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.

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.

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?

How to Make Writing More Fun & Effective (Even if You Have Depression)

June 9, 2017 by jjscreativelifemidwife

Confession: I have an ongoing relationship with depression. I am not depressed, I don’t suffer with depression – I have a relationship with depression, one I’ve had since childhood.

It often goes underground and becomes invisible. Occasionally it comes roaring to the surface as it has for well over a year now, but especially evident since January.

As a creative, depression can be especially brutal for me because a big part of my symptomology includes very low motivation and flat affect. This morning I sat at my desk and I willed myself to write and in the process it occurred to me there may be many of you out there in a similar situation.

What I was reminded of this morning is the effectiveness of creating mini-writing goals and games to move me from a space of not-writing to writing.

The net result? I feel better. I would love nothing more at this point than to know I helped someone else feel better, too. I offer these suggestions as possibilities. Please try them on and write with them, at least for a day or two or maybe even three.

Let’s Play Writing Games with Goals (and feel better in the process.)

1. Make your writing goal game as simple as possible: write one sentence. Then another, then another. Often with depression we can’t even begin to state a goal like we can when we are not feeling depressed. That once shining, glittering project gets fuzzy and grows into your scariest version of the abominable snow man and the loch ness monster combined. Your first writing goal? Write five sentences on the same topic. Doesn’t matter if it is a paragraph and it doesn’t matter if it makes sense. Five sentences. Period.
Find one person to report to daily or almost daily. Be sure to determine if that person is a match for you. I had an accountability partner briefly but her energy literally stressed me out more than I was so it wouldn’t work at that moment in time. Find a compassionate person who has your best interest at heart who is capable of holding a flashlight alongside you to illuminate your greatest accomplishments, not the glaring weaknesses you may be prone to see first and foremost, always.
When your own words are exceptionally stubborn, search for quotes on topics you would normally be inspired to write about and then hand write those quotes into your notebook or journal. It may sound odd, but copying good writing often leads to writing your own good writing. Perhaps pick up a favorite novel and start copying a favorite scene from it, word by word by word. This is a writer’s block medicine that works every time. Don’t think it will? Try it, without attachment and let me know what happens.
Write what is around you in the precise moment you sit down to write. Allow yourself to have fun with what is around you. This morning, I wrote this while trying to figure out what to write:

I heard my coffee maker call out, “Come get your cup! Drink it! Feel better!” so I think I will. I can hear the sprinkler outside the window and if I close my eyes I can feel the moisture in the air against my skin and pretend I’m close to the ocean or river or a like, maybe, rather than my Bakersfield living room.

I started the day working, aiming to be pleasant and gracious when I wasn’t feeling it, whittling away time with people I didn’t want to be with in exchange for a few dollars as I contemplated sunrise and the possibility of exchanging my time for a substitute teaching gig.

I think about my writing goals – actually my goals in general, and I think about what one might do to light that passion fire again, to once again see the potential in a project one once loved and since has sputtered out – victim of lack of oxygen and fuel.

I sit with my hands under my chin, my eyes closed, and realize I could easily choose to fall back to sleep, to let my mind go numb again but something nudges me from the inside to continue typing, to keep getting words out – to light the way for others so that when they feel less-than-optimal they may read these words and remember there is a better, more companionable way.

5. Be open to enjoyment of the process. Depression is never fun and moments within it may actually be exactly the light we need to begin feeling better. When I actually write, I almost always feel better later. If you need help with this, we will be doing #5for5BrainDump livestream sessions on my Periscope Channel for the next two weeks. These WILL help you to write.

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 Struggle is Conceived in Your Mind and Cemented in Your “Buy In” + Lack of Intentional Action

May 4, 2017 by jjscreativelifemidwife

Please, please, please may our lives move beyond memes and into three dimensional living?

I am trying to not be a pain in the derrierre. Truly. But there are certain lines I just can’t cross.

I have taken a stand against foul language as well as violent language. If marketers or even brilliant people say they have a killer program or they want to slay or kick (usually a version of a donkey) or the like, I just won’t consume that product.

So I felt a real “ick, no won’t get there” vibe with the word “struggle” and when a challenge I am in focused on my ideal client’s struggles and writing struggles into being so that I could slay them I just had to say no.

I am choosing not to do that.

I decided first I would try to play nice. I would do some research on synonyms for struggle and all would be well and I would transform my thoughts.

The exact opposite happened.

Synonyms for struggle all lined up with violence and battle and difficulty and all of those not-Julie-isms I realized there is a reason for this disapproval. There is a reason none of this sits well for me and I get blocked by it.

When I say I am aligned with peace and justice and equality and love, I need to use language accordingly.

Instead of struggle, I will choose to create with the word “Challenge” because that – my friends, is something I thrive on.

Why?

A challenge may be won by many.

A challenge may be embraced collaboratively: there doesn’t have to be one big kahuna, there may be a tribe standing in a circle and singing “kum-bay-a” as they reach the top if that fits.

When I was a kid my siblings teased me mercilously because I didn’t want to play the family softball games. “How about no score keeping this time?” I would offer up. “What if this time we don’t have winners and losers?”
Back then it was because I didn’t like having responsibility for making my team lose, but little compassionate sweet hearted Julie is still alive and well in middle-aged Julie.

I challenge you to pay close attention to the words you are using and the way you are using said words.

I challenge you to aim towards being the most successful person you may possibly be and perhaps even gathering a few others up in your reach and inspiring them to be ridiculously successful, too.

I challenge you to laugh, to love, to sing, paint, dance, hike, build others up with abandon. Wear tie-dye if you feel like it. Wear a three piece suit or carry a personalized Coco Chanel bag.

Or create a vision of yourself in your ideal place. Dream wide and deep and colorful.

Let’s do this – whatever your this is.

The world is waiting.

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.

Truth: Writing Always Makes Me Feel Better so Write Even When You Don’t Feel Like Writing

April 28, 2017 by jjscreativelifemidwife

Write your response – mine is below –

Writing always makes me feel better.

No matter what, even if in the midst of it, I feel like crap – even if I’m sweating and cursing and writing flat out garbage, I know when the day is done I can say “I wrote three hundred words” or “I wrote one decent sentence” or “hell, I threw words on the page and that is something…”

It has to be something.

It is, indeed, something.

Writing always makes me feel better.

I set the timer for five minutes. I take a bite of donut and a gulp of coffee.

I’m writing.

Writing always makes me feel better.

It’s like easing out of a sore throat, drinking the tea and lemon water. It helps. Not always immediately apparent and it helps. I wake up and can speak more clearly. Like with writing. I throw words down, even gobbled gook, and my mind clears, just slightly.

Like sweeping away the mulberries or the darn spider webs that reproduce in Bakersfield when you walk around the block there are suddenly more. Always. Writing always makes me feel better.

Sometimes it’s simply cataloguing: “They changed the chocolate recipe. It is more thick than I like. That girl is being a volunteer and wants to be a nurse. She knew of Sheila “My friends were always talking about her,” they said she said.

That chocolate is too thick. I think I have a chocolate beard now but I keep writing because I know, I know, I know. Writing always makes me feel better.

I think back to when Samuel was first diagnosed.

I think back to when Writing Crew met at 11 every day on twitter and I wrote alongside them every single day or nearly, a sacred call.

Writing always makes me feel better.

Always.

Someone texted me. I am ignoring it because the timer will ring when my five minutes are up and this is where I need to be, not checking my phone, not answering the door, not looking at my bank balance or threatening my son’s teacher. (That last one is totally untrue but I didn’t know where to go with my words and fiction always works in a pinch.)

The timer goes off, piercing, like an annoying alarm on a travel clock I once carried in what feels like someone else’s life.

I notice, I do feel slightly better.

It works.

Writing always makes me feel better.

===

Creative Life Midwife Julie Jordan Scott writes on the road,, when she sits in cafes or in train station. She writes, always.

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.

Poetry: Love it, Hate it, Bored by It? Let’s play a free association game now —

April 21, 2017 by jjscreativelifemidwife

When you see or hear “poetry”: what springs to your mind first? Read this essay to relate to poetry in a useful, reflective way.

I subscribe to a variety of writing websites, read writing instructional books regularly and attempt, always, to be at the forefront of thought around writing so that I may serve my students and workshop participants and coaching clients as well as I possibly can.

I also make it no secret that I am a poet and an actor.

Today I was reading one of my subscriptions, saw this and literally gasped aloud:

“Reading poetry often bothers people. Sometimes poetry feels lofty and pretentious and seems to say, “I know something you don’t know,” which is obnoxious, like an older sister taunting us.”

I was mortified.

“Reading poetry BOTHERS people? How can that be?!” I found myself taking this assertion personally. “How dare they think such a thing! They are missing the fabulousness that is poetry and anyone knows…” and then I thought back to the years when I wrote poetry and neglected to read poetry.

It is sort of like being a selfish-all-about-me person who enjoys other people’s company as long as the focus is solely on what they like and what they want and the conversation revolves around them.

Poetry isn’t like that. At. All. If poetry is a one way “I just write poetry” or “I abstain from all poetry” you are missing out on a huge area of growth as not only a writer or creative, you are shutting yourself off from the sheer pleasure of word play that comes with it.

What if a poem was an invitation?

My father was one of those who didn’t like poetry because he couldn’t “figure it out” and then I wrote a sonnet about hearing my grandather’s voice in a train whistle.

Suddenly poetry – according to my father especially poetry written by me – was enjoyable and easy to understand.

Let’s take a moment to free associatie – I will share three lines of poetry, one at a time.

When you read a line, jot notes of how you connect with those words.

“We have the town we call home wakening for dawn which isn’t here yet but is promised.”

Philip Levine

Make associations – what words do you connect with here? What do you see in your mind’s eye from this one line of poetry?

“The grass never sleeps”

Mary Oliver

Associations, please.

“I saw you in a dream last night –

Quiet and pale, but still my handsome cousin.”

Dana Gioia

Associate (Do you have a handsome cousin?)

“Time for gardening again; for poetry”

Margaret Atwood

More associations – play!

I just pulled random collections of poetry from my shelves, opened them, and wrote the first lines I saw. I didn’t have to hunt for inviting word sections or the easier to understand lines or the ‘dumbed down” versions.

See, what I love about poetry is the simplicity I find there, the purity and the relationship between me and the words and by association the poet. Three of the poets I chose are currently living, breathing this same air I breathe, standing on the same ground I stand upon albeit in different spaces. Phillip Levine died in 2015 in Fresno, California not far from where I live in Bakersfield. Have you been to Fresno? The most unpretentious people you have ever met live there.

Dana Gioia and I had a conversation in December but I doubt he remembers me. I became a fourteen-year-old girl holding a copy of a fan magazine when I spoke to him. Giddy, with rapid speech, nervous about my choice of outfit and wishing I had taken more time with my appearance when we spoke. He is the current poety laureate of the state of California and the word craft in his poetry makes me swoon.

There is a new television show starting based on one of Margaret Atwood’s books.

Mary Oliver is a Pulitzer Prize winner.

Philip Levine is also a Pultizer Prize Winner who chose to focus on the working class in his poetry and the place of his birth, Detroit, was one of his central inspirations.

I went back to the article that started this train of thought and discovered a shift there, as well.

“If we keep reading, poetry often moves us in ways a paragraph can’t. It requires a compression of language and meaning, tucked inside precise words that create concrete images. Poets, with a wink and a wry smile, trust us to read well.” Joe Bunting, TheWritePractice.com

Share in the comments what words you free associate with POETRY. Whatever you think or feel, let it drip onto the comments here. This is going to be fun. Let’s read your thoughts now –

Coming Up: 30 Days of Writing Passionately

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

Check out the links in the margins 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.

Inspiring Artistic Rebirth. Remembering Passionate Purpose

May 25, 2015 by jjscreativelifemidwife

Writing at Gertrude Stein’s House

King Arthur’s knights quested after the Holy Grail. I, however, perpetually quest for ways to make writing fun. I even posted a request for “writing fun suggestions” at the Writing Camp with JJS Facebook page recently.

In a few spare moments on a Saturday night I decided to visit twitter’s #amwriting feed. I came upon a post with a headline very hype-y but obviously it made me click.Hyperbole is much alive in this title “This Fun Creative Writing Exercise Will Change Your Life”.

Seriously? One writing exercise will change my life?

I can’t support that wildly reaching proclamation but the article did, help me give birth to a poem draft. I haven’t written as much poetry lately and it made me sad. Writing a quick draft – badly on purpose – felt exceptional.

Does this change my life?

Maybe.

This creative writing exercise is most of all enjoyable and yes, it does get one’s pencil moving. Here is what I quickly wrote, attempting to write poorly as my theme:

Bad Poem: Take First

Sisyphus expels fiction

Portable headstones rumbling nowhere

Fused opinions laugh at sweat

Mangle Josephine and Scarlet and Rastafarian hats

(Not even sure if that is a word, I continue)

Rain doesn’t come here

Snow doesn’t come here

Pacifists don’t come here

Snaggletooth and mulberries are frowned upon

over there though their new wall and

attempt at visibility works

Voo doo doll paves the way

So this is how this works?

First shots. Not a dunk or lay up

Hula hoop falls down the hips

Too many EL Fudge cookies

leave her belly trapezoidal

Try again

later

===

Your turn!

==========

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 Spring, 2015 and beyond.

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.

Please stay in touch: Follow me on Twitter: @JulieJordanScot

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