Category Archives: Writers Life

In Praise of Fierce Women – Orr What? Wednesday

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There’s no force as fierce as a woman with a purpose she’s determined to fulfill. This was true as ever last weekend at Liberty State Fiction Writers’ Conference in New Jersey. So much impressed me there but I was most impressed by the fierce women who made the event speak to me in ways I needed to hear.

The first of these women was Rayna Vause the Conference Organizer – fierce with service from my initial sighting of her in the morning until my last after the final workshop was done. Rayna tends to be mild mannered but ferocity is mostly about dedication to a goal rather than personality. Rayna’s goal was to help the rest of us.

She was answering someone’s question when I first spotted her and doing the same when I saw her again at late afternoon. In between – the day Rayna had orchestrated spun around us all. She was fiercely determined that we would have an amazing experience and we did.

After lunch I moderated a workshop titled “Raiders of the Lost Arcs” with Kathryn Craft – a woman who is fierce with knowledge. Her complex subject was story structure and lunch had run long. Kathryn had to capsulize a lot of information into an impossibly short time and she did.

I took so many notes my wrist hurt. I also had an epiphany about my own writing process and how emotional arcs keep a story moving. Or slog to down if not artfully portrayed. Kathryn was determined to enlighten us and we were enlightened.

It was dinnertime when Liz O’Connor – who writes as L.G. O’Connor – joined us at a corner table in the hotel restaurant. Liz and I had been alphabetically slotted next to each other at the book fair earlier. Her energy and enthusiasm were evident from the start and continued through our dinner conversation where I discovered that Liz is fierce with encouragement.

The two other authors with us are at the beginning of their careers. Liz couldn’t have been more generous with her long experience and fund of facts about both traditional and independent publishing. Liz was determined that these new writers would be armed with information for the battle they must wage to become published and they were.

On the train back to New York City I was tired but filled with my own ferocity. Fierce with gratitude for the women with fire in their spirits that sets the rest of us aflame.

RR

My latest story is A WRONG WAY HOME – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book #1 – Matt & Kara’s Story. Available at amazon.com/author/aliceorr. This is my 12th novel and the heroine is definitely a fierce woman.

 Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com

 

Tribe and True – It’s True on Orr What? Wednesday

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Writing is a solitary gig. We sit in a room and manipulate words. Which requires focus. Which requires solitude. Other things in life require solitude too. That’s okay – except when it isn’t.

For example solitude isn’t okay at worry time. We hunker down in the dark closet of our negative brain place. We spin our worries into more and more complicated tapestries. We let those tapestries become us. We eat them like the nutcase in The Red Dragon. Remember him?

The same goes for doubting. We really know how to spin our doubts big and bigger until they suck up all the air in that narrow closet. Our doubts all begin pretty much the same. With a sentence that goes “I’m not good enough to….” You fill in the blank with your own doubts.

I know this doubt and worry closet well because I’ve spent way too much time there. Hunched in the corner with the closet bar over my head and every hanger draped in fear. I’ve spent too much time there and not one nanosecond of that time did any good Group Hug - Pooh styleat all for me or my career or anything.

Solitude also doesn’t work in our favor at question time. Google doesn’t have the answer to everything though it does a damned good job at that. But Google doesn’t have a human voice. Google can’t reach out to us from its heart or give us a reassuring smile. At least not yet.

For that we need our peeps. Unfortunately for those of us who write – a lot of the time our personal life peeps can’t help us. Because your significant other or your sister or even your regular friends most often do not know the correct answer to the following crucial question.

“When you’re staring into space, can you possibly be working?”

Civilians – meaning anybody not engaged on the battlefield of the writing/publishing wars – can’t be expected to understand that blank stares and frozen faces and arrested motion in general on the part of a writer can mean an idea is either on its way or in search of its perfect wording.

We need our tribe. In our tribe we find quirky-obsessive minds like our own. In our tribe we find inspiration and encouragement. In our tribe we find each other. We hold each other up when worry and doubt and questioning press down on us. And we are beautiful together.

I am reminding myself of all of this as I renew my own commitment to several of my tribal families. My home RWA Chapter at www.rwanyc.com. Liberty State Fiction Writers which I joined a couple of months ago at www.libertystatesfictionwriters.com. New Jersey Romance Writers which I just rejoined at http://www.njromancewriters.org/. And my local chapter of MWA where I intend to become active again after many years at http://www.mwany.org.

So I’ve been mostly absent for a while but now I’m back. Maybe I’m back to life in a way in general. How about you?

Find my books HERE.

Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com

 

Gramma’s Dandelion Wine

Storytelling, Writers Life

I don’t know how my proper English grandmother would feel about being represented by a recipe for spirits. I found it in her notebook recorded in a lovely but substantial hand. Substantial enough to be read many decades after it was written.

The ink is faded of course. Real ink like the kind that used to come in bottles and inkwells. The pages are soft with age and worn off at the corners. I touch them carefully for fear they will disintegrate into powder.

The pasteboard covers are separating at the spine. The original brown was probably dark but is now a dusky shade. She wrote “Cook Book – Mrs. Boudiette – 467 Holley Street – Watertown NY” on that cover – referring to herself in properly modest fashion without her first name.

This inscription tells me something about the age of the notebook. Grandma lived on Holley Street long before they moved to the tall brown house on West Main where I spent the happiest hours of my childhood with her in her kitchen during the 1940’s.

I run my finger over the letters she wrote. My hand touching the place where her hand had been. She died when I was only seven years and three days old but she has been deeply entrenched in me ever since. Everything good that has happened in my life began somehow with Gramma.

Only two dates are eMe & Grandma Gardeningntered in her notebook. November 1, 1927 after her recipe for Apple Jam. March 9, 1931 on the page with Tasty Salad.

Other entries include “How to Remove Ink from Clothes” and “Receip for Tanning Hides.” Bless you Gramma for that.

And here is her Dandelion Wine.

Alice Jane Rowland Boudiette’s Dandelion Wine (In Her Own Words)

 6 quarts fresh heads of dandelion blossoms in stone jar or granite. 1 gallon hot water poured on the blossoms. Put aside for 3 days and nights, then strain through a cloth. Now add 3 pounds sugar, juice of 2 lemons and 3 oranges. Add one-half yeast cake. Pour mixture into a stone jar and let it stand 4 days and nights. Then strain again through a cloth. Bottle. Let stand in bottles with corks set in loose until it stops working. Otherwise it will blow off or break bottles. After it stops working cork tightly and store where cool.

Shared by Alice Jane’s Granddaughter — February 21, 2015 – The picture is of me and Gramma in her garden when I was two and a half years old. Find my books at amazon.com/author/aliceorr.

Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com.