Welcome to The Initiated Writer’s journey.

You will discover in your weekly inbox (every Friday morning) writer’s prompts and contemplations that will ignite your imagination, deepen and transform your inner life, and open pathways that will bring forth your best writing. Awaken your best creative self. This is free to the inquisitive spirit.

There’s an inner teacher within each of us. One who through skillful prompts and courageous exploration will arrive to assist us, teach us and inform us on and off the page. These weekly contemplations and writer’s prompts are the red thread to your inner teacher, who is always present, awaiting your arrival.

“For me the highest plane of creativity is found in one’s practice, and Julie offers the reader and writer a real means to follow through on one’s creative and spiritual intentions. The practices are straightforward and gratifying; the pilgrimage itself a worthwhile, even required engagement for the spiritual hero.” –Steven Pressfield, author of The War of Art and The Legend of Bagger Vance

No one can take our spiritual or creative journey for us. We don’t become spiritually initiated or a writer based on the wisdom path of others. We become initiated based on our own choices, practices, and actions. Just so!, the Initiated Writer is a spiritual journey, where your explorations and initiation results in a more conscious, creatively engaged life, a life that benefits both yourself and others. An active writer’s life.

To be an initiated writer is to know how to fulfill our inner callings as a writer. We listen to and act on these inner, often hidden treasures. We move with and through resistance. We write. We share our words, and worlds, with others. 

You are also invited to join me for 4 live webinars and one writing and meditation retreat on these dates (hold the dates!) 

May:  The Writer Within: Writing Memoir & Fiction from the Inside-Out
July:  The Vulnerability of the Writer’s Witnessing Presence 
October: Deal Breakers & How to stay the course (finish your projects)
January: Rewriting is writing: 

How to Approach this.

Let the writing prompts take you where they will. There are no right or wrong responses. Most importantly is to let yourself write and explore. Begin your written responses in a journal, hand writing them. Then you can transcribe what you’ve written into a document on your computer, if you like.  Ideas for your novel or other writing projects will come forth as a result of these prompts.  Be curious. Let what comes, come. You also may want to carry a field notebook, as I do. You can carry these prompts and contemplations out into your daily life. Then, take notes. Notice what arrives. Notice what you notice (and what notices you), and jot it down. You can then later transcribe this into your journal or a document on your computer. 

I use quotes, poems, koans, and mythological, and anecdotal stories. These are the third thing first introduced to me in Parker J. Palmer’s work. This third thing, tertium quid in elemental science, points to an unknown third element that arises from two known elements. This unknown third element opens us up. The third thing is that extra something that can shake up complacency, get you to listen to your inner teacher, and generate your natural meaning-making abilities. It has the ability to arouse the hidden gems inside the secret chambers of our souls.

When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. –MAX PLANCK, NOBEL PRIZE–WINNING PHYSICIST, CONSIDERED THE FATHER OF QUANTUM PHYSICS ​

“This Always Works: Bringing in the Third Thing or the Third Place Rightly used, a third thing functions a bit like the old Rorschach inkblot test, evoking from us whatever the soul wants us to attend to. Mediated by a good metaphor, the soul is more likely than usual to have something to say. But the fact will count for nothing if we fail to recognize that the soul is speaking or fail to pay attention to what it says.” PARKER J. PALMER, A HIDDEN WHOLENESS ​

Welcome to a year long journey of transformation, creativity and initiation of the Writer and Inner Teacher.