Here is My Point: There Needs to be a Point When it Comes to Writing

November 13, 2011 — Pat Bertram

I saw an indie movie yesterday that was so indie it could actually be considered self-produced. Well, truthfully, it was self-produced — and it went straight to video without a big screen debut, which is something you should all be thankful for. The only reason I watched it was that it was filmed near where I am staying, and I had fun trying to figure out where all the scenes had been filmed. There was no other reason to watch it. The actors were terrible. (I’d read once that a good actor was one who acted natural on the screen. These folk were so unnatural as to make paper doll cut-outs seem life-like in comparison.) The plot was derivative. (You know the story — drug dealers, undercover cops, only one cop left alive at the end and you wish he’d died along with all the rest.) The camera work was appalling — looked as if it had been filmed with a cell phone (as one of my fellow movie watchers put it).

So, here’s my question. Why did they make that particular movie? What were they thinking — “Let’s make a movie that’s been made a zillion times before, but let’s see how bad we can make it”? I know they weren’t trying to showcase talent — there wasn’t any. They weren’t trying to have fun with dialogue — it was stilted and silly at best. They didn’t show the drug dealer vs. cop conflict in any new light. So, what was the point? I still don’t know.

This is the same question I ask myself about many of the books I read, and I get the same response — I don’t know what the point is.

But here’s my point — there has to be a point, especially when it comes to books, because if there is no point, why would anyone read it? A writer can write for herself, of course, which might be the point of writing the book, but we readers need a reason to read it. Even if it’s a light romance or a cozy mystery written only to entertain, there still has to be a reason for it. People do read for entertainment, but if a book gives a reader nothing new — no new experience, no new understanding, no interesting character or situation, no wit or humor, just a rehash of what has been written too many times already — there’s not even any entertainment value in it.

I recently read a well-touted book from a debut author, someone I had met on facebook.  I looked forward to the book since this woman posted such interesting and witty remarks that I thought for sure her book would be as interesting. It was, to a certain extent — it was well-written, the dialoque was sort-of snappy (though it often came across as contrived) and the story was okay. But it was only okay, nothing special. There was no spark of originality, no reason to care about the character, nothing that explained why hundreds of people wrote glowing reviews. I might be getting to be a bit of a curmudgeon, since obviously I was one of the few who found the book disappointing, but the truth is, I was disappointed. All the way through, I kept thinking, “Why am I reading this? What’s the point?”

Books don’t need to have a message — in fact, books with messages are often not worth reading — but there has to be a reason for the book to exist beyond an author’s imagination, even if it’s just for us readers to see what happens to a character we care about.

Posted in books, life, writing. Tags: , , , . 9 Comments »

Is It Necessary to Want Something?

November 11, 2011 — Pat Bertram

The other day I told a friend about the feeling of expectation that accompanied my grief and how empty I felt when nothing wonderful happened to me.  She said we have to make wonderful things happen, we can’t just wait. Then she started quizzing me on things I wanted to do. I couldn’t come up with anything. I’ve never really wanted much, never had big dreams or wild fancies. I do want to want something, though. It would give me a goal, a reason to be hopeful, an investment in the future.

But here’s the conundrum:

We’re told that we have to want something, have to try to reach beyond our comfort zone so that perhaps wonderful things will happen to us. At the same time, we’re told that all things come to those who wait.

We’re told that dreams are important, that we need to have something to live for. At the same time, we’re told to be grateful for what we have, to live for the day.

We live in a society with an economy that is built on the principal of wanting. The more we want, the more we buy, the more we use, the more we help the economy. At the same time we’re told to be frugal, not to waste, but more trash automatically accompanies more goods. I had to get rid of so much of our stuff when I moved out of our house, that it makes no sense to buy more stuff. So, where does wanting to want something fit in with that situation? I sure don’t want more stuff to eventually have to get rid of!

And then, there’s the Zen philosophy that we should neither want nor not want.

So what is the answer? Wanting? Or not wanting? Going after something or waiting till it comes to you? Having dreams, or being satisfied with what you have?

(After the conversation with my friend, I did think of something I wanted. I always wanted to make a gingerbread house, so I made a little one. I don’t want to eat it, though. But still, I can cross it off my list.)

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Hurrying Through Grief To See What is On the Other Side

November 10, 2011 — Pat Bertram

During the first months of wild grief after the death of my life mate, I occasionally had the feeling that something wonderful was going to happen to me. I don’t know why I had that feeling — perhaps my sense of fairness dictated that a great good was needed to balance a great grief. Or perhaps such a cataclysmic closing of one segment of my life demanded an earthshaking opening of another segment. Or perhaps after years of waiting for his suffering to be over, I felt deep down that it was time for me to live.

I wasn’t the only one who thought his death might bring good changes to my life. Shortly before he died, he himself told me that everything would come together for me after he was gone. (He never explained what he meant, though, and foolishly, I never asked.) And afterward, my sister, who witnessed my grief and saw it as life affirming, told me that I could be entering the happiest time of my life.

Whatever the truth of it, I held on to the feeling because . . . well, because it was all I had to hold on to. In fact, the feeling was so strong at times that I wanted to hurry through my grief to see what was waiting for me on the other side. But here it is, nineteen months of grief later, and whatever that wonderful thing I expected to happen, didn’t.

Part of me is still waiting (just as an ever-diminishing part of me still waits for his phone call to tell me I can come home), but mostly, the feeling that something wonderful was going to happen to me is gone. Oddly, this is not an uncommon feeling for us bereft, and those who had the feeling of expectation also felt let down when nothing wonderful happened, which leads me to believe that the feeling is a survival mechanism, or perhaps another one of the many stages of grief nobody ever talks about. (Those who did have something wonderful happen in their lives weren’t able to feel the wonder of it, which left them feeling empty, and that is almost as bad as having nothing wonderful happen.)

Yesterday at the grocery store, I saw one of the hospice social workers who occasionally moderated the grief group I used to attend, and I thanked her for helping me through such a terrible time. During our conversation, I mentioned the odd feeling of anticipation I’d had during my months of grief. She replied, “Something wonderful did happen to you. You got through it.”

Is that wonderful enough to account for all those months of expectation? Maybe is has to be.

Posted in culture, grief, life. Tags: , , , . 17 Comments »

The Symphony of a Life Gone By

November 9, 2011 — Pat Bertram

It is impossible to freeze a single moment of music — what you get is a chord that means little by itself. It only gains meaning by what went before it and what comes after, by existing as part of a whole.

Ever since the death of my life mate, I’ve been haunted by images of him at various stages of his life — when I first met him, when we were in the fullness of our relationship, and then at the end, when there was nothing left but a body depleted of life. Which of these moments was him? Were any of them him? Or, like music, were each a single meaningless chord in the symphony of his life?

This might seem a foolish reflection, but it is one that echoes now that his life has been silenced. When a person is alive, the person you know is the culmination of a life, with everything — every note and chord of his existence — leading up to that very moment and foreshadowing the song of his future. When the person is gone from this earth, there is no more culmination. The man I knew at the end — the man who had spent his last breath — is gone, burned into a pile of ashes and crushed bone. The man I knew at the beginning, the radiant man with half of his life still ahead of him is also gone, burned by the fires of living and dying. So which is the real person? How do you remember a life — a man — when all you have are bits of the whole?

We were not picture takers, and I have but a single photo of him. Although it looked exactly like him when it was taken fifteen years ago, it doesn’t look at all like him at the end of his life. For months after his death, I refused to look at the photo, afraid that the image of him in my mind would be supplanted by the image of the photo. Recently I decided it doesn’t matter if the image in my head is not of him. No image is “him.” He is gone, his moments forever broken into meaningless chords. I know I cannot hold the whole of him in my mind — it took 63 years of living to play his entire repertoire, parts of which I never heard.

And so, I look at the photo, this single chord of his life, and remember the symphony of a life gone by.

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

Have You Ever Felt as if the World Were Backward and Upside Down?

November 7, 2011 — Pat Bertram

?drawkcab saw dlrow ruoy fi sa tlef reve uoy evaH

Hɐʌǝ ʎon ǝʌǝɹ ɟǝlʇ ɐs ıɟ ʎonɹ ʍoɹlp ʍɐs ndsıpǝ poʍu¿

¿uʍop ǝpısdn puɐ pɹɐʍʞɔɐq ɥʇoq sɐʍ plɹoʍ ɹnoʎ ɟı sɐ ʇlǝɟ ɹǝʌǝ noʎ ǝʌɐH

At times, we’ve all felt as if the world was backward and upside down, felt as if we needed to stand on our heads to make sense of life. In truth, the world is upside down all the time, or at least half of it is, though I doubt anyone knows which half is upright and which half is upside down. Does space have an orientation? Is there a top and a bottom? A right and a left? An east and a west? We know the east is where our sun rises (at least, that’s what we’ve been taught) but in space, with no rising suns, with not much of anything in fact, is there an east?

We live on a small ball, careening around in space, twirling and tumbling at unimaginable speeds. And yet, for the most part, we manage to deal with each sluggish day as it comes without a thought to our precarious situation. Some days, we feel as if we are on top of the world even when there’s nothing to prove to ourselves that we are on top. Other days, by definition, we have to be at the bottom of the world because, in a globe situation, there is no way for everyone to be on top all the time.

There are some things one cannot make sense of, even when you and the world are both upright. Electrons, for example. We live in an electronic world, with billions of electrons careening around in mostly empty space (hmmm. Too obvious a metaphor, perhaps?). Or maybe there is only one electron zinging around so fast it creates the whole shebang. (Not my idea about there being a single electron, though with the way my mind is working tonight, it might as well be. As for shebang — that’s something no one seems to be able to make sense of — apparently it appeared out of nowhere like the big bang.)

Now, don’t you feel so much better about your problems? Life may not always make sense, but it muddles along whether we understand it or not.

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

Do Blogs Need to Have a Single Topic?

November 6, 2011 — Pat Bertram

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Most articles about blogging mention that you need to pick a topic for your blog and all your posts need to center on that topic. Is this really necessary? I suppose if you are a literary agent who sets himself up as an interpreter of the publication industry (explaining what one needs to do get published, for example), you’d need to stick to your topic, otherwise you’d lose your readers. Or if you are a marketing coach who is trolling for clients, it would be a good idea to stick to the topic at hand. But what about the rest of us? Specifically, what about us authors? Is it necessary for us to stick to a single topic? And if so, what should that topic be?

I have two fairly well-received blogs that are topic-oriented — Book Marketing Floozy, which is an indexed blog of book marketing tips and hints written by various authors, and Pat Bertram Introduces . . ., which is a blog for interviews with authors and their characters.  (Ahem! You know this because, of course, you have already submitted an interview, right?! If you haven’t yet submitted your interview, you can find the instructions and questions here: Author Questionnaire. I’ll be waiting for it!!)

I also have a third blog that isn’t as highly rated as those two, but it is rated (if an Alexa rating of 21,000,000 passes for a rating.) That third blog, Dragon My Feet, went through several metamorphoses from a blog to talk about all the things I did while procrastinating from writing (which I never used because when I was procrastinating from writing, I wasn’t even writing blog posts) to a blog highlighting excerpts from books as part of my ongoing effort to promote others while I learn to promote myself. You can find submission requirements for that blog here: Let me post your excerpt!

Which brings me to the blog at hand, the one you are reading, the point of the discussion. This blog started out as a place to talk about my efforts to get published, my efforts to get noticed once I was published, and what I learned along the way. I’d talk about reading and writing, and over the years I ended up with some pretty impressive views on some of my articles about writing.  “Describing a Winter Scene,” for example, has almost reached 10,000 views for that article alone, and it spawned a couple of other posts with good ratings: “Describing a Winter Scene — Again” and “Describing a Winter Scene — Again. And Yet Again.” And all of those winter scene articles descended from the grandmommy of them all: “Describing a Scene in an Interesting Way.” But continuing to write such articles would get boring after a while, both for me and my poor readers, most of whom know more about writing than I do!

Before boredom set in, Death intervened. Not my death, of course, but it was a significant event in my life nontheless, and so I started writing about grieving. Partly, I couldn’t think of anything else but my sorrow, and partly I got so furious at novelists who didn’t seem to understand the first thing about grief that I wanted to set the record straight. Well, I accomplished that to a certain extent, and now I have a book about my grief that will be published next year. So, in a way, all that talk about grief was still within the parameters of this blog — all part of writing.

But now I’m coming out of the worst of the fog. I’ve said most of what I wanted to say about grief and most of what I wanted to say about writing (I mean, how many articles about describing winter can one person write?) and now I’m at a crossroads. I’ve been talking about the various things I’ve been doing to put my life back together, such as “Halt and I’ll Shoot! (Adventures With Firearms)” and “Proving to Myself That I’m Real,” but eventually I’ll move beyond that, and then what? I’ll have to decide on a topic for this blog. Or do I? Is “life, writing, and the writing life” a specific enough topic? Is it better for an author to write about whatever catches his or her interest so readers (hypothetical though they may be) can better get to know you? Is it enough simply to blog?

Posted in blogging, life, writing. Tags: , , , . 8 Comments »

Happy Birthday, Roy Rogers!!

November 5, 2011 — Pat Bertram

Today is the 100th anniversary of Roy Rogers’s birth. (Actually, it’s the 100th anniversary of Leonard Slye’s birth. Leonard Slye didn’t legally become Roy Rogers until 1942, so this is only the 69th anniversary of Roy Roger’s birth. Or rebirth?) I didn’t grow up watching television or going to the movies, but even I had heard of Roy Rogers and Tigger. Oops. I mean Trigger. Not wanting to spend another sad Saturday hiding away, I hied away to the park to listen to Roy Rogers Jr and the High Riders sing his daddy’s songs.

After a few sets, he talked about his father and about the difference between country songs and western songs. He said country singers sing about lyin’ and cryin’ and cheatin’ and dyin’ but he didn’t say what western singers wailed about. Wide open spaces, I guess. And loneliness. Hmmm. I know something about that!!

He went on to say that we don’t want western music to disappear, and at that very moment, his voice disappeared. At first, I thought he was making a point, but it turns out the batteries on his microphone decided to die right then. Cracked me up. But no one else seemed to catch the irony. Not a single person but me smiled. Apparently the thought of the demise of western music is not to be taken lightly in certain circles. Or perhaps everyone’s face was too frozen to move. The day was bright and sunny, but the winds were icy.

Still, it was a perfect setting for the centennial. And for taking photos. The fellow in the photo below seemed to fit the scene perfectly, and I couldn’t help taking his picture. Turns out it was a day for irony — he was there to take photos of the event!! (Maybe taking a photo of someone who was there to take photos isn’t ironic, but it did amuse me.)

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

I Am Not Grieving Inappropriately

November 2, 2011 — Pat Bertram

I recently received a message from a woman who is concerned that I’m still counting sad Saturdays — she’s worried that my grief for my dead mate is going on too long and keeping me from living. I appreciate her concern and her continued prayers (just as I appreciate the concern and prayers from all of you), but the truth is, except for readers of this blog, no one knows I still have my sad times. I don’t hide myself away from life, I’m not missing from life, and I’m not missing life. I miss him, of course, and I hate that he is missing from this life, but that particular sorrow is something I accept as part of my life.

There is nothing wrong with sad times, and there is no reason to fear sadness. Depression is dangerous, but not all sadness is depression, nor does all sadness lead to depression. Sometimes sadness is melancholic or nostalgic — a seasoning of life rather than a banishment of life, a reminder not to take life for granted. For several months now I’ve been hesitant to continue posting about grief since such posts show me (perhaps) in a pathetic or needy light, but there are too many misconceptions about grief that we accept as truth, and I want people who have lost the most significant person in their life to know that they do not need to put aside their sorrow simply to placate others. It is their grief and they need to feel the sorrow, not ignore it. Experiencing grief and processing it are how we learn to be whole again (or as whole as is possible).

The first year after such a traumatic loss, one struggles to survive the psychic shock. The second year one deals with the effects of the ongoing loss and begins to look ahead more often than one looks behind. Since I am still in my second year, I don’t know what the third and fourth year bring — perhaps occasional upsurges of grief or a continual (though diminishing) struggle to comprehend life and death and loss. People who have been on this journey and come out of it mostly intact, tell me that it takes four years before one completely gets back the joy of living. So I am still within the normal bounds of grief.

For some people, grief is a time of shutting themselves away, of forgetting that they have other people in their life who need them, and if this goes on too long, they might need to seek professional help, especially if there are children involved. For me, though, and for others who are grieving appropriately, this is a time of opening up, of showing our vulnerability, of admitting that life is not always happy or fun. And in doing so, we make connections to help us rebuild our lives.

If I had hidden my sadness, if I had followed my natural inclination to bear my pain in silence, my life would have been much diminished. You and all the people I met since I began this journey nineteen months ago have added so much to my life that it tells me what I already know: I am not grieving inappropriately.

Posted in culture, grief, life. Tags: , , , , , , . 13 Comments »

Saturday, My Sadder Day

October 29, 2011 — Pat Bertram

Another sad Saturday — 83 of them since my life mate died. Even when I don’t remember that it’s Saturday, or that Saturday is the day of the week he died, my body remembers, and my usual muted feeling of sadness becomes more pervasive. It’s not that I want to be sad; the sorrow just comes, especially when the weather is as perfect as today’s — warm, still, clear sky, bright sun, gently cooling breeze. I’d worry more about my continuing sadness except that I tend to be of a melancholic bent. And the sadness does reminds me to pay attention. Since he can no longer make note of a lovely day, it’s as if I need to appreciate it twice — once for me and once for him.

If Saturday is a sadder day than normal, that must be a sign that I am doing okay most of the time (otherwise I wouldn’t feel sadder; I’d just feel sad). The world still feels flawed, I still feel the phantom itch from where he was amputated from my life, and I still yearn to talk with him. Part of me (perhaps that fabled inner child?) cannot understand why I can’t call him to find out how he is doing, to see if he needs anything, to ask if I can come home. This yearning flares up every Saturday, as if he’s closer on this day, and it seems as if I should be able to reach out and touch him. But he’s gone, out of reach of even my sadness.

Oddly, in many respects, my life is much better now, at least temporarily, than it was at the end of “our” life. I don’t have to worry about him any more (though the habit of a lifetime is hard to break, so I wonder if he is feeling as lost and as alone as I sometimes feel). I have a lovely place to stay with proximity to wild spaces. I have a respite from bills and other such annoyances. I have time to indulge myself with small excursions and escapes.

But my heart doesn’t care for such things. It wants what it cannot have, especially on Saturday, my sadderday.

Posted in culture, grief, life. Tags: , , , , , , . 12 Comments »

Occupying Wall Street, the Desert, and Small Spaces

October 28, 2011 — Pat Bertram

This morning I went walking among the creosote bushes with only jackrabbits for companionship. It was a gorgeous fall day in the desert and would have been perfect except for the smoke from people’s fireplaces that burned my lungs and aggravated my allergies. People are within their legal rights to use their fireplaces around here, but still, they encroached on my right to breathe clean air just because they didn’t want to wear sweaters or otherwise deal with inside temperatures a degree or two beneath their comfort level.

The problem with humans is that we encroach. We always want what we want without regard to others. And if we’re not stopped with regulations or fights or lawsuits, we continue to encroach.

An example of encroachment took place several years ago at an art show. Each person was allotted a ten-foot-by-ten-foot space. One woman (let’s call her Pat) used a six feet table across the front, with two feet on either side for an entry to an additional exhibit behind her table. All would have been fine except that the neighboring person used part of Pat’s space for an easel. People couldn’t get behind Pat’s table without tripping on the easel, so Pat moved her table to give people space to get around the easel. Next thing she knew, the neighbor moved the easel further into her space, so again Pat moved her table because it just didn’t seem worth fighting over such a petty matter. Again, the neighbor moved the easel, and yet again, but now there was no room to shove the table out of the way, so Pat asked the neighbor to move the easel, explaining it was in her space. The neighbor didn’t move it, so Pat did. And all the rest of the day, she had to listen to her neighbor complain about how Pat had moved her easel and stolen her space.

A silly story perhaps since there was nothing at stake besides a couple of feet of floor space, but it illustrates a fundamental human trait — we want whatever we can take, and once we’ve taken it, we feel it is ours.

The rich want to take from the middle class (they don’t want to take from the poor since the poor don’t have anything), the middle class (what’s left of it) wants to take from the rich, and the poor want to take from the rich, the middle class, the government, anyone they can. Our whole system of entitlement is based on this need to encroach. We need, so we should get. We are all trying to capture as much of our share of resources (power, money, land, energy) as we can. Sometimes we buy into the stock market hoping to make a killing. Sometimes we do get something for our investment; other times we lose it all, and when we lose it, we complain about all we have lost, when in fact we have lost nothing but paper profits we took from someone else. Sometimes we have many children, which is a way of staking out more than our share of resources. Sometimes we cheat a little — or a lot — and justify it because how else are we going to get what is ours? And sometimes we occupy someone’s space just because it’s there.

Quite by accident the other day, I happened to walk past a western offshoot of “Occupy Wall Street.” Most of these people wanted a redistribution of wealth, some wanted to ban Nukes, some wanted a place to stay or a reason to feel important. Perhaps those who began the movement are right and the rich have too great a share of the world’s resources, but the trouble is not the rich. The trouble is us — all of us, rich and poor alike — and our inbred penchant for encroachment. We all want more. The rich are just better at encroachment than the rest of us. Or maybe not. Maybe they just had more resources to begin with. Or were in the right place at the right time. Or were smarter. Or were more nefarious.  Or were born into a rich family. But it doesn’t really matter why they are rich. If the pyramid of wealth were reversed and the rich became poor and the poor became rich, the world would be exactly the same, just with different faces at the top and bottom. Our situation/status in life defines us just as much as we define our situation in life.

Still, whatever our status or situation, we want something we don’t have. And today what I wanted was a wonderful walk and a perfect day. And like most of our wants, I didn’t get it because other people wanted something completely different.

But the day was not lost. I got a blog topic out of the deal.

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