized and held countless meetings but the bottom line is she loves how the paint smells and how it feels to move it on the canvas, how the expression on that face she just created reminds her of her first grade teacher, Miss Foley, when she told her “Happy Mother’s Day” with the sweet purity of a seven-year-old who loves her single-not-a-parent-yet-teacher-who-obviously –loves-children.

Passionate detachment says “I will go after success AND I will do what I love, regardless of how wacky some people may think I am in doing so.”

Passionate detachment says, “Make that slightly offbeat declaration about your plans on Facebook in front of everyone you know (and a few people you met once in passing who friended you) and then, by gosh and by golly, take action in the direction of that wild dream no one thinks you will ever really do.

Passionate detachment says, “I don’t know how I’m going to do this, but I am going to start because I know Plato once said something like ‘The beginning is the most important part of the work’ and if I just talk about beginning but don’t actually start, it is worth nothing. And my vision and I are both worth a whole lot of something so here… I…. “ and then, the passionately detached person takes that leap.

She moves her pencil on the blank page. He makes that phone call to that investor he met while riding pool on Uber in Los Angeles. They sign that contract to rent that space for the event they have wanted to hold and place the ad and talk to five more people than they’re comfortable speaking to because they are passionate and they are detached. They know they are worth every action and their vision is worth every small and not-so-small risk.

They are passionately detached.

(Sometimes brain dumps are interrupted by phones ringing and sometimes they end with applause.)

How do you create with passionate detachment?