Julie Unplugged

Curiosity: Inspiration for Your Blogging, Writing & Creativity - Dorothy Parker Quote, Prompts & More

Each day, a quote, an image, several questions and a writing prompt are offered to you to use for  Your Blogging, Writing & Creative Inspiration in order to increase your creative thinking as well as your personal and soulful  development. 

Quote

"The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity."

Dorothy Parker

Questions:

What are the first things you think about when you hear the word 'curiosity'?

Tell me, did curiosity really kill the cat? What's the story behind that saying? Do you believe it?

List 5 - 10 topics that hold your curiosity.

List 5 - 10 times when being curious lead you to an important personal discovery or growth situation?

Writing Prompts:

If I was more curious, I...

If I acted as curious as I felt.....

My beliefs about the value of being curious are based upon.....

Personal Growth/Creativity Coaching

1. What do you think Rumi means when he wrote, "Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment." Write about it.

2 Draw, sketch, collage, paint or meditate on the word "curiosity" for at least 15 minutes. Repeat three days in a row and then use one of the earlier prompts to dive more deeply into the subject. Your subconscious will be so happy you are utilizing her!

>> ----- <<

One helpful strategy is to read the quote, questions, prompt and list and not to "take them on" all at once, but to allow them to simmer in the back of your mind throughout the day. Sure, you may "write" one immediately, but don't call it "done" until you have allowed your powerful subconscious mind to bring up some unexpected responses for your conscious mind to create within.

Remember, though - there are no rights and wrongs, there is only showing up for your life and your creativity. Brava for being here!!

This Blog Series was created to increase your creative thinking process as well as inspire writing and ideas to take form that may not have taken form without these specific quotes, questions and prompts. If you find them helpful, I hope you will pass them along to friends as well.

I’m so glad you are here, reading and creating.

Julie Jordan Scott is a writer, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist. Her word-love themed art will be for sale at First Friday each month in Downtown Bakersfield. 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.

Follow me on Twitter: @JulieJordanScot

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

 Follow on Instagram 

And naturally, on Pinterest, too!

Curiosity & Passion: Linked for a Living a More Passionate Life

To Read this series from the start, please visit this #31 Days Link after you have read this essay.

 

If Passion had a fairy godmother she would be curiosity: an avid interest in life itself and the lives of those she encounters.

Last night Emma and I were at the First Friday artfest/street fair here in Bakersfield. When we don't have time to go visit galleries we stick to the sidewalks where off-the-grid artists collect. I get lots of hugs and we usually buy some small things to encourage the artists to continue creating.

I met two eleven-year-old young women entrepreneurs selling their creations. I was immediately excited and sharing my enthusiasm with the girls and their parents. Emma told the second mother-daughter-father trio, "My Mom likes to interrogate my friends like this, too, and for some reason they really like her!"

The Dad agreed with Emma's friends saying, "Well, she takes an interest."

People love when they are the center of your curiosity, your interest.

Have you heard the truism that if you have a conversation with a person and simply ask them questions about themselves they will go away from the discussion thinking you are the most brilliant, fabulous person they have met?

The thing is, if you make curiosity a practice, you will become closer to people immediately. You will feel more connected to the world, immediately. You will find yourself delectably wonderful as well.

See? Curiosity IS Passion's fairy godmother!

 

 

Julie Jordan Scott is a writer, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist. Her word-love themed art will be for sale at First Friday each month in Downtown Bakersfield. 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! 

© 2013

How to Never Be Bored Again: Embrace the Joy of Being Quirky

Raise Your Hand if You Never Want to Be Bored Again!

I will be the first to raise my hand and admit to being more than just a little bit quirky.

I wonder if you will be surprised to hear it is that very quirky nature of mine that keeps me from ever being bored.

I’m not overly fond of being called “weird” or “nut job” or “strange” but quirky, charming, unique – these I will take.

Being this way means I am attracted to some rather unusual subjects which usually boil over into one or more of my creative projects. Here’s what I mean:

I love finding strange, beat-up and not entirely legible signs along the roadside that point to either something that no longer exists or something that is an eraser smudge of what it used to be. Since I live in Bakersfield, California, the majority of such signs are right here within the range of my normal, everyday activities.

Today one of my activities was dropping sixteen-year-old Emma off for her final performance of “Les Miserable” at a high school far from home. I have become rather expert in the drive and usually take it from one of three ways, specifically so I can see more and also so I get less bored.

This Quirky Pig was once the Logo for the Kern Valley Packing Company, since 1915!

I had been having a happy celebration in my mind when I started thinking of the photo challenge I am currently participating in called AugustBreak13. I was thinking, “Sound, I need to find something related to sound,” when out of the corner of my right eye I saw… this pig, up in the air. 

Given my unconventional leanings, this meant I had to take a short detour to come to know this sign better. The back of the sign, the one which faces sweet, gentle sunrise versus tired, cranky late afternoon into sunset, told more of the story:

The Eastern Facing Side of Quirky Pig was much easier to read....

Over the past few months I have found these signs fascinating:

In Oildale, I noticed an old ice cream joint:

 

Another find on my way to and from Emma’s rehearsal and straight out of the grapes of wrath:

This treasure is easily missed... the Kern Motor Inn... South Union in Bakersfield

And finally, there are my beloved shopping carts. Since I discovered a shopping cart library last Spring on the way to my daughter’s school last Spring, I’ve been addicted. Last night I found a lonely shopping cart from the Tractor Supply Store – you can’t get much more Bakersfield than that –

I Never Stage My Shopping Cart Photos - it is as if they pose and wait for my attention.

and I could swear I could hear it humming country and western music as I snapped photos of it.

Here’s a challenge, a dare perhaps – for you.  You see, I don’t understand when people say they are bored or that the places they find themselves are boring. I don’t live in a space of that ever being a possibility.

Allow yourself to join me in the consciously lived space of, “Oh, that’s interesting…” which yes, I actually say aloud.

Instead of talking yourself into being bored by saying, “I am bored” or “This is boring” talk yourself into making your life a daily treasure hunt for quirky, oddly wonderful things that catch your attention. You know those things that make you smile and you don’t know why they do?

Become even more aware of those and get to know how easy it is to eliminate the whiny “I am bored” persona from your life.

 

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

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And naturally, on Pinterest, too!

© 2013

 

 

 

 

 

How to Ignite Your Curiosity One Layer at a Time

 

Weedpatch, California - Hospital Screen Window, aged + Cemetery monument close to the home of W.E.B. Dubois.

Lately I have been experimenting with taking my photos and layering them, taking moments in time from one place I have visited and layering it with another, much like how memory of the past and the experience of the present sit on top of one another rather than side-by-side.

 What do you think: are your memories inside you, tower like with one upon the other or are they linear, like a path from birth to now to death? Maybe you think of it differently.

The image here tends more toward the layers.

My favorite image from this week is one of those examples of layers, both from the same month but from very different places.

Where is the connection? Where does the story of the people of Weedpatch - primarily refugees resettling in the agricultural lands in California from Oklahoma and Arkansas during the Dustbowl era - meet the story of the people of the Berkshires, buried in this idyllic cemetery there?

Where does your story meet up with these two seemingly opposing places a continent apart?

One of my creative tasks today is to live those questions - so throughout the day I will allow this curiosity to seep into the rest of my life. I will give room for my subconscious to play with the images so that I may focus on other things. I will write again tonight and see what comes and then write again tomorrow morning and see what appears.

Please join me either with these images or with your own.

I would love to hear what you discover.

# # # # #

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!

© 2013

Together We Can Figure Out How to Say It: "Normal Day, Let Us Be..."

How do I say it?

The last week has been rather trying for me. Well, since last Monday, things have been trying for me.

Traveling across country and switching planes three times – two of which were smaller seating arrangements with grouchier people than I would like and finding out in Houston there had been an emergency evacuation due to a gas explosion in my Bakersfield neighborhood made for an emotionally treacherous end of the trip.

Once in Bakersfield, I was immediately thrust into my normal routines. And my normal routines plus secondary and tertiary activities along with spinning plates of other’s needs and desires almost all day long everyday.

I found a poem I love by Mary Jean Irion and have decided to play with an image and a line, daily, to remind me what is important… certainly much more important than getting worked up over continual plate spinning.

I hope you will read along to experience the entire poem and perhaps pray or set an intention to live the poem as it is posted.

How about it? Do you want to remember: “Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are.”

What else or what other ways would you complete this sentence or add to this sentence?

 

This post is Number 27 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!

 

Talk about Taking a Risk: When Your Mentor is a Completely Surprising Not a Surprise at All.

Today’s NaBloPoMo question from BlogHer goes like this:

Who out there in the world would be

the best mentor for your ideas and goals?

You want to talk about risk? My response to this question feels like a huge risk to put out there for all of heaven and Earth to see.

I almost don’t want to answer this because my response sounds really cliché. Seriously, over the top cliché.

The thing is, once I asked today’s NaBloPoMo question, I couldn’t wipe the cliché response out of my head. I’ve thought it over and here’s what I’ve come up with: cliché is only bad when we say it out of complete lack of creativity.

My response to this prompt is completely truth-filled and nothing less.

My first thought was “I have no idea” and then I remembered when I was pregnant with my son and on my own raising my two daughters, I chose to see God as my partner. It helped me through a lot of dark days. I spent a lot of time chatting with God then, just sort of “hanging out” in nearly constant prayer and communion.

Times change and I don’t do that much anymore.

What I have discovered is that when I do “hang out” with God and include Him in my choices and actually ask for his advice on things via prayer and contemplation, everything in my work and my life improves.

Since I am a creative entrepreneur, who but the Creator of the Universe would be the perfect mentor to bring my (I should say our) ideas into fruition.

There. I said it. I wrote it. And now I am even going to hit publish!

 

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

Be sure to "Like" WritingCampwithJJS on Facebook (THANK YOU!) 

 © 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott

What is your creative process teaching you? & Other Thoughts on Making Art Every Day

A question to tuck into the back of your mind as you read:

What is your creative process teaching you?

 My day yesterday was flat out weird creatively.

I couldn’t get myself to sit still to create anything meaningful or long lasting. I didn’t even write anything of merit and when things are sour, at least my writing muse comes out to play most of the time.

I gessoed, I did some first coats of paint, I took some photos, I collaged but I wasn’t happy with what I collaged.

 For a change of pace I picked myself up and visited Hart Park where I contemplated at my favorite spot. Something wants to float up from me, so I honored my lack of sitting still with some quiet time out of the house.

I even brought some pieces of my art as my companions.

 

At least the day wasn't a complete loss as I look back at it.

I helped a sick friend, I purchased materials which were running low, I laughed at synchronicities that told me I was on the right track even though I felt wrong.

I allowed myself to feel nostalgic for being on the stage.

I watched yet another Hallmark movie and didn't beat myself for not making roses at the same time. I felt like I needed to rest, free from movement.

What is your creative process teaching you?

Follow me on Twitter: @juliejordanscot  

Be sure to "Like" WritingCampwithJJS on Facebook (THANK YOU!) 

© 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott

 

17 Life Enriching & Evocative Quotes from 17 Extraordinary Writers & Poets

Preface: Five ideas for how to use quotes to enhance your life and writing are listed below the quotes.

“Two girls discover the secret of life in a sudden line of poetry.”
Denise Levertov

“Perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all one's life.”  Kate Chopin

"Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings."
W.H. Auden

“We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.”

May Sarton

“The first duty of a human being is to assume the right relationship to society -- more briefly, to find your real job, and do it.” Charlotte Perkins Gilman

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"
Mary Oliver

"Poetry is what gets lost in translation."
Robert Frost

"I shut my eyes and all the world is dead. I lift my eyes and all is born again."

Sylvia Plath

"The old woman I shall become is very different than the woman I am now. Another I is beginning."

George Sand

"We need, in love, to practice only this: letting each other go. For holding on comes easily; we do not need to learn it."

Rainer Maria Rilke

“Your silence will not protect you.”
Audre Lorde

“It was my destiny to love and say goodbye."
Pablo Neruda

“Reverence the highest, have patience with the lowest. Let this day's performance of the meanest duty be thy religion. Are the stars too distant, pick up the pebble that lies at thy feet, and from it learn the all.”  - Margaret Fuller

"Poetry is what happens when nothing else can."
Charles Bukowski

“It is never too late to be what you might have been.”
George Eliot

 “What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?
The world would split open.”
Muriel Rukeyser

“Life offers you a thousand chances... all you have to do is take one.”  Frances Mayes

 Five Ways to Use these Quotes (and Others)

• Use the quote to ask a question of yourself. Free write your response to the question.

• Do a search about the writer of the quote. Perhaps there are names here you don’t know. If a quote stirs you, there is a reason. Choose to read a book by the speaker instead of what you are normally reading.

• Use the quote as a meditation or writing prompt. Pick the key words and meditate upon them and then, later in the day, write. OR pick the key words and write upon them. Meditate upon them later. 

• Make an index card of the quote and post it on your computer monitor to consider throughout the day.

• Use a photo editor and add the quote to a favorite photo. Use that as your computer’s wallpaper. Notice what happens as the quote begins to infiltrate your everyday life.

Follow me on Twitter: @juliejordanscot 

Be sure to "Like" WritingCampwithJJS on Facebook (THANK YOU!) 

© 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott

This is my twelfth post (of 31!) for the October 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 & 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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