Julie Unplugged

Julie Visits (and Writes) with Emily in Amherst

Sometimes the Best Solution to Getting Words on the Page is Leaving the Page Behind - Inspiration from Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Anne Eastwood and Anais Nin

I have attempted to sit in my seat and write for an hour now.

I have written roughly five hundred words which for me is the usual for thirty minutes.

I have been wandering away consistently, though, taking on what I call “short attention span keyboard” and I’m not exactly certain why.

The why doesn’t even matter of course, what matters is what will I do about it with multiple writing projects hanging in the balance, how can I sustain them and my overall happiness with the craft if I don’t stay put and write?

I look up from my desk and see Anais Nin looking down at me. 

I see photos of Alice Eastwood, a woman naturalist who was so passionate about her work she astonishes me. Plus I need a hat like she is wearing in the circa 1900 photo. Susan Glaspell is up there as is the work of Charlotte Perkins Gilman and a postcard of a woman levitating above her lawn which my friend sent me because she said it reminded her of me when I write on my porch.

What should I do, wise women, when I am having trouble sitting still to write?

Anais says, “Do something that honors the hunger of your senses,” as she takes a puff on the end of her very long cigarette holder.

Alice says  succinctly, “Climb a tree.”

Susan says even more succinctly , “Improvise.”

Charlotte Perkins Gilman says, “Don’t be too rough on yourself. Do what you feel the urge, right now, to do the most.”

I plant my face in my palm.

Charlotte continues, “Obviously in this precise moment, writing isn’t it. You are excused for the next hour. Make some good.”

And with that, I shut down my computer, grabbed my dogs’ leashes and headed out to one of my favorite outdoor haunts very close to my house.

It was a tremendous choice.

The next time you feel completely stuck behind a brick wall of words and think what you SHOULD do is chain yourself to your key board, consult some of the writers you admire the most.

I did use my senses to see, to smell, to feel textures. I took photos, I talked to people I met along the path. I enjoyed my dogs.

I didn’t climb a tree, but I honored and greeted several.

I definitely improvised.

I took a break.

I came back and I wrote.

Try it.

PS – If you are unfamiliar with the writers I mention here, use your favorite search engine and seek information about them. Each is a fantastic woman writer who could teach each of us a lot.

Follow me on Twitter: @juliejordanscot 

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© 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott

    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 & this Summer will be traveling throughout the US to bring this unique, fun filled creative experience to the people wherever she finds the passion & the interest.

 

History: My Literary Family History Flows with Words & Images

This morning I made a light proclamation to my daughter, Emma when I said, “Your Great Great Grandpa was Canadian.”

She didn’t find that very funny.

Emma is taking AP World History this year and one of her first assignments is to research where her family roots began. We’re thinking nineteenth century here. Most of her classmates have roots in Europe or Central or South American during that time, but my little Emma’s roots stretch across the United States in that time.

My family of choice goes beyond blood. My family of choice flows words and images as blood. My literary Grandma’s and Aunties, My Artist Cousins and Sisters, these women so many people haven’t heard of yet.

In honor of the spirit of “FLASH” today, I am going to leave you with images of these women and request you visit the links I will leave from my “Women in Literary History from A to Z” series from last Spring.

Lucy Larcom, Mill Girl & Writer

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Social Reformer & Writer

Ina Coolbrith, First Poet Laureate of California

Kate Chopin: Novelist, Short Story Writer (with her Children)

WORD COUNT 173

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Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since 1999. She is

Julie Jordan Scott writing at Ina Coolbrith Park in San Francisco

also an award winning Actor, Director, Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the StoryTelling Slam champion in Bakersfield. 

 

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 © 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott

Walking In the Woods at Walden Pond: #BlogFlash2012 Day 24 - In The Woods

Last Fall I got off course while visiting Walden Woods. YES! Those Walden Woods, the place where I am certain Henry David Thoreau never got lost.

I happily walked paths alone, my heart singing a joyful song.

It was like coming to Mecca for me.

The place that is the heart of transcendentalism, Concord, Massachusetts – and this, the legendary place Thoreau went, in his words, to “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

Lost, found, on a path, on the path, on my path, none of it mattered. I was here, now, in Walden Woods. I heard the train whistle. Felt like home.

WORD COUNT: 141

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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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Powered by us.groups.yahoo.com  © 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott

Laws I Would Change ~ as a Government leader These Would Be Part of My Focus - Summer Blog Challenge #49

Today’s Summer Blog Challenge prompt is a difficult one to write to as well as read. My prayer is people read and respect other’s views, especially those that are completely different than yours AND those you don’t understand the reasoning.  We may learn something from those opposing views, especially if we come together in conversation with minds that are willing to listen rather than shut themselves off.

The prompt:

July 19- If you were president or prime minister for a day, what's one law you would change? -Submitted by Hannah @ Baby Knows Best

 

I know some of you may be surprised by what I write about what laws I would change. Before you close your window and declare yourself unwilling to speak to me again, please read my why’s behind the what’s.

Here are a smattering of laws I would change:

1. Equality across the board – I knew of my first gay marriage back in 1990. I didn’t question the legality of it, I just thought it was great my friend Steve was getting married. It wasn’t until it was legalized (briefly) in California that I discovered, “You mean this isn’t legal?” My current research is to collect all the Biblical references regarding what Jesus actually SAID about this issue since I have a meeting with a fellow Christian about this topic next week. My children and I protested here in California and carried signs that said, "Christians Against H8." I had the best theological discussions that day.... and I was afraid my church friends might see me and tsk tsk. I also believe in equality in education – meaning all school districts should strive for excellence and serve their underserved populations like Special Ed students through mainstreaming as many kids as is appropriate and not just warehousing the “inconvenient” kids. And wouldn’t it be great if there really was a community where interracial friendships were the norm instead of the exception? How about straight people and the LGBTQ community hanging out together without women being called Fag Hags or straight women hanging out with lesbians being presumed lesbians. How would I create such a law? No idea, but I think if we created an environment of love and compassion, these outcomes would be like breathing. Maybe for our kid’s generation.
2. Get ready to spit out your coffee. I believe in legalized prostitution because I would prefer the women who are engaging in that profession be protected AS WELL AS the men who are purchasing their services. Imagine if we could be sure there aren’t all those diseases rolling around and imagine if we could get horrifyingly violent pimps off the street. Imagine if all the prostitutes were actually there by choice because they realized it was a way to make a decent living, support their families or whatever it is they are doing? Imagine if you couldn’t be drugged up to be a prostitute and you couldn’t have untreated STD’s to be a prostitute. Imagine if we could collect sales tax on prostitution to keep our infrastructure intact. (Some of our roads here in California are AWFUL!) Read here about how forward thinking parts of the US were in the 19th Century AND how women's rights were won first by Prostitutes and the WOMEN who employed them.  I didn't write this, a scholar did....
   
3. Legalize and Monitor certain (now) illegal drugs. I say this as I am the biggest Carrie Nation style drug Prohibitionist you will ever meet. I have friends who, again here in California, have their Medical Marijuana cards, which is a joke. I hate it! People say “Oh, my fingers hurt from typing, I need a medical card” and they get one! And then they get HIGH and then they may lose their jobs because of the marijuana that stays in their system for a long, long, time! I know, look at all my exclamation points. I just found out last night there is a part of the marijuana plant that may be ingested (not smoked!) which actually HELPS with brain function. My thought with legalizing certain drugs is #1) Take away the power from the Drug Cartels #2) Empty our jails of bodies just wasting away and becoming bigger criminals from the culture on the inside #3) Again, build our infrastructure with tax revenues. #4) Actually minimize addiction instead of maximize it. Remember how awful it actually was during prohibition? All the crime, all the dirty activity caused because by it?
4. In the Education World (I mentioned a bit of this above) I would make sure all General Education teachers get training in Special Ed and with the huge Autism Epidemic, I would be sure the schools and the teachers are prepared. They would discover teaching a spectrum kid is actually helpful to their entire class. I would be sure all the administrators are educated in Special Ed law and if they BLOW IT by not helping a child they have the smallest inkling might have special needs, send those principals out of their offices and into special ed classrooms. Test them on laws and if they fail, they lose their income until the pass their legal exam. Can you tell it was administrators who failed my son? I realize this is more of a state-by-state and district by district thing, but I just wish all our children could be served AND that we, as a society, created a world where uniqueness was treasured rather than hidden off in the special needs ghettoes which exist on so many campuses today.

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. She leads Writing Camp with JJS & this Summer will be traveling throughout the US to bring this unique, fun filled creative experience to the people wherever she finds the passion & the interest.

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#SummerBlogChallenge Day 22: "What do you want to be when you grow up?"

Like many children when the “What do you want to be when you grow up,” brought a multitude of answers from Astronaut (long before Sally Ride!) to Actress to Mother to the one I wanted to be the longest was teacher of the blind and deaf.

I read a biography of Annie Sullivan, teacher to Helen Keller, and it sparked something deep within me. I wanted to be like her. I wanted to reach out and into the lives of people who were separated from the world because of the lack of visual and sound light.

While I gave up that specific vocational goal, I think as a life coach, I do reach out and into the lives of people who are separated from light: and oftentimes that leaks into not being able to see or hear life at its finest due to blocks in belief or hope or love or joy. I help people to re-discover those sensual experiences we relish in childhood.

I am also an actress and a mother, so I didn’t do so bad, did I?

I love this prompt and question. Makes me smile.

So – when you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

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© 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott

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 & this Summer will be traveling throughout the US to bring this unique, fun filled creative experience to the people wherever she finds the passion & the interest.

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Women Writers in Literary History: Lucy Larcom - Lowell "Mill Girl", Poet & Influential Memoir Writer

I was involved in this years April A to Z Challenge. My theme? Women Writers in Literary History. I fell head over heels in love with the theme so I am continuing to write my brief primarily social biographies. I hope to write as many as two a week. ENJOY!

When I discovered Lucy Larcom it was as if several of my worlds collided.

My friend Jared gave me the Poetry Edition from an old Children’s Encyclopedia last Christmas. He had found this series at a book sale and parceled the volumes to friends he knew would appreciate the content. I found a strangely feminist sounding poem tucked inside among what you might think would be in a poetry collection from the mid-1940’s. The intrigue led me to a google search where I found Lucy Larcom had been one of the Mill Girls in Lowell, living in the planned "Golden Experiment." for young girls to work in cotton mills in the 19^th Century.

Lucy Larcom lived and worked in Lowell from age 11 to age 21. She started as a threader, meaning she delivered spools of thread to the women working the machines. She graduated quickly to working the loud, heavy machines. She and her friends would post their favorite poetry on the walls since books were not allowed in the mills. She read her “poetry library” throughout the day, sometimes challenging each other to recite from memory.

She and her sisters were valued both for their tenacity in the workplace, but also for their love of language. This love helped her to insure the machinery would not “make her its slave.” She continued, "(the machine’s incessant discords could not drown the music of my thoughts if I would let them fly

high enough."

Until she was 15, she could attend school 3 months out of the year. She took full advantage of this opportunity for an education.

When the Mill Girls of Lowell began an experiment in publishing their work through a magazine for the workers called the Lowell Offering. Lucy was published repeatedly.

Through her poetry, she became one of the voices of the Mill Girls.

After she left Lowell, she started teaching school “out west” in Illinois, even though she had dropped out of school at age 10. She continued her education there, in Illinois, as she taught school, hoping to have enough credentials to eventually move back to Massachusetts and teach there, too. In 1849 she enrolled in the Monticello Female Seminary in Godfrey which had rigorous studies for women.

 Lucy returned to Massachusetts once her education was complete. She took a job teaching at the Wheaton Seminary (now Wheaton College.) She maintained friendships with John Greenleaf Whittier (who wrote a poem about her), Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Louisa May Alcott among others and eventually left her teaching career to pursue writing and publishing full time.

 Her 1889 autobiography, A New England Girlhood soon became a classic, a chronicle of the Mill Girl experience from a Mill Girl herself. She published fifteen other books, primarily poetry, in her lifetime.

 So – next time you are planning your Christmas gift giving, consider each friend’s passion and gift accordingly. I am grateful Jared did!

 ===

I am working on a page with links to all my biographies. Watch for it, soon!

 

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 teaches a teleclass/ecourse "Discover the Power of Writing & Telling Engaging, Enlightening Stories" which begins again May 24, 2012. Find details by clicking this link.

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HOME: Means different things to different women: Women's Sphere? Art Continues

I am haunted by an experience.

I am haunted by the image of the experience.

I am haunted by these themes during Art Every Day Month: Women Artists and Writers who left us too early, primarily due to mental illness - mostly depression.

I love cemeteries. I know there is a schism between those of us who LOVE cemeteries and those of you who think cemeteries are fine, from far away.

The cemetery I am using thus far in “Women’s Sphere?” is one of the most unique cemeteries I visited. I was couchsurfing in Connecticutt . My host, DeAnn, who I also visited recently in Vermont, took us on a quirky tour of her town, including the historic site, Connecticut Valley Hospital.

A bit of history: “The Connecticut Hospital for the Insane was formally opened in Middletown in 1868. Two years earlier, Middletown had granted the site to the State for the establishment of an asylum to accommodate Connecticut's mentally ill. By 1896, four groups of buildings had been erected and the institution was one of the largest of its kind in the country.”

What fascinated me most, though, was our last stop: the cemetery where there were rows and rows of graves. These graves were marked with numbers, not names. These were nameless, unclaimed mentally ill individuals who died without anyone. They left behind…. Numbers.

Among these, I am sure, are plenty women who had postpartum depression or psychosis, brilliant young women who lost their minds in late adolescent and most probably, some women signed into the hospital by husbands or family members who may not have even been mentally ill. This was the 19^th Century, after all. Women couldn’t vote or own property or make their own decisions.

Women were, primarily, chattel.

For these women, this was there adult home where songs were left unsung, words were left unwritten, stage plays never found an audience and paint brushes forever packed away, out of reach.

This piece, you may notice, has a home in the heart in the middle. It is the tower representing the Yellow Wallpaper towel. In actuality, it is the writing tower of Nathaniel Hawthorne who was tormented for different reasons.

This is The Yellow Wallpaper House from yesterday and the HOME piece and my cat, Constance, lurking outside. I found that to be a poignant metaphor.

This is a photo capturing What's Now and What's Next. The spiffy item underneath home... oh, I remember when Country Kitchens were the thing and these were everywhere. Anyway, now it is turning into a memorial for Sara Teasdale, first woman recipient of the Pulitzer Prize. She was a melodic, sentimental poet who some appreciated and some scoffed.

I love her and her work. When I was working on "Home" she kept coming into my

almost pleading with me to include her.

Sara Teasdale was born August 8, 1884 in St. Louis Missouri. She died, a suicide, on January 29, 1933. This date is actually twenty nine years to the day from my birth. Intriguing… yes.

 

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© 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott

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 & this Summer will be traveling throughout the US to bring this unique, fun filled creative experience to the people wherever she finds the passion & the interest.

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