The Orr Report | January 2025
Happy January!
I hope everyone had pleasant holidays! I spent the week of Christmas/New Year's watching several documentaries and stand-up specials. It was glorious and I learned a lot about the craft of stand-up, something I'd never really focused on until I realized (like any other art form), I could apply what I learn to my novels. My biggest takeaway is some people are simply GOATs and you can feel it as you're watching it. I even re-watched a couple of them to take notes specifically on how this set-up led to this punch line and the call-back in the closer, etc. Studying other art forms (especially design elements) will only make my work more interesting and thus, watching Netflix is now counted as "billable time" for my writing career.
Writing News!
In December, I reflected on the top 10 things I learned in my second-year as a writer. I learned a LOT as you can read here!
I also finished Draft 2 of my paper mill family saga, took a week off over the holidays to give the draft some time to marinate and now I'm back at it to start Draft 3. Draft 2 was pretty much a total rewrite of Draft 1 to make it contemporary and I wrote a whole new character's POV which made me realize she is actually the protagonist, and one of the other POVs is a totally different book. And thus I now have two works-in-progress: my paper mill novel and my musician novel!
To celebrate starting Draft 3, I printed out Draft 2, put it in a sparkly binder and as I read through, I used these cute kitty post-its. If you love Japanese stationery, Paper & Pencil in Andersonville/Chicago is heaven (they are in-person shopping only, fyi). My draft 2 paper version is covered in cats and also rainbow post-it notes to highlight all my major revisions. . . of which there are hundreds. I'll definitely need more stationery!
Books!
In December, I read and enjoyed these four novels:
My favorite was The Secret History. I now understand why it has a cult following: very dark academia, literary, and propulsive with a very specific atmosphere. Highly recommend.
I also loved and can't stop thinking about Flashlight. The structure alone is awe-inspiring and the story is extremely haunting. Excellent novel.
Here is my best books of the year list, in case you missed it!
Three Happy Things
In addition to my comedic Netflixing and reading, here are some of my happy things from December:
Silicon Valley (on HBO Max): I didn't watch this show when it came out, but after writing a whole novel about two female founders who build a unicorn company, I’d say my novel is like Silicon Valley but with tons more women and lots of Birkins. :) But even if I hadn't just written a whole novel about building companies, I would have enjoyed this series very much: it's really funny. Shout-out to my little brother for this recommendation.
Ouai St. Barts: Shout-out to my niece Lindsey with whom I watched the first couple episodes of the Taylor Swift doc on Disney. In the scene where she is pouring a bath, we zoomed in on her bath products and I was immediately influenced to purchase this body wash, despite not self-identifying as a Swiftie. Ouai St Barts bath wash is very tropical but not terribly strong (I am allergic to everything and have no reaction to this one!). Also, the iridescent packaging is on point.
Learning Piano! I wanted to challenge myself to re-learn how to play the piano in lieu of reading or writing more words (there are so. many. words.) The app Simply Piano makes learning incredibly fun and everything is coming back to me despite not having played piano for over thirty years. Shout-out to my mom for buying me a subscription to the app as a Christmas present!
Please tell me the things you enjoyed this month! Especially in need of TV recommendations.
xo,
Sara
