Alice Orr's Blog, page 8

Write Thru Crisis – Summer Memories

 Write Thru Crisis – Summer Memories. We each have a memory bank account of favorite summertime nostalgia. One of my super favorites is all about a green island and a pink tractor.

In the mid-2000s, 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’d moved there from New York City to help raise our grandchildren. Urban slickers plunged into village life on a five-acre plot 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, and I made a vow. Someday Jonathan would drive his own tractor in that parade.

Our dream vehicle turned up eventually in Eastern Washington. The intense sun over there had bleached her from orange to a lovely shade of pink. We decided to leave her that way, and our five acres became known as 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.

He, 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 about 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 left in us than we may think.”

 What is your favorite summer memory? Go full-bore for nostalgia. Aim straight at our hearts. And 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: “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 Thru Crisis – Who’s Cooking?

Write Thru Crisis – Who’s Cooking? Someone once said that watching me in my kitchen was like watching a captain on her ship. Sure of every move I make, totally in command, piloting with confidence however agitated the sea may be.

I would prefer a dance metaphor. Cooking comes with its own choreography for me. I glide from counter to cupboard, light on my feet, each gesture executed with purpose, taking care not to clatter the pots unnecessarily.

No need for a mirror along the wall. I know how I look. More important, I know how I feel. At home in my natural habitat and refuge. Free to deviate from the recipe, an experimental pinch here, a different dollop there, without counsel or critique from anyone but myself.

I seldom invite collaborators. To tell the truth, I don’t trust their judgement. Would not welcome their fingerprints on the jars in my spice rack, or the bulk of their bodies blocking my path. This stage has always been mine, and soloing there gives me peace.

I must pause and focus my nerve endings now to recall those sensations. That tableau, the experience of luxuriating, mid-pirouette, toes only grazing the tile or hard wood or whatever my culinary studio flooring might be. All are a part of my past.

My Covid-19 era kitchen is another place entirely, and I’m another person in it. I no longer flow freely from one action to the next. I no longer relax in my refuge. I am no longer a captain on the bridge of my ship.

First of all, my husband is here. I didn’t invite him. 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 tasks at hand. But maybe not.

His choreography is clumsy at best. His limbs flail as if unhinged. His awkwardness is evident everywhere. He wants to be here about as enthusiastically as I am ready to admit him. He’s out of his element and imperfectly replanted in mine. We attempt a compromise of sorts amidst our mutual discomfort. He tries his best not to blunder into my path.

All the same, he taxes my parameters. He asks too many inane questions, makes too many furtive moves, displays too little inclination for blending into his new, accidental habitat. He captained his own ship once in another place, at another time, but those days are done.

Our pathetic pas de deux may improve with practice. Lately, we’re a tad less at odds, but I doubt he will ever slide smoothly between storage cabinet and stove, or that I will ever regard his bumpy ballet as a thing of beauty to behold.

Yet, something more troubling lurks beneath our dissonance. We irk each other with our mismatched presence, but what disturbs us most is the absence of the supper guests who will never arrive. We yearn for the achingly invisible company worth unearthing our most lovely table linens to pamper and please.

We are in lockdown, stay-at-home, quarantine, whatever. No feet other than our own will tread the deck of whosever ship this will end up to be, either in dancing slippers or the sloppy loungewear kind. Which, we find with regret, is the least tolerable intrusion of all.

Who occupies your Coronial kitchen? Who samples the kettle, then adjusts the seasonings just so? What characters concoct your story stew and contrive the plots in your pots? Would you please share a sip from your yarnspinning spoon? Could you perhaps come sparkling-spatula clean about Who’s Cooking?

Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com.

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.”

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Write Thru Crisis – Muffled Cries

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

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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Write Thru Crisis – Peaceful Justice

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/

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Write Thru Crisis – Floodlight Moments

Write Thru Crisis – Floodlight Moments. Our grandson has always had a secret smile, playing behind his composed features and in his eyes. Irrepressible, even at five years old, no matter how much he intended to play a straight-faced joke on camera-toting Grandma who had just said, “Smile for me, sweetheart.”

I cherish moments. Moments in general and specific ones. I remember them and, when I want them to return, I illuminate them with the floodlight of my imagination and fill in the details. For example, I took a photograph of our grandson on a Saturday morning in the kitchen of our house on Vashon Island in Washington state.

The sun shone through the window, and Grandson was in full cartoon garb. SpongeBob SquarePants (the hat) and Thomas the Train (the pajamas) were Saturday morning pals for me also. As I passed through the living room, I’d catch glimpses of their antics from the corner TV table Grandpa Jonathan had built.

This photograph stands on a bookcase in our New York City living room today. Though our grandson of the secret smile passed age seventeen in April, this memento radiates very present delight every time I look at it

Plus, I can add more details to the scene. We’d painted the walls yellow to brighten the frequent shadows of Pacific Northwest rainy days. Fronting the couch, a ponderous low cabinet had a top that lifted for snacking and a drawer at the bottom where Grandson kept the curious items he’d collected from the local thrift shop’s trove of recycled treasures.

I picture the scene and urge the wattage to climb in my memory floodlight. The feelings surrounding it. The atmosphere of love and ease on those mornings, when no one had yet scurried out of night clothes into daywear.

Each of us has deposited such moments in our memory banks. Smiles that touch your heart. Flashes of beauty beneath the retina of your inner eye. You can revitalize them in an instant. No intense pondering is necessary. In fact, pondering is discouraged.

Instead, grasp the moment in midair. Cradle it in the palm of your hand. Allow it to ripple through your fingers, up your arm, into your heart. Add to your visual recollection the sound of birds chattering outside, the aroma of breakfast on the stove, the touch of sunlight from the window on your skin.

In other words, revel in sensual richness brought to life. Drop gently out of the present. Loosen its hold on your consciousness until you are fully embraced by that long-ago kitchen moment, or wherever the incandescence of your imagination has taken you.

Anticipate the thrill of preserving this scene on a page, but don’t go there yet. Linger. Savor. Enjoy. Recognize the rapture. Edge aside what is now for what was then. But, do so gently, in order not to disturb the still place where your psyche has allowed itself to rest.

When you’re ready, gradually return to your now. Before the details fade, write down the adventure of your visit to your recaptured moment. Afterward, favor yourself with these interludes often. All you have to do is turn on your imagination, direct its glow within, and there they are. Write Thru Crisis – Floodlight Moments.

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.

Experience Alice’s own Floodlight Moments 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/

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Write Thru Crisis – Salted Wounds

Write Thru crisis – Salted wounds. Mother’s Day was a few weeks ago. My son once said, “This is a holiday created by Hallmark Cards to sell their product.” My response to that might be, “This is a holiday created by Morton Salt to sell their product.”

I am a mother who had a mother, and a grandmother who had a grandmother. All of which does have a Hallmark card side. Idyllic resonances that could prompt sweet, four-line rhymes. Plus, a Morton Salt side, associations with wounded places, some scarred over, some still bloody, all conflicted.

Meanwhile, on a grander scale, there is the Covid-19 catastrophe. Whether you believe this to be our century’s worldwide plague or a conspiratorial hoax, we are all in the midst of a Morton’s moment magnified. This situation rubs salt into every vulnerable, sensitive corner of our psyches, the places where we most long to be left undisturbed.

Unfortunately, crisis of any kind is, by nature, disturbing. Crisis is an impertinent, belligerent, often malicious finger, rubbing the Morton’s deeper in, making certain we experience its sting to the max.

Back to Mother’s Day, which I pick on only as an example. Like the Corona Crisis, Mother’s Day is a universal phenomenon, whether you celebrate either or not. We all have some relationship with motherhood. We are all in the grips of this crisis. We all have wounded places.

Animals are a good example of what to do about the last of those. When wounded, they find a place of refuge, a crevice where they can burrow in, lick the lethal elements from their wounds and, hopefully, heal. Each of us has a similar refuge close at hand, our personal stories and the telling of them.

Here, as examples, are two of my own refuge stories. Coroneal Mom’s Day was bittersweet for me. On the lighter side, I missed my son in law’s waffles. Last year, I stuffed myself so full of them, I had to lie immobile for an hour to recover. This year, he and my daughter stood six feet from me in the street, avoiding mention of waffles or anything else we missed.

On the heavy side, my mother suffered from mental illness. Which is why I spent most childhood weekdays with my kind, loving grandma. She passed away when I was seven years and three days old. Life before then and life afterward were very different realities me and, for some reason, this Mother’s Day has brought those times close to my heart.

Obviously, each of these snippets requires much more detail to become an actual story. As I said, they are only examples, starting places in search of further telling. They are also crevices I may burrow into, salve my wounds with words, and heal, or celebrate. You can do the same.

What real-life stories does Mother’s Day 2020 call forth for you? No crevice is required, only a pen, a journal, and sentences. Or draw a picture, construct a collage, compose a lyric and some music to go with it. Whatever your medium preference may be, let it wash the salt away, dull the sting, encourage healing to happen.

And don’t forget the feelings, where method and magic meet. Share your stories, if you wish, at aliceorrbooks@gmail.com, and let me know if you would like others to experience them too. Share this post also. We all have stories to tell, as we Write Thru Crisis.

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.

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/

 

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Write Thru Crisis – Write It Down

Write Thru Crisis – Write It Down. “Go home, get some rest. Marnin’ the world new, every time.” In White Teeth by  Zadie Smith, gorgeous Jamaican Carla Bowden says these words to down-and-out Londoner Archie Jones.

Wise advice for today’s gone-to-madness world. Go to ground for a while and lick the wounds created by simply looking at, listening to, walking through the madness. Then, drag yourself up to as straight-back a position as you can manage and, if you are an author, Write It Down.

What is my own personal Biggest Mistake as a writer? Sometimes I don’t write things down. Crucial things that are the stuff of strong storytelling, because they have lots of Emotional Content. Which means they make me cringe and want to look away or, better yet, to run away. To do anything other than drag out my faithful notebook and record the psychic carnage.

We’ve got psychic carnage galore right now, right here in River City or anywhere. So, grab that notebook. Retrieve a stick of charcoal from the charred remains of what you once believed to be a sensible existence, and start scribbling. Fast as you can come up with words to describe the devastation. Because  this  reality is storytelling paydirt.

Too bad we are also in Biggest Mistake territory. I know this has happened to you, because it happens to all of us. The chaos of life presents you with a knock-your-socks-off story idea, so good you are blown away. So good you can hardly believe this super great fortune has been given to you out of the super obliterated landscape that surrounds you.

I call it the Idea from Heaven, or maybe, in these circumstances, from the other place. What has been given is a glimpse of narrative that, though it may be ugly to others, has for you, the storyteller, elegant symmetry. It is exactly the Inspiration you’ve been yearning for. Nothing short of paradise, or the other place, could deliver such a priceless gem.

You are struck profoundly. You are certain this moment will remain with you forever. It has been imprinted indelibly upon your soul. All the same, your writer’s practicality knows you should write it down immediately. But for some reason, often fairly trivial, you do not. For some reason, notetaking isn’t convenient for you at this particular time.

You don’t intend to put it off for long. You only intend to get done with whatever you’re into right now. Besides, this is the Idea from Heaven, or… A bolt of bestseller storytelling lightning has zigzagged across the deepest blue beauty of your writerly dreams sky. You absolutely will not forget a single detail. Except. You do.

You look for your priceless gem, maybe only minutes later, but it is gone, gone, gone. You search and search. You employ every memory-jog trick and technique you’ve ever heard of, but all you can recall is the feeling. All that remains is a whiff of the euphoria that blew in on this once-in-forever brainstorm. Everything else has evaporated.

You absolutely cannot believe what has happened, but… The story kernel that was destined to catapult you to the stars has flitted off, possibly to some other authorial imagination like a fickle tease, and your own authorial instincts tell you it will never return.

Brain science may have a theory or twelve about this phenomenon. Or maybe the universe if just screwing with you. Whatever the explanation, the upshot is always the same. You plunge into mourning. The Kubler-Ross five stages of adjusting to great loss lie ahead, and it is all your fault. Because all you had to do was write the damned words down, but you did not.

Meanwhile, back to our present definitely not- easy existence. Brainstorms are crashing and booming all around you. Pull your head out from under your comforting soft-stuff-filled comforter, mine is blue by the way. Gaze around you, take it all in, every earth and heaven rattling detail. Then. Write It Down. Write It Down. WRITE IT ALL DOWN!!!

Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com.

Alice’s latest novel 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.” “Budding romance sizzles in the background until it ignites with passion.” “The best one yet!”

A Thankless Season – Riverton Road Road Romantic Suspense Series Book 6 – the series finale, is in progress. Stay tuned for further alerts. And, Write Them Down!

Look for all of Alice’s books HERE.

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“Dis Life No Easy” – Write It Down

In White Teeth by the amazing novelist Zadie Smith, gorgeous Jamaican Carla Bowden says to down-and-out Londoner Archie Jones, “Go home, get some rest. Marnin’ the world new, every time. Man… dis life no easy.”

Wise advice for today’s gone-to-madness world. Go to ground for a while and lick the wounds created by simply looking at, listening to, walking through the madness. Then, drag yourself up to as straight-back a position as you can manage and, if you are an author, Write It Down.

What is my own personal Biggest Mistake as a writer? Sometimes I don’t write things down. Crucial things that are the stuff of strong storytelling, because they have lots of Emotional Content. Which means they make me cringe and want to look away or, better yet, to run away. To do anything other than drag out my faithful notebook and record the psychic carnage.

We’ve got psychic carnage galore right now, right here in River City or anywhere. So, grab that notebook. Retrieve a stick of charcoal from the charred remains of what you once believed to be a sensible existence, and start scribbling. Fast as you can come up with words to describe the devastation. Because, “Dis life no easy,” and that reality is storytelling paydirt.

Too bad we are also in Biggest Mistake territory. I know this has happened to you, because it happens to all of us. The chaos of life presents you with a knock-your-socks-off story idea, so good you are blown away. So good you can hardly believe this super great fortune has been given to you out of the super obliterated landscape that surrounds you.

I call it the Idea from Heaven, or maybe, in these circumstances, from the other place. What has been given is a glimpse of narrative that, though it may be ugly to others, has for you, the storyteller, elegant symmetry. It is exactly the Inspiration you’ve been yearning for. Nothing short of paradise, or the other place, could deliver such a priceless gem.

You are struck profoundly. You are certain this moment will remain with you forever. It has been imprinted indelibly upon your soul. All the same, your writer’s practicality knows you should write it down immediately. But for some reason, often fairly trivial, you do not. For some reason, notetaking isn’t convenient for you at this particular time.

You don’t intend to put it off for long. You only intend to get done with whatever you’re into right now. Besides, this is the Idea from Heaven, or… A bolt of bestseller storytelling lightning has zigzagged across the deepest blue beauty of your writerly dreams sky. You absolutely will not forget a single detail. Except. You do.

You look for your priceless gem, maybe only minutes later, but it is gone, gone, gone. You search and search. You employ every memory-jog trick and technique you’ve ever heard of, but all you can recall is the feeling. All that remains is a whiff of the euphoria that blew in on this once-in-forever brainstorm. Everything else has evaporated.

You absolutely cannot believe what has happened, but… The story kernel that was destined to catapult you to the stars has flitted off, possibly to some other authorial imagination like a fickle tease, and your own authorial instincts tell you it will never return.

Brain science may have a theory or twelve about this phenomenon. Or maybe the universe if just screwing with you. Whatever the explanation, the upshot is always the same. You plunge into mourning. The Kubler-Ross five stages of adjusting to great loss lie ahead, and it is all your fault. Because all you had to do was write the damned words down, but you did not.

Meanwhile, back to our present definitely “no easy” existence. Brainstorms are crashing and booming all around you. Pull your head out from under your comforting soft-stuff-filled comforter, mine is blue by the way. Gaze around you, take it all in, every earth and heaven rattling detail. Then. Write It Down. Write It Down. WRITE IT ALL DOWN!!!

Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com.

Alice’s latest novel 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.” “Budding romance sizzles in the background until it ignites with passion.” “The best one yet!”

A Thankless Season – Riverton Road Road Romantic Suspense Series Book 6 – the series finale, is in progress. Stay tuned for further alerts. And, Write Them Down!

Look for all of Alice’s books HERE.

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Why A CHRISTMAS CAROL Sings

A Christmas Carol Sings to Me because I Long to Decode its Secret. Why does this story grasp my heart and refuse to let go, no matter how many times I experience it? How has it continued to hold that same power for so long over a vast audience? What did Charles Dickens do that keeps us returning again and again? Let me venture some guesses.

A Christmas Carol Sings because of Ebenezer Scrooge. Charles Dickens created a character we are unable to resist. Ebenezer commands us to revisit the dark chill of his “money-changing hole” with astonishing regularity. We simply cannot get enough of him, or the twisting and twisted trail he leads us along.

A Christmas Carol Sings because it is a Ghost Story. Things that go bump in the night abound. Literally, as Jacob Marley’s chain of miser’s sins clanks toward Scrooge’s cold, barren rooms. On film, I personally favor the Alastair Sim version. The gloomy black and white images and ominous soundtrack most accurately evoke the mood of the book for me, while Ebenezer’s angry scowl draws us all into dread and melancholy.

A Christmas Carol Sings because there is some Ebenezer in most of us. Not because we hoard and hover over our worldly goods, or grumble, “Humbug this, humbug that,” for all to hear. But because, as surely as Scrooge carries his poisonous, punishing temper everywhere, he carries wounds as well, and so do we.

A Christmas Carol Sings because those Wounds are to our Hearts. As was true for Scrooge, hurts are inflicted on us in our tenderest places, usually when we’re very young. Hot cinders of malice, neglect, unkindness, or worse are dropped, one by one, singing a hollow that begs  to be filled by love, which is in turn denied or simply unavailable.

A Christmas Carol Sings because we struggle mightily with our own ghosts. Some of you may not be haunted in this way nor have suffered wounds to the heart. If this is true, I rejoice for you. Still, I suspect that, more often than not, we bear up bravely beneath our injuries and scar them over as best we can.

A Christmas Carol Sings because Ebenezer Offers Us Choices. He exemplifies the  capacity within us to live afflicted, or to heal. Before the spirits visit him, he vividly embodies the former choice and its accompanying  bitterness. Afterward, he shows us another way to go, but action will be required, as in all Redemption stories. This is one of those for sure, and the required action is love in its working verb form.

A Christmas Carol Sings because it Reminds us of a Crucial Truth. One prescription for healing our wounds is to love, deeply and consistently as possible, given our flawed human natures. if we  listen, we may hear the still, small voices within us echo the goodness of that intention.And, like A Christmas Carol, those voices sing.

Meanwhile… Charles Dickens, Ebenezer, Tiny Tim, and I wish each of you a beloved and loving New Year.

Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com

Alice Orr’s Christmas story A Vacancy at the Inn – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book 3 – is available on Amazon HERE. Enjoy!

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.

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