Julie Unplugged

Today - Binge in a Healthy Way - for the Love of Words

I woke this morning at precisely 3:57 a.m.

I was wide awake before my eyes read the time on my cell phone and I knew there was no getting sleep back.

It is strange to be homesick for a place you’ve never lived. I am back here, though, back at this place I have called home for more than two decades. I have been reminded repeatedly to pay attention and listen. I can take that absolutely literally and be astonished by the crow having a love fest of sound behind me. I can also say I am noticing I let my coffee get cold again before I could fully enjoy it. Or the motorcycle, I am guessing from the sound of Japanese origin: I just heard that.

I can also tell myself to pay attention to what is in front of me now in my day rather than continue to lean into what was there for me last week.

I seriously drenched myself in physical literary loveliness.

It was like a binge on word-love. It was a healthy, hearty binge yet it was a binge nonetheless.

I texted a friend in Bakersfield, “This is ridiculous. I am driving past small town after small town of wonderfulness.”

This comment was from someone who loves the urban lifestyle and has adapted to the Bakersfield way of life as well. Small towns – village or hamlet style – are not my usual favorite.

What can be said by just happening by the birthplace of WEB Du Bois, Susan B. Anthony, and Edith Wharton’s summer home all in an afternoon? For reference – we are talking about the founder of the NAACP, a legendary suffragette and a Pulitzer Prize writer who was at the forefront of the literary scene during the gilded age of America.

I return to Bakersfield and as I drove my daughter to school this morning, came upon this bouquet of shopping carts. I looked out the window of my car and said, “Look, look at all the colors! Oh, this is a photo that wants to be taken!” The early morning light drenched the gossiping shopping carts with showers of new beginnings.

I see it as a different sort of literary loveliness.

Who am I to judge the value of The Mount or a tidy Victorian home on Great Barrington, Massachusetts with a shanty town of shopping carts, surrounding a cracked mirror and overgrown grasses?

Both and all are poetry, simply different flavors and available to be seen only by the eyes who are ready to see them.

Frankly, I found Edith Wharton’s Mount to be pretentious and boorish. The pet cemetery was charming but oh, the social good that could be done with such abundance – given the right administrator, perhaps. I enjoyed the more modest home of WEB DuBois as well as another home I visited last week, one which belonged to Harriet Beecher Stowe.

I mean to leave you with one noticing, however, rather than a listing of places I have been recently.

There is poetry in all of it.

There is poetry in the arrangement of trash, in the remains from today’s poverty, homelessness and drug addiction.

There is poetry in conspicuous consumption.

There is poetry on wide open country lanes and crowded, multilingual neighborhoods.

Our eyes and our ears and our observations – and the opinions we bring to the page that make the difference.

What poetry are you experiencing today?

If nothing comes to your awareness, look differently.

Poetry may be in the glasses beside the keyboard, the coffee mug, the barking dog, the lace curtains.

There is poetry in all of it.

This post is Number 13 of 30 and was inspired by the Ultimate Blog Challenge. I fell behind due to my travels and am hoping hoping hoping to catch up. Please give me some extra TLC via commenting, etc - as I will need it as I write write write for the next week or so!

Throughout the month I will be posting writing and creativity tips especially to make your writing (and your writing experience!) better.

I'm so glad you are here!

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

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What Stories Are Your Eyes Trying to Tell Me?

I don't know anything about her but her eyes call to me.

I have no idea who she is or when she lived, where she lived and how she died. All I have is this photo I bought at a Bakersfield antique store. On a shelf there is a big box stuffed with photos: portraits, vacation snapshots, military headshots, babies. Most are in black and white, some are signed, some give me the tiniest hint of who these people were.

Mostly they just give me curiosity.

I never knew going to the antique store could bring me so much writing pleasure as well as creative pleasure since I focus on many of these photos I collect in my mixed media pieces.

“Why did your photo end up for sale for twenty-five cents at an antique store? Where is your family, who should be treasuring your face as least as much as I do?”

I love this gal so much she now has a place beside me on my desk.  

I look into her eyes, and I think she was uncomfortable. Look how her knuckles are, tucked against her chin. She seems to be holding them awfully stiffly. Her tiny, corseted waist, adorned by a large buckle also makes me curious. How long has she been corseted so tightly?

I can’t even estimate her age or when she lived, but she looks an awful lot like a Gibson girl.

I wonder if any of photos of me will wind up for sale for the equivalent of a quarter in an antique store bin very few people peruse?

Why not try it yourself later today or even right now?

Go to google and do an image search of “young woman, 1900’s” and see who pops up.

What are her eyes, fingers and waist speaking to you?

I feel like all of these people, like me, never imagined their faces would be bought by a stranger and then written into something called a blog post. Somehow I feel it is part of my job to keep these people alive and give their stories a chance to surface, even if they are totally fictitious at least they are something more than sitting in a box for decades.

You may see your own eyes in someone’s eyes.

Search and then look. Question and then write.

Let me know how it goes.

 

This post is Number 10 of 30 and was inspired by the Ultimate Blog Challenge. Throughout the month I will be posting writing and creativity tips especially to make your writing (and your writing experience!) better.

I'm so glad you are here!

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

 Be sure to "Like" WritingCampwithJJS on Facebook. (Thank you!)

Follow on Instagram

And naturally, on Pinterest, too!

Where Will Your Creative Process Take You Today?

Never try to be in control of which direction your creative process wants you to go....

One of the assignments I have given myself this April is to “curate” my vast body of work and then sculpt them into several different… somethings. I am thinking books to start, probably with Kindle or other ebook methods to begin.

 

I have tons of writing lessons I created, how-to’s on writing, essays on writing and I even take photos about… writing.

This morning I pulled out a lesson I wrote three years ago to see if I could morph it into a new blog post as a part of my curation process. I decided as I wrote along here, telling you about my process, I would go one step further and give the “proper” definition of “curate”.

I was completely surprised at what I found.

I was expecting “curate” as in “curator” at an art gallery. I have been involved with enough art shows and even curated one of my own, so I know from firsthand experience a curator does this: “Select, organize, and look after the items in (a collection or exhibition).” Naturally I’ll be doing some clean up, revision and restoration along the way, dusting off cobwebs and other things curators usually do.

What I didn’t realize was the second definition of “curate” which actually fits as well when you think of it for a moment longer than your knee takes to jerk up to your chest. Curate = “A member of the clergy engaged as assistant to a vicar, rector, or parish priest.”

Just like that I have a new mindset about what I do when I am editing, revising and sculpting my work into specific forms like teleclasses, e-classes, books, stand alone lessons, collections of essays, how-to or info products. No longer is this drudgery and I am required to shove my creative mind into the dungeon. Now it is a soulful process where a different kind of touch is required, someone to come along that whirling dervish creative side and teach her about stillness.

I wonder if you can tell from reading what I just wrote that this blog post was supposed to be about Rainer Rilke’s love for the questions combined with blind contour drawing?

That blog post will have to wait for later.

This “a-ha” blog post that is begging to be shared with you is what wants to be born NOW.

One of the biggest challenges my writing students have is they get stuck on revision. They remember the red slash marks of their teachers in the past – they obviously were not curators – and they see it as something bad, scary and most likely with a negative or hurtful outcome. What if instead we begin to approach this “second part of the process” as sacred, holy and gentle.

My mind is immediately seeing a second side of me, I am wearing my robe and a floral headpiece of some sort. No, wait – I am wearing lots of lace… sort of loose flowing yet tight around the bodice. I look at my ethereal best and I take gentle care of these words the world is waiting to hear.

That feels much better than angry red slash marks, doesn’t it?

Yes. In April, I will be curating and curator of my life work.

I feel softer, lighter and I have an enormous yet peaceful smile on my face.

Tomorrow, perhaps – we will meet up with Rilke and Blind Contour Drawing, but today is our day to simply sit here and consider how our writing would improve if we gracefully put on our curator costume before we revise or edit. Instead of red slash marks and frustration with your whirling dervish creative self, minister gently with her – showing her both her brilliance “as is” and her brighter brilliance with a bit of polish and panache.

How does this shift how you approach the second stage of your writing process?

This post is Number 4 of 30 and was inspired by the Ultimate Blog Challenge. Throughout the month I will be posting writing tips especially to make your writing (and your writing experience!) better.

I'm so glad you are here!

 

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

 Be sure to "Like" WritingCampwithJJS on Facebook. (Thank you!)

Follow on Instagram

And naturally, on Pinterest, too!

 

Free Up Your Writing & Creative Juices by Getting Yourself Good and Word-Drunk

 

This is the face of a woman who is drunk on words. Word high. Blissed out by words.

 

Artist’s Dates, Writer’s Dates, special times you devote to freeing up your creative juices in a sort of “without a product purpose sort of way.

I believe in them.  Ever since I was first introduced to the concept of the Artist’s Date by Julia Cameron I wanted to celebrate. This is something I do naturally and now, someone had given me permission.

My favorite writer’s date is to go to the library for a couple hours and surround myself with books and then… read them, take notes, and allow them to do their thing with my mind and soul.

I call it word drunk. I know, this might not be politically correct, but I don’t know of another woozy, slightly out-of-body bliss way to describe it. Before you say anything or click away, please realize there is a history of alcoholism in my family, so people who are drunk on alcohol frighten me. Seriously.

But being high on the written word? There is absolutely nothing like it.

 

Last week on my library date with myself I also bought six books for sixty CENTS. Yes, you are reading those numbers right.

Sixty CENTS.

I also brought some word-love flowers to grace my table as I read and wrote.

It was almost like being at my desk at home except there was no computer and I don’t have quite this many books surrounding me as in the library. It may seem strange to you, but I love having books that have a history of being read by other people. I especially love having books other people have inscribed.

Word-love, after all, is something to share. Bliss is something to share. Which is why I am here, talking to you today.  I have even been known to encourage my friends to imbibe in word bliss with me. This is my friend, who joined me at the library. I heard when he lamented, "I don't even know where the library is in this town."

He read about the subject that makes his heart go a flutter.

He was also impressed by the art he saw on display and treated me to a bit of an art tour of the place. See what happens when you allow yourself a couple hours of indulgently browsing and hanging out at the library?

Do you see those two books on top of my library stack pile?

They are Margaret Atwood’s The Door and the Letters of Louise Bogan? I bought them both on Amazon when I got home. The Atwood poetry book included a CD of her reading her poems and cost me a mere ten dollars and the Louise Bogan book was less than five dollars altogether AND it is inscribed, a pleasant bonus I discovered when I tore it open two days after I ordered it.

I wrote this page and became delighted all over again.

Word-love. Word-blissed-out and yes, Word-drunk... that comes with a creative hangover which is almost as fun as the primary experience.

When will you visit your library again?

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© 2013 by Julie Jordan Scott

How the Art of Writing Letters Has Inspired My Creativity #lettermo

One of the Lettermo Challenges is to put mail in a variety of mailboxes. Found a new one yesterday!

February has been many things for me so far: the month when I watched Nemo come a calling upon my daughter. It has been the month of my eldest daughter’s twenty-third birthday. It has been the month of making and sending Valentine greetings for the first time in years.

The biggest thing February has been for me?

It has been a month of writing and receiving letters.

I had forgotten how fun it is to write newsy notes and receive newsy notes, written by hand from people you have never met. Because of Lettermo, I have met others who love this sort of communication. When I was a little girl, I wrote oodles of letters.

Email and life took over so no more newsy, handscribed notes or pouring over the stationery section of the store to get the “just right note paper” with colored envelopes, naturally. There is nothing I love more as a letter writer and receiver to have cool envelopes pop into the monochromatic white or ecru envelope.

I sat in a cool, independent bookstore in Echo Park called "Stories" and wrote letters one February Friday night.

Thanks to Lettermo, I have started making my own envelopes and cards and even more wildly (for me) I have actually started to make matching cards and envelopes. I have also sent more than thirty letters and received nearly as many. I still have five more to write to catch up and I’ve heard (via twitter and the like) people have letters to me on the way.

I am even going to write a letter to Malta this week. MALTA! I never would have conceived this before, my handwriting and art landing in a mailbox that remote strikes me as more than a little bit cool.

It was through writing letters my creativity has burst into flames in quite a renewed way.

As I said, February has been quite a month!

I participate in the Creative Every Day Challenge with Leah Piken Kolidas. You may join at any time.

 

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© 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott

Expressing What Can't Be Framed with Words

This is me, three days before surgery to remove the melanoma from my face last September. Sarah Downie took a series of photos. So grateful!

I went to a workshop nine days ago that was aimed to work with women who were dealing with cancer and their stories.

I didn’t want to go to the workshop particularly, but I felt I needed to go so I went and I’m glad I went but damn, I resent that I have to be attending a woman dealing with cancer thing, especially when some folks just don’t get that dealing with cancer doesn’t end with the surgery or the remission or the end of chemo or the ending of whatever the person’s treatment has been.

Facts are facts: I will continue to return to my doctor every six months for skin checks. Recurrence is fairly likely, hopefully it won’t be overly invasive next time. I have gotten better at not simmering in it, but there are moments when I still poke a hot stick into my scar saying, “The place where the cancer was deepest continues to be a grizzled sight to me. It has only been five months, it has only been five months, it has only been five months….”

"Women Get Cancer" Mixed Media: 2009 & 2013 by Julie Jordan Scott

I am pleased to see the continued processing from the workshop is coming out via art because words can’t express what I have to say about it most of the time. I don’t want to talk to friends about it. It makes me feel even more self conscious than I do now.

Women get cancer. I got cancer. I have recovered from cancer. Cancer doesn’t create who I am AND I may use my cancer to continue to express myself creatively. I never know when my creative process and product will be exactly what another person needs to see, to feel what she needs to feel, to get to the roots of what she needs to process.

May we all, collectively, feel better about our relationship with cancer. And if we feel a sense of resentment or whatever it is we feel, may we find people, places and projects which will help us to express the inexpressable.

 

=    =    =  

Julie Jordan Scott is a Creative Life Coach, a Poet Performer, a Writer and a Mommy Extraordinaire. Stay in touch with her via twitter or facebook or you may always call or text her at 661.444.2735 to arrange a complimentary coaching session.

Follow me on Twitter: @JulieJordanScot  

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© 2013 by Julie Jordan Scott

Creative Every Day Check In: Playful Experimentation with the Dark #CED2013

Dark Alienation: Mixed Media

This week I spent a slice of time every day to create this mixed media piece called “Alienation” along the theme of “Dark” – the monthly theme for January at Creative Every Day. I didn’t have a plan when I started out, I just plopped some gesso and paint thickly on a board, cut out some fish from Escher and traced some fish to add in the same shape, but made from dictionary pages.

After I cut the dictionary page fish, I layed them over the fish which were a deep shade of orange because I didn’t feel like the color fit my intention of “Dark”. The fish made of printed pages seemed to reflect both alienation and darkness. 

Dark Alienation in process: pulling the pieces together.

I loved how it looked at that point, but it didn’t feel dark enough. So I put on purple glitter wash followed by a dark grey wash to make it dirtier and darker while at the same time, more shimmery.

I was working on other vintage book page pieces which I will show later in the week. Since it took me five days to get this piece made from start to finish, I wanted to honor it here.

It might not be the greatest piece technicially, but I enjoy the vibe it gives off… of darkness and alienation.

What did you create this week?

 

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© 2013 by Julie Jordan Scott

Do You Listen When Nature Speaks, Even and Especially, in Urban Settings?

Nature speaks, even or especially in urban areas, when we keep our hearts open to

Leaves in a Parking Lot become Teachers

her voice. She spoke to me yesterday. I couldn’t help but share her message as soon as I sat at my computer again.

 

Read yesterday’s post here to hear what nature told me and through me, told you.

A random colorful leaf reaches out from a pile of curled up brown leaves: what does nature say to you?

A flower (or bush or tree) rises up from cracks in the pavement: what does nature

Nature springs up in unexpected places - beside a shopping center parking lot two palm trees are born.

say to you?

 

A bird sings to you as you walk from your house to the car: what does nature say to you?

An opossum walks down the street of your suburban (or even inner city) neighborhood: what does nature say to you?

Today pay attention to nature as it reaches out to you to be heard, to be seen, to be loved.

Yes, it is possible to climb a tree in urban areas.

Write after you notice her message.

 

As you do this more and more, you will discover not only more and more about nature, you will discover more and more about yourself.

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Plein Air Writing and Sketching Beside a Busy Street in Bakersfield

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 © 2013 by Julie Jordan Scott

  This is my sixth post (of 31!) for the January Ultimate Blog Challenge. Watch here for challenge posts which will include Writing Prompts, Writing Tips and General Life Tips and Essays.

  Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since 1999. She is also an award winning Actor, Director, Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the StoryTelling Slam champion in Bakersfield. She leads Writing Camp with JJS  and will be traveling throughout the US to bring this unique, fun filled creative experience to the people wherever she finds the passion & the interest.

Let's Walk Along the Road to Your Opportunity Adventure -

 

What do you feel in your belly when you hear the word “opportunity”?

I confess, I think about friends in the past attempting to induce me into one or another  network marketing business. Sometimes the opportunities were worthwhile for me, otherwise we just didn’t match up at all.

Unfortunately the residue of “not matching” tends to rumble in my belly when I first hear this word which is actually, quite a favorable word. It is even in the top 1% of words looked up at Merriam-Webster.com.

Apparently a lot of us want to figure out their relationship with opportunity.

This is a natural time of year to interact with it as we reflect upon what was and step into what is yet to be. We do know one thing: opportunities will show up. They may show up in strange disguises though so we don’t necessarily recognize them when they tap our shoulder or ring our front doorbell.

This morning I played with the word opportunity and opportunities. Playing with words is one of the ways I get closer to its meaning, I come to know it better, just like as children playing with the neighborhood kids helped us to get to know one another – as well as ourselves – even better.

I started with just the word: Opportunities.

And then I added to it:

Opportunities are.

And added some more:

Opportunities are risky.

And then, this burst out:

Opportunities are risky invitations to move beyond the current parameters of life. Opportunities lead to “I did it, I did it, I did it!”

I played with images, one of which is at the top of this blog post and along with that image I placed the Merriam-Webster definition which I love for so many reasons:

• a favorable juncture of circumstances
• a good chance for advancement or progress

The first one sounds so British. I can hear a male voice, sort of mid-range, speaking it aloud and it makes me melt, just like that. Isn’t that wonderful?

Are you ready to play with me in the Land of Opportunities?

How about are you ready to play with me in the Land of YOUR opportunities?

 

Let’s take a stroll through the land of opportunity.

There, ahead, I see quite a favorable juncture!

Get better acquainted with the word, in either the same way I did or perhaps using other creative tools. Grab markers or crayons and make it decorative. See if you have any belly upset attached to it so that you may erase it away and once again, become enamored with YOUR adventures in opportunity which are right around the corner.

I’ll be back later today with more of my own play to inspire and as a way to walk alongside you.

 

Follow me on Twitter: @JulieJordanScot

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 © 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott

Paths: Taken, Not Taken - Chosen, Unchosen or Just Fell onto Your Head Without Your Permission

Path: Some times the best path chooses you. -- Patrick Rhone

"What path chose you this year?" asks Meredith from Cultivate2012

Phew. I am getting tired of talking about this all the time and it is only day 2 of December.

One path chose me this year: cancer. Melanoma to be specific. It is a path that pisses me off, quite frankly. I am working through it. Sometimes I abhor this scar on my face, other times I think it is awesome and still other times I forget it ever happened.

I like that last option the best.

I haven’t reached that giddy excitement to just be alive like many cancer survivors do.

Another path chose me: branching out creatively.

Yesterday at a soul collage workshop the facilitator said, “Well, you know how it is, Julie… as a painter you understand.” I didn’t say anything because I am surely not a painter, I insist. I am a poet, yes. I am a writer, yes. I am a performer, yes. I am certainly not a painter. I play with photography, sure I’ve sold some pieces and I have leaped into mixed media and jewelry making but no, thank you, I am not a painter and then someone I respect deeply not only referred to me as a painter, he called me specifically an “abstract painter.”

This seems ridiculous. Why do people keep insisting I am on a path which I know I am not on?

Silly people.

Perhaps this is partially because of my melanoma: I have pulled back from theater because I am concerned my appearance will be upsetting to audience members and “pull them out of the moment” that is, if any directors would be foolish enough to cast me.

Cancer chose me. Deepened creativity chose me. I can’t be angry for either. I believe I was at choice with the deepening creativity now I guess I need to be at choice in not saying, “No I am not a ____, if I was that I would be horrible at it!”

I also want to shift to being at choice with my cancer, more in that I do not see cancer as a “thing that happened to me” or “something that chose me because I am somehow wrong, bad, or I deserve it.”

Each prompt this year is helping me get more clear.

By the end of December, I should be exceptionally brilliant. (See me laugh and hold my tongue firmly in cheek.)

Thank you, Cultivate 2012!

Follow me on Twitter: @juliejordanscot 

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Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since 1999. She is also an award winning Actor, Director, Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the StoryTelling Slam champion in Bakersfield. 

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