In this moment I hear ohmmmm....

I was surprised to find myself writing along with the group during the freewriting time during "And Now You Write." This isn't my usual - normally as facilitator I just hold the space...but the power of the collaboration moved my pencil. I could not stop these words from being born if I tried!

So, that being said, here is what I heard and wrote today during the And Now You Write session:

I vote for the oh, the pitter patter of gloating jokes leave foam at the open mouth of the ugliest gnome. A sassy pants drone, he is. My heart's metronome calls, instead, for ohm. It invokes my soul home, and the round mouth bicycle tire spokes of bristle cone seeds taking root in my spoken truth woven in ohm.

In this moment, I hear ohm. Ohm. Ohm....

If you would like to experience the creative writing community of "And Now You Write" please join us for this, and other, writing prompts.

New Blessings I See: Free Writing From "And Now You Write"

Today's focus: gratitude gratitude gratitude. I write on my porch and see so many blessings, but in the "I see many" it is a pureed soup, so instead, I will scoop blessings out, one by one, and revel in their specificities.

I see Samuel, my blessing, who is humming an unrecognizeable tune and I daren't ask him what it is. His thoughts make him smile which make me smile. Constance the Cat, my blessing, sits cuddled next to him. Constance is a cast off cat we have adopted and she and her rogue husband, Bob, reign over our yard, King and Queen. Samuel says, "Hi, Bob!" The scarred black tom cat is getting less and less frightened of us. This makes me smile. It is like blessing perfume, perfect in this morning.

I see a pumpkin, my blessing, the first of the season, sitting on the corner of my desk atop a Thomas Merton book, Echoing Silence. The pumpkin was named John by Emma, Samuel and me. Ostensibly he is named after Henry David Thoreau's brother John, fellow teacher and pencil-maker, but I know the truth. :-) I've started a play for Project Love about heaven and my brother John. This paragraph is like a trifecta or hat trick of blessings.

I see my weathered porch desk - another blessing - which needs replacement. By winter, three months from now, I should replace it. It has served me well. Many words have been written here. It has repaid its $10 ticket price many times over.

Samuel exclaims, "It's that same jeep again!" I look up, "Really?" He notices everything (another blessing) "What?" he says to Constance-the-Cat. "You want me to comfort you?" He reaches down, to cuddle with her.

I cry just a little. (A blessing). He has come so far. (a blessing!)

I take a sip of my coffee. A blessing that appears regularly on my gratitude lists. My morning compadre, simple pleasure, eye opener, subject of many love poems.

I see the blessing of my notes for today's And Now You Write. I read the words, "Writing is effortless when we are alive to the world." When we are alive to the world. I am blessed by words, my own and others, of notes and affirmations and blog posts and new voices. Returning voices. Multigenerations. A primary component of creativity camp is being manifested right here.

The chimes ring from inside. Hank (a blessing) must have sidled past them too closely. Samuel goes to his waiting spot after the "imposter bus" drives by. He cranes his neck and says, "I see my bus."

He's gone from cranky to contend in our first hour of the day together. I wave to his friends (blessing!) as the bus pulls away.

Morning by morning new mercies I see...

I fill the paper with the breathings of my heart....

I fill the paper with the breathings of my heart and my intellect interferes, muttering about "What's the purpose?" and the I-twin scoffs, "Can you make money from putting the breathings of your heart on paper?"

My heart gives a not so gentle nudge and I feel "let's prove it" build, rumbling volcano pre-eruption like under my breath. The pulse, the movement of blood and life force is in teh PROVE it. The ROVE whats true the ignite the fire metaphor stew with seasonings from the heart. Whispers of "look up" so I do. Women in blue uniforms connected by formica, disconnected by cell phones.

The "look up" also ignites the honking of yesterday's geese from outside my window. I listen and wonder of the connection between these words I added to my notebook while out and about and this moment, here now. A pregnant woman in a pink shirt waddle-walks by. "Hold your moments close!" I want to shout. My heart does it silently yet vividly for me. My heart warms up, grateful for the acknowledgment.

A woman comes to me after she notices, hand raised to knock. She leaves her rapping-on-the-door to open me to more light, even though I don't think I need it, I gratefully receive her outpouring of service.

She had been on her way to clean the men's restrooms. Before her knuckles rapped, she diverted her attention to my writing heart. I am sure that is what called her. Her footsteps matched my heart beat. "More light" she said, then created it. SHe put the shades into their upright and locked positions with my heart-words, ready for lilft off.

My left hand completely relaxes, remembering heart-opening yoga, last night.

I hear a blue shirted woman say, "Vamos a ver" and I nod, "Let's go"...

We mirror love, what we love when we write, when we speak, when we pray when we paint when we listen and feel...

When we reach our hand up to knock and recognize love, we may leave the rapping knuckles and write what compels before moving back into the "supposed to do's" and settle into the simplest heart service of raising a blind, wiping a nose, making a phone call, writing a poem, a sentence, listening to a goose's honks and smiling.

I fill the paper with the breathings of my heart. And next up in my day is filling the painting paper with the breathings of my heart... I'll post here, too.

(I am grateful that even as I facilitate, I know I am as much of participant as everyone else.)

For those of you who don't know about And Now You Write, consider this your invitation to join us right now - you are here at the perfect time...

More of the Writing Adventure at Hart Park: Sometimes an Ugly Duck stays an Ugly Duck

In today's session of And Now You Write I shared of my moments at Hart Park, a regional park not far from my home. I took myself there because although I attempted to write at home, I realized sometimes the best thing to do is switch up what we are doing and begin to write from someplace new.

I was lead to go to Hart Park, so I did.

I shared some of the story at the And Now You Write blog, but here is the missing excerpt from my sketch pad. I found it a lot of fun and thought I would offer it up to you, here.

I heard a duck sounding like a children's toy.


Not a quack, but something else. And then a gutteral grgrgrgrgrpip

The wood ducks noticed and came along, hautily, and swam in the way of these other, visiting country ducks and sang out the very quintessential duck "Quack quack quack quack!" The mallard joined in, pontificating "Quack quack QUACK!" which I think means something like "I am top duck, go make your grgrgrgrgrgrpip on some other pond."

The winter visiting country ducks pitch raises when they skitter-fly across the water, like Xena's shout changes when she gets excited and mobile.

I look at my attempt to draw the country-visitor-duck and I think Emily Dickinson would be so annoyed by me, so disappointed in my result.

The ugly ducks sound like a nerd choir, or a second, third or fourth string choir. The wood-duck-in-charge hates this and bellows at the country duck, "Shut up your choir, Jethro!"

Unlike the ugly duckling who grows into being a beautiful swan, these Jethro ducks are simply Jethro ducks. They are what they are, there is no changing the facts. I have seen them come to this pond and live here each fall and winter, year in and year out.

There will be no story of transformation from ugly Jethro to beautiful swan.

These ducks have been ugly Jethro and they will continue to be ugly Jethro.

Poor ugly Jethro ducks. As the saying goes, sometimes an ugly duck is just an ugly duck.

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Sometimes lightning strikes sideways

If I were open to lightning striking my writing... I get this image of me sitting at a picnic table at Songdog. Light was brand new them, just having cracked open along the line of the horizon. I wrote into that cracking of light.

I look at the previous pages. My hand wrote, rook notes, almost immediately post lightning strike yesterday when I got my idea for a script for Project: Love. If lightning strikes were measured on a richter scale like earthquakes, it would have been somewhere between 8.0 and 8.5. My writing is slightly sloppy, I notice. Still tingling then, still wobbly.

Keeping the lightning stike alive: this is a slightly different matter.

Notes alongside, remembering, poking the space of the strike. When I wrote my initial tears from the lightning were gone.

When I allow lightning to strike my writing I am open to emotion. I allow emotion to have the freedom to roam in my creativity. No cages on my emotion. If my creativity was an animal, well - for me it would be a menagerie - it would be a gazelle, an eagle, a domestic short hair cat like Constance and Bob. There would be a whittler: an old man sans teeth, whittling. His wife, Ida, plays the fiddle.

She is the creative whiz. He is the metronome. She is the one who does the jig. He is the one who walks in the pre-dawn. Their love shared is a given.

When I allow lightning to strike my writing, it doesn't bother me to hear Samuel's voice breaking through my words. "Mommy! Mommy!" he calls. I respond, knowing the page will be there waiting when I return.

Later, I took myself on an artist's date (a la Julia Cameron) because I was floundering and frustrated at home. The surefire cure for floundering and frustration is to change what you are doing rather than wallow in the mire.

I decided to get myself a drink along the way and just like that a poem and a sketch was born.




Sometimes lightning
strikes sideways
while doodling in
my drawing pad
behind a rogue carpet
installer, I copy the
rolled up carpets onto
my paper in swirled
flames of gratitude
I write that
1Bx6170
his license plate
I see
1 box 6
times removed
she drives her
SUV west on
I-70
I lamented the
writing didn't won't
can't seem to strike

And I picked up my
pencil
and the lightning
came, surprising me
by striking sideways

:-)

Life and the Writing life, is grand....

Be a part of our writing community at And Now You Write.
We meet daily via a telephone bridge line and/or via recorded teleconference so you may write alongside us and with us any time of day or night.

Check it out here.

So much love to each and all reading this -

Julie

What do I hold in my hand?

I post this free flow writing, raw, unedited - to illustrate how far off course I go with my free writing and HOW RIGHT IT IS to do exactly that - I even noticed when I started to type this all for you that I wrote "write" instead of "right" at one point. And it is the perfect, just right, make me giggle writing "mistake". Please don't hesitate to share your writing. It is like sharing at a slumber party with our masks all over our faces, dry and crackling. Sometimes these make the best memories and the best, longest lasting connections.

When I witness my hands I see...

What do I hold in my hand?

Splatter words, on the page. My write hand holds my pencil. I feel the tension of this pencil holding all the way up my arm. I never noticed that before, the tension tumbles and skitters and scrapes the veins as it works my way up my right side. It is not the most comfortable tension, I notice.

Samuel and I wait for the bus, I write that - so my hand "holds" that, too. Samuel notices a dog bone in our garden, left abandoned deserted hidden? by one of the strange looking hounds that has been carousing about the neighborhood lately.

Yes, I went from writing about my hand and muscle tension to dog bones and my son.

Free writing isn't always tidy.. .and I love some of the word combinations I came up with because I followed the flow of the pencil into those images.

(Note I never tell myself I messed up by going off course. Neither do you! Please don't hesitate to share your writing!)


Big hugs,

Julie

Announcing Mission/Complete - Finally Finish that Writing Project!

What is the number one challenge of people, like you, who are creatively inspired or
have a story to tell?

What plagues writers more than writing block or lack of ideas or not having
the time to write?

The biggest problem is Completion: birthing the book, launching the blog or filling it with content consistently.
 
Mission/Complete is a 12 Week program from Writing Camp with Julie Jordan Scott that will walk you step-by-step through completing your
big writing project: be it a book, a blog, an ecourse, screen play
or any other "word product".


We will meet weekly via teleconference (or if the timing isn't convenient
for you, you may "meet" via the session recordings) to walk, step-by-step
and build, brick-by-brick as you write, revise and complete that book you
have wanted to write forever but somehow never got to it.
We provide the context, the inspiration and the support so you will write
not on your own, but in community with other writers who are also completing
their own projects.
Why am I creating and facilitating this program? Because while I have a
solid track record of bringing informational products, teleclasses, workshops
and plays into the marketplace, I have had a challenge with taking my voluminous
files for books and turning them into completed works. Yes, I do have two
books under my belt but it has been a long while between projects and I
know myself well.
I do better - much better - when I have a group to whom I am accountable
AND filled with people who are walking alongside me, creating separately
yet creating together.
Here is what we will be covering, week-to-week, during our sessions:
Before Session One:
Registration open through September 19 thought space is limited:
We may need to close registration if it fills too quickly. It would be wise to register now to avoid being left out of this  session.
Individualized Roadmap to Completion - Before we begin our meetings, we
will hold several group coaching sessions on Wednesday, September15 as well as audios to help you create your individualized roadmap to completion.
This is not a cookie cutter program so you will not have a cookie cutter
Roadmap. No generic applications here since we all have different projects
with different needs. This isn't a one size fits all approach, this is a
personalized approach created especially for you.
September 20: Week One: Passion Fuel for Your Project - 
Mission/Completion: Cross the Finish Line with Purpose
September 27: Week Two: Build Your Framework -
Beyond the Outlines and Table of Contents + Managing Your Writing Time
October 4: Week Three: Nuts and Bolts of Completing Your Work
What "Hardware" is necessary to bring your product to market?
Who is your best audience and what does that mean as you bring
your book into completion?
October 11: Week Four: Lighting (and Keeping) the
Writing Fire Burning Bright + Gathering resources
and bridging the gaps in your writing.
October 18: Week Five: Beginning Your Marketing Plan
as You Complete Your Book + The Joy of Juggling
without crashing into overwhelm
October 25: Week Six: Staying the Course: When the
Going Gets Tough (or dull, or uninspired, or seems
too steep) the writers get tougher.
November 1: Week Seven: Revision, Redefinition,
Really Quality Material and not falling off
at the Idea Junkie Rest Stop
November 8: Week Eight: Staying Present when the
GPS system gives you the wrong driving instructions
To market, to market, to market with passion
November 15: Week Nine: The Value of Networking
and Inspired Focus Group Participation.
November 22: Week Ten: Confidence, Charisma and
Creating Content in these "last ten pounds" or
"last ten pages"... Be the Little Writer That
Could (and then some!)
November 29: Week Eleven: The art of Polishing
with Passion and Panache.
December 6: Week Twelve: Celebrate!! Bring your
finished product to our closing celebration and
dive headlong into joyful, passionate marketing.
Share successes, wins, lessons learned and know
the world is a better place because you completed
your work!

Meeting times:

3:30 to 4:30 PM Pacific time on Monday Nights

Final note before you register or shrug and say,

"Next time" - if you have the desire to be a part

of this unique group of forward thinking writers,

I want you to join us. It is as pure and simple

as that. Please strongly consider registering as

soon as you can simply because I need to end

registration before the group gets too large

or unmaneagable.

If you have any questions or concerns, please

call me at 661.444.2735 or send me a

note: juliejordanscott at gmail.com

Begin: September 20 and end: December 6

Please check out the "And Now You Write" program: a community of writers, collaborating to create word fire and flow worldwide.