{"id":613,"date":"2017-04-11T17:17:42","date_gmt":"2017-04-11T17:17:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.juliebaldwin.com\/?p=613"},"modified":"2017-04-11T17:17:42","modified_gmt":"2017-04-11T17:17:42","slug":"seeding-your-subconscious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juliebaldwin.com\/?p=613","title":{"rendered":"Seeding Your Subconscious"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been out of the blogosphere for a month.<\/p>\n

When I began the countdown to publishing my book, I cut back to writing my blog twice a month, rather than weekly. Then, as the deadline drew nearer, I stopped blogging altogether.<\/p>\n

Oh, what I learned from that experience!<\/p>\n

I keep relearning an essential truth: treat my creativity with respect. Nurture it daily, and don\u2019t demand that it perform like a circus animal\u2014that kills the spirit. Creativity is not tame and orderly; it\u2019s a deep, mysterious process.<\/p>\n

The moment I put demands on my creativity, the muse retreats like the moon at morning. Inspiration and imagination get blocked, and nothing works.<\/p>\n

But when I shift from demanding that my creativity produce, to playing with my imagination, my creativity slowly begins to flow again.<\/p>\n

I call this \u201cseeding my subconscious.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Drawing<\/p>\n

This morning, I felt really blocked. So I looked at objects on my desk for something to paint, just to play, without any expectation that I would produce something \u201cgood.\u201d<\/p>\n

I sketched a gray conch shell.<\/p>\n

I put watercolor on paper, quickly sketching sunflowers in a blue vase.<\/p>\n

I played with my sun and moon motif, using a fountain pen with a semi-flexible nib.<\/p>\n

Still feeling blocked, I chose four words (conch shell, sunflowers, sun, and moon), then I wrote a short vignette, using each word somewhere in the story. It felt like I was in the flow, at times, but most of what I wrote seemed flat and uninspired.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s okay. The muse is temperamental.<\/p>\n

The shapes, colors, and words from this morning are all offerings to my subconscious, little nourishing seeds for it to absorb, or use to bring forth something new.<\/p>\n

And that experience brought me to write this blog post, after waking this morning, unsure I could write anything.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a good start to my week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been out of the blogosphere for a month. When I began the countdown to publishing my book, I cut back to writing my blog twice a month, rather than weekly. Then, as the deadline drew nearer, I stopped blogging altogether. Oh, what I learned from that experience! I keep relearning an essential truth: treat […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,22,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creativity","category-inspiration","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juliebaldwin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juliebaldwin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juliebaldwin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juliebaldwin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juliebaldwin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=613"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.juliebaldwin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":615,"href":"https:\/\/www.juliebaldwin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613\/revisions\/615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juliebaldwin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juliebaldwin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juliebaldwin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}