Tag Archives: Inspiration

How to Boost Your Writer’s Imagination  

Writing Tips, ,

How to Boost Your Writer’s Imagination. Usually, I am all about discipline all of the time. Today I shall noodle a different tune. A tune I make up as I go along. Today I am all about lack of discipline all the time. Today is Distraction Day.

On Distraction Day, my imagination roams. Won’t you roam with me? Our object, if there is one, will be to see what happens, and perhaps be surprised. Our theme will be Less is More. Less careful attention. Less deliberate pursuit. Less clamor after control. Let us let go.

Instead of pushing yourself to do your very best today. Allow yourself to do whatever you end up doing, wherever you happen to be, however you happen to feel. We are not chasing achievement. We are, as the mystics say, simply being here now.

Start with your immediate environment. Where exactly are you? What is going on there? What will go on there when you let your imagination loose and follow the fantasy of whatever scenario may appear. When you allow the nature of the place to topple into the tale that unfolds.

Undiscipline your commitments. Put off your promises. The promises you have made to others. The promises you made to yourself, about what you would do in the several hours ahead. Watch it all slip-slide straight off your plate. Undo your To Do list, just for today.

Populate your presence with whomever happens to show up. Don’t turn off your phone. Don’t silence the notifications signal on your social media. If somebody knocks, answer the door. Invite everyone in by opening up to happenstance.

Stop thinking of distractions as a bad thing.  Distractions can lead us off our intended paths. Into adventure. Into unexpected venues. Around a corner we have never before turned. This is Distraction Day. A time to be carried away on whims of chance.

What are your personal time burners? The activities you ordinarily regard with guilt as a waste, especially of your declared intentions. Activities you think of as minimally productive to your career. What is the most difficult of these to resist? Desist from resisting. Indulge instead.

Welcome your own weirdness. David Lynch, frequent traveler of this territory, says, “It’s like fishing. I never know what I’m going to catch.” Take yourself on a fishing expedition. Accept anything that lands on your hook, the stranger the better. Astonish yourself if you can.

Meanwhile, there are a couple of rules to impose upon our anarchic experience of How to Boost Your Writer’s Imagination.

Open your senses wide and turn up their volume. See. Each detail around you at maximum vividness. Listen. To sounds bursting like a revelation. Taste. Any morsel that touches your tongue. Smell. Scents pleasant and unpleasant alike. Feel. Everything, both tactile and internal.

Write it all down. Notes. Fragments of thought. Impressions. Dialog snatches. Only enough to make sure you can summon back the scene, the sensations, the silliness later on. If you spot the spark of a writing idea, record it briefly. Then abandon yourself to distraction once more.

Most important, have fun. Fly free. Resolve to fly into fun again soon. Make Distraction Days a regular event in your schedule. Your unleashed writer’s imagination will reward you richly for doing so.

Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com

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.” “Budding romance sizzles in the background until it ignites with passion.” “The best one yet!”

All 0f Alice’s books are available HERE.

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

 

 

Write Thru Crisis – Peaceful Justice

Personal Storytelling, ,

Write Thru Crisis – Peaceful Justice. The first time I helped someone out who’d been bullied I was a young teen in my upstate New York hometown. Years later, a woman named Marsha told me the story. Some neighborhood boys had lifted her by her overall straps and hung her on a picket fence. I apparently came along and took her down.

I don’t remember the incident. But I do remember how good it made me feel that I corrected this small injustice which loomed so large for her that she’d never forgotten it, or my act of mercy. Like most positive things about me, my merciful instinct originated with Grandma. “If you’re not making the world a better place, why are you here?” she would ask.

Grandma lived by those words, and my guess is that most of you do too. You have your own history of mercies, small and large, remembered or mostly forgotten, when the world was a better place because you were in residence. Moments when you lived by the messages we are meant to impart to others. “Don’t give up. You are not alone. You matter.”

In each of these moments we are agents of peaceful justice. Each of these moments is a story worth telling, worth bringing back to life and honoring. Some of your tales of justice are personal and private, like rescuing a little girl who’s been pinioned on a picket fence. Some are on a grander scale and public, like my daughter in the street, risking safety to shout out her truth.

My daughter shares her peaceful justice story in Twitter shorthand. I follow its episodes with pride and trepidation. I’ve seen video of police and soldiers, armed and ready, too near to her for my comfort. “Ready for what?” I ask myself and don’t want to hear the answer I fear.

Many of our stories of peaceful justice feature real-life heroes we love and admire. They live in our families, friend circles, neighborhoods, classrooms, workplaces. Their stories remind us of the potential for good we all possess, and lift us on a wave of hope. My favorites often feature the Hero in Your Mirror – you, and the gift you are to those you touch with your heart.

My granddaughter is another of my real-life heroes. In high school, she reached beyond her natural self-consciousness to lobby in Washington for social and economic justice. In college, she learned how to carry those causes further. Now, she is poised to fulfill her great-grandmother’s credo and make the world a better place.

These are some of my stories. What are yours? Who are your heroes? What are their deeds of mercy, their efforts for the betterment of others? Don’t forget to remember your own deeds too. Your life will be enriched by telling your stories. Humanity is enriched when we share our passionate and compassionate selves. Write Thru Crisis about Peaceful Justice.

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.

Meet the good people who gifted Alice with their mercy and compassion in her memoir Lifted to the Light: A Story of Struggle and Kindness. Available HERE.

Look for all of Alice’s books HERE.

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

Present Perfect Survive-Thrive Secret #1

Motivation, ,

Persist Till You Prevail. We’ve seen many of us fall by the wayside. We’re called Creatives. Yet, we struggle to create the mindset that will keep our bodies and spirits from sliding off the path which gives us joy and satisfaction. The challenge is to Persist. The goal is to Prevail.

I Have Persisted. Over boulders in my way. Under bridges where trolls lurk at every turn.  Am I boasting? You betcha, though God and a great support network had a lot to do with it. Plus maybe my rat-dog stubbornly stupid refusal to give up.

Alice’s Survive and Thrive Secrets. Five rules for life’s risky road were planted deep in me by Grandma when I was young, and I’ve nurtured them some since. I share those seeds in my next few posts. The overall message being Persist Till You Prevail.Grandma and Alice at Two and a Half

What Do I Mean by Prevail? Do I mean fame and fortune? Don’t turn those puppies away if they scratch at your door, but they’re not my thesis here. To Prevail is what my top-line title states and my bottom-line belief dictates. Survive and Thrive. Get past whatever you encounter. Don’t expect easy. Survive to Thrive and tell about it, because we must always share good news.

What Do I Mean by Thrive? Muster the strength to pick up your life, and celebrate your very existence. You made it this far, battered and bruised maybe, but still Present. That, like me not being crushed by boulders or devoured by trolls, is a miracle.

Present Perfect. So, here’s Survive and Thrive Secret #1. Be the Best You Can Be in the Present. The best you can be, not the best there ever was, or the best expected by whomever’s been flogging your psyche for almost ever. Your ma, your pa, Saint Francis. I expect of you, only the best that you can manage to be on any given day in any given moment. You should expect the same.

The Best You/I/We Can Manage is Good Enough. Better than good enough. Your Personal Any Morning Best. That’s a diamond, my friend, subject to polishing perhaps, but worth a fortunate fortune all the same.

In the Interests of Full Disclosure. My own consciousness lost the gist of that last paragraph for a while. The concrete of forgetfulness paved my path, honed it into hobble-stones that delivered a direct hit to my psyche more than once. A cautionary tale you must remember when tempted to overlook the glint of the jewel you already are, or misjudge it not glinty enough.

Be Gentle with Yourself (And so the Exercise Begins). Identify goals that are Realistic for You. Not for whomever you’re alleged to be less whatever than. Realistic/Doable/Workable Goals for You. Be compassionate. Cutting somebody a break begins at home.

Brainstorm Those Compassionate-with-Yourself Goals. Get someone who really loves you to join in, or make it a solo storm. A bottle of wine could help, or a pot of strong tea if you prefer. Make mine cabernet sauvignon, please.

Write Them Suckers Down. Do not edit. Don’t say, “That’s stupid,” or “This won’t work.” Remember the psyche-floggers I mentioned earlier? These dismissive self-critiques are echoes of her/his/their voice. Ignore it. Write down every syllable. Then leave the list alone for a bit, maybe even a day or two.

The Cooler Consideration. Again, do not edit. Guided by self-compassion, prioritize Your Realistic Goals. Start easy, not with the biggest thunderclap on your brainstormed list. Now, make a new list from the new sequence you’ve created.

Print That List in a Large Font. Hang it everywhere you hang. Your laptop lip, the fridge door. Do not laminate. Periodic tweaking, always in self-compassion mode, is encouraged.

Go After Those Goals at Psyche-Sensitive Speed. You are Present Perfect now, Lovey (as Grandma used to call me). Survive and Thrive Secret Number One is done and done.

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

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.”

Look for all of Alice’s books HERE.

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