life | Bertram's Blog

Allowing Myself to Dream

December 6, 2012 — Pat Bertram

warrior Yesterday I wrote about Living Each Day We Are Given and how there will come a time when I am free from my current concerns. People think I should be preparing for that future, planning what I am going to do, where I am going to go, and how I am going to live. Each person has his or her own suggestion as to what form that preparation should take, such as my going back to school either to situate myself anew in the job market or to take advantage of student loans. Others think I should be researching places to live, but the truth is, I am tired of planning. I’d like to be bold without being foolish, adventuresome without being reckless, but most of all, I’d like to be spontaneous without being flighty. In other words, I’d like to stretch myself to see what I’m made of without putting myself in danger, and I can’t do that if I immediately go from one planned life to another.

Still, I am preparing for my future, though it might not seem like it. I am exercising and trying to eat right, taking yoga classes and going for long rambles in the desert. And I’m pitching ideas, trying them on for size.

I’ve always had a sense of my strengths and weaknesses, but I don’t want to take those strengths and weaknesses into consideration. I want to throw myself wide open and envision a life of endless possibilities, at least to begin with. It won’t be long before the realities slowly creep back in. I’m not elderly, but I’m not young, either. I’m not indolent, but I’m not athletic. (I’m smiling to myself as I write this. I had to rewrite the word indolent a half a dozen times because each time I inadvertently wrote insolent. I’ve never been insolent, never liked hurting people, so I have no idea where the subconscious desire for insolence came from.)

I’m not much of a daydreamer, living fantastic adventures in my head. I’ve always been too practical and pragmatic to want what is unattainable. Never been one to want much of anything, to tell the truth. Many women in my situation gave up their own dreams when they got married, and now that their husbands are dead, they are picking up those original dreams and running with them. I have no such abandoned dreams, but many things will be open to me in my new life that would have been inconceivable in the old one, and I need to allow myself to dream so I can become receptive to those possibilites.

Do I want to hop a plane and fly to Britain, with no real plans of what to do when I get there, just see what happens? Do I want to hole myself up in a garret and write incredibly wise and witty books? Do I want to enroll in classes — Tai Chi or calligraphy perhaps? Do I want to get rid of my stuff or put it into storage, and take to the roads? Do I want to . . . ?

There is a chance that I will move back to Colorado and settle down, but now that I am on my own, settling down seems too much like stagnating, and stagnation terrifies me. I don’t want to end up like one of those old woman who sits in her dark apartment, alone, with the whole bright world outside her door. And yet, and yet . . . there is the small matter of a lack of funds and the large matter of a laid-back nature more suited to a life of contemplation than a life of action.

So now I’m throwing my heart out into the world of possibilities in the hopes that someday the rest of me will follow.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+

Posted in being me, culture, life, writing. Tags: daydreamer, dreaming of the future, dreams, preparing for the future, world of possiblities, yoga. Leave a Comment »

Living Each Day We Are Given

December 5, 2012 — Pat Bertram

I’m noticing a change in my attitude lately — more cynical perhaps, and at the same time more optimistic about the future. This change showed itself to me in my reaction to a news story that is going around about a couple who holds the record for the longest marriage — 86 years. The story purported to tell the secrets of how they stayed together for so long, and my first thought was, “Because one of them didn’t die.” No matter how much they love each other, no matter how well they get along, if one of them had died, that would have been the end of their being together.

Immediately following my cynical thought was a moment of horror at the idea of being stuck in the same sort of life for all those years. She married very young, so what did she know of life (or herself) before making her vows? And she’ll never have a chance of exploring what she could have been on her own. The universal reaction to the story seemed to be “Oh, how sweet,” so the horror I felt must not reflect their situation but my own changing attitude.

My soul mate and I always thought we would die together since our bond was so strong, and yet, here I am and he is not. The pain of our separation was almost more than I could bear at times, and in fact, sometimes the only way I could get through another minute of continued life was to scream my pain into the wind.

Now, as I pass through to the other side of grief, continuing to process all the various emotions, fears, regrets, guilts, I sense that a new life awaits me, a life of possibilities, maybe even adventure. I don’t know what form this life will take, whether it will entail geographical travels or spiritual travels, new activities or new perspectives, broadening my horizons or only broadening my mind. But a new life is surely coming, and sometimes my heart leaps ahead of me at the thought of such freedom.

I’m not yet at that place of freedom. I still have many concerns to deal with first. Since I am looking after my 96-year-old father, that is my prime concern, but there are also personal concerns such as my continued awareness of my mate’s death. I know he would be the first to applaud my coming adventures — he felt bad that the constraints of his illness and the life we were forced to live destroyed my spontaneity, but the truth is, he gave me the courage to be spontaneous in the first place. And now I’ll have to find the courage to be spontaneous on my own.

It’s a difficult line to walk — being glad of a chance at a different sort of life while at the same time not being glad of the death that will allow such a life, being glad of one more day of life while being aware that such a day was denied him. But I will find a way to handle it as I have handled every step of this grief journey.

Maybe the secret isn’t how to stay together, but how we live each day we are given, whether with someone or alone.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the conspiracy novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+

Posted in culture, life, relationships. Tags: being together, staying together, surviving grief. 7 Comments »

Death and Dying: Good-bye Experiences

December 4, 2012 — Pat Bertram

During the past thirty-two months since the death of my life mate/soul mate, I have shared my grief, and in turn others have shared their grief with me, telling me stories they never told anyone else. I have heard incredible tales of signs and dreams and feelings of connection to the one who has left earthly life behind, which makes me realize that something is going on beneath the surface of earthly life, though I don’t know what.

Although I concede that near death experiences exist, I do not believe that NDEs are necessarily an encounter with those who are dead. We humans are so incredibly complex, that these experiences could be an as yet unknown state of consciousness, such as a dream state, or maybe even a dip into the collective consciousness. I’ve heard of too many people who saw the white light, saw their loved ones begin to draw near and then immediately recede as the nearly dead person returned to consciousness. It seems peculiar to me that the dead have nothing better to do than wait for someone to begin to die, to hurry and don their earthly bodies to rally round on the off chance that the person will die, and then shrug off their earthly personas and go back to doing whatever their disembodied selves were doing before being called to reception duty.

On the other hand, there have been an incredible number of instances of people saying good-bye before they left the earth for good.

Sometimes the good-byes were said while the people were still alive. I’ve heard many stories of perfectly healthy people who visited and called family and friends they hadn’t seen in a while, and then a few days later they had an accident or a heart attack and died. It was as if part of them knew they were going to leave this earth, and they were saying good-bye even though they didn’t consciously realize that is what they were doing.

Sometimes the good-byes were said after the people were dead. A boy’s grandmother stopped by to tell him that she would be okay and not to spend his life in sadness. A woman whose husband died in an accident never got a chance to say good-bye before the hospital removed his body, but that night, she felt a kiss on her cheek and his whispered words that it didn’t matter, that he’d already been dead when he reached the hospital. A woman who swam too far out into the ocean and was floundering in panic heard her mother tell her to relax, that she would be okay, and later found that her mother had died at that very moment. A woman who lost her husband had incredibly rich and coincidental experiences every Monday during the first six months after he died. She could even feel his anger, but now, eighteen months later, he is finally leaving her alone to find her own way.

And sometimes the messages come in dreams. One daughter planned to move in with her mother, and that night her father visited her in a dream and said he was glad, that her mother needed her. (The daughter told her mother to tell her father to stay out of her dreams.)

Even I had a good-bye experience. Two of them, actually.

For the last year of his life, my love and I argued about what I would do afterward. He thought I should go stay with my father where I would be safe and warm and fed, but I could not bear the thought of doing so. I’d just finished caring for one dying man, and I didn’t want to look after another. While he was in a coma during his last days, however, I finally decided to follow his wishes and come stay with my dad, and I told him so. Just a few hours later, he died.

At the moment of his death (or rather, when his breathing and his heart stopped), I did not feel anything except a moment of relief that his suffering was over. I watched the nurses clean his body and shroud it in a blanket, then I waited numbly for the funeral director. After she took away his body (in a black SUV, not a hearse), I left. The highway was dry, but about halfway home, my car suddenly went careening, around and around, back and forth, totally out of control. (I assumed I hit a patch of black ice, but that was such a peculiar night, I can’t say for sure.) I thought I was going to die, but oddly, I never left the road. The car finally came to a halt facing the wrong way on the highway. I was fine. So was the car. As I sat there gripping the wheel, I wondered if he had stopped by on his way out of this world to save me, to leave me a final reminder to be careful, or maybe give a shake of his ghostly head at this evidence of my carelessness. (He always worried that I wasn’t careful enough.) I remember feeling him leaving this earth — like a breath passing over head — but to be honest, I don’t know if I really felt his leaving at the time or if the impression was something my mind created later to explain the bewildering event. It was after this particular near death experience (as out of control as the car was, it truly is amazing that I survived intact), that the feeling of his goneness slammed into me, and I never again have had any sense of his presence in my life.

What was he doing for those hours before he left this earth? Finishing his dying, possibly. Closing down systems of the body and brain that have yet to be discovered. From grief, I have learned the power of our lizard brain, learned that there is way more to the brain — and human biology, psychology, and consciousness — than is in our textbooks.

So what does all this mean? I don’t know, and that’s the truth of it.

***

Posted in culture, grief, life, relationships. Tags: encounters with the dead, near death experiences, saying good-bye, saying goodbye to the dead, unknown state of consciousness, white light. 29 Comments »

UnSocial Networking

November 29, 2012 — Pat Bertram

I’m starting to play rough with Facebook, unfriending people with the same abandon I once friended them — sort of reverse social networking. (Would this be called Unsocial Networking or Social UnNetworking?) Start with 5000 people at random, and then one by one, remove the annoying ones. You know the people I mean:

1. The authors who send you one message after another asking you to like their FB page, download their book, check out their website, read their blog. I’m not talking about notifications or the posts that show up in your feed, but repeated private messages. I now have a new policy: if you spam me once, I might let it go if I know you or if I’m in a good mood, but if you send the same spam message a second time, I will unfriend you. Friends don’t spam friends.

2. The rabid political lobbyists, those who are always lobbying for their party, their agendas, their preferred candidates, their right or left wing propaganda. These people aren’t interested in being friends. They want power, even if at one remove.

3. The uncompromising religious folk, those who never acknowledge that another person’s religious beliefs might be as sacred as their own. These people remind me of the folk in Emo Phillips joke. This joke was voted the best God joke ever, but was not credited to Emo Phillips, and truly, it’s such a classic, he needs to be acknowledged as the author. I don’t remember many comedians, but I do remember the delightfully waifish Emo telling this story:

Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, “Don’t do it!” He said, “Nobody loves me.” I said, “God loves you. Do you believe in God?”

He said, “Yes.” I said, “Are you a Christian or a Jew?” He said, “A Christian.” I said, “Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?” He said, “Protestant.” I said, “Me, too! What franchise?” He said, “Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?” He said, “Northern Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?”

He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?” He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region.” I said, “Me, too!”

Northern Conservative†Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?” He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912.” I said, “Die, heretic!” And I pushed him over.

I’m now down to about 1650 friends on Facebook, and who knows, at the rate I’m pushing people off the bridge, I might end up with only one or two hundred connections, but those will be real friends — people I enjoy following, whose blogs I read, and whose opinions I respect. And never, ever, do they spam me or lobby me or disrespect my beliefs or unbeliefs.

***

Posted in culture, internet, life, relationships. Tags: annoying social networkers, best God joke ever, Emo Phillips, Facebook, friending, unfriending. 20 Comments »

Thirty-Two Months of Grief

November 27, 2012 — Pat Bertram

I haven’t been writing much about grief lately. It’s been thirty-two months — 977 days — since my life mate/soul mate died. In that time, many others have suffered grievous losses, and to continue mentioning my grief seems like all I’m doing is whining. Still, this is my loss, and what other people experience, no matter how horrific, doesn’t lessen my sorrow. I don’t have the same sort of raw pain that I did at the beginning, of course, nor do I have the gut-wrenching angst that so often bedeviled me during those first months, but I do experience bouts of sadness and yearning.

My emotions are on a slow Ferris wheel ride, usually sliding down into sadness on Saturdays, the day he died — a day that apparently is etched in my very psyche — and then a gradual climb to hope and possibility on Monday and Tuesday.

Even when Saturday’s sorrow is fleeting, as it often is now, I find that I am at my most vulnerable then, and any hurtful word, thoughtlessness, or setback can send me spiraling down into grief. Without him to talk to, without my being able to casually mention the slights and so slough them off, the unkindnesses take hold and remind me that I am alone. Which reminds me that he is dead. Which makes me grieve.

I can handle being alone. I can even handle his being out of my life. What I can’t handle is his being dead. It’s possible he still exists somewhere, perhaps lolling on the shores of some cosmic sea, a cat purring in his arms, but I have no way of knowing for sure. All I know is that he is out of this earthly life. Gone. Deleted. I still cannot wrap my mind around that. And I still can’t help feeling that he was cheated out of a couple of decades of life.

Sometimes I pretend to believe that he left so that I could experience life in a way we couldn’t experience together, but other times, especially on the day of the month that he died — such as today — I find it impossible to pretend that this new experience of life alone is a positive thing. And even if it is for the best, it comes at the cost of his life, and that is too big of a price to pay.

If I sound discouraged today, the truth is, I am dis-courage-d. Have lost my courage. Sometimes I am strong and forward looking, but on this 977th day of his goneness, I am unable to gather the courage to believe that any good will come from his being dead and my being alone. I’d give anything to see him one more time, to have him smile at me or say an encouraging word, but no matter how much I yearn for such an encounter, it’s not going to happen in this lifetime.

I am used to the ups and downs now, so I know all I have to do is hang on, and in a day or two, when I am less tired perhaps, I’ll find my courage again. And some day I might even come to believe that this new experience of life alone truly is a positive thing.

***

Posted in culture, grief, life, relationships. Tags: dead, death of a soul mate, Ferris wheel, living alone, spiraling down into grief, Thirty-Two Months of Grief. 118 Comments »

Promoting Other Authors

November 25, 2012 — Pat Bertram

Author, blogger, reviewer Sheila Deeth, interviewed me for her blog, and here is one of the questions she asked, followed by my response:

You are always such an encouragement to other writers, posting excerpts, interviews, character interviews, offering advice, sharing experiences. . . . What do you think drives your generosity?

I don’t consider such online activities as generosity, just part of the internet experience. I never quite knew what to do on Facebook, for example — I don’t like games or sharing cute animal photos or any of the other things that clog the news feed — so I built up a couple of discussion groups. It gave me a way of interacting with people and besides, I love talking about the whole writing process. As for the interviews and such. Well, that was a fluke. My personal blog is blue, but I figured out how to change the color, so just for fun, I did an orange blog, a green one, a red one, a purple one, and then I had to figure out what to do with all of them. A book blog and an interview blog seemed the obvious use for two of them since I came in contact with so many authors. The interview blog especially has a fairly good rating, and it seems a waste if I don’t have an interview to post, so I keep promoting it.

In the back of my mind, I hoped that all the author karma I’m building up would somehow help catapult my books to stardom, but so far, it hasn’t happened. But that was never the point of promoting authors on my blogs. As I said, that was mostly a fluke.

(You can find the rest of the interview here: My thanks to author Pat Bertram)

That is only part of why I promote other authors on my blogs. The truth is even less altruistic than I made it sound. I’ve had those two author blogs for several years and just posted sporadically until a couple of years ago. After the death of my life mate/soul mate, I got addicted to a few of the games on my computer — Spider Solitaire, Mahjong Titans, and FreeCell. I so desperately needed for something to work out, I kept playing the games over and over until I won. I couldn’t redo my life, so there was some sort of comfort in redoing something — anything — until it came out right. And the games were a way of taking a vacation from the pain that all but consumed me at times.

When I realized how obsessed I had become, I decided to go cold turkey and give up the games, but I still needed something to do to break the hold of grief when it got too much for me to handle, so I substituted blogging — posting excerpts and author interviews to promote other authors in addition to daily blogging here on Bertram’s Blog. I figured that at least I would be doing some good with my online activities, which is something that cannot be said about computer games.

As for why I keep up with promoting other authors now that my grief is dissipating . . . well, it’s the right thing to do. If you want me to interview you, you can find the questions and instructions here: Author Questionnaire

***

Posted in blogging, internet, life, writing. Tags: addicted to games, authors promoting authors, breaking the hold of grief, interviews with authors, promoting other authors, Sheila Deeth. 5 Comments »

If People Are the Same, Why is the World Different?

November 23, 2012 — Pat Bertram

This world of the early twenty-first century seems completely different from the world of fifty years ago, and for some reason yesterday, that struck me as odd. Except for the accoutrements of our lives, such as computers and clothes, why would things be different? Most people want the same things now as they wanted then — a safe world for their children to grow up in, a degree of comfort and security and happiness, a chance to succeed either in their chosen career or in their daily lives, freedom to live the best way they know how. So why is life today so different from what it used to be?

Admittedly, those were not the halcyon days people remember them as being. There was strong prejudice in certain areas in the United States, though not all people or neighborhoods or cities participated in the prejudice against blacks, woman, gays. There did seem to be restrictions against what women could accomplish, though women who wanted to accomplish big things often managed to succeed anyway. But most women thought they had it good, staying at home, taking care of their husbands and children. Is it any better today when women are forced by circumstances or custom to work?

People are still basically the same, yet now married couples seem to be unable to find a way to stay together. Back then, divorce was rare, and now it is all too common. The number of single parent homes are increasing. Children are being shuffled between parents. Some children have too few parents, and some have too many. You’d think that with the fluidity of life today that people would be more accepting of each other, but our society is still pigeonholing both men and women, forcing them into roles they might not want. We seem to always be categorizing people, foisting labels on them, making them conform to fashionable ideas and attitudes. And we seem to be even more polarized now than ever before, whether religion or politics, with less tolerance for opposing points of view.

Looking back on those long ago days of the mid-twentieth century, it seems a completely different world. Children played in the streets, walked to and from school, rode their bikes to distant neighborhoods, ran errands for their mothers, walked to the park for pick-up games. Were things safer then? Or was it simply that people were not bombarded with images of peril on TV and the internet and so did not know how unsafe they were? No matter how graphic newspaper stories and photos were, no matter how detailed radio news became, they were still static words and images, without the horror that today is thrust into our lives in full color, making us fearful for our safety.

If things were safer then, and it isn’t an illusion of nostalgia, then why were things safer? As I mentioned, people want now what they wanted then. Is it simply that there are more people in the world? Is it that the neighborhood schools have been consolidated into district schools so that the neighborhood is no longer a separate entity? Is it that we move more frequently now so we ever gets to know our neighbors? Are we less trusting, perhaps, and if so, why? Does it make a difference that someone isn’t waiting at home when kids get home from school? Or maybe it’s that no one is home during the day and so whole neighborhoods are deserted, giving us a feeling of being ungrounded? Is it that two salaries or two jobs are necessary to maintain the same level of comfort that one mediocre salary could handle back then? If so, why is that? Is it simply inflation (or perhaps a conspiracy to kill the middle class as some people believe) or is it that more things are necessary now, that a comfortable life today needs more equipment than a comfortable life fifty years ago?

There used to be one car per family, one television, one telephone. (Some families had two of each, of course, but most only had one.) Now each person in each family seems to have their own mode of transportation, their own television, their own telephone, their own computer. Games were simple back then, too — a bat and ball, board games, jigsaw puzzles — and you needed someone to play with. Now expensive game consoles take the place of neighborhood companions. After school activities seem more structured now, though family life seems less structured — families eating meals together at a set time used to be the norm and now is a special occasion. But then, families themselves are different.

I don’t know if any of this is important or if it means anything. Whatever once was no longer exists, and we can only live in the world of today, but it does seem strange to me that despite people’s goals remaining the same, the world has changed so much.

***

Posted in culture, life, relationships. Tags: are things worse today, is safety an illusion, predudice, twentieth century, twenty-first century, what people want. 4 Comments »

Giving Thanks for Words

November 22, 2012 — Pat Bertram

Every day I find something to be grateful for, even if it’s only that the sun is shining, that I once had a great love, that I have open spaces to explore (both in my head and in the world). Even when all else seemed bleak these past thirty-one months since the death of my life mate/soul mate, even when I had no hope, there was always something to be grateful for (most often that he was no longer suffering), so I don’t need to set aside a special day of thanksgiving.

Still, during this season of giving thanks, there is something I am especially grateful for, something worth celebrating . . . words.

Words convey thoughts, ideas, hopes from one person to another. They connect us from continent to continent, enabling us to bond with like-minded people all around the world. I have exchanged words — and friendship — with people from New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the Nederlands, India. And for this I am grateful.

Words allow us to read and to write, to find entertainment and enlightenment in worlds created out of nothing but letters strung together. Words allow a story, concocted in one mind, to come to full realization in another. For most of my life, these worlds of words have been my life, or at least a major part of it. Now that I too am a world-creator, I am grateful for the words with which I build my stories.

Words give comfort, especially when distance (either geographic or emotional) does not allow a touch of commiseration. I am especially grateful for all the words of encouragement you (the readers of this blog) have given me during my time of grief, words that touched me. I hope some of my words touched you.

Words mean hope. With words, there is always the hope that we will be able to come to an understanding of each other, and perhaps find peace. (Of course, people would have to shut up long enough to listen to each other’s words; one-way words cause conflict and confusion.)

Words mean community and continuity. Words, both spoken and written, presuppose that there is someone to listen, and that is community. Telling our his-stories and her-stories to each other creates both community and continuity. They tell us who we were, who we are, and who we hope to become.

If there were no one to hear our words, if we existed solely in ourselves, we’d still need words to communicate our feelings and ideas to ourselves. This ability to put our thoughts into words gives us the power to know ourselves and to understand greater truths.

So this week, whether you celebrate the U.S. Thanksgiving or not, stop for a moment to give thanks for words. They are we.

***

Posted in culture, life, relationships, writing. Tags: communication, significance of words, Thanksgiving, touched by words, words. 8 Comments »

Today Is a Good Day and I Am Feeling Fine

November 21, 2012 — Pat Bertram

On the advice of a friend, I have been doing a daily affirmation, telling myself I am happy, but it doesn’t work for me because I’m not sure I want to be happy. Un-unhappy, yes. Unsad, yes. Contented, of course. At peace, for sure. But happy? It’s not a state I’ve ever aspired to. I’ve always believed other things are much more important, things such as love, truth, purpose, freedom, kindness, integrity. Happiness means many different things to many people, but to me, happiness has an element of giddiness, of being glad to be alive, of effervescence, maybe. I prefer being centered, not tipping toward happiness or sadness, but unafraid of my tomorrows, satisfied with my yesterdays, at peace with my todays.

To that end, I have changed my daily affirmation to “This is a good day and I am feeling fine.” This affirmation was gift from my yoga instructor, a short meditation to help us get through the holidays. She suggested we sit quietly, breathe in thinking “This is a good day,” and exhale thinking “I am feeling fine.” And it works for me. Of course, it helps that my days now are good, no real traumas, no sock-to-the stomach bouts of grief, just a slow gentle roll into sadness now and again, and a slow gentle roll back to center. The few tears, when they come, seem more nostalgic than debilitating.

The past couple of days have been especially good — lovely weather, clear skies, warm sun, breezes no stronger than a breath. And I am feeling fine. No overwhelming aches and pains, no worry or stress to weigh down my shoulders. I’m standing tall, breathing deep, opening myself up the world and the future.

I’m still not sure where I am going, what I am looking for, what I expect to find. For now, it’s enough that I am continuing to open myself to possibilities, continuing to believe that today is a good day and I am feeling fine.

***

Posted in being me, culture, life. Tags: daily affirmation, finding happiness after grief, grief and nostalgia, happiness, I am feeling fine, today is a good day. 4 Comments »

Showing My Particular Vision of the World

November 18, 2012 — Pat Bertram

All the books about writing I ever read stressed the importance of genre. The books recommended choosing a readily recognizable genre and sticking to it. Apparently, readers like to know what kind of book they are reading and don’t take well to authors who hop from one genre to another (and if readers do accept it, agents and editors sure don’t). The books also suggested developing a series character in that specific genre, one who is so compelling people will be waiting for the next book. And readers who come late to the series go back to read earlier books, so sales take on a life of their own, each book helping to sell the others.

Seems simple enough, but I ignored the advice. Each of my books is a stand-alone novel without a series character, and each straddles a shadowy line between genres. Since I didn’t create a series that helps promote me and my oeuvre, I have to start over each time a new book of mine is published, promoting each book individually, finding a new readership.

I’ve experienced all the setbacks that bedevil authors — too little support, too many rejections, too much time dedicated to writing-related activities, such as editing and promotion, and not enough time dedicated to writing. But the most disheartening of all is the difficulty of generating momentum with non-genre, non-series books.

And yet . . .

We can only write what we are compelled to write. We each have a vision, and we must be true to that vision, true to ourselves, true to our stories.

Diane Arbus, noted American photographer, said, “I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn’t photograph them.” And so it is true with writers. We see things, either in the world or in the world of our imagination, that nobody would see if we didn’t photograph them with our words.

Each of my books shows a particular vision of the world as I know it. A Spark of Heavenly Fire shows the horror of an all-too-possible pandemic, the even more horrific steps the government is ready to take, and the various ways, both heroic and craven, people might react to such an eventuality. More Deaths Than One shows the unthinkable results of mind control experiments, experiments that have actually been perpetrated without our knowledge. Daughter Am I is a more light-hearted romp, a treasure-hunting tale of finding oneself in a most unlikely way. And Light Bringer, my latest novel, hints at a world where the Sumerian myth of a tenth planet — a planet of doom — is fact.

The disheartening aspects of writing without the scaffolding of a genre are more than offset by the joy of having created four unique visions of the world, dozens of characters who would not have life without me, vivid word pictures that exist only in my books. Like my lake of flowers from Light Bringer:

Becka kept running, needing no footpath to lead her to their destination. She could feel the music tugging at her, guiding her, singing her forward.

At first a faint red trumpeting, the music swelled into a full orchestra: orange church bells, yellow bugles, green violins, blue flutes, indigo cellos, violet woodwinds.

Beneath it all, she could hear the grasses murmuring, “Hurry, hurry.”

And then there it was, spread out before her in a shallow thirty-foot bowl. A lake of flowers— chrysanthemums and tulips, daisies and daffodils, lilies and columbines and fuchsia—all blooming brightly, all singing their song of welcome.

What things would people be deprived of seeing if you didn’t photograph them with your words?

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