Idle Writers Club

Shaili & Kate share their thoughts on winter & creating with the seasons.

Happy holidays!

We're back and we're troubleshooting how to find momentum again after a break from our creative practice.

Links to Shaili's new website and brilliant Find Your Flow workbook!

It's the final chapter! Wow - what a ride, thank you for joining us on our follow along of Julia Cameron's FINDING WATER, we hope you enjoy this closing episode, we've loved sharing this journey with you! (FYI: we recorded this in December 2022!)

Some of this episodes topics:

• What tools will we take away from this process?
• Keeping going despite our internal weather
• Spoiling your artist
• You don't have to act like a poet to be a poet
• Reading like a writer
• and more!

"you are asked to imagine yourself larger and more sure-footed than you may feel yourself to be"

Welcome to our 5th 'week' in our follow along of Finding Water by Julia Cameron! This episode includes chat about:

• Asking for inspiration
• Automatic writing & connecting with the 'Great Artist'
• Humility - what would you do if you were more humble?
• Shitty first drafts & working with fragments
• TRUST THE SMALL ACTIONS - keep collecting!
• Back yourself - get your work out there without approval from the 'establishment'
• Celebrate your work the way you'd celebrate the work of someone you love
• And more!

Join us in this episode as we talk about:

• how to find ways to connect with people that help us feel grounded
• practices that help us feel grounded
• different ways to think about perseverance that’s not about just “keeping on” or grinding it out
• Rituals that are sensory and “move you into a sense of safety and expansion” + preparing for success mentally by “telling yourself symbolically that you are fine”

We loved this chapter! Kate actually did every exercise this week 😜

Join us in this episode as we chat about:

• the process of doing Finding Water out of sequence
• the unsung importance of a sense of safety to creativity
• the reconnection with something bigger than you
• 'Martha Stewart' risks (which we loved), do your mending!
• Learning to say 'yes I can', over 'no I can't' - "our reward must lie in doing the risk itself"
• Having a deep faith in what you're doing - defining our own success
• Julia's brilliant take on reviews - "how did I like the work?"
• 'Where are the people who get the work and get me?'
• Constantly expanding vs taking tiny nourishing risks
• Balancing safety & excitement
• Receiving inspiration in sacred spaces
• And more!

"All creativity requires grounded action. [...] Just as a bucket is filled a drop at a time, so too a creative life develops by the smallest acts." Julia Cameron

In our responses to this week of Julia Camerons' Finding Water programme we talk about feeling upended in life and creative process and how these practices do (or don't!) ground us back into ourselves and our creativity.

Hey everyone! Here's an episode where we share with each other and with you dear listener about our projects outside of Idle Writers Club!

In this episode we talk about the power of community and managing out energy levels.

Join Kate's group coaching Making in the Middle here: www.katemaxwellcoach.com/making-in-the-middle

Email Shaili here to find out about working with her here shailis90@gmail.com 

(Sorry for the poor sound on Kate's mic!!)

For Idle Writers Club season 2, Shaili & Kate embark on a follow along of Julia Cameron's FINDING WATER: The Art of Perseverance.

In this episode we chat about 'The Basics': Artist Dates, Morning Pages and Walks as well as Chapter 1: Finding a Sense of Optimism.

Welcome to this cheeky bonus episode! We thought it would be super fun to interview each other about the stories that have been with us at different stages in our lives, from childhood, through adolescents, reading slumps and returns to reading.

This is also our first video podcast, enjoy!

This conversation covers some really massive topics that we just cover briefly, but there are some important reminders about what it means to follow your energy and style and not anyone else’s way along with some strategies and exercises to try to tap into your unique expression of creative energy.

We mentioned a lot of different influences and people, so here’s a list if there’s any particular one that resonated with or intrigued you:

• Hand drier IG account: @handdryers
• Emma, Ancient Wisdom coaching program, IG @emmajaneargent
• Marlee Grace
• Marie Forleo
• Asking why 5 times on the same topic to discover more insight about a situation: this is actually a human centered design exercise, not a coaching one, but you can find a more complete description here.
• Circle of Excellence NLP exercise: ?
• Hygge
• Locke & Key (TV show on Netflix)
• Eric Maisel, Coaching the Artist Within

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In this episode we talk about the impact productivity and grind culture have on our creativity by making us striving for consistency. We talk about the opposite of this being freedom, playfulness, fun.

Are effort and ‘hard work’ the only ways to create something of value?

Is it useful to bring playfulness into our practice if it feels performative?

How can we bring back lightness to our process when we get bogged down in making it ‘hard work’?

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This episode is about how creatives need time for idleness and how to create pockets of idleness in your day. We also talk about the difference between a more generative idleness and one that feels not very useful, and how to do our creative work in a way that takes the “trying,” or sense of effort, out of it.

Some references we make in this episode;

• The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey
• Coaching the Artist Within by Eric Maisel
• The Right to Write by Julia Cameron
• The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel
• Silvia Morena Garcia

You can find journal prompts for this episode on our instagram @idlewritersclub as well as a space for comment and discussion, we'd love to hear your thoughts!

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