Pat Bertram

On Writing: The Importance of Setting

June 7, 2014 — Pat Bertram

Deborah J Ledford, in “Captivating Settings,” a section from Novel Writing Tips and Techniques From Authors of Second Wind Publishing, stresses the importance of setting, of putting readers at ease and giving them a visual at the beginning of each chapter, especially the first time the location is presented. As the author of the popular Deputy Hawk/Inola Walela thriller series, Deborah J Ledford knows what she is talking about. We do need to be aware of our surroundings. In real life, if we were to awaken in an empty room — or heaven forbid, hanging in empty space — with no indication of where we are, even the most equanimous would be uncomfortable. The rest of us, of course, would be panicked out of our minds.

Although being unacquainted with where we are in a story wouldn’t panic us, it would prevent us from settling into the novel. We’d be searching the pages warily wondering where we are and even worse, wondering if we want to continue reading.

In the past couple of days I had the dubious honor of reading the first chapters of two new books on the market, and combined, they show the importance of setting a scene and doing it properly.

The first book had absolutely no setting. It was as if the characters were hanging in the air, held to the page only by the thin strings of their words. There was no “there” there, and I had no desire to keep reading. If the writer didn’t care enough about me as a reader to let me know where I was, I certainly didn’t care about the story.

The second book had too much setting, describing the initial scene at great length with lots of awkward constructions using “had”s and “you”s, and meanderings into the past, that I had no interest whatsoever in the story, even though I did know where I was. Instead of describing the setting using vague and anecdotal constructions, she could have used the setting in a more dynamic way, evoking mood, atmosphere, making the setting part of the action. Most importantly, she should have searched for a couple of telling details — the sights, sounds, smells, feel, tastes that evoke the entire feeling of the setting.

In the 1980s, bookracks in grocery stores were full of gothic romances. Perhaps you remember seeing those covers: a brooding mansion in the background, a woman in a diaphanous gown running away from the house, looking back at it in fear. Despite their triteness, those were dynamic covers: the pictorial description of the house, the effect on the character (fear), and how the character reacted (running away.) Written description can be as vibrant as those covers; it just means taking the description a step further and filtering it through the senses of a character.

In this example from my novel More Deaths Than One, we already know that Bob and Kerry are in a hotel in Bangkok, but now we get an impression of the hotel room from Kerry’s reaction.

Bob opened his eyes, then squeezed them shut against the light. From the heaviness of the air and the brightness of the day, he presumed it was mid-morning. He opened his eyes again and this time managed to keep them open.

He turned his head toward Kerry. She lay on her back, hands behind her head, eyes focused on the ceiling. Following her gaze, he realized she was staring at one of the ubiquitous green lizards. Her body vibrated with excitement.

He smiled to himself. Leave it to Kerry to be thrilled with this small reminder they were no longer in Colorado.

“Isn’t this great?” she said in a hushed voice. “We have our own private watch lizard.”

Bob brushed away a fly buzzing around his head. “We could use a few more.”

Later, the description of the hotel becomes an integral part of the Bob’s worry.

The hotel was built around a courtyard accessible from all the rooms. Bob took his breakfast out to the courtyard, but couldn’t enjoy the fountain, the bushes, the flowers. He kept stealing glances at the windows, wondering if anyone was watching him.

When dark clouds rolled across the sky, pushing a stifling humidity before them, he took refuge in his room. It did not have air-conditioning, but the slowly revolving ceiling fan offered a modicum of relief.

He paced the floor, feeling as if he were a stranger in this land. It didn’t matter that he had lived here for sixteen years, he realized; any place would seem alien when he wasn’t with Kerry. She was his home.

He tried not to worry about her all alone on the streets, but as time passed, the worry grew too strong to ignore.

Then the rains fell. There was no light spattering gradually increasing in intensity as in Colorado, but an abrupt opening of the skies as if someone had turned on a spigot.

Because of the emotions evoked, the brief descriptions in no way stop the forward movement of the story.

After Kicking the Bucket List

June 6, 2014 — Pat Bertram

A few days ago I mentioned in a blog that I didn’t have a bucket list because there are too many things in the world that either I’m not aware of that perhaps I would like to do, or if I am aware of the things, I’m not aware that I would like to try them.

Several people pointed out that bucket lists have become a cliché, which they are, but the way I figure it, they are also redundant. A bucket list is a list of things you want to do before you die. As far as I know, every list is a list of things one wants to do before they die. A shopping list is more immediate and a heck of a lot less exciting than a list of activities such as sky diving or mountain climbing, but still, it’s a list of things to do while you are alive.

I have yet to see a list of things to do after one kicks the bucket, though I imagine such a list would read:

1) Make an appointment with God.
2) Tell Him/Her what He/She did wrong when creating the world.
3) Learn how to play the harp.
4) Shop for the latest fashion in wings and halos.

Or, in a more dire situation:

1) Amass a stock of aloe for burns.
2) Find your friends, especially those your parents once warned you about.
3) Look for a hot guy.
4) Have a hell of a good time.

Now those are bucket lists!

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Posted in culture, life. Tags: after kicking the bucket list, bucket list, kicking the bucket, making lists. 3 Comments »

Requiem for Online Dating

June 5, 2014 — Pat Bertram

Six months ago, a married friend urged me to join a dating site, more, I think, to fulfill her own fantasy of going out with a lot of different men than because of any perceived need of mine. She promised to help me weed through the site to find men who might be compatible, but still it took one entire sleepless night for me to make the decision to play her game. I’m not sure what I was afraid of — moving even further beyond my deceased life mate/soul mate perhaps. Or maybe accidentally falling in love again and tying my future to another person.

Although I wasn’t looking for a serious relationship, I was lonely. Thinking it would be fun to meet people, maybe go on a few dates, I signed up for a dating site and paid for a six-month subscription. I originally planned to pay for one month, but I didn’t want to sabotage myself by counting the cost.

At the beginning, I wrote charming messages to all the men my friend thought might be suitable, and even some the site found for me, though the site’s computers seemed to think I was looking for an inarticulate, overweight, tattooed smoker who rides a motorcycle. Um, no.

I suppose it’s understandable I got not a single response to my notes. Inadvertantly, I’d created a profile that guaranteed I wouldn’t catch any man’s attention — I told the truth about myself, used more than 95 words, didn’t downplay my intelligence, didn’t show cleavage, didn’t use words like “fun-loving” that could connote an eagerness for mattress games, and most of all, I didn’t lop years off my age. Eek. I must have seemed like their worst nightmare!

I eventually joined two free sites besides that first fee-based site, but the free ones garnered me no attention either. (In fact, those sites matched me with many of the same unsuitable men the first site did.)

Last night, my paid subscription ended, so I laid my profile to rest. I deleted my photos, deleted the description of myself, deleted my thoughts about what I was looking for in a man. Then I went through the whole rigmarole of deleting the profile. They promised that the profile would be permanently deleted from their site, but a while later, when I tried to sign in to make sure the profile really was gone, there it was along with a welcome back note. So I deleted it again.

The truth is, I am glad I didn’t find anyone to go out with. I am finding my wings, waiting to see if I can fly, and I don’t want to be held earthbound by anyone else’s expectations of me, no matter how potentially rewarding the relationship might be.

Goodbye, online dating. Goodbye, romance.

Hello to . . . whatever might come next.

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Posted in culture, life, relationships. Tags: accidentally falling in love, creating a profile, dating sites, fun-loving, online dating. 4 Comments »

On a Pilgrimage

June 4, 2014 — Pat Bertram

Today when I mentioned my idea of walking up the coast, a friend asked, “Why walking?” I had to stop and think about that. I originally planned a journey by car, crisscrossing the country, so I’m not sure how the idea of driving metamorphosed into walking, or why the idea took hold except that I’ve always had an affinity for walking.

When I first started roaming the desert after the death of my life mate/soul mate, I would follow the paths drawn in the sandy soil by bikes and ATVs, always wanting to see what was up ahead, around the next turning, behind the next knoll. I had to be careful not to wear myself out because I needed to make sure I had enough energy to get myself back to home base, and I couldn’t help wondering what would happen if there were no home base, if I could just walk until I got tired, and when I was rested, continue on. Such practical things as being able to carry enough water, food, and protective coverings to get me to wherever I was going didn’t enter the equation. I just like the idea of walking to see . . . whatever there was to see.

Back then, I was still going through the pain of first grief, and walking was the only way I could find any peace. Somedays I walked for hours, limited only by my strength and the amount of water I’d brought. My walking, though it was always circular rather than to a special place, seemed like a pilgrimage, a long journey to a new life. My old life was dead, cremated along with my life mate/soul mate, and somehow I had to find a new way to connect with the world. My current idea of walking up the Pacific coast seems like a continuation of that grief-born pilgrimage.

“Pilgrimage” has been defined variously as any long journey, especially one undertaken as a quest; a journey or search of moral or spiritual significance; a walk in search of something intangible. Although making a pilgrimage was not my intention when I first thought of walking up the coast, “pilgrimage” seems to define most what I want out of the journey. I don’t want the journey to be one of survival (though I do intend to survive it, of course). My wilderness survival skills are nil, so in any contest between me and the wilderness, the wilderness would win. My ability to carry a heavy pack is also nil. And yet, I would like to see the coast more intimately than from the window of a car passing by at 65 miles an hour, with only periodic stops to rest. I would like to see what I am made of. Could I handle the endless hours of nothing to do after my walking stint is finished for the day? How would I connect with the world? Could I handle the uncertainty of never quite knowing what will happen? Could I spend so much time outside without becoming ill? I’d stay in motels when I could, but for long stretches, there would be just me and whatever was around the next bend.

Meantime, I am on another pilgrimage. Bruce Chatwin in Anatomy of Restlessness wrote, “To dance is to go on pilgrimage.” Some people see dancing just as exercise, but for me it’s a way of connecting with life, of being alive, of searching for something intangible, if only proficiency and grace. Dance is a journey of the spirit just as I would hope an epic walk would be, and it’s changing me in some ephemeral way. For example, for the first time in my life, I have no body image problems. All that time in front of a mirror is making me comfortable with the way I look, both my good points and bad. Dancing also seems to reach inside to hidden places and pull out previously unknown joys.

Dancing is the one thing besides physical inability that would change my mind about walking up the coast. It’s a rare and special privilege to be able to learn how to dance at any age but especially when one is sliding down the banister of life.

At the beginning of my journey into grief, a wise woman told me that I could be entering the happiest time of my life, and though it took longer than I expected, I can see that she was right. The pain of grief seems like a portal I went through, and now on the other side I can feel the possibility of true happiness and joy.

Walking. Dancing. Embracing whatever the future might bring.

My pilgrimage.

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Posted in being me, culture, life. Tags: Bruce Chatwin, dancing, epic walk, pilgrimage, to dance is to go on pilgrimage, walking up the coast. 8 Comments »

Is the Handwriting on the Wall for Cursive?

June 3, 2014 — Pat Bertram

Some schools no longer teach handwriting beyond kindergarten or first grade and some teach it not at all. It seems strange to think that few children growing up now will ever write anything by hand, but they won’t need to. Computers, tablets, phones are all just an itch away. Kids today are in constant contact with their peers, using a form of language — textspeak — that would have been anathema just a generation or two ago, but it is their world, not ours. They will have to be living in their “modern” world when we who are adults now are long gone. (I put quotation marks around modern because people in every age going back thousands of years have considered themselves as living in the modern world. And of course, they were right. To people in each era, their contemporary world is like the head of a comet with past trailing along behind. Someday a future era will be at the head — the new “modern” world — and our current modernity will be lost in its tail.)

I read once that the only place besides the brain where we have grey matter is in our fingertips, and perhaps that is true. I seem to have a better hand/brain connection when I am writing longhand than when I am typing on the computer — or at least I did. I wrote my novels long hand because that is the easiest way for me to delve into into myself for the story. I’m not one of those writers who can sit down and let the words flow. I have to sit and think about everything I want to say, and to figure out the best words to show what I decide to say. I’m getting used to writing on a computer since that’s how I write blogs, but I have a hunch that longhand is still the way to get deeper into my mind, where buried insights might have a chance of showing up on paper. And research bears this out. Apparently, writing by hand helps generate ideas.

In school, I always did well on tests without much studying because I took copious notes during class while other students daydreamed, talked, or doodled. New research explains why that was so — supposedly we have a better chance of retaining what we learn if we write it longhand rather than printing it or using a keyboard.

Other research shows that writing longhand, printing, and keyboarding all produce different brain patterns. For optimum brain usage, then, it would seem necessary to use all forms of writing. And yet, learning is not necessarily about optimum brain usage; it’s about standardizing not just information, but the students themselves. (That’s why they’re called standardized tests. If school was about teaching children to be independent or to develop their unique skills, they would be called something else like “Unique skills tests.”

When I started writing this bloggery, I intended to show that cursive was still important, but considering that kids today will have a different world to deal with than we do, maybe it’s better that they learn computer skills early on. But what do I know? Perhaps if I had written this essay by hand instead of typing it, deeper insights would have shown on the page, and I’d have a better grasp of what I think.

Handwritten copy of A Spark of Heavenly Fire

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Posted in culture, writing. Tags: cursive, handwriting, modern, modern world, writing by hand, writing longhand. 5 Comments »

Easy Does It, and Other Notable Blog Posts From Second Wind Publishing

June 2, 2014 — Pat Bertram

The Second Wind Publishing blog always seems to have interesting posts. For example, Harry Margulies, author of The Knowledge Holder, wrote Easy Does It, a wonderful blog about character names that really hit home. One of the many reasons I can’t read fantasy is the fantastic names the authors come up with. Harry’s plea for simple names is humorous and fits my philosophy. My characters are named Bob and Mary and Kate and Phillip. Nice simple names for not so simple characters.

Jay Duret, author of the soon-to-be published novel Nine Digits, wrote Nom de Plume, a funny look at how his pseudonym evolved as his he evolved. For me, it was the other way. I chose as a nom de plume a variation of my name that I wasn’t using at the time simply because it sounded authorly, and somehow I have evolved into that name. Now it’s the one I use both online and in the real world.

Harry Margulies’s most recent post is The Enchanted Food Network, a humorous look at cooking, food networks, and the fantasy of never having to use a Brillo pad.

A year ago, Coco Ihle, author of She Had to Know, wrote Belly Dancing…Dangerous?, which planted the seeds of dancing in my head. I didn’t actually start taking lessons until six months later when I happened upon a nearby studio, but if it weren’t for those seeds, I might not have gone inside and talked to the studio owner. And it changed my life.

Other articles to check out on the Second Wind Publishing blog: A Love Letter to My Magnolia, by Carole Howard, If You Got Transcended Would You Know It? by Lazarus Barnhill, and What is Your Character’s Favorite Color? — by Pat Bertram

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Posted in blogging. Tags: belly dancing, Coco Ihle, Food Network, Harry Margulies, Jay Duret, Second Wind Publishing blog. 1 Comment »

Point Where You Want to Go

June 1, 2014 — Pat Bertram

At ballet class the other day, I was practicing chaine turns and not doing a very good job of it. Chaine turns, in case you don’t know, are those often rapid turns performed in a straight line across the floor or a stage, moving from one foot to the other as you go. To keep from getting dizzy, you need to “spot” — to find something to focus on as you’re turning, and when you rotate out of sight of that spot, you need to whip your head around so that you can again focus on the spot. Trying to learn such a step after a certain age is difficult because one’s head does not whip around fast enough, so not only do you get dizzy, you end up not going where you want to go.

Seeing my difficulty, the teacher suggested pointing to the spot as well as looking at it on the assumption that where you are pointing, there you will go. And it worked. I mostly got to where I wanted to go. Still dizzy, but I got there.

It seemed to me such a profound bit of advice, “Point where you want to go.” If you’re not pointed toward where you want to go, it’s hard to get there because we tend to go where we are looking. If we’re looking behind us or are distracted by side roads, it’s hard to keep focused on the goal. (It seems to me this is both metaphoric and physical, pertaining to actual physical movements and also pertaining to one’s journey through life.) Even something simple like gesticulating as we’re walking tends to keep us from walking in a straight line because we’re pointing everywhere but where we want to go.

One obvious image comes to mind as an example of pointing where you want to go. I’ve seen baseball players sometimes point their bat, in a grandstanding pose, toward the outfield where they aim to hit a home run. (Well, seen it in movies; I don’t know if they actually do it.)

Writers do the same thing, pointing where they want to go. In writing, such pointing is called foreshadowing. We writers need to know where we are going so we don’t get off track. and we need to know where we are going so we know to stop when we get there. We also need to give readers hints of where the story is pointing so they can find their way to the end, but we need to make sure readers don’t know where they are going until they get there, otherwise the suspense is lost. Hence, in writing, dizzying chaine turns keep the reader focused on the constantly changing twists and turns of the plot and not the end.

I feel so very cultured using a ballet term, but ironically, my very use of term is an example of the importance of sometimes not pointing where you want to go. I would never have made a point of taking ballet classes. It would never even have occurred to me, but when the option was offered, I grabbed hold of it. And now I am focused on the classes. (And yet I was looking for something to focus on, so maybe that counts.)

Twists and turns.

It’s what life, dance, and writing is all about.

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Posted in culture, life. Tags: ballet class, chaine, chaine turns, dance, focusing on the spot, pointing, spotting. 5 Comments »

A Perfectly Fair Day

May 31, 2014 — Pat Bertram

When I mentioned there were no single riders allowed on the Ferris wheel at the county fair and lamented having no one to ride with me, a woman from my dance class volunteered to accompany me if we went on Saturday. Such a lovely surprise, that offer, and I accepted eagerly.

Today, Saturday, turned out to be perfect. Perfect weather. Perfect fair. Perfect company. Usually when I go to a fair with people, they want to spend most of their time at the merchandise booths inside the pavilions, which to me seem like walking into one bad late-night television commercial after another. My friend had no interest in such exhibits. (See? Didn’t I say the day was perfect?) Instead we admired the quilts and, for a small contribution, we had the fun of making pins at the Quilts of Valor booth.

Sporting our new finery, we looked at the handcrafts and collections, searched for the model of the U.S Constitution a walking buddy had made, and enjoyed the African violet display, especially this lovely flower that was smaller than my thumbnail:

We marveled at a cougar visiting from the zoo, checked out the artwork, passed by the haunted house.

Finally we went searching for the Ferris wheel and found not one but two wheels! (Well, three if you include the kiddy Ferris wheel.) Although there was no apparent difference between the two Ferris wheels, we decided (okay, I decided) to ride both wheels.

For some reason, one ride was both longer and faster, and the polite young man who operated that wheel let us stay on for a second ride. (See? Perfect!)

Afterward, we bought drinks and a taste of the fair. Every year, it seems they come up with something more esoteric to deep fry and this year it was cheesecake. Not something I’d recommend, but then, that’s what fair food is all about, tasting something outlandish, and so that, too was perfect.

We couldn’t find the picnic tables, so we sat on a curb like little girls to eat and rest and chat.

Can you tell I’m smiling as I write this?

Wait! I almost forgot! There was another treat. We drove to the fairgrounds in her convertible. I have no idea how it is possible that I have never ridden in a convertible before, so my first ride with the top down added the exclamation point to my perfect day.

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Posted in culture, life. Tags: African violet, county fair, deep-fried cheescake, fair food, Ferris wheel, Quilts of Valor. 1 Comment »

Walking: A Miracle of Life

May 30, 2014 — Pat Bertram

It was 95 degrees today when I finished my exercise class. (It was actually a ballet class, but “ballet” sounds graceful, elegant, and light-footed, none of which can be used to describe my fledging efforts. And anyway, we mostly spent the time doing stretches and other barre exercises.) Someone asked me if I were going to walk home, and she sounded surprised when I said “yes.” I suppose it is foolish to walk in the heat, but I am well protected. Wide-brimmed hat. Long sleeves. Long pants. Plenty of water. (Although skimpy clothes in the heat are the norm, it’s actually more comfortable to be covered up. You can’t feel the direct burn of the sun, and clothes trap cooler air between the cloth and your skin.)

For me, walking is much easier than driving. You put one foot in front of the other, shift your weight and put the other foot in front. You keep repeating this until you get where you want to be. What an innovation! No ignition. No keys. No gas. No oil. No tune up. No tires to fill. No oil pumps to break down. No brakes to fail. Just your feet and you.

There are drawbacks to walking, obviously. It takes more time to get anywhere, your mileage is limited, your carrying capacity is restricted. And if your body breaks down, it’s harder to fix and costs more than if your car breaks down. (Though maybe not much more since mechanics nowadays seem to empty your bank account as fast as doctors do.) Which, of course, is why I own a car, though after 42 years, the poor thing only has only 152,000 miles on it. I’ve also put more than 42,000 miles on my feet in those years. Both means of transportation — car and feet — are a bit worse for wear, but both still work.

Not everyone has the luxury of being able to move around on both feet, so I feel very fortunate that I can walk, and generally walk without pain, though sometimes after the mile to the dance studio, an hour or two of classes, and the mile back to the house, my feet do protest. Even more fortunately, after a bit of rest and perhaps a change of shoes, they are ready to go on the move once more.

Walking is truly one of life’s miracles.

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Posted in life. Tags: drawbacks of walking, walking, walking is a miracle, walking vs. driving. Leave a Comment »

To Dance Is to Live

May 29, 2014 — Pat Bertram

At lunch after a dance class a couple of days ago, a friend and I were discussing why we don’t have bucket lists. We agreed there are too many things in the world that either we’re not aware of, or if we are aware of the things, we’re not aware that we would like to try them.

For example, we’re both taking dance classes, which have become lifesavers to us. (Like me, she’d been mired in grief and took dancing as a way of moving on with her life.) Neither of us ever had such an inclination before, so dancing would never have been on our bucket lists. I’m not even much for dancing around the house, though for a while, I did what I called “dance therapy” in an effort to overcome the lingering grief after the death of Jeff, my life mate/soul mate. This therapy worked to a certain extent, but . . . I don’t know . . . maybe it was too soon, maybe the songs were too sad, maybe it was simply that I didn’t know how to dance.

I took therapy yoga for a while, which did help with grief. When those classes were canceled after the teacher got an offer of a fantastic job, I played around with learning Tai Chi, which incidentally was something that would have been on my bucket list since I’d always wanted to do it, but I didn’t feel the connection with Tai Chi that I’d expected. And it must not have been in the cards for me anyway. When I went to sign up for classes after the free introductory lessons were over, I found the office closed. (They are closed every other Friday, but since they never said which was the other other Friday, I had no way of knowing what the right day would have been.)

A few days after my aborted attempt to sign up for Tai Chi, I’d planned to meet a friend for lunch. As I waited for her, I paced the sidewalk in front of the row of shops, and there I saw a dance studio. On a whim, I stopped in to see if classes were being offered to adults, what the classes were, and how much they cost. The prices were so cheap it seemed a shame not to try at least one of the classes before I settled for Tai Chi. The only class that didn’t need any props or special clothes was jazz, so that’s what I started with.

And I came alive.

In an effort to find a renewed interest in life, I’d been doing many things I would never have had a chance to do before Jeff’s death, but everything I did was like dropping pebbles in the sand of grief. Although I enjoyed my excursions and activities while I was doing them, none of that momentary happiness rippled through the rest of my life. Yoga did to a certain extent, but with dance . . . oh my. Ripples galore.

By the middle of the following month, I was taking ballet, Egyptian belly dance, tap, and Hawaiian in addition to jazz, and recently I started Tahitian.

Dancing is hard for me. I’m not naturally rhythmic, not naturally musically inclined, not naturally poised or balanced. Nor am I one for doing anything in a group. (Do I need to mention that I am far from having a dancer’s body?) And yet, it was love at first . . . not sight. Feel maybe.

A lot of the joy of dancing for me comes from learning something completely new, since more than anything I love to learn, but it’s the whole of the dance experience I’m enamored with — the music, the various steps, the choreography, dancing as one with the rest of the group, the other women in the class. Most of the women are a lot older than I am, but they are a heck of a lot more graceful and agile. Actually, they are a heck of a lot more graceful and agile than most women half my age.

It seems strange now that I’ve never mentioned my dance classes on this blog, but since I also once took a couple of exercise classes at the same studio, I’ve just lumped all the activity under “exercise classes.” Dancing seemed too sacred almost to use for blog fodder.

So why am I mentioning it now? The teacher, a remarkable woman just a few years short of eighty, is always having to explain to her family why she continues to teach. (You know how older people are often called “spry”? That is not a word you could ever use to describe her. To see her dance, you’d never guess her age. She dances like a girl, looks like she’s in her forties, and is still beautiful.)

Because she was born two minutes before midnight on Friday the thirteen, she laughingly calls herself a witch. And she is — a good witch with remarkable powers of bringing people to life. Bringing people happiness. Bringing people dance.

As Snoopy says, “To dance is to live. To live is to dance.”

I know you’re reading this, Ms. Cicy. So — thank you for teaching me a new way of living.

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