Category Archives: Inspiration

Abundance Surrounds Your Writer Self

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Abundance Surrounds Your Writer Self. Many of us lost sight of Abundance during the past two very difficult years. I certainly did. I drew myself in and held my loved ones close as was possible in a distanced, divided, doubt riddled world. Reminders of loss were everywhere, so I burrowed deeper. In my writing life I did the same. Maybe something similar happened to you.

Spring has Come Now, and We Long for New Light and Fresh Beginnings. We peer out tremulously from our hibernation places in search of what remains of possibility. As I peer out from my own writer’s burrow, the first thing I see is all of us, and what a lovely sight we are.

We are Our Great Resource. Each other – our writers’ community. Our writing sisters and brothers, still here where we have always been. Abundance of Talent – Ideas – Support. We reach out. We work together. We combine our resources and thrive together.

We Call on Each Other When our Determination gets Shaky. We remember the words of two oldish songs and sing along. “We all need somebody to lean on.” – and – “You’ll get by with a little help from your friends.” We invite ourselves to lean on one another and accept help.

We Remind Ourselves that Our Common Ground is More Precious than Our Differences. We reconcile. We listen to each other. We press on as allies because allies are what you need, not enemies. United we stand and are strong – in our writing lives and in our human hearts.

Turn Next to another Great Resource – Yourself. You are your first ally in every undertaking. You are your first fortress through any struggle. You are the Hero in Your Mirror. You are equal to whatever challenges you may face. Never underestimate that. Never underestimate yourself.

Never Underestimate Your Writer Self. Repeat these words to yourself every single day. “I have something worthwhile to say. I have something to say that is worth saying well. I have something to say that is worthy of being heard. And stories to tell that deserve to be told.

Rediscover – or Reinvigorate – Your Love for Your Writing Work. You are blessed to have discovered your passionate pursuit in life. Rejoice in the gift of that discovery. Loads of effort and creativity will be required of you, but that is the most satisfying route take. One day of diligent, delicious effort at a time. This is a journey you can be proud of making.

Finally (if you will permit me to suggest it) Turn to the greatest Abundance of all. Your Higher Power. Whatever that may be. Powerful forces for good are present in your life and in your work whether you are aware of them or not. I believe this to be true. I invite you to believe as well – and also to know that, now and always, Abundance Surrounds Your Writer Self.

Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com

ASK ALICE Your Crucial Questions. What are you most eager to know – in your writing work and in your writer’s life? Email aliceorrbooks@gmail.com. Or add a comment question to this post. I will be honored to respond.

Alice’s latest novel A Time of Fear & Loving – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book 5 – is available HERE.A Time of Fear & Loving

Look for all of Alice’s books HERE.

Praise for A Time of Fear & Loving: “Alice Orr is the queen of ramped-up stakes and page-turning suspense.” “Warning. Don’t read before bed. You won’t want to sleep.” “The tension in this novel is through the roof.” “I never want an Alice Orr book to end.” “The best one yet!”

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Write Your Stories of Summer Memories

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 Write Your Stories of Summer Memories. We each have a memory bank account of favorite summertime nostalgia. One of my favorite memory bank deposits is a story of a green island and a pink tractor.

Once upon a time, I bought my husband Jonathan a 1947 tractor. My goal was to see him drive in the annual Strawberry Festival Parade. I had no idea how much that would come to mean to our family, because I hadn’t yet been diagnosed with breast cancer.

We lived on Vashon Island in Puget Sound, a 20-minute ferry ride from Seattle. We had moved there from New York City to help raise our grandchildren. We were city slickers plunged into village life on a five-acre plot of land two miles from town.

The parade was a local treasure, and antique tractors were its crown jewel. Our first parade summer, the closer those old tractors rolled, the brighter my husband’s eyes shone. I made a promise to myself right then. Someday Jonathan would drive his own tractor in that parade.

Our dream vehicle turned up eventually in Eastern Washington. The intense sun over there, on the other side of the Cascade Mountains, had bleached her from orange to a lovely shade of pink. We decided to leave her that way, and our five acres became Pink Tractor Farm.

The next year, despite Jon’s best efforts, on parade day, Pink refused to run. The following year, I had cancer. The last thing we needed was another complication, but Jonathan knew what a boost it would be for all of us to see Pink in the parade.

Jon, and an old tractor hand named Milt, worked like crazy to make that happen. Parade day morning, Jon was still tinkering. He and Pink had to get to the tractor lineup on time or it would be no-go again this year.

They made it down our driveway to the road. Ahead lay a long, steep hill. The grandkids and I spotted Jonathan from my red jeep as he attempted the climb. Several times, Pink’s engine turned over then stalled before he pronounced the inevitable by cell phone. “She’s not going to make it.”

But the children weren’t ready to give up. “Grandpa can do it!” they cried out together. That hope and belief radiating out the jeep window to Jonathan and his pink charger may explain why he gave her one more try. She rumbled to life, and they began to ascend.

Not long later, I was propped in a camp chair beside the parade route. “Come on, Honey,” I whispered as the kids’ shouts continued. “Grandpa can do it,” It was nothing less than a family victory when Pink bumped past at three miles an hour, smack dab in the middle of it all.

A little ditty popped into my mind at that moment. It’s simple rhyme rings with resonance still. “Strawberries are red. Tractors are pink. There’s more triumph in us than we may think.”

 What are your favorite summer story memories? Go full-bore for nostalgia. Aim straight at our hearts. Write Your Stories of Summer Memories. Do not hesitate to bring tears to our eyes – and your own.

Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com.

Summer is also the season in Alice’s novel The Wrong Way Home – the first book in her Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series. Sample this warm weather treat for free HERE. Take to your deck chair with the four Riverton Road story adventures that follow. Find them, with the rest of Alice’s books, HERE.

What  readers say about A Wrong Way Home: “Alice Orr is the queen of ramped-up stakes and page-turning suspense.” “Warning. Don’t read before bed. You won’t want to sleep.” “The tension in this novel is through the roof.” “Budding romance sizzles in the background until it ignites with passion.”  “I never want an Alice Orr book to end.”

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Write Thru Crisis – Floodlight Moments

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Write Thru Crisis – Floodlight Moments. Our grandson has always had a secret smile, playing behind his composed features and in his eyes. Irrepressible, even at five years old, no matter how much he intended to play a straight-faced joke on camera-toting Grandma who had just said, “Smile for me, sweetheart.”

I cherish moments. Moments in general and specific ones. I remember them and, when I want them to return, I illuminate them with the floodlight of my imagination and fill in the details. For example, I took a photograph of our grandson on a Saturday morning in the kitchen of our house on Vashon Island in Washington state.

The sun shone through the window, and Grandson was in full cartoon garb. SpongeBob SquarePants (the hat) and Thomas the Train (the pajamas) were Saturday morning pals for me also. As I passed through the living room, I’d catch glimpses of their antics from the corner TV table Grandpa Jonathan had built.

This photograph stands on a bookcase in our New York City living room today. Though our grandson of the secret smile passed age seventeen in April, this memento radiates very present delight every time I look at it

Plus, I can add more details to the scene. We’d painted the walls yellow to brighten the frequent shadows of Pacific Northwest rainy days. Fronting the couch, a ponderous low cabinet had a top that lifted for snacking and a drawer at the bottom where Grandson kept the curious items he’d collected from the local thrift shop’s trove of recycled treasures.

I picture the scene and urge the wattage to climb in my memory floodlight. I luxuriate in the warmth of that moment. The feelings surrounding it. The atmosphere of love and ease on those mornings, when no one had yet scurried out of night clothes into daywear.

Each of us has deposited such moments in our memory banks. Smiles that touch your heart. Flashes of beauty beneath the retina of your inner eye. You can revitalize them in an instant. No intense pondering is necessary. In fact, pondering is discouraged.

Instead, grasp the moment in midair. Cradle it in the palm of your hand. Allow it to ripple through your fingers, up your arm, into your heart. Add to your visual recollection the sound of birds chattering outside, the aroma of breakfast on the stove, the touch of sunlight from the window on your skin.

In other words, revel in sensual richness brought to life. Drop gently out of the present. Loosen its hold on your consciousness until you are fully embraced by that long-ago kitchen moment, or wherever the incandescence of your imagination has taken you.

Anticipate the thrill of preserving this scene on a page, but don’t go there yet. Linger. Savor. Enjoy. Recognize the rapture. Edge aside what is now for what was then. But, do so gently, in order not to disturb the still place where your psyche has allowed itself to rest.

When you’re ready, gradually return to your now. Before the details fade, write down the adventure of your visit to your recaptured moment. Afterward, favor yourself with these interludes often. All you have to do is turn on your imagination, direct its glow within, and there they are. Write Thru Crisis – Floodlight Moments.

Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com.

Alice has spent most of her professional life in publishing, as book editor, literary agent, workshop leader, and author. She’s published 16 novels, 3 novellas, a memoir, and No More Rejections: 50 Secrets to Writing a Manuscript That Sells (revised version coming soon). Her current work in progress includes Hero in the Mirror: How to Write Your Best Story of You.

Experience Alice’s own Floodlight Moments in her memoir Lifted to the Light: A Story of Struggle and Kindness. Available HERE.

Look for all of Alice’s books HERE.

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