Category Archives: Writers Life

How to Notch Up Your Writer Discipline

Writers Life, ,

How to Notch Up Your Writer Discipline. For starters, write regularly. Let the rich experience of creativity sink deep into your psyche until you feel out of balance without it. I used to say, “One page or one hour a day minimum.” Now I say, “Often enough to feel the need to return the next day.”

Discipline Your Work Environment. Carve out a corner of your own. Virginia Woolf talked about “a room of your own.” Crowded circumstances can preclude that. A space that encourages a writing mood will suffice. Make that space as private and comfortable as you need it to be. Keep your writing paraphernalia nearby. Notebooks, files, pens, computer, a lamp shade covered in story ideas.

Acquire Quality Writing Equipment. Do so by disciplining your spending on other things if that is necessary. Most important, do so by believing this absolutely crucial truth. You deserve what you need to succeed.

Discipline Your Commitments. Cut out every non-writing activity that you can. Ask yourself, “Is there somebody else who can do this? Does it have to be me?” Say no to new requests for your time and energy. Ease the inevitable disappointed reaction with a smile and this gentle suggestion. “Ask me again next year.”

The Exception is When You are Paying It Forward. Invest in your career by investing yourself in your writing community as often as you can manage. Find a balance that benefits both you and others. Do not hide your generosity. Serve in the spotlight, but do not brag. Graciously accept thanks and acknowledgement of your efforts.

Discipline Your Family and Friends. Post your work hours. The refrigerator door is a good place to do that. Insist on no interruptions at those times. Tell your people how important your writing is to you. Make them hear you. Eventually, they will get it. Do not back down.

Discipline Your Telephone. List your daily work hours on your voicemail message. Say that you do not take calls during your work hours and mean it. Keep a smile in your voice, but do not apologize. Mention the hours when you do receive calls. Eventually, they will get it. Do not back down.

Discipline Your Online Activity. Identify your personal online time-burners. Activities that are minimally productive to your career. If you cannot resist, do not indulge during your best brain time. Never indulge during your writing work hours. Use your online activity to build your career, your public platform, your visibility. Limit online playtime to your dim brain hours.

Escape-Write through Stress. Life is full of stressful situations. They can stop your writing progress in its tracks. Use that stress to enhance your writing instead. Powerful storytelling is intense, so is stress. Incorporate how you are feeling into a dramatic scene from your current work. Your body, breath, immediate environment. Feel it all. Adapt it all.

The Purpose of Discipline is to Carry You Deep into Your Story and Keep You There. John Gardner called this place “the dream of the book.” Discipline helps you inhabit that dream and write from deep inside your imagination. Because deep inside is where your best stories live. Discipline helps you get there. How to Notch Up Your Writer Discipline.

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Alice Orr. Teacher. Storyteller. Blogs for writers at www.aliceorrbooks.com. Former literary agent. Author of 16 novels, 3 novellas, a memoir, and No More Rejections: 50 Secrets to Writing a Novel That Sells. Amazon says, “This book has it all.” Updated version coming soon. Look for all of Alice’s books HERE.

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

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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http://twitter.com/AliceOrrBooks/
http://goodreads.com/aliceorr/
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Writers Conference Kickstart Time

Writers Life, ,

Writers Conference Kickstart Time. Spring into summer is conference time. Small retreats and huge gatherings punctuate this period of the year for many of us. We pack up our notebooks and our hopes and head for a convocation of scribes.

Most of us want to find a kickstart to getting our work published or better published. But I do not believe that is the most important thing we gain from these gatherings, whether they take place in a grand hotel or a modest cabin or somewhere in between.

The most important thing we find is each other. We make the most of a writers’ conference by maximizing that discovery. We writers are natural allies. That is so deeply true because we understand one another from inside our own writers’ lives and souls.

We understand… what it’s like to labor in the formidable publishing marketplace… what a struggle it is to get our work published and keep it published… how it feels to suffer rejection and disappointment… and the joy of our accomplishments, whether they be large or small.

Every writer needs support in these hard struggles we have chosen. We know this because we need the same support ourselves. With this knowledge comes the obligation to reach out and offer encouragement to our writer friends, the old friends we reunion with at these gatherings, and the about-to-become new friend in the hotel lobby chair next to ours.

A few sentences of kindness can be another kind of kickstart. They can be exactly what a writer colleague requires at a downbeat moment of her career, while requiring little more on our part than a few upbeat moments of being nice.

Our success dreams make us nice to the max to attending agents, editors and instructors. We line up to pitch our projects. We take copious, almost worshipful notes at their presentations. We long to recruit them as our allies on the inside of the publishing world.

In the meantime, we mustn’t forget to nurture our allies inside the writing world. Give what you can. A word of advice, an attentive ear, a shared laugh, a hug. As you scurry to workshops and appointments, take a moment to touch an author ally with a bit of being nice. My guess is you will experience a lot of feeling good in return. That good feeling is the true essence of Writers Conference Kickstart Time.

Note: The photos in this post are from conferences I was blessed to attend 1994 – 2018.  Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com

A Wrong Way Home – Alice Orr’s Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book 1 – is a FREE eBook HERE. Enjoy!

A Wrong Way Home

Alice’s latest novel – A Time of Fear & Loving – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book 5 – is available 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!” “Budding romance sizzles in the background until it ignites with passion.”

Find all of Alice’s books HERE.

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Gratitude Attitude Writers Style

Writers Life, ,

Gratitude Attitude Writer’s Style. “At this time of the rolling year,” as our great storytelling mentor Charles Dickens wrote in A Christmas Carol, gratitude feels obligatory, or maybe just appropriate, if you are more comfortable with that.

Gratitude Attitude Writer’s Style. Which got me thinking about what we, as writers specifically, might list in our thankfulness inventory. So, I posted an internet query under the heading “Writing Life Gratitude.” The responses have made me very grateful indeed.

Gratitude Attitude Writer’s Style. Most prominently, we are grateful for one another. “Critique partners who give me their honest opinions and encouragement when I make mistakes,” says Kayelle Allen. Ruth Casie adds, “Writing partners who enrich my life with their friendship, caring and great brainstorming ideas.”

Gratitude Attitude Writer’s Style. Each of us can reflect on a history of helpers: other writers who may themselves suffer through dark passages of career disaster, crippling self-doubt, or personal life turmoil. Nonetheless, they reach out to urge us back toward the light. Roni Denholtz, Marcia James, D.V. Stone and Jennifer Wilck echo the rest of us in saying, “Thank you all so much for that.”

Gratitude Attitude Writer’s Style. Joan Ramirez is grateful for “a loving husband who shares my enthusiasm for my novel writing career” and is her best friend as well. Several others, including myself, mention family, including grandchildren. Writing may be a solitary pursuit, but we are definitely not alone.

Gratitude Attitude Writer’s Style. And who isn’t thankful for readers? “All the readers who’ve stuck with me for so many years and keep buying my new books,” says Meredith Bond, while Marcia James reminds us to thank the Beta readers who help us hone our work, and I feel personally in debt to readers who make the effort to review what we write.Gratitude Attitude Writer’s Style. I was moved by those of us – Connie Bretes, Paul Lima, Nancy Morse – who shared their struggles through serious health problems, and somehow found the will and stamina to keep on working, or to get back to the writing desk eventually.

Gratitude Attitude Writer’s Style. Jean Brashear, Marie Force, Joan Peck and Livia Quinn spoke of the 60 Minutes story of Tim Green’s battle with ALS. “How dare I ever falter for a second,” Jean says, in the face of such inspiring courage.

Gratitude Attitude Writer’s Style. My own heart was hard-struck by the inspiration of one of our own, Susan Meier. “This year, every inch of my life, including my career, was tested when my son died in January,” Susan says, and thanks RWA and her sister chapters for their support. At the time of her loss, she had a manuscript due, and her publishers and editors helped her through when she insisted she must work on toward deadline. We are also with you, Susan.

Gratitude Attitude Writer’s Style. The greatest number of responses to my Writing Life Gratitude question were about being thankful for the opportunity to write in the first place. “To fill my hours with writing, and for the wonderful characters that keep me company,” says Carol Roddy aka Caroline Warfield. “To start with an idea and end with a published book,” says Joan Peck. Dee Knight speaks of her latest book, which “languished unfinished for years,” and now is completed at last.

Gratitude Attitude Writer’s Style. The ultimate joy of writing is summed up beautifully by Elizabeth Tarry-Crowe. “I’m grateful that, after years of writing, I still strive to get better, shoot higher, try harder,” and Lisabet Sarai agrees. Whatever life and career setbacks confront us, we do what we can and must to heal, then we forge forward again.

Gratitude Attitude Writer’s Style. Finally, as in the beginning, we are together. “I’m grateful for my writing friends….” Alice Valdal says. “The writing world is so different from the one I first joined, but writers willing to share and laugh and cry and encourage and keep trying are still there. For that I am grateful.” Me too! Happy holidays.Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com

– R|R –

Readers recommend Alice’s latest novel. A Time of Fear & Loving – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Book 5. Available HERE.

A Time of Fear & LovingPraise 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!” “Budding romance sizzles in the background until it ignites with passion.”

A Wrong Way Home – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Book 1 – is a FREE Kindle eBook HERE. “Danger & romance explode in a red-hot read.” Look for all of Alice’s books HERE.

http://facebook.com/aliceorrwriter/
http://twitter.com/AliceOrrBooks/
http://goodreads.com/aliceorr/
http://pinterest.com/aliceorrwriter/