Julie Unplugged:

L is for Lucy Larcom: Inspired by Literary Grannies - "love for poetry as one of the most needful & helpful..."

Looms at the Lowell Mills layered with a photo of the Sculpture, "Homage to Women" by Nico Kaufman

"I regard a love for poetry as one of the most needful and helpful elements in the life-outfit of a human being. It was the greatest of blessings to me, in the long days of toil to which I was shut in much earlier than most young girls are, that the poetry I held in my memory breathed its enchanted atmosphere through me and around me, and touched even dull drudgery with its sunshine.”

Lucy Larcom

I first wrote about Literary Granny Lucy Larcom in 2012. My admiration of her has continued over the past few years, especially after a visit to her home, Lowell, Massachusetts in April 2013.

She was not only one of the famed Lowell Mill Girls, her entire family was connected to the mills. Her mother was a Mill Boarding House Mother and Lucy was living and assisting her mother in the home even before she went to work in the mills at the tender age of ten. Yes, ten-years-old, like our usual Western fourth grader, little Lucy was working as a threader in the mill.

As she worked her way up in the mill ranks, she discovered new ways to stay creatively engaged through reciting and eventually writing poetry as the machines cranked out fabric. The machines are loud and rhythmic, steady - metronome like. Among this ear shattering noise, young Lucy integrated the musicality of poetry into what could be seen as the drudgery of such work.

I discovered on my visit to Lowell, the very mill where Lucy worked was steps away from the high school famed beat poet Jack Kerouac attended decades later.

Questions for Writing and Contemplation:

What can you do to bring more musicality and word play into work or chores you consider drudgery?

How do you relate to the theme “Whistle while you work?”

Sentence starters:

I hear music in my writing when I…

My “day job” impacts my writing because….

My creativity is sparked from my work when…

Gibran says, “Work is love made visible…” and in relationship to my creativity I would have to say….

Reflections for the End of the Day:

I noticed my attitude toward work and writing changed when I…

If I was honest about what I think about my work I would have to admit..

I wish I felt…… about my work

A change in attitude would….

Tomorrow I will…

I am grateful my work is…

I am grateful my writing is…

I will devote myself to being more aware of…

= = = =

This blog post is a part of April's Blogging from A to Z Challenge. Visit here daily in April to be inspired by literary grannies across time.

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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

Julie Jordan Scott is at the Microphone writing a collaborative poem during a poetry performance

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

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

Follow on Instagram

And naturally, on Pinterest, too!

Posted at 11:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

K is for Kate Chopin: Inspired by Literary Grannies

I don’t remember who first suggested I read The Awakening by Kate Chopin. I wish I knew so I could thank them. It reminds me of the movie, Pleasantville and in many ways it reminds me of my own life.

Kate Chopin was one of the first women writers I declared worthy of the “literary granny” moniker.

Like Charlotte Perkins Gilman, she faced serious depression. She was widowed and without any means of support, she started writing to at the advise of her doctor, in direct opposition to Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “rest cure” to combat depression.

She built a name for herself through her stories of the Southern region of Louisiana and quickly became quite popular. Her “Story of an Hour” and “The Awakening” are both strong stances against convention and perhaps a part of her popular downfall. When she died at age fifty-three, she had fallen into disgrace from the community that once revered her.

I wonder how she would be received now, writing similar stories?

I wonder if her depression would have been medicated away rather than written away?

Questions for contemplation and writing:

How do I receive the stories of others?

How can I best inject more wonder into both my own stories and the stories of others?

What questions haven’t I asked that would be valuable to ask?

Sentence starters:

I am awakening to…

I need rest from…

I need to create more…

Reflection questions for the end of the day:

Today I noticed myself awakening to…

One community I used to be in was….

I notice I have disconnected from….

I want to be remembered for….

= = = =

This blog post is a part of April's Blogging from A to Z Challenge. Visit here daily in April to be inspired by literary grannies across time.

==========

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

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

Follow on Instagram

And naturally, on Pinterest, too!

Posted at 07:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

J is for Judith Sargeant Murray: Inspired by Literary Grannies to Stand Up for Other Women

Judith Sargeant Murray is s frequently called “a feminist” because she worked toward equality between women and men, but there wasn’t a name for this yet. She would never call herself a feminist because that might be like one of the Viking Captains calling himself an astronaut.

When I first wrote about Judith Sargeant Murray in 2013 I wrote, "She s frequently called “a feminist” because she worked toward equality between women and men, but there wasn’t a name for this yet. She would never call herself a feminist because that might be like one of the Viking Captains calling himself an astronaut."

Today’s Literary Granny was an advocate for the education of girls before most people believed there was a need to educate “the gentler sex.” In her day, when the United States was a brand new country, only the wealthiest boys from the “best” families were able to invest the time to do much “book learning.”

Today, times have changed somewhat though there are more places in our world where girls still are not afforded an education. My daughter, Katherine, attended an all-women’s college specifically because I noted how many women leaders are developed at such institutions and had wondered allowed to her how my life would have been different if I had given an all women’s college more consideration when choosing where to do my own higher learning.

Beyond education, oftentimes women tear one another down more often than we build one another up.

Why does this continue?

More importantly, perhaps, is asking “What can we do to stop it?” and then taking aligned action to build up other women in our communities through supporting the work they do and the causes that stir their hearts.

Judith Sargeant Murray took action. It was her brothers who went to Harvard to be educated. She got her Harvard educations from her brothers when they came home for the Summer. Her “second hand” education lead her to her unwavering belief in the education of girls and women. Her first published essay (under the pen name Constantia) was titled: “Desultory Thoughts of Self-Complacency, Especially in Female Bosoms,” which appeared in 1784. It is, perhaps, a chapter from one of her earliest drafts of the work she published in 1790, On the Equality of the Sexes, which she reportedly completed its first draft in 1779 but was not ready to have it published at that time.

In addition to the pen name of Constantia, she also wrote under the name “Mr. Vigillius” because she believed he would have a wider readership than Constantia. “He” wrote fiction which described and illustrated Judith’s views on religion, politics, education and the manners and customs of the day.

Judith stood alongside fellow women using her writing voice - even cloaked in a male pseudonym - so that we could continue to learn, write and speak today.

Questions for contemplation and writing:

What do you to do to stand up for women in your writing and/or in your actions?

What are some ways you may reach out more than you do now?

Sentence starters:

I have an unwavering belief in…

When I see unfairness, I usually….

I would like to build women up by…

I can stop tearing down other women through…

Reflections at the End of the Day:

Today I am pleased to report I….

I was inspired to….

Today I noticed women….

Tomorrow I will….

I really want to be more….

= = = =

This blog post is a part of April's Blogging from A to Z Challenge. Visit here daily in April to be inspired by literary grannies across time.

==========

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.

Julie Jordan Scott writes from inside a Fountain at Joaquin Murrietta Park in Oakland, California. Mr. Murrietta was one of Ina Coolbrith's closest writing friends.

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

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

Follow on Instagram

And naturally, on Pinterest, too!

Posted at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Inspired by Literary Grannies: Ina Coolbrith, Legend and Encourager of Legendary People

“It’s oh my heart, my heart, to be out in the sun and sing!”

Ina Coolbrith

She is one who would best be called legendary. Oh, if only more people knew who she was rather than only who she influenced.

The name Jack London is revered, but who is to say who this young boy might have become if not encouraged and inspired by the librarian of his “house of worship” also called the Oakland Public Library? Ina Coolbrith so touched his young, creative heart, he wrote a letter to the library years later, extoling her virtue and crediting her with his earliest development as a lover of words.

She was the first Poet Laureate of the State of California - in fact, the first state poet Laureate in the United States.

She was friends with John Muir, took walks and had chats with the young Samuel Clemens, and had friends so devoted they purchased her land and built a home for her after hers was destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fires. She collaborated with reformer and literary granny Charlotte Perkins Gilman and counseled a young Isadora Duncan.

Today, allow her energy and enthusiasm to light your writing and creative fire. Invite her heart into yours, to be in the sun - metaphorical or not, depending upon where you are weather wise today - and sing. Just sing - whether for you singing is something you do with your pencil on the page, your body in your dance or your voice, quivering with vibrato.

Questions for contemplation and writing.

What space, place or circumstance fills your heart so full you must sing? (or dance or paint or write? Write a vignette of a time when your heart was that full --

Who are some of the legendary people in your life? Start a mental or physical list and scribe an homage (or two). Share your observations with others to keep that legend alive, even if she or he is no longer living. Allow your passion for that person to overtake you, even for a moment.

Sentence Starters:

Oh, my heart is….

To be out in the sun and…..

Reflections for the end of the day:

Whose life have you influenced?

What people (or groups of people) would benefit from your positive influence? What will you do and who will you be to reach them more readily?

Today I was inspired by….

Tomorrow I will be more aware of….

Today, I created….

Tomorrow I aim to create…..

(My first writing of Ina Coolbrith may be found here)

= = = =

This blog post is a part of April's Blogging from A to Z Challenge. Visit here daily in April to be inspired by literary grannies across time.

==========

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.

Julie Jordan Scott writes from inside a Fountain at Joaquin Murrietta Park in Oakland, California. Mr. Murrietta was one of Ina Coolbrith's closest writing friends.

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

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

Follow on Instagram

And naturally, on Pinterest, too!

Posted at 08:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Inspired by Literary Grannies: H is for HD - "Writing is love" YES!

“Writing. Love is writing.” H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)

When I read her poems, I am reminded of another poet I adore, the soul opening Mary Oliver.

When I read of her life, I am reminded of many of the women whose work I have been using as a focus. She attended a woman’s college, Bryn Mawr, before she later attended University of Pennsylvania where she met Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams. She was misunderstood by most Americans, so a short trip abroad turned into a lifetime as a resident of Europe, primarily. Her life was filled with tragedy and passion, interchangeably.

She was an actor as well as a poet. She wrote memoir and novels, too. Her words were lyrical and they were few. Her poetry reminds me a bit of Adelaide Crapsey (Read about her on from my Women in Literary History Post - A is for Adelaide Crapsey.)

Though known as an imagist, she expanded those boundaries quickly. Then, as now, identification can prove to be fatal to one’s fame so the addition of “Feminist” to “Imagist” was a death knell for her work. People applied “imagist” rather than actually experiencing her words so she had limited success and acclaim during her lifetime. Thankfully, she has become known more widely since her death due to stroke in 1961.

She was also a member of the “Pool Group”, three individuals: Kenneth Macpherson, Winifred Bryher and H.D. They lived, worked and created together in Switzerland. They published a literary magazine Close Up and also created a classic feature length silent film, Borderline. It featured an inter-racial theme and for the times very sophisticated sexual themes. HD had the leading female role in the production.

Among all the rest of these facts, HD had a daughter, Perdita, who was raised in the “Pool Group” home, where she was exposed to many avante garde artists and writers.

Can you imagine what that would have been like?

She went on to be a servicewoman in World War II before moving to the US and living a rather conventional adult life, complete with a home in Manhatten and four children, all of whom became writers.

Questions for Writing and Contemplation:

What comes up for you when you think of HD’s words, “Writing. Love is writing.”

How would you describe your love affair with writing?

How can you expand the boundaries of your creativity?

Sentence Starters

Writing is…

Love is….

Reflection Questions for the End of the Day

I would like to expand my writing to be more…

I want to make my love affair with writing more….

Today, I most enjoyed writing…

Tomorrow, I want…

= = = =

This blog post is a part of April's Blogging from A to Z Challenge. Visit here daily in April to be inspired by literary grannies across time.

==========

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

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

Follow on Instagram

And naturally, on Pinterest, too!

Posted at 12:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Inspired by Literary Grannies: G is for Gabriela Mistral - Defending Rights & Writing Poetry

Literary Granny Gabriela Mistral: Change agent, Poet, Nobel Prize Winner

“Love that stammers, that stutters, is apt to be the love that loves best.”
― Gabriela Mistral

Does your writing ever stammer or stutter? My guess is for most of us who describe ourselves as writers, there have been moments of some level of discouragement to find the words, the right words, to get the words on the page.

When today’s Literary Granny, Gabriela Mistral, speaks of love - I can also relate what she says to writing. Let’s try that on:

“A writing process that sometimes stammers, that stutters, is apt to be the writing that readers loves best.”

Yesterday our Literary Granny Frances Harper Walker suggested we lead a true and nobel life which will then be our way to writing the most important poetry of all. This thought inspires me. If I allow myself the space to stammer and stutter as I write anything - and continue to write, anyway, I recognize what is coming through my initial messiness is bound to be some really exceptional stuff rather than cliché or run-of-the-mill or what one might expect of me.

I am passionate about sharing women’s voices. I am passionate for women to come together in community – to find heroines as well as heros to discover how much more we have in common than those ways we are different. When our writing stammers and stutters and finds its way - especially in community - lives are forever changed.

Gabriela Mistral was such a change maker.

She was not born Gabriela Mistral, she was born Lucila Godoy y Alcayaga. She was a Chilean poet whose early life was laced with tragedy and early adult life was scratched deeply due to suicides of those she loved dearly.In 1945 she won the Nobel Prize in Poetry stating “for her lyric poetry which, inspired by powerful emotions, has made her name a symbol of the idealistic aspirations of the entire Latin American world.”

Besides being the foremost Latin American poet of her time, Gabriela was an intellectual, an educator and consistently defending the rights of those who had little – if any – power. In 1906 she wrote a hard-hitting article called "La instrucción de la mujer" – The Education of Women. She had been denied the right to study and wanted make sure this restriction was lifted forever.

She was a change agent repeatedly in her life, as evidenced by her Nobel prize. She worked on her career as an educator and writer simultaneously, working on social justice and communicating her vision via poetry and has been a champion for all people ever since.

Questions for Writing and Contemplation:

In what ways are you currently a change maker?

Would you like to be more of a change maker? What inspires you to be a change maker?

Sentence starters

I influence others when…

I influence others when I write…

I would like to increase my influence in….

When I think of myself as a champion of people, what comes up for me is….

Reflection at the End of the Day

Today I influenced..

Today I wish I had acted upon…

Today I wrote…

And tomorrow I aim to write more….

Tomorrow I will…..

= = = =

This blog post is a part of April's Blogging from A to Z Challenge. Visit here daily in April to be inspired by literary grannies across time.

==========

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

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

Follow on Instagram

And naturally, on Pinterest, too!

Posted at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Inspired by Literary Grannies: F is for Frances Ellen Watkins Harper "How to Produce the Grandest of All Poems"

Frances Ellen Harper Watkins, Literary Granny & Inspirer of the Generations

F is for Frances Ellen Harper Watkins : May she inspire you today - -

"Every mother should be a true artist, who knows how to weave into her child's life images of grace and beauty, the true poet capable of writing on the soul of childhood the harmony of love and truth, and teaching it how to produce the grandest of all poems - the poetry of a true and noble life.”

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

The closing portion of the quote, “the poetry of a true and noble life” resonates with me on a deep level.

That’s the sort of life I want to live, getting increasingly true and more honorable as I continue to grow and develop and learn and laugh and explore and create.

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper certainly lived such a life. She was not only a gifted writer who contributed to the literary world by making history as the first African American woman to publish a short story in 1859, she was also a journalist for anti-slavery newspapers. She was a lecturer and founder of the National Association of Colored Women and focused continually on improving the lives of women as well as being a mother and step-mother.

She was an artist-activist whose poetry brought to light in a clear, melodic way the challenges facing the oppressed and the marginalized.

What a gift it would be for each and all of us if more of us took on the task of bringing more grace and beauty, more “poetry of a true and noble life” not only to ourselves by to those we encounter who are less than or marginalized or those around us who simply believe themselves to be less than or marginalized.

Let’s be honest: all of us have felt as if we don’t measure up and as if we are insignificant and irrelevant at some point in our lives, haven’t we? Perhaps that is part of what stirred Literary Granny Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. Now she is here, again, to inspire us.

Questions for Contemplative Writing

What do you do to actively live a true and noble life? What more could you do?

What can you do to begin to focus on leading a poetic life?

What can you do to weave grace and beauty into your everyday experience?

Sentence starters:

I am inspired by…

I inspire others when I….

My edition of a ‘true and noble life’ would look like….

Reflection when the day comes to an end:

How did I live poetically today?

What actions did I take that were noble and/or true?

Who can I be and what can I do tomorrow to add more nobility and truth to my day?

= = = =

This blog post is a part of April's Blogging from A to Z Challenge. Visit here daily in April to be inspired by literary grannies across time.

==========

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

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

Follow on Instagram

And naturally, on Pinterest, too!

Posted at 11:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Inspired by Literary Grannies: Poet Elinor Wylie - "I love bright words...." & creative friendships

”I love bright words, words up and singing early;

Words that are luminous in the dark, and sing;

Warm lazy words, white cattle under trees;

I love words opalescent, cool, and pearly,

Like midsummer moths, and honied words like bees,

Gilded and sticky, with a little sting.”

Elinor Wylie

I am a morning person. I am the first one awake in my house and when my children were little I trained them to be quiet when they found me at the kitchen table writing in my notebook.

“Mommy is writing her morning pages,” I told them. It was my sacred time, as Elinor Wylie wrote, “I love bright words, words up and singing early.”

There are few writers and poets I am in love with as deeply as I love Elinor Wylie. I love both her writing and who she was as a person. It got more intense after I visited the home of one of her beloved friends, Edna St Vincent Millay in 2013.

Shortly after this visit I wrote the following:

I backtracked after reaching Auesterlitz and couldn’t find my way to Steepletop. I drove back to the hamlet and telephoned, expecting to get an answering machine. Instead, I got the warm voice of Peter Bergman, the Executive Director of the Edna St. Vincent Millay Society, although I didn’t know at the time to whom I was speaking. He gave me simple directions and invited me to tour the grounds “anytime”. With my heart pounding and my passion guiding the car’s forward movement, I found myself able to experience the grandeur and silent wonder of a place I have dreamed of visiting not on my own or with a crowd. I was blessed to experience Millay’s home on a one-on-one tour with the curator. When I found more of Elinor Wylie’s work on the shelves in the store I literally shouted, “Elinor!” as the reality of their friendship wasn’t at the forefront of my mind until I took her book off the shelf.

Millay was the more famous of the two women, but she loved Elinor with a strength beyond what many ever come to know. In the home at Steepletop there is a bottle of wine meant to be shared with Elinor but instead shared by her widowed husband and Millay shortly after Wylie’s death. It has been left empty on the mantel ever since as a forever altar in honor of their friendship.

Creative friends will fuel our writing and artistry. They make the journey bearable when we are at our worst and they make the celebrations so much sweeter when we are at our best.

Let’s consider our creative friends in our writing today.

Questions for Writing and Contemplation:

Which people can you consistently rely on to support you creatively?

What can you actively do to find more people to nurture your artistic process?

Sentence starters:

I wish for a creative friend who….

I love words that….

In my writing life, I want people who….

Reflections for the When the Day is Nearly Over:

What creative work did you do today that you are most proud to report?

What were your areas of procrastination?

What will you change about your procrastination tomorrow?

When I think of my day as a creative whole, I will say…

To improve my artistic practice tomorrow, I will actively….

= = = =

This blog post is a part of April's Blogging from A to Z Challenge. Visit here daily in April to be inspired by literary grannies across time.

==========

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

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

Follow on Instagram

And naturally, on Pinterest, too!

Posted at 12:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

D is for Diane Di Prima: Inspired by Literary Grannies

"Beatnik" poet - Revolutionary Thinker, Mom and Feminist

“The only war is the war against the imagination.”
― Diane di Prima

I first discovered Diane di Prima when a friend loaned me a book about the women of the beat poetry movement. I knew there had to be some women as counterpoint to Allan Ginsberg and Charles Bukowski and my beloved Jack Kerouac.

This year I discovered another connection.

While the men of the beat generation have mostly died long ago, at eighty-years-old Diane is still with us. Like my mother, however, she now has Parkinson’s disease. I pray I haven’t missed my last opportunity to experience her in person. Her most recent collection of poetry, The Poetry Deal, was published in 2014. I need to at least purchase several copies of it in honor to the woman she is and will continue to be.

I love these quotes she gave in a 2014 interview with Josh Rankin of SFGate.

“My mantras are: ‘Keep making art’ and ‘If you make a big mistake, forgive yourself.’ I don’t try to make anything into something other than what it is. The world is perfect as it is. You are perfect as you are, though you have to get back to work to reactivate that perfection.”

Questions for Writing (and other) Contemplation:

What will you do today and this week to reactivate your perfection (as Diane di Prima explains it.)?

What do you do in your war with imagination? How would you describe your relationship with imagination?

Sentence Starters:

My mantras are….

I’ve forgiven myself for….

My imagination is fueled by….

I need to forgive myself for….

Day in review (to be written after today is almost over)

Today my imagination surprised me by…

I am glad to report I continued to….

I wish I had spent more time doing….

Tomorrow I intend to….

I will reach out and….

= = = =

This blog post is a part of April's Blogging from A to Z Challenge. Visit here daily in April to be inspired by literary grannies across time.

==========

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.

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Writing to Find Your "Full Place" in the World - Today's Literary Granny Guide is Charlotte Perkins Gilman Shows Us the Way

At times it seems epidemic: people - including our friends, our family and perhaps at times ourselves, have that feeling of not quite fitting into the world as we wish we did. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, reformer, mom and change-maker, invites us with her writing to step into our full place instead of constantly striving to "fit into" anyone else's preconceived notions.

Let's read her words, a bit about her and then sample numerous prompts to explore your thoughts and writing:

Quote to inspire your transformational writing:

“This is the woman's century, the first chance for the mother of the world to rise to her full place . . . and the world waits while she powders her nose.”

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Today I was in Pasadena, California, to visit an exhibit of paintings on loan to the Norton Simon Museum. My children and I drove through an intersection near the museum and I said, “Right here, Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote The Yellow Wallpaper in two days in June and her novel changed history.”

“How did it change history?” my thirteen-year-old son asked me.

“Well, because of this novella, doctors treated women differently when they had post partum depression. This has positively impacted countless women and families up until now.”

She is one of my beloved Literary Grannies because she was a multi-faceted artist whose heart was always tuned into the power of being a reformer. She wrote plays, she created trade cards, she went on the speaking circuit, she lived life on her terms.

The quote I offer from her today shows her frustration with those who don’t take action upon what we know we are meant to do, like writing practice or speaking up for injustice or simply being present to our intuition and following it rather than our fear of whatever is ailing us on any particular day.

“The chance for the mother of the world to rise to her place…”

I am now both a Mommy and a Granny. I feel this responsibility AND this privilege even more now.

Let’s explore that in writing, no matter whether you are a man or a woman, try it out today.

Prompts for Contemplation and Writing:

Where might your personal “full place” be, both in your writing and otherwise What challenges you about Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s assertion? What inspires you?

Sentence starter prompts:

My full place in the world inspires me to….

I am a bit wobbly when I consider my place in the world because….

What action(s) might I take today with my writing so that I am no longer “sitting, powdering my nose?

You may contemplate and consider these prompts throughout your day.

At the end of the day,

Day in review prompts-

Today, I took an action to….

Tomorrow, I aim to….

I feel proudest of….

I wish I had…..

= = = =

This blog post is a part of April's Blogging from A to Z Challenge. Visit here daily in April to be inspired by literary grannies across time.

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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 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.

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Writing to Find Your "Full Place" in the World - Today's Literary Granny Guide is Charlotte Perkins Gilman Shows Us the Way