I’m Declaring This Blog Reader Appreciation Day

October 21, 2011 — Pat Bertram

As most of you know, this has been a hard couple of years for me. I watched my life mate (soul mate, business partner, best friend) die slowly of inoperable kidney cancer. I survived months of grueling grief. I left my home to take care of my 94-year-old father. I’ve struggled to keep from being swallowed up in the quicksand of emotion and trauma.

Through it all, you’ve been here for me. I want you to know how much every comment, every word of support, every story you shared has meant to me. Even those of you who have never left a comment (so I was never able to thank you personally) have helped me get through this terrible time because I knew you were there, suffering your own traumas. Your presence made me feel as if we were going through this journey together.

And perhaps we are going through this journey together. We are so often in competition with each other we forget that in some intangible way, we are connected one to the other. The internet, though it does sometimes keep us from connecting in the offline world, keeps us connected in a more ethereal way. The internet and computers are fueled by electrons, and so are we.  Somehow the two streams of electrons manage to collide. How else to explain the very real connections we have made though many miles — sometimes half a world — separate us?

So, thank you. Thank you for holding out a virtual hand and keeping me from sinking. Thank you for reading my blog, for caring, for connecting. Thank you for being part of my stream of electrons.

Posted in blogging, culture, internet. Tags: , , , , , . 5 Comments »

Proving to Myself That I’m Real

October 20, 2011 — Pat Bertram

I’m still struggling with the sense of loss that the death of my long time mate created in me. It’s not just that I lost him — I feel as if I’ve lost a sense of reality, a sense of my reality.

During the first months of almost unbearable pain, I felt that the situation itself was unreal. Part of me couldn’t believe he was dead (though I knew he was — I watched him die). It seems strange now, but accompanying the disbelief was a belief that something wonderful would soon happen to me, perhaps because I needed to believe good would come to balance the unbelievable wrongness of his absence. I no longer hold myself tensed against the reality of his death (though it does still tear through me at times), but I also no longer have that sense of an imminent good. What I’m left with is a feeling of waiting, though I don’t know what I’m waiting for.

This feeling of being in limbo seems to be a common stage of grief for those of us past the first year. So many of us are struggling with it, trying to find . . . a new reality, perhaps.

I’m not a sentimental person. I seldom kept keepsakes and I never chronicled my life with photos, but now I do both to prove to myself that yes, I am alive, and yes, I am doing something with my years. I’ve recently started a scrapbook of paper memories. Perhaps someday I will feel a sense of reality again, but if I don’t, I can look at the book and know the truth of it. I am real.

        

Posted in culture, grief, life. Tags: , , , , , . 3 Comments »

What Does Not Destroy Us Makes Us Stronger. Or Weaker. Or More Fearful

October 19, 2011 — Pat Bertram

Nietzsche said, “What does not destroy me makes me stronger.” I’m not sure if that is strictly true. Sometimes that which doesn’t destroy us makes us makes us weaker because it makes us fearful of living, fearful of more trauma, fearful of fear itself.

Eleanor Roosevelt said, “You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.”

In life, we often have to do the thing we think we cannot do. Too many times during the past eighteen months I’ve felt that I can’t survive the pain of losing my life mate (we were together for 34 years). Panic kept washing over me, as if I’d been set down in the middle of an alien world with no idea how to deal with all the horror being thrown at me. I feared every new step, every change. I’d been especially fearful of growing old alone. Sometimes I still am. I’ve seen what dying can do. It’s a terrible way to end one’s life, and it seems even more terrible when one has to face it alone. Of course, there’s a chance that it will be decades before I have to face the grim reaper, and who knows what will happen until then?!

Well, I do know one thing that will happen: this discussion about life, writing, and the writing life!

So, what do you fear? How do you deal with your fear?

If you are a writer, how does that fear work its way into your stories? What do your characters fear? How do they deal with the fear? Is the fear a plot driver, something that drives the story forward or is it more of a subplot, a way of developing your character? Is the fear justified? Is the fear realized? (I mean, does the thing the character fear happen, and if not, why not?) How does the character deal with the fear? How does the fear change the character? How does facing his/her fear change the character?

Posted in culture, life, writing. Tags: , , , , , . 6 Comments »

What To Do When One of Your Beloved Pieces of Art Glass or Pottery Gets Broken

October 18, 2011 — Pat Bertram

What do you do when one of your beloved pieces of art glass or pottery gets broken?

It breaks your heart to have to throw it away, but what else can you do with it?

Don’t throw it away!! Plant it in your garden.

They make wonderful accent pieces. And you can continue to enjoy their beauty.

I wish this had been my idea, but I’m only passing it along.

The glassware collection and the idea of planting broken pieces of art glass and pottery are my sister’s.
I’m only posting the photos I took in the hopes that you enjoy her pottery garden as much as I did.

Posted in culture, How to, photography. Tags: , , , , . 6 Comments »

Gotta Love That Spam!!

October 17, 2011 — Pat Bertram

I always check my spam folder here on WordPress, partly because some real comments have gotten lost in that black hole, and partly because they tickle me. Whoever is posting these things needs to get a better translator program. (Or perhaps all such programs are faulty?)

This particular bit of spam almost makes sense:

Halloween outfits usually are costume worn out around or on Evening, your event which in turn drops regarding Oct 31st. A Costume carries a fairly limited history. Dressed in costume has long been regarding some other vacations at about the time from Evening, possibly even The holiday season. Some of the earliest referrals that will being dressed in costume located at Evening is within 1895, exactly where “guisers” usually are announced inside Scotland, reliable almost no reference to a dressing up inside Uk, Ireland in Europe, or perhaps the Us until eventually 1900. Early on costume highlighted the actual questionable plus medieval design of this getaway, however , through thirties costume depending on characters inside advertising that include silver screen, literature, plus airwaves were definitely favorite. Evening has been actually touted to provide a children’s getaway, as a method from reining while in the licentious plus damaging behavior from students. Early on Halloween outfits were definitely aimed at youngsters for example, however , following your mid-20th centuries, just as Evening significantly came to be famed by simply older people, the actual Costume has been worn out by simply older people perhaps up to youngsters.

And here’s the ever popular Hey Dude:

Hey, Dude. My group is not considerably into searching at, but somehow I acquired to read several articles on your weblog. Its great how interesting it’s for me to pay a visit to you fairly often.

Others make no sense at all:

Post Standard,mmodern care forget big take afternoon as element totally requirement energy line step paper focus obviously occur used himself figure not threaten reaction perhaps new favour late hurt flat wife crowd recall empty rich protect weapon insist total ago rule train international treatment reaction trade weekend directly tree explore damage revolution during aircraft fear recover politics component actually who for have absolutely work comment notice examine museum main result planning until avoid herself correct sky dress target step connect cold growth beautiful alone meaning insurance deep largely leg hard division.

And some are just fun:

I agree with most of your points, but a couple of want to be discussed further, I will hold a small speak with my partners and perhaps I will appear for you some suggestion soon.

So here’s a small speak for the big spammers: Hey, Dude, don’t make it bad. Take your spam and make it better.

Posted in blogging, internet. Tags: , , , , . 5 Comments »

Does Curiosity Automatically Create Conflict?

October 16, 2011 — Pat Bertram

In an online writing discussion the other day, someone asked if curiosity automatically presented conflict. I had to think about that. If the curiosity isn’t at odds with the character in any way, if nothing is stopping the character from following their curiosity, there is no conflict. Curiosity, in that case, is about doing what comes naturally, going with the flow. And going with the flow is not conflict. Conflict is going against the flow.

Curiosity can lead to conflict, of course, since curiosity can get our characters into trouble, and trouble does present as conflict. Or perhaps the character is tempted to follow his curiosity but he needs to resist since his curiosity always gets him into trouble, and that temptation/resistance is conflict. In fact, curiosity is a great reason for a character to get into trouble, which moves the story along (especially if you’ve shown that your character is apt to follow his/her curiosity no matter what.)

As a plot driver or as a motivation for your character’s actions, curiosity may not have the emotional power of love, hatred, vengeance, anger, fear, but it has a power all its own. This drive to know new things, to find out about life’s mysteries, both major and minor, is one we can all understand. If we find a locked box, don’t we all want to know what is inside? If the box belongs to our spouse, do we have a right to open it? Do we look for the key? Do we open it? In real life, we might resist the urge out of respect or loyalty, but if we read a book where the character finds the box, we sure keep reading to find out how the character satisfies his/her curiosity . . .  and ours. For that is the crux of a story — as readers, it is our curiosity to find out what is going on that keeps us turning pages. If we didn’t care, if we had no curiosity about what is happening in the story world, we’d toss the book aside and find other things that arouse our curiosity, such as what’s on television, or who’s online.

So, even though curiosity doesn’t automatically create conflict, it might lead to conflict, and for sure will keep us reading.

Oddly, curiosity can also bring peace, which is the direct opposite of conflict. If a character has suffered greivous trauma, if the character as no other reason for living, their natural curiosity might give them a reason. Sometimes all one has to hold on to is curiosity as to what the future holds. And that realization brings peace of a sort. At least, it does bring peace until you start throwing more trauma at your character, because peaceful characters are not necessarily compelling characters.

Posted in writing. Tags: , , , , , . Leave a Comment »

More Names Than One: Fiction Made Real

October 15, 2011 — Pat Bertram

The other day I was getting gas when a truck pulled up next to me. It looked familiar in a dream-like way, but I didn’t think anything of it. It wasn’t until I started driving away that it dawned on me what I was seeing. A truck delivering Singha beer. I’d needed a Thai beer for my novel More Deaths Than One and just picked the name out of a guidebook, but somehow it didn’t seem real. At least not until I saw that truck. Here is the excerpt from the novel where I mentioned the beer:

In his short-sleeved shirt imprinted with red, green, and yellow parrots, Bob felt like a tourist. He even found himself gazing around as if he’d never visited the place before.

He saw a couple of the other regulars, a German and an American—both mercenaries—but most of the people were strangers to him, including the four men sitting at the next table. They seemed to be Americans of the right age to have fought in Vietnam. A man in a Yankees baseball cap waved his arms for emphasis.

“I did my job,” Bob heard him say. “Then I got out and continued on with my life. Everything’s great. My life is full. It happened so long ago. I don’t understand what the big deal is.”

The haunting strains of “Hey Jude” filtered through the room.

“What are you going to have?” Kerry asked.

“A Singha in honor of Harrison. It’s a local beer he liked. Also a hamburger with fries.”

When a giggling young waitress approached, Kerry ordered hamburgers, fries, and Singhas for both of them.

Hamburger Dan brought their drinks.

Setting them on the table, he gave Bob a penetrating glance. “It is you. I wasn’t sure at first. How’ve you been—”

Before Hamburger Dan could speak his name, Bob said quickly, “Gandy. I’m Rick Gandy and this is Julie Walsh.”

Hamburger Dan’s eyebrows rose. “I see. Does this have anything to do with the two men sitting in the booth across the room?”

Bob lifted his drink to his lips and gazed over the top of the mug. The men in question leaned back in their seats with studied nonchalance, but their eyes were hard and way too alert—cop’s eyes.

“My supposed friends?” Bob asked.

“Right. They’ve been in and out for the past six weeks or so, but after you called they started spending a lot of time here.”

“Something you should know. Your phone is tapped.”

Hamburger Dan stiffened. “What’s going on? What are you involved with?”

“I have no idea, but I’m looking into it.”

“You?” Hamburger Dan had the grace not to smile, but Bob could sense his incredulity.

Seeing the light of battle in Kerry’s eyes and her mouth opening to come to his defense, Bob laid a hand on her knee. She closed her mouth, but her jaw remained set.

The waitress brought their hamburgers. The delicious aroma of grilled meat made Bob’s stomach growl with hunger.

“I’ll leave you to your food,” Hamburger Dan said. “I shouldn’t stay here too long anyway, don’t want to draw the attention of your friends.”

Kerry’s gaze followed him as he moved off, then it shifted to Bob.

“How come he talked to you like that? Doesn’t he know you’re the Bob Noone character in Dark Side of Heroes?”

“I doubt it. Now that Harrison’s gone, you’re probably the only one who knows. And if by chance Hamburger Dan does know, he still wouldn’t be impressed. He’d think Noone was a wimp.”

“Oh.” She took a big bite of her hamburger and ate it slowly. “How did you come up with the names Rick Gandy and Julie Walsh?”

“They slipped out. I decided we shouldn’t advertise the names we’re traveling under.”

“Good thinking.” She chewed on a French fry. “I’m beginning to have as many identities as you. It’s confusing.”

Bob nodded. Munching on his own hamburger, he let his glance fall on the other bar patrons.

“Mike seemed like a brother to me,” the man in the Yankee baseball cap said, tears brimming over. “I tried to save him, but there was nothing I could do.”

The men with the cop’s eyes stood, took a final look around, then sauntered out of the bar, still main-taining their casual air.

Bob felt his shoulders sag with relief.

As he continued to eat, he could hear the gaunt man playing “Let It Be.”

More Deaths Than One is available at Amazon, Smashwords, and Second Wind Publishing.

Posted in books, fiction, writing. Tags: , , , . 1 Comment »

Life Needs a Laughtrack

October 14, 2011 — Pat Bertram

While reading Nancy Cohen’s blog post “Cut That Wimpy Dialogue!,” I thought about how much smoother and more interesting dialogue in books is in comparison to normal conversation. In real life, we stutter and stammer, repeat words, interrupt each other, talk while another is still speaking, and we tell long drawn out stories that go nowhere. Such idiosyncracies would bore us to tears if we read them in a book, but we’re used to them in real life, perhaps because we’re more interested in our connection to the people we are talking to than the actual words we are using, or perhaps we are more forgiving because we know none of us can rewrite our spontanous speech to make it vigorous and decisive as we do in our books.

I used to be more congnizant of what I was saying. I would hear the wrong words as they came out of my mouth, and I tried to correct them before they hit the air, but that just made me sound like a stammering fool. Now that I don’t listen to myself as much, I talk smoothly without stammers, but still, my conversation is normal. In other words, if my life were a book, most of my words would be edited out.

Since most conversations in real life are less than scintillating (since most of life itself is less than scintillating) maybe what we need are laughtracks. Laughtracks — especially loud and raucus laughtracks — are prevalent in television comedies that have little humor and less wit, but the laughtrack gets your adrenaline going and makes you think you are watching something special. Or at least makes you think you have some connection to the story, which makes you feel less foolish for watching the silly show. Inane comments on a comedy without a laughtrack leave us cold. So why shouldn’t we each come with our own private laughtrack? If we say something that falls flat, canned laughter floats around us and our listeners, making us seem brilliant and witty. And if what we said was really inane, the laughtrack would rise to a crescendo, drowning out the echo of our words still hanging in the air, making it impossible for anyone to remember them.

On the other hand, the constant sound of raucus laughter could get on our nerves. Maybe it’s best to leave things the way they are, and save our wit and wisdom for writing where we can edit the words until they are so perfect there would be no need of a laughtrack for distraction.

Posted in culture, life, writing. Tags: , , , , , . 2 Comments »

Does Anyone Really Want to be Good? Do You?

October 13, 2011 — Pat Bertram

There is no such thing as a bad driver. Ask people if they think they are good drivers, and they will all say yes. Why? Because we judge our driving ability by our strengths and values. If we think fast driving makes a good driver, and we drive fast, then we consider ourselves good drivers regardless of our discourtesy to other drivers or our lack of attention to possible hazards. If we think obeying every letter and number of traffic laws makes a good driver, and we obey the laws, then we consider ourselves good drivers even if our driving poses a risk to other drivers.

Of course, if you ask drivers if other drivers are good drivers, then there is no such thing as a good driver.

Goodness is the same way. We all consider ourselves to be good, but that’s because we judge goodness by what we do and what we value. If we think honesty makes a good person, and we scrupulously tell the truth no matter who we hurt, then we think we’re good. If we think adherence to religious doctrine or sexual mores makes a good person, and we adhere to those customs, then no matter what unkindnesses we commit, we consider ourselves good. If we think not murdering our horrible neighbors makes us good, and we refrain from inflicting bodily harm even though we believe the world would be a better place without them, then we consider ourselves good no matter what other havoc we might wreak.

Goodness, like good driving, isn’t as subjective as we think it is. Goodness is about character — integrity, honesty, kindness, generosity, moral courage, and all the other virtues we wrinkle our noses at because they are old fashioned.

I hadn’t considered “goodness” until I needed a topic for a writing discussion and came across this quote from playwright Maxwell Anderson: “The story of a play must be a conflict, and specifically, a conflict between the forces of good and evil within a single person.” A few hours later I found an article in the newspaper, a transcript of a Rosh Hashanah sermon by Dennis Prager in which he enumerates 13 obstacles to becoming a better person. (Supposedly, the purpose of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is moral introspection: What kind of person am I, and how can I become a better person? This struck a chord with me, because these questions are the focus of my life right now.) The combination of these two writings gave me my discussion topic: The Not Quite Good vs. the Not So Evil.

Prager made a good point: most of us don’t want to be good. We want to be other things, such as happy, smart, attractive, healthy, successful. In today’s workplace especially, those old fashioned virtues such as kindness, generosity, integrity are pretty much an antithesis to any kind of success.

Although I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about what I want to do with the rest of my life and what I want to become, I never once considered “goodness” as a goal. To be honest, I’m not sure it’s even practical. It’s too nebulous. Perhaps I’ll settle for something more concrete, such as not killing my neighbors even when their music blasts my eardrums.

What about you? Do you want to be good?

Posted in culture, life, relationships. Tags: , , , , , . 3 Comments »

The Not Quite Good vs. the Not So Evil

October 12, 2011 — Pat Bertram

“The story must be a conflict, and specifically, a conflict between the forces of good and evil within a single person.” — Maxwell Anderson, American playwright (Actually, he said, “The story of a play must be a conflict . . .” and that can lead to the first question of tonight’s discussion. Does a story/novel differ from a play in other ways besides simply the format?)

The best stories are, of course, conflicted, and internal conflict deepens one’s knowledge of a character and raises the stakes for the outcome of the story. But . . . does the conflict need to be between good and evil? If a character is battling it out internally between such disparate forces, then there’s a chance the story will end up being comic bookish and the character end up resembling Linda Blair in The Exorcist.

Perhaps it’s better for the internal conflict to be a bit narrower? Say between one’s need to do the right thing and one’s tendency to be selfish?

I just read an article that said most people don’t particularly want to be good. They’d rather devote their efforts to other things such as being happy, successful, smart, attractive, healthy. Sounds like the makings of a good conflict. Battling one of these urges in order to do something selfless would make a character more real than one who has to battle their evil nature, because who of us is truly evil? Most of us are thoughtless, selfish, petty, pettish, angry, given to telling small lies and committing small dishonest acts, none of which are evil. Just human.

According to that same article, goodness is about a person’s character — integrity, honesty, kindness, generosity, moral courage. A story person with such qualities would seem shallow and uninteresting and too good to be true. On the other hand, some characters who are supposed to be on the side of good do as much bad as the characters who are supposed to be evil. In other words, in a fictional world, it’s okay to be evil as long as your intentions are good. That would make a good conflict, too — a battle between a character’s good intentions and what the character really does. But such a battle is still not a conflict between the forces of good and evil in the same person.

So, do you agree with Maxell Anderson? Do your characters have a massive internal conflict, or do their internal conflicts tend to be less dramatic? What are your characters internal conflicts? Does the internal conflict reflect or contrast the major conflict in the story? As for your villains — are they also conflicted but perhaps lose the battle to their less than stellar side?

If you’d like to discuss this topic live, you can find me at the group No Whine, Just Champagne on Gather.com on Thursday, October 15, 2011 at 9:00pm ET (8pm CT, 7pm MT, 6pm PT). Otherwise, we can just chat here.

Posted in writing. Tags: , , , , , , . Leave a Comment »
« Older posts
Newer posts »