Tag Archives: Writer Motivation

How to Put Your Writer Psyche on Your Side

Writing Career Tip, ,

How to Put Your Writer Psyche on Your Side – One Step at a Time. Do the messages you send yourself light your way up the mountainside? Or do they shove you downward into shadowed places? Are you on your fan page or your enemies list? Do you believe you have what it takes to write and be published?

Self-Doubt is the Mighty Adversary of Motivation. Do you say to yourself, “I’m not good enough,” or “What chance do I have?” Wrong-headed thinking steers you in the wrong direction when it comes to pursuing your author ambitions and traveling toward your writing goals.

How to Put Your Writer Psyche on Your Side - www.aliceorrbooks,com

How to Put Your Writer Psyche on Your Side – Step 1 – Answer this Question. What is your right-now writing goal? A one-sentence answer, please. Clear, concrete, and very specific. Stop reading this post and craft that sentence. Write it down, big and bold, for your psyche to see. First step taken. You have identified where you want to go.

Step 2 – See Your Goal as Here with You Today. Not somewhere off in a vague future, but sitting next to your keyboard. Waiting within each sentence you write and story note you jot down. Giving you a kickstart into every writing task you undertake.

Step 3 – See Yourself Moving toward Your Goal Today. If you make any progress at all, even a nudge or two, then this is a productive day. That nudge can be on the page or in your imagination. Visible, or maybe invisible to everyone except your storyteller’s soul.

Step 4 – Take Stock. Before today ends, make a written record of everything you have done or thought or said since waking that relates in any way to your current story or your on-going career strategy. If you don’t yet have a Writer’s Journal for this purpose, I urge you to start one.

How to Put Your Writer Psyche on Your Side - www.aliceorrbooks.com

Step 5 – So  Crucial that it Could be Another First Step. Make sure your goal is realistic. Do not defeat yourself by filling your plate impossibly full. A tyrannical to-do list is the monster you create for yourself all by yourself. Set reasonable, self-sensitive goals.

Step 6 – The One We Too Often Ignore. Savor what you have accomplished today. Don’t rush off to the next thing just yet. Haste makes waste of your ability to experience your achievements as fully and deeply as you deserve to experience them.

Follow these 6 Steps Every Day. Know your overall goal. Break that goal down into daily expectations, or not. Some of us want a set plan for each day. Others prefer to go with the flow. Do what is comfortable for you, what keeps your head in your writing life game.

If You Don’t Believe You Achieved Enough Today – Look Again. Ask yourself, “Have I done what I undertook today as well as I could?” Factor in the obstacles and setbacks you encountered. If you can answer, “I have done what I could as well as I could do it,” you have had a successful day.

How to Put Your Writer Psyche on Your Side - www.aliceorrbooks.comThink of Each Day as a Jewel on the Thread of Your Life. A jewel on the thread of your writing career. Place it artfully, and never underestimate its worth. Never forget to admire its beauty.

You are Headed up Your Mountain One Step at Time. Building belief in yourself lights the way one day at a time. Nurture that belief always. This is How to Put Your Writer Psyche on Your Side.

Meanwhile, ask your crucial questions. How does your attitude need to be adjusted? What fears do you face about your writing career? What do you most eagerly desire to know? Add a question comment to this post, or email me at aliceorrbooks@gmail.com. I will be honored to respond.

 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!

How to Put Your Writer Psyche on Your Side - www.aliceorrbooks.com

Praise for A Vacancy at the Inn. “Grabbed me right away and swept me up in the lives of Bethany and Luke.” “Undercurrents of suspense move the story along at an irresistible pace.” “The Miller family is rife with personality quirks, an authentic touch that demonstrates Alice Orr’s skill as a writer.”

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/

 

 

 

Attitude. How to Earn an A for Author Attitude

PublishingTip, ,

Attitude. How to Earn an A for Author Attitude. Make yourself your most valuable writing career asset. I began teaching workshops to writers over three decades ago. From the beginning, my mission was to share what I know about the publishing world.

My knowledge comes from many years as a book editor and literary agent. My mission comes from many years as an unpublished, then published author. Back then, I could have benefited from what I have learned since as a publishing professional. I pass those lessons on to you, so that you may navigate the publishing marketplace more effectively in your own writing careers.

The specifics of my message have changed as your author needs have changed. My current  message is about how to combat the self-sabotage I find so rampant among writers who hope to be published, or better published, in this time of diminished opportunities.

Getting published has always been a challenge. Finding success in any competitive arena is difficult. Many try, but relatively few are chosen. That situation has not changed. You may not be able to alter these circumstances, but you can alter the way you respond to them.

Attitude. How to Earn an A for Author Attitude. You must empower yourself in your writing career. You empower yourself when you commit to two priorities. #1. To use your time and talents to grow your career potential, however tough the challenges may be. #2. To control your reactions to the limitations you encounter along the way.

You can make it through these difficult times. You can make it through because you already possess at least some of the skills and resources that will take you there. You only need to reassesswhat those resources are, and be guided toward a strategy for employing them. That strategy begins with examining your Attitude.

Triumph through adversity has everything to do with Attitude. And your first Attitude Adjustment must be to accept the following. To succeed you will have to do battle. You have no other choice, if your passion is to write and bring your writing to the world.

Attitude. How to Earn an A for Author Attitude. Your second Attitude Adjustment must be to fight back fear. Struggle against fear as fiercely as your story heroine struggles against the obstacles in her path in order to survive and thrive. I have waged similar fear-filled fights in my writing career. As an author, you are destined to do the same.

Will yourself through the scary places. Here is a practical exercise to prepare you for that adventure. First thing every morning  say these words, out loud and with passion, to your mirror. “I will not be afraid today. I refuse to let anxiety infest my spirit today.”

How else do you fight back fear?  Change your thinking about now and the future. Change your attitude toward today, and also toward tomorrow. Particularly in terms of your goals for yourself and your writing career.

Attitude. How to Earn an A for Author Attitude. Stop discouraging yourself. Stop thinking of your goal as far away. Stop thinking of your progress toward your goal as painfully slow. That kind of thinking ends in discouragement. That kind of thinking drains your hope. That kind of thinking will not help you triumph in your struggle to succeed as a writer.

Do not squander what Ralph Waldo Emerson called the Power of Enthusiasm. Never relinquish your Powerful Enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is the energy you need to fuel yourself and your writing career through testing times. Enthusiasm will carry you to your goal.

Don’t miss my other Attitude Adjustment posts. I guide your Powerful, Enthusiastic Journey. I show you how to put your psyche on your side. How to escape the frenzy the writing life can become. How to notch up your discipline. How to recognize and utilize the abundance that surrounds you.

Join me here. Learn what we all need to know, and never forget Attitude. How to Earn an A for Author Attitude.

Meanwhile, ask your crucial questions. How does your attitude need to be adjusted? What fears do you face about your writing career? What do you most eagerly desire to know? Add a question comment to this post, or email me at aliceorrbooks@gmail.com. I will be honored to respond.

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!

Alice Orr A Vacancy at the Inn

Praise for A Vacancy at the Inn. “Grabbed me right away and swept me up in the lives of Bethany and Luke.” “Undercurrents of suspense move the story along at an irresistible pace.” “The Miller family is rife with personality quirks, an authentic touch that demonstrates Alice Orr’s skill as a writer.”

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/

Places Replenish Our Writer Souls

Personal Storytelling, , ,

Places Replenish our Writer Souls. Reading stories aloud was a big deal when our grandchildren were growing up. Some of my favorite storyteller moments happened under the storytelling tree.

Our front yard featured a particularly family-friendly place. A yellow Adirondack chair fitted into a notch at a fence corner between two trees. I would sit in that chair with one grandchild at my side and another at my feet, and I would tell stories.

The way those two trees grew made me think of them as one. At ground level, they were far enough apart to accommodate a seat and small table. Further up, at about towhead height, they began to grow toward each other.

One day my grandson asked me about that. “What’s the story with the trees, Grandma.” He was staring at the place where the trees came almost together over my head, and he’d asked for a story. I gave him a story. Because that’s what grandmas and writers do.

“These trees were born close to each other under the ground, and they fell in love. When they grew above the ground and saw each other’s beauty, they fell in love even more. So much so that they couldn’t stand being apart and grew toward each other. Until they were side-by-side, with their branches entwined, reaching for the sky.”

The grandkids appreciated a good yarn and let me think they believed my tale. As for me, I believed every word with all my heart. Especially the feeling of it, which perfectly suited my yellow chair and that enchanting place. Because Places Replenish Our Writer Souls, and I definitely have one of those.

Stories have power. They lift and transport us out of real-life time and space into another universe, separate and apart. John Gardner called that universe “the dream of the story.” I believe in this lifting and transporting, but I also believe in places like the storytelling tree.

Places have power. Wherever we may be, we can picture ourselves somewhere else, like that notch in the fence at the corner of our front yard. We can take ourselves there, into the feel of it. The green branches overhead, the smell of grass and a child’s hair, the sound of birdsong on the soft air of late spring. The taste of contentment on the tongue. A feast for all of our senses as Places Replenish Our Writer Souls.

At bedtime in those days, I sat in another storytelling chair. Bright red, with a comfortable back cushion to ease me after delightful, exhausting hours surrounded by youthful energy. This chair stood between the dormers of the children’s bedroom, where the angles of the ceiling leaned toward one another, like the trees in the fence corner.

When I need a spirit boost, I take myself back to Christmas Eve in that red chair. There is a  stack of books at my side. My deliberate singsong tone has droned two excited children almost to sleep. I reach the last book on the pile and begin. “Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house…” To this day, that line transports me to the red chair under the dormers. Places Replenish Our Writer Souls.

You must tell your re-spiriting stories as well. Stories of places that lift you out of the moment. Places that come alive for you in every detail, if only in your imagination. Your heart is opened there. You are moved to bring us there as well. Because Places Replenish Our Writer Souls, and we deserve to be replenished.

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

Speaking of Christmas, A Vacancy at the Inn is Book 3 of Alice’s Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series, and it is a holiday story. Find A Vacancy at the Inn HERE.  Find all of Alice’s books HERE.

Alice Orr A Vacancy at the Inn

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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