Places Replenish Our Writer Souls

Personal Storytelling, , ,

Places Replenish our Writer Souls. Reading stories aloud was a big deal when our grandchildren were growing up. Some of my favorite storyteller moments happened under the storytelling tree.

Our front yard featured a particularly family-friendly place. A yellow Adirondack chair fitted into a notch at a fence corner between two trees. I would sit in that chair with one grandchild at my side and another at my feet, and I would tell stories.

The way those two trees grew made me think of them as one. At ground level, they were far enough apart to accommodate a seat and small table. Further up, at about towhead height, they began to grow toward each other.

One day my grandson asked me about that. “What’s the story with the trees, Grandma.” He was staring at the place where the trees came almost together over my head, and he’d asked for a story. I gave him a story. Because that’s what grandmas and writers do.

“These trees were born close to each other under the ground, and they fell in love. When they grew above the ground and saw each other’s beauty, they fell in love even more. So much so that they couldn’t stand being apart and grew toward each other. Until they were side-by-side, with their branches entwined, reaching for the sky.”

The grandkids appreciated a good yarn and let me think they believed my tale. As for me, I believed every word with all my heart. Especially the feeling of it, which perfectly suited my yellow chair and that enchanting place. Because Places Replenish Our Writer Souls, and I definitely have one of those.

Stories have power. They lift and transport us out of real-life time and space into another universe, separate and apart. John Gardner called that universe “the dream of the story.” I believe in this lifting and transporting, but I also believe in places like the storytelling tree.

Places have power. Wherever we may be, we can picture ourselves somewhere else, like that notch in the fence at the corner of our front yard. We can take ourselves there, into the feel of it. The green branches overhead, the smell of grass and a child’s hair, the sound of birdsong on the soft air of late spring. The taste of contentment on the tongue. A feast for all of our senses as Places Replenish Our Writer Souls.

At bedtime in those days, I sat in another storytelling chair. Bright red, with a comfortable back cushion to ease me after delightful, exhausting hours surrounded by youthful energy. This chair stood between the dormers of the children’s bedroom, where the angles of the ceiling leaned toward one another, like the trees in the fence corner.

When I need a spirit boost, I take myself back to Christmas Eve in that red chair. There is a  stack of books at my side. My deliberate singsong tone has droned two excited children almost to sleep. I reach the last book on the pile and begin. “Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house…” To this day, that line transports me to the red chair under the dormers. Places Replenish Our Writer Souls.

You must tell your re-spiriting stories as well. Stories of places that lift you out of the moment. Places that come alive for you in every detail, if only in your imagination. Your heart is opened there. You are moved to bring us there as well. Because Places Replenish Our Writer Souls, and we deserve to be replenished.

Alice Orr – https://www.aliceorrbooks.com.

Speaking of Christmas, A Vacancy at the Inn is Book 3 of Alice’s Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series, and it is a holiday story. Find A Vacancy at the Inn HERE.  Find all of Alice’s books HERE.

Alice Orr A Vacancy at the Inn

What Readers Say: “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 Your Stories of Summer Memories

Inspiration, ,

 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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Who’s Cooking in Your Covid Story Kitchen

Personal Storytelling, ,

Who’s Cooking in Your Covid Story Kitchen? Someone once said that watching me cook in my kitchen was like watching a captain on her ship. Sure of every move I make, piloting with confidence however agitated the sea may be. Don’t you love that feeling?

Or, you might prefer a dance metaphor. Cooking up a story comes with its own choreography. When all is well, we glide from counter to cupboard, sentence to sentence, light on our feet. Each gesture has purpose. Each word has its place. We take charge.

No need for a long mirror to watch ourselves. We know how we look in this familiar place. More important, we know how we feel. At home in our natural habitat. Free to deviate from the recipe, a pinch of plot experiment here, a dollop of quirky dialog there, without counsel or critique from anyone.

Who’s Cooking In Your Usual Story Kitchen? You are. Occasionally you may invite collaborators in, but generally trust your own judgement first. Prefer your own fingerprints on the spice jars of your imagination. You perform with comfort on this stage, and soloing here gives you peace.

I pause now to focus on those sensations in my personal experience. Luxuriating, mid-pirouette, toes grazing tile, fingers flying over keys, commanding whatever my creative corner of the world might be. All are, for the moment at least, part of my past.

My Covid era story kitchen is another place entirely. I no longer flow freely from one inspiration to the next. No longer relax in my familiar creative place. I am no longer a captain on the bridge of my ship. Because I am no longer alone.

My husband is here. He simply showed up one day, buffeted by circumstance onto my private preserve. I might have been less taken aback if he possessed more aptitude or affinity for the practical tasks at hand. But maybe not.

His choreography is clumsy at best. He wants to be here about as enthusiastically as I am eager to admit him. He is out of his element and imperfectly replanted in mine. We attempt a compromise amidst our mutual discomfort. Try our best not to blunder into each other’s path.

All the same, he taxes my parameters. Asks endless questions, makes furtive moves, displays little inclination for blending into his new, accidental environment. He captained his own ship in another place, at another time, but that ship is on covid drydock now.

Our pandemic pas de deux may improve with practice. Lately, we are less at odds, but I doubt he will ever slide smoothly between storage cabinet and stove, or that his bumpy ballet will become a beauty to behold. And this is only in the cooking kitchen.

In other rooms, something more troubling pervades. I have lost my private creative space. Writing has always been a solitary occupation for me. I am challenged to maintain motivation in a shared environment. Are you in a similar circumstance, struggling to contend with the same question? Who’s Cooking in Your Covid Story Kitchen?

Meanwhile, an even deeper discomfort lurks  beneath our displacement dissonance. The absence of supper guests who never arrive. We yearn for company worth unearthing our most lovely table linens to pamper and please, so sadly absent now.

We are in lockdown, staying at home, staying safe, whatever. No feet other than our own tread the deck of whosever ship this may end up to be. Which, we find with regret, is the least tolerable intrusion of all.

Who occupies your Coronial creative place? Who samples the kettle and adjusts the seasonings just so? What characters concoct your story stew and contrive the plots in your pots? Who’s Cooking in Your Covid Story Kitchen?

Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com.

A Wrong Way Home

Aunt Dee cooks to heal the heart in Alice’s novel The Wrong Way Home – the ladle-licking-luscious first book in her Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series. Sample this delish dish for free HERE. After that appetizer, dig into the four Riverton Road story courses that follow. Find those, and the rest of Alice’s books, HERE.

What Readers Say: “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.”

https://www.facebook.com/aliceorrwriter
http://twitter.com/AliceOrrBooks/
http://goodreads.com/aliceorr/
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