Tag Archives: Write Thru Crisis

Tell Your Real Life Story

Memoir Writing, ,

Tell Your Real Life Story. There are many reasons to tell your story as you have lived it. All of those reasons are legitimate, as long as they are your reasons, and you are the center of your story. Which is definitely a story that deserves to be told.

You might want to make a gift to those close to you, especially your family. A gift portrait in words, and other materials too, created by you from the moments that make up your experience on this earth. Your story is a legacy after all, to be passed on to those you love.

Or, you might want a wider, less personal audience. An audience you reach by publication. I took that road once myself, with Lifted to the Light: A Story of Struggle and Kindness. Should I ever choose to explore another aspect of my story, I might possibly try a different route.

What are the challenges of publication as a personal storytelling goal? They have to do with the difficulty of actually reaching that wider audience. I base this opinion on my several decades in the publishing business, as book editor, literary agent, and teacher.

What does commercial success as a personal storyteller generally require? Either you are already well known in the world. Or, you possess the potential to become well known because your story is sensational. Meaning it has shock value. The more shocking the better, if you wish to capture attention in a world already bombarded by shocking stories.

I don’t discount this reason for telling and marketing your story. If you happen to have risen to fame or infamy, grab your flash of spotlight while it lasts. Grab that glory with all your might, and hold on tight.

On the other hand, many of us might seek a more intimate center stage. The family and friends focus is one of those venues. But even this personal circle audience may not reach as deeply into your heart as you can travel when you Tell Your Real Life Story.

Some of us are determined to tell our stories, first of all, for ourselves. We seek to define ourselves, and to represent ourselves, on our own terms. You want to tell your life story as you perceive yourself to have lived that story.

We have all heard ourselves defined by others in various ways. From glowing to despicable. Reality generally lies somewhere between those poles. Plus, the reality that truly matters to your story is your own. What you perceive, believe, and struggle to tell about yourself, as long as you struggle for truth.

You aim to tell your real life story from the center of yourself. Not the versions of your story told by the voices of other people. Though the most insistent critical voice in our heads is often our own.

Your challenge is to excavate your story below its surface. To Tell Your Real Life Story as it really happened, beyond the derisive voices, including your own. To undertake a personal archaeology that will discover, uncover, and recover the story of your life that is most true for you.

This is an expedition worth undertaking. Unearth the story in which you are the main character, the hero of the drama you have personally experienced. Yours is a story definitely deserving to be told. Have no doubt of that. I, personally, can’t wait to hear you Tell Your Real Life Story.

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

Lifted to the Light: A Story of Struggle and Kindness is Alice’s moving memoir of her battle against life or death odds and the good people who helped her triumph. Find Lifted to the Light HERE.

What Readers Say: “Couldn’t put it down.” “Juicy and truthful, straight from the heart.” “Too good to miss.” “Beautifully written.” “Funny and consoling.” “Alice Orr is an amazing author.”

All of Alice’s books are available HERE.

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Write Thru Crisis – Muffled Cries

Personal Storytelling, ,

Write Thru Crisis – Muffled Cries. My son was three when this first scene occurred. I had entrusted him to the care of another mother, while I went to the laundry room. We lived in a suburban apartment complex at the time, and I anticipated no danger.

When I returned, my son was nowhere in sight. My friend had turned away – for a single moment – to tend to her own child. I saw my son then, past the wide green grass of the play area, across the asphalt sidewalk and a border of more green grass. He was rocking back and forth on a curbstone at the edge of a busy highway.

I dropped my laundry basket and ran. I didn’t stop to wonder how his small-boy legs had carried him so quickly into peril. I didn’t stop to ask anyone if they had seen him take that perilous path. And, I did not cry out. If I startled him, he might topple into traffic, so I muffled the cries that terror had catapulted into my throat.

He was almost twenty when he caused me to do that again. He was back from college and staying with us for the summer. He’d gone out with friends into a formidable city and, though it was hours past midnight, had not yet returned home. I couldn’t run after him this time, and cell phones were years short of invention.

I sat on the couch, muffling my cries once more. I didn’t turn on the lamp. A lone streetlight outside the window illuminated my fears. Nightmare scenarios raced through my mind, though I didn’t once envision my son being locked into a cell, or a police club bashing him. Years later, female offspring would take my imagination to that horror show.

First, it was my granddaughter, in another large, possibly ominous city. She was there to march and shout in protest against the injustice of poverty and oppression. My son, of age by then to be her father, was near enough to find her at the precinct, if arrests should occur. Still, on that bright fall afternoon, I muffled my urge to cry out my worry and fear.

Not long ago, my daughter brought me similar alarm. She was demonstrating in support of her own strong beliefs, as she often does. On this occasion, armed police and members of the military lurked what I considered uncomfortably closeby. My daughter and her compatriots were herded into a roped-off area, but I guessed accurately that she would press close to the barrier and shout to be heard, while I muffled my cries.

Such stories grip the heart. Mike Nichols, an expert on how to create that gripping effect, once said, “We only care about the humanity.” That is because our own humanity resonates with the tale. Almost all of us have suffered through terror in our own lives, especially when we fear for someone we love. We know how it feels to clap our hands over our faces to shut out fearsome visions, and shut in muffled cries. I hope you will write about your muffled-cry moments, too.

My last story happened decades ago, during my own street activist days. I was in the midst of an angry crowd with a friend, when a policeman on a large horse reached down from his high perch and sprayed mace in the face of my friend’s young son. I didn’t clap my hands over my mouth that day. Instead – for a single moment – shock and disbelief muffled my cries.

Each of these stories deserves an ending. I reached my toddler son before he could fall into traffic. Years later, he came home at dawn and was soundly scolded. Phone calls, followed by profound relief, assured me my granddaughter and daughter in turn were safe and unharmed.

The ending of the mounty-and-the-mace story is hardly as satisfying. That afternoon ended my years of street activism. I walked away, into the safety of my whiteness.  Because of their blackness, neither my friend, nor George Floyd’s mother, had that choice. I am haunted by their cries, too soul deep and wracked with grief for muffling.

Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com.

Alice has spent most of her post-activist work 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. Her current work in progress includes Hero in the Mirror: How to Write Your Best Story of You. Find her books HERE.

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Write Thru Crisis – Precious Life

Personal Storytelling, ,

Write Thru Crisis – Precious Life. I had a dream last night. It was deep winter, though our real season now is the beginning of summer. My son and I were in Denver, at a layover of a flight from the east coast, where we now live, to Washington State, where we used to live.

The dream details were vivid, but the time wasn’t the present. My son was young, maybe ten years old, though he is in his fifties now. I wasn’t any particular age. I was simply his mother, responsible for the safety of his precious life, and my own, and our safety was in danger.

A snowstorm raged outside, and the forecast was possibly dire. For some reason, only comprehensible in a dream, we were scheduled to travel in a relatively small plane. There was an important reason for our trip, and my son was eager to reach our destination. Everyone, including the pilot, assured me we would probably be safe to fly.

I don’t know what I believe about dreams. I don’t usually remember them after I awake. I’ve had others, vivid like this one, but I haven’t written them down afterward. I definitely have not written them down and shared them on the internet, or anywhere else.

The difference now is that we’re at a choice-making time in our personal waking lives. My husband and I must decide if we’ll reopen our business. as New York City reopens amidst the Covid-19 crisis, after nearly four months of public work suspension.

What makes this a dramatic story is the high stakes that are involved. We are both well beyond the sixty-five-plus vulnerable age for Coronavirus, and I have an underlying health condition. I won’t go into specific detail, but the physical circumstances of the company we run together are risky. My husband would face this risk in person and possibly bring it home to me.

I awoke from my intense dream to a lovely morning. The sun shone bright outside. The kitchen was flooded with light and warmth, and birds chirped beyond the window. There could hardly be a more peaceful setting. Yet, conflict persisted within our personal situation.

In a truly dramatic story, opposing high-stakes forces are at work. In our story, we hadn’t planned to retire this early. It would be to our financial advantage not to, and financial advantage is crucial to us, like it is to almost everyone we know. Back in my dream, the snowstorm continued, and threatened lives that were precious to me. In real-life, the pandemic did the same.

Have you ever been in your own high-stake situation? Has your safety, and/or that of people you love been at risk? Was a critical choice required? Did a prophetic message appear, maybe a dream? Was your flashing red light simply instinctual, or in some other warning form?

I won’t keep you in suspense. In my dream, I decided we wouldn’t travel further. My son grumbled, but the kind pilot invited us to stay in her pleasant home so all was well. Similarly, my husband and I have decided to close our business and continue the precautions that have protected us so far.

Your dramatic life stories also deserve to be told. If you’ve answered yes to any of the questions I asked about your own experiences, and I suspect you have, I hope you will write them down. Maybe also consider passing them on to me, to be shared as I’ve shared my own. Either way, I hope you will Write Thru Crisis about you own Precious Life.

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.

Read the story of another dramatic period of Alice’s precious life in her memoir Lifted to the Light: A Story of Struggle and Kindness. Available HERE.

Look for all of Alice’s books HERE.

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