My Only Memoir Writing Workshop This Year

Memoir Writing Workshop with Alice Orr

Women’s Voices for (a) Change Conference

June 20-23 at Skidmore College

Saratoga Springs NY

MAZES MENTORS & MIRACLES

Bring Your Real Life Story to Life on the Page

In this workshop you will tell your personal story. You will Re-member the pieces of that story, Dis-cover those powerful chapters at the center of your heart, Ex-cavate your truths from that deep place and give them voice. Your real life story is a joy and a revelation. Alice guides and inspires you toward that story. She teaches you to tell your story as it deserves to be told.

Alice Orr is a former book editor and literary agent, published in fiction and nonfiction including No More Rejections: 50 Secrets to Writing A Manuscript That Sells. Alice lectures nationally on storytelling & memoir – how to write and market both. Here is what her memoir workshop students have to say.

From Alice’s West Coast Memoir Writing Workshops

“Alice is a fabulous presenter and brings to the table a rich array of knowledge. 5-Star!’

“You opened me up to me and to my story.”

“This has been transforming.”

From Alice’s East Coast Memoir Writing Workshops

“I learned how to pressure the coal of my life to find the diamond.”

“I felt I didn’t have the courage to write my story. Today I discovered I do.”

“This will impact my writing life profoundly!!! The level of deep emotional content was awesome. Thank you.”

We are each of us butterflies with a single wing

until we become whole by embracing ourselves.

Email Alice at aliceorrseminars@gmail.com

Or call (206) 714-2843 to find out more.

Go to www.LivingKindness.org to register ASAP.
Registration Closes May 15th

My Brother Michael

Please excuse that I use this space for a personal purpose today. My brother Michael Harron passed on to another consciousness two years ago. This is how I remember him.  

                                                                                                                            

Michael was complications

with a bald spot

and side hair fringing down

like bed skirt tassles.

Michael was talent in a

toothpick body

especially at the last

when he was wasted

though he never wasted anything

Michael tracked trash nights

on Park Avenue

and hurried there to

trundle treasures in a

wheelbarrow or borrowed pickup

to his realm of rescued things.

Michael fabricated Christmas

at the final moment

huddled in a corner

sketching tuning penning lyrics

for a gift you’d never give away

and soon forgot was so last minute

because it came from him.

Michael had a smile that

glittered from his

curling lashes to his

grinning chin

and may have been

a turn he played on stage

like Shakespeare and the rest

he’d given life you only could believe.

Michael trailed a train of

enemies behind him

dazzled then discarded

but always fewer far

than those still

thriving in his thrall

when his dramatic exit

left us less enlivened

and he was finally forever gone.

By Alice Orr

Plotting the Story They Tell About You

“Your ability to get a job could turn on the stories they tell about you.” So says film director Steven Soderbergh in the February 4^th issue of New York magazine.

He’s talking about getting a gig in movies. I’m talking about getting a gig as published author. He goes on to say “If I’m an a-hole I don’t get the job.” I say “He’s got that right.

Authors way too often sabotage their chances with their behavior. At the beginning of your career especially the story publishing professionals tell about you among themselves is crucial.

That is why I am sharing with you Alice’s 10 Commandments for Making Agents and Editors and All Manner of Publishing Types Love You for Life.

Commandment # 1: Thou shalt be reasonable. Think before you make a demand. Ask yourself – Is this absolutely necessary to my career at this moment?

Commandment # 2: Thou shalt be revisable. Choose carefully which revision suggestions you challenge. Ask yourself – Is this the hill I’m willing to die for OR strain this relationship for?

Commandment # 3: Thou shalt be realistic. Maintain perspective on your power position – especially at the start of your career when you have little or no clout.

Commandment # 4: Thou shalt be impressive. In person or by phone or email – sound and look like a serious savvy business person. Never whine or beg. Never let them see you sweat.

Commandment # 5: Thou shalt be retiring though not shy. Modesty – not to be confused with self-deprecation – is attractive. Boasting is unattractive.

 

Commandment # 6: Thou shalt keep it professional. Personal references – to your life or to theirs – are less than appropriate.

Commandment # 7: Thou shalt keep your cool. Display of temper is counterproductive. Stick with cooperation rather than confrontation. No prima donnas need apply.

Commandment # 8: Thou shalt keep your mouth shut. Do not complain out loud about the pub business in general and this pro in particular. Gossip spreads and this business loves it.

Commandment # 9: Thou shalt – and this is crucial – come across as an ally. Human beings respond best to appreciation and helpfulness and publishing pros are definitely human.

Commandment # 10: Remember the good sense Grandma gave you. You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

That is spoken like the proud grandma I am and this grandma says that if you follow these good sense guidelines the story told will be that you are not an a-hole – You are A-Number-One.

Meanwhile you may feel free to find out more about Alice the commandment-giver at my website www.aliceorrseminars.net.

Blog or Bore?

Mary’s Q: Many writers blog about writing – things like character and grammar – boring topics for nonwriters. Wouldn’t it be far more interesting to blog about your novels?

My A: First I must say EEK! I blog about writing. Here is my defense for doing that.

Writers are our readers. They are our core community. And community is our key – the key to effective communication and also to effective marketing.

To market anything – your work or your opinion or yourself – start by walking out your front door and looking up and down the street. Your neighbors are your best first audience.

They share your interests. They care about much of what you care about because you occupy common ground. They will be most receptive to your message because they are your tribe.

So give yourself a break. Begin your blog conversation where folks are interested in what you have to say. A writer’s common tribal ground is the community of writers.

Check out Elizabeth Craig at Mystery Writing is Murder. She covers that ground quite nimbly as she blogs about the mystery of writing across all categories.

Blogging about your novel may be fascinating to you. But are you sure it is fascinating to others? How many people will care when you talk about your story? How many will mind glaze?

Unless you get creative the way Lois Winston does in her blog Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers. Her character Anastasia Pollock narrates and has interesting opinions about everything.

The ABC of blogging is Always Be Communicating. It is not Always Be Carrying-On-About-You or about your project. Otherwise your D could be Delete keys clicking on every side.

We all want the world to be our caring community. The challenge is to build that broader community block by block and plank by plank into a sturdy platform.

Still I would advise against blogging about grammar. In my corner of the community at least – that usually is a bore.

And to find out what I do when I’m not communicating with you – click these keys please – www.aliceorrseminars.net.

World Building - Romance Novel Series Style

In response to my post on World Building in Series Fiction a reader asked this question. How can the principles of series world building be applied to a series of romance novels?

Rules are the foundation of any world you build as the setting for any series in any genre. Those rules differ from genre to genre according to the conventions of each of those genres.

The conventions of a genre can be most easily defined in terms of reader expectations of that genre. When a reader buys a book in that genre what does he or she expect to find in the story?

Identifying these expectations is essential to success in writing any genre novel. Violating reader expectations can thwart that success big time. Thou shalt not disappoint reader expectations.

The first among reader expectations of a romance novel is that it be pretty much all about the romantic relationship at the center of the story – the relationship between the lovers.

This convention or rule carries over big time to the romance novel series and it starts with the most basic unit of each novel in that series. That most basic unit is the scene.

Each individual scene must focus somehow on the romantic relationship. The story of that relationship as it progresses toward the inevitable happy ending is the plot of the book.

The world of each book and of the entire series radiates out from that focus. The family and the community you create exist only to provide a context for the romance at the center of each story.

When you digress from the romantic relationship focus in any romance novel scene or book or series you violate the first rule of the genre and of your series world. All other rules evolve from this basic principle.

Beyond that I have one more piece of advice. Study the champion series world builders of your genre. As always in all writing the successful authors themselves are your best teachers.

In romance I suggest Sherryl Woods and Susan Wiggs and the matriarch of them all Debbie Macomber. Deduce the rules that define their series worlds. The details that give each world its beating heart.

Ask yourself how each of these details might be adapted to the world of your series. Then go deep down to the soul of that world and with each vibrant detail make it come alive on the page.

Build a Series - Build a World

Novels in a series are a road to success for an author. They are also an adventure that takes place in a world. You build that world detail by detail and scene by scene.

Your goal is to draw readers into the world you build and make them want to stay there through one book then the next and the next. To do this you must create a world that has reality and resonance.

At Liberty State Fiction Writers Conference I learned that you must also create a world that has Rules. Following these rules makes your world consistent and adds to its reality and resonance.

Conference panelists Caridad Pineiro and Elisabeth Staab and Stephanie Julian talked about rules and world building in the genre of paranormal romance. They also got me thinking.

They got me thinking about fiction world building in general. They got me thinking about how establishing rules applies to all series writing in all genres – and even to all storytelling.

To hook a reader you must master the art of immersion. You immerse your reader so completely in the story world you create that she is eager to remain there until you release her at The End.

Your reader will miss that world when she is forced to leave. She will be equally eager to return there again and again. Thus you have set the hook for a series as well.

One way to sabotage that good effort is to slip an inconsistency into the mix. An off-key note that disturbs the reader and awakens her from what John Gardner calls the dream of the book.

To prevent this you establish and follow the rules of your story or series world. Some of these rules you figure out in advance. Others arise as the story grows and reveals more of itself to you.

A bonus of this exercise is that it immerses you as author deeper and deeper into the world you are creating. From this deep place you are better able to bring your story to real and resonant life.

In this respect story rules are anything but limiting. They liberate your writer’s imagination into the flowing ocean of the story and its world. Like your reader you never want to leave.

Write a series and you don’t have to leave. You dive back into that immersing current with each new story you create. You have built a world where you can thrive all the way along your road to success.

Something's Rotten in Storytown

Shakespeare is the inspiration for that title and it applies to the max to storytelling today. Actor/director/smart guy Jon Favreau calls this the heart of every strong story. I heartily agree.

“The world is broken,” he says. From this seed at the start springs the plot which proceeds apace until the break is mended – or not. Favreau uses his own life as example.

He was a kid in Queens NY growing up in a relatively ordinary life. Then his mom died. “She was suddenly just gone.”

With no warning he was plucked out of the life he had known. That was where everything began. The struggle to survive a broken world. The struggle to regain a semblance of wholeness.

Unfortunately a version of this scenario happens to most of us in our lives. The struggle follows. If we are blessed that struggle does not destroy us.

Fortunately for us as storytellers this scenario is also the template for strong storytelling. Stories we know in our bones because our bones have been shattered by the likes of them at one time or another.

We set our main character onto the earth of her story at the moment when the scent of something rotten has just wafted into sniffing range.

The struggle then commences. The object of that struggle is to banish the stink. The outcome will be that our character either succeeds or goes down gasping.

The disgust level of the stench varies according to story type or genre. Softened in a romance by tincture of roses. Heightened in a thriller to send the reader strangling for cover.

Still the eau de essence remains the same. Something’s rotten. The world of the story is broken. The struggle toward wholeness proceeds. The outcome happens.

Meanwhile all of it – as my friend Herma once said – is for the porpoises of the plot.