Tag Archives: Story Ideas

Summertime and the Writing Ain’t Easy

Writer Motivation, ,

Summertime and the Writing Ain’t Easy. Your hero may be rich and her lover good lookin’ but your drive to tell their story has driven to the beach to play. These lazy hazy crazy days of summer took hold of your heart and sent your head to another season. Still all that is writerly in you has definitely not been lost. Much that is easy remains among the blades of clover grass and goodies in your picnic basket to keep your author mojo summer hummin’ along.

It’s Easy to Remember Why You Love to Write. I love to write because of my characters. Discovering them is an into-body experience for me. At first I’m inside them falling deeper as I grow to know them better. The further I fall the more besotted I become. Then the process reverses and they begin to reside in me – through my thoughts and heart and into my body. Sounds like love and sex. Maybe that’s why I enjoy it so much. Why do you love to write?

It’s Easy to Be Inspired. The secret is to sense yourself up. Look around. Colors. Shapes. Movement. All exploding everywhere. Listen in. Past your own noisy thoughts and urges to take control. Allow the sounds of life – including dialog snatches – to tumble and flow into you. Breathe deep the scents of the season. From a new peach to storm ozone in the air. Taste the sweet and the spice. Touch it all and let it touch you. Soon you will forget that  it’s Summertime and the Writing Ain’t Easy.

It’s Easy to Immerse Yourself. Dive deep into the pool/pond/ocean of experience. Any experience. Let go of your personal gravity – whatever holds you down or back. Prepare to be mesmerized. Seek your meditative center beneath and beyond the difficulties and frustrations of the day-to-day. Be taken over and transported like a child clasped by the hand and led through a world that unfurls into a sunny glade where every step is magic.

It’s Easy to Capture It All. Always write down the important things in life. And your savored summertime is very important. Not necessarily as a story or novel just yet unless you can’t stop yourself. Otherwise notes on a card will do – as long as you always carry those cards with you except when swimming. They will save you from the following huge writer mistake. You have an idea so super you can hardly believe such great fortune has befallen  you. So super you know you will never forget it. Then you do.

Warm Weather Discipline may not be Easy but Many other Things are. Especially when you carry yourself along at a lazy lighthearted lope. All you need do is this. Remember why writing is your adoration and adore it. Sense up your sexy self to be inspired. Immerse your soul in depths of magnificent mystery and float away on a current of calm. Note the necessity and joy of capturing it all in a few adoring, mysterious, magnificent words you shall not lose. Because it may be Summertime and the Writing Ain’t Easy – but loving your writer self is.

Alice Orr Says – You Possess Storytelling Magic. Keep on Writing Whatever May Occur. https://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? Ask your question in the Comments section at the end of this post.

Alice Orr has published 14 novels, 3 novellas and a memoir so far. She wrote her nonfiction book No More Rejections: 50 Secrets to Writing a Manuscript that Sells as a gift to the writers’ community she loves. Her hot novel for this hot season – A Year of Summer Shadows – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book 2 – is available HERE.

Amazon.com/authors/aliceorr

 Praise for A Year of Summer Shadows: “Alice keeps you wanting to read faster, then when you finish the last page, you want more.” “Orr’s characters come alive on the page.” “A Year of Summer Shadows has moved up to one of my favorite books.”

 All of Alice’s Books are HERE.

http://facebook.com/aliceorrwriter/
http://twitter.com/AliceOrrBooks/
http://goodreads.com/aliceorr/
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What’s in Your Writer’s Closet?

Writer Motivation, ,

What’s in Your Writer’s Closet? I last posted here two months ago. You might say I took a summer vacation. Now autumn approaches and I anticipate the invigoration of bracing evenings and new promise in the air. It’s time to get moving again. Time to check out where to begin.

An animal prepares to burrow in – out of the flow – at autumn time. Not so with humans. We are ready to reenter the flow. To shake off the humid torpor and plunge into the vitality of life. Writers are ready to plunge also. To re-engage our psyches and set loose our imaginations.

In his wonderful book On Writing, Stephen King offers good advice about that. Sit down every morning and do the work. Two-thousand words minimum. Or thousands more, if you can manage it. He is a taskmaster for sure. His career is evidence of the wisdom of the task.

Keep on writing whatever may occur. I’ve signed my own books with those words for many years. I cherish the phrase and the sentiment. I pass them on with every good wish in my heart, especially to beginners on this path. But what will you keep on writing as a new season begins?

A writer writes – whatever that may entail. Maybe not always a host of novel pages to start with. A writer may scribble ideas on notecards. A writer may fill journal pages when the morning gifts her with inspiration. A writer may stare at the wall and just imagine. It all counts.

For me the way back in led to a peek inside my writer’s closet. A writer’s closet is the place where we store the stories we gave up on. The stories we dropped in their tracks. The stories we abandoned when a shinier new idea came along. We all have a writer’s closet.

What I found in my writer’s closet was a story that hit a snag. When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Supposedly. The boulder in this particular writing road was a scene that didn’t work. It didn’t fit with what came before. I could have pressed on. Instead, I walked away.

Autumn inspires us to see old roads with new eyes. The spark of potential rekindles. Maybe not a full blaze at first. Maybe only a flash of light. We see it and feel it all the same. We rediscover a path we can dance again, possibly to an altered tune. I saw. I felt. I am dancing.

What’s in Your Writer’s Closet? Take a peek. Look for a story you might dance to again. Look for a story you already tingle to tackle each morning. A spark of potential recognized anew. You see it. You feel it. Your heart jumps. Your imagination stirs. You begin to dance.

Alice Orr – https://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? Ask that question in the Comments section following this post. Share your writer’s journey and inspire future posts.

Alice has published 16 novels, 3 novellas and a memoir so far. She wrote her nonfiction book No More Rejections: 50 Secrets to Writing a Manuscript that Sells as a gift to the writers’ community. Her latest novel – A Time of Fear & Loving – Riverton Road Romantic 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!”

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/

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/