writing | Bertram's Blog

Help! I Need a Guest Blog Topic

September 8, 2013 — Pat Bertram

I’ve been invited to write a guest blog for UniteWomen.org. This is a huge honor since the Facebook group alone has more than 80,000 fans, so of course I said yes. To be honest, though, I would have said yes even if they honly 800 “likes” — I’m a big fan of the woman who asked me, and I appreciate the work she does to help empower women.

Oddly, I’ve never felt disempowered as a women, perhaps because I seldom define myself by gender, religion, nationality, age, or any other consideration. I am simply . . . a being in flux. I have felt powerless at times, but not because of being a woman. The powerlessness came from being in situations greater than my abilities. Sometimes I developed the necessary abilities, other times I simply endured. Either way, somehow I moved beyond the powerlessness and here I am — still strong, still developing my abilities, still learning to empower myself.

(Grief was one of those situations where I felt powerless, but I embraced the experience and endured.)

I have a third way of getting through situations greater than my abilities, such as my current inability to decide on a blog topic — I ask my blog readers for their input.

The woman suggested several topics for the guest blog:

Anything relating to women’s rights, gender equality, your identity as a woman (in and/or out of the romantic partnership).
Re-establishing your identity as a woman after the loss of your partner.
Lessons learned — anything that would empower or inspire other women.
How writing can be very healing and that you would recommend it to anyone who has gone through trauma.
How female friends supported you through grief.
Whatever you want to say to 80,000 women who are struggling for equality.

She also suggested a post about women judging and criticizing other women, like those who told me to “get over it” when I was grieving, but I don’t want to do that one. Sounds too antithetical for the blog.

Do any of these topics strike you as being more interesting than the others? Or is there another topic besides those listed that I should consider doing?

***

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.” Follow Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

Posted in blogging, culture, writing. Tags: blog topic, empowering women, gender equality, guest blog, identity as a woman, UniteWomen.org. 15 Comments »

What Next for Bertram’s Blog?

September 3, 2013 — Pat Bertram

In three weeks, I will be celebrating the six-year anniversary of this blog. I will also be celebrating the two-year anniversary of daily blogging. (Two years ago, I responded to a challenge to blog for 100 days, and I just kept going.)

My first post on September 24, 2006 was tentative, a mere dipping of my pen in the metaphorical ink of the blogosphere. All that post said was:

Am I an aspiring writer? I have written 4 books, rewritten them, and will continue rewriting them until they are perfected.

No. I am not an aspiring writer. I am aspiring to be a published writer.

untitled2 Not a bad statement of intent for a new blogger. In the beginning I wrote about my struggles to find an agent or a publisher, my attempts to learn all I could about how to become a bestselling author (still don’t know — drats!), my efforts at establishing my online presence. In the beginning, I used no photo of me, just an initial. I still hadn’t decided if I wanted to use a male pseudonym or any pseudonym at all. I’d also started writing a new novel that I now call my work-in-pause since it’s been sitting there, half-finished for almost six years. Later, after I found a publisher, I talked about my newly published books, and when ebooks, Kindles, and self-publishers burst on the scene, changing the face of publishing forever, I wrote various blog posts about the publishing industry, trying to make sense of it all and trying to find my place in the clamor

Three and a half years ago, my soul mate died. His death catapulted me into a world of such pain, that it bled over into this blog. My grief posts became not so much a way to escape, but a place to try to make sense of what I was going through, to offer comfort and be comforted, to find my way to renewed life.

This blog also helped me to re-establish my life as a writer because, after all, blogging is writing, too.

It’s nice to know that whatever life threw at me, whatever problems I encountered, whatever challenges came my way, this blog was here for me.

But now I don’t know where to go with my life, and I don’t know where to go with this blog. Except for occasional grief updates or excerpts from my book: Grief: The Great Yearning, I’ve said most of what I wanted to say about grief. And there’s nothing more to be said about the publishing industry. It has changed beyond my comprehension, so there’s no point in my writing about it. Besides, there is too much controversy still, with militant self-publishers jumping on anyone they think is casting aspersions on the phenomena. And there is too much controversy with sharing writing tips. Every time I tell what I have learned, other authors stomp on my words, proclaiming that it’s an author’s right to make up the rules. I just am not a contentious person, and I don’t like being pulled unwittingly into such imbroglios.

So, I have three weeks to decide if I want to continue daily blogging or if I want to go back to the way I started, just blogging when I had something to say. I need to decide what, if anything, I have to say — maybe I’ve said it all.

In the end, I’ll probably decide not to decide, and just keep on blogging. It’s become a way of life.

***

Posted in blogging, internet, writing. Tags: aspiring writer, blog anniversary, blogging, blogging and life, book promotion, daily blogging, postaday. 11 Comments »

An Open Letter to Militant Self-Publishers

September 2, 2013 — Pat Bertram

Dear Militant Self-publishers:

It’s time to lay down your swords. The war has been won. Very few people care any more if the books they read are self-published or not. There are probably more self-published authors making a living by writing than traditionally published writers, which mean you sell a whole lot of books.

If someone accidentally or even purposely impugns all self-published writers, let it go. Stop brandishing your swords as if this is some sort of war or civil rights movement. People have a right to their opinion. Some readers have been burned by buying poorly edited self-published books, and it is their prerogative to stay away from self-published books if they wish. There are way too many books on the market for anyone to read them all, so each person has a right to set their own parameters. It is also their prerogative to say so publicly.

And oh, while I’m at it, please stop comparing yourself to Dickens and John Grisham and other iconoclasts. These self-published authors from previous eras went against the flow of publishing, arranging to have the books printed and selling copies by hand. Being self-published today is about going with the flow. There are millions of you. You are an army with no enemy.

So just lay down your swords, take off your armor, and enjoy what you have accomplished.

***

Posted in writing. Tags: self-published authors, self-published books, self-publishing. 20 Comments »

Ah, the Difference a Comma Makes!

September 1, 2013 — Pat Bertram

One of my recycled blog posts was published in an ezine today, and apparently people are more interested in insulting me than in reading what I wrote.

The article was about striving for clarity in writing. I wrote;

There seem to be two vociferous groups of writers nowadays:

1. Self-published writers who insist that they can do everything their way without regard to grammar rules, publishing conventions, and even readers.

2. Writers who want to be published by the major publishing houses, and who scrupulously follow every dictate in the hopes it will bring them the acclaim they strive for.

I described each of the groups and ended by saying that the truth of good writing lies somewhere in the middle of those two groups.

Very simple, right? Wrong.

One self-published author commented: Bracketing all self-publishers as people who ‘do everything their way without regard to grammar rules, publishing conventions, and even readers’, is not true Pat, and you know it! If your point was merely to be controversial, you have certainly achieved it. Your obvious prejudice against self-publishers in general has done you no favours, believe me. Yes, some do ignore the rules, but then there are people like myself – best selling self-published authors who do obey the rules…

Another wrote: Your categorising writers into two groups is just plain silly. It smacks of snobbery and a failure to comprehend reality.

Huh? Doesn’t anyone read?

First, even if I believed self-publishers are all bad writers, which I don’t, I would never publicly come out and say it. Too many self-publishers are militant, fighting a battle that has already been won, and it’s simply not worth getting into the fray.

Second, I listed two “vociferous” groups. Those who strive for good writing are not vociferous. They simply write without insisting that their way is the right way.

Third, if you will notice, I did not say all self-published writers. I said “self-published writers who insist they can do everything their way.” If I meant all self-published writers, I would have written “self-published writers, who insist they can do everything their way”.

Ah, the difference a comma makes!

Maybe next I need to write an article about striving for clarity in reading.

***

For those of you who don’t understand the comma rule:

In the sentence “Self-published writers who insist that they can do everything their way”, the clause “who insist that they can do everything their way” does not have a comma before it, which means it’s a restrictive clause. It restricts the subject “Self-published writers” to those who insist they can do everything their way. Leaving off the comma means that the clause is an integral part of the subject, that the subject does not stand alone.

If I had meant all self-published writers, I would have used a comma. The comma would have alerted readers that the phrase “who insist that they can do everything their way” was a non-restrictive clause — merely a parenthetical remark describing all self-published writers, and it could have been removed without changing the meaning of the sentence. But, I did not use the comma. Hence, I did not make a sweeping generality that took in all self-published writers. The comment referred to a select few vociferous writers.

In my experience, those who insist they can write however they wish without regard to rules are self-published or plan to be, so my sentence as I wrote it was not pejorative. Writers who wish to pursue a different avenue of publishing know they have to follow the rules of whatever publishing company or agent they are trying to impress, and they will not vociferously proclaim they can write however they wish without regard to rules.

***

Posted in writing. Tags: clarity in writing, non-retrictive clause, readability, restrictive clause, self-published writers, traditionally published writers, truth of good writing. 7 Comments »

Good Grammar is like Good Etiquette

August 28, 2013 — Pat Bertram

I often hear new writers and self-published writers say that it’s okay not to follow the rules. That they can write however they want. That it’s more important to be creative than to be pay attention to grammar. That they need to break new ground.

Um. No.

Certain rules are necessary because they help clarify our writing and convey to the reader exactly what it is we want them to understand. I admit that in many cases readers don’t care. They just want something to titillate them. (How else can one explain the success of the appallingly awful 50 Shades of Gray?)

Still, good grammar is like good etiquette. It’s a matter of respect. You might not think it necessary to thank someone for a gift, but that someone sure think it’s necessary. Besides, it’s the right thing to do, especially if you want them to continue sending you gifts. (Good grammar is also like good etiquette in that both are considered old fashioned and unecessary.)

I’ve given up trying to read self-published books because it’s too hard to weed the good books from the bad ones. So many self-published books seem to have been thrown in the Amazon river without any editing. If those authors don’t have the courtesy or respect to make sure the book is readable, then I certainly see no reason to give them the gift of my time and money. (Yeah, I know — it’s a different world out there. Many writers post a draft on Amazon and use reviews to find out what needs editing.)

A common problem involves wrongly used participial phrases that end in ing. According to The Elements of Style by Strunk and White, a participial phrase at the beginning of a sentence must refer to the grammatical subject.

The example Strunk and White give is: Walking down the road, he saw a woman accompanied by two children. Who is walking? He is, of course, since he is the subject of the sentence, and the ing phrase always refers to the subject. If the woman is walking, you have to rephrase the sentence: He saw a woman, accompanied by two children, walking down the road. You, I’m sure, would never have to worry about who is walking because you’d never use such an ambiguous sentence in the first place!

The other examples of wrong phrases Strunk and White give are humorous and show why it’s important to follow the rule (the parenthetical comments are mine):

Being in dilapidated condition, I was able to buy the house cheap. (If I was in dilapidated condition, how did I have the strength to buy the house?)

Wondering irresolutely what to do next, the clock struck twelve. (Hmm. The clock wondered what to do next? Smart clock!)

As a mother of five, with another on the way, the ironing board was always up. (Wow! That’s a lot of ironing boards!)

In case you don’t know how to rephrase the above sentences, here are my quick efforts:

Because of the dilapidated condition of the house, I was able to buy the place cheap.
As I wondered what to do next, the clock struck twelve.
A mother of five, with another on the way, I was never able to put the ironing board away.

Another ing problem comes from simultaneous actions, when an author has a character do something that’s physically impossible. For example: Pulling out of the driveway, he drove down the street. He cannot be pulling out of the driveway at the same time he’s driving down the street. He pulled out of the driveway, then drove down the street.

I know you know all this, but such sentence structures do slip into our writing. It’s up to us to wring the “ings” out of our work, and show respect for our readers.

***

Posted in culture, How to, writing. Tags: grammar rules, ing phrases, participial phrases, Strunk and White, The Elements of Style. 6 Comments »

It Is What It Is

August 25, 2013 — Pat Bertram

I talked to a friend today about the various problems we are facing in this, our fourth year of grief, and she said, “It is what it is.”

Robert Hartwell Fiske calls such sayings “quack expressions,” saying they “readily explain behavior that the dimwitted otherwise find inexplicable, and justify attributes that they otherwise find unjustifiable.”

He’s right to a certain extent, and yet . . .

My friend is anything but dimwitted. She, like me, is struggling with life, death, grief, change, and other life experiences that are inexplicable to everyone, dimwitted, brightwitted, or somewhere in between. Sometimes it truly is what it is, quack expression or not.

Despite what the positive thinkers and those who believe we create our own reality profess, much of life is beyond our control. We don’t decide who lives and dies. We can’t choose who we love or despise (though we can choose what we do with those feelings). We can’t always help people who need to be helped. We can’t hurry along or slow down natural processes, such as childbirth or old age. Nor can we recreate the world to suit our desires. The sun always rises in the eastern sky and sets in a westerly direction. The moon always affects our world, though myths tell of a time before the moon came to stay. And, as they say, time and tide wait for no man. (Though I suppose, being a woman and not a man, I should be able to sway such natural phenomena.)

It is what it is.

Lately, I’ve been struggling with a couple of situations that are not of my making, that I have no control over, that don’t affect me in a primary way (besides tearing me apart by conflicted loyalties). I can’t solve any of the problems that have arisen, can’t walk away from them, can’t change anything. All I can do is realize each situation is what it is, and let it go as best as I can. (It helps to realize that in a case of divided loyalties, my loyalties belong to myself.)

In my writing, of course, I stay away from such expressions since I like my writing to have a tinge of elegance, but life is not always elegant.

It is what it is.

***

Posted in culture, life, writing. Tags: beyond our control, elegant English, grief, it is what it is, quack expressions, Robert Hartwell Fiske. 12 Comments »

Open Sesame!

August 23, 2013 — Pat Bertram

I had lunch with a friend today, and she asked if I was writing anything, so I told her the story of my grieving woman, one of the two moribund works I’ve been slowly resurrecting.

It was gratifying to see her rapt face as the story unfolded, and her attention gave me a boost of ambition to finish the story. To be honest, though, I don’t need the boost — I’ve been enjoying working/playing with the manuscript.

I say working/playing, because it isn’t work — work connotes toil and energy expended with perhaps a monetary reward at the end, and though I have been working on the book, it hasn’t been work. More like puzzle play. I wrote many of the scenes a few months after my life mate/soul mate died, attempting to deal with my grief and record the pain before I forgot some of the particulars. It’s been long enough now that the pain is mostly a faint and bewildering memory, so working on the book, even the agonizing scenes, isn’t a hardship.

I started the novel as a NaNoWriMo project to see if I could meet the challenge of 50,000 words in a month. Despite being a slow writer, I did complete the required number of words, though to do so, each day I had to write whatever scene came to mind. I have a stack of scenes that have to be put into some sort of order before I do the difficult scenes, the fill-in sections, the transitions, the descriptions — all the parts that are hard for me to write but need to be included. That could take a while, since I only have about 40,000 words, which falls short of a full novel.

Now, however, I am typing up what I’ve written and trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together. For example, I have a flashback scene that shows her dying husband laboriously filling page after page with what looks like his daughter’s name, and he keeps talking about his “sesame.” (Like my life mate/soul mate, the poor guy is not able to find the correct words to say what he means.)

In another scene, my grieving woman checks his computer to see if she can find his estranged mother’s address so she can notify her of her son’s death, and she comes across a file labeled “journal.” She clicks on the file, curious, because she’d never known him to keep a journal, and finds it password protected. Though she tries all the passwords she’s known him to use, she can’t open the file.

Now here’s the problem — which scene should come first? The sesame flashback or the journal scene? “Sesame” of course, is short for “open sesame,” which is what his poor cancer-addled brain is calling a password, though she doesn’t know that. If the sesame flashback came first, would it be obvious when the journal scene comes around that he’d been trying to figure out the password? If the journal scene comes first, would it be obvious when the sesame flashback comes around that he’d been trying to figure out the password?

Oh, that all my problems should be so insignificantly significant!

***

Posted in writing. Tags: NaNoWriMo, novel about a grieving woman, work vs play, writing as play. 3 Comments »

Is the Unwitnessed Life Worth Living?

August 21, 2013 — Pat Bertram

In the movie Shall We Dance, Beverly Clark (Susan Sarandon) says: “We need a witness to our lives. There’s a billion people on the planet . . . I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you’re promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things . . . all of it, all of the time, every day. You’re saying ‘Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness.’”

After the death of my life mate/soul mate, I felt that whatever happened to me in the future wouldn’t matter. He had been the witness to my life. He gave it meaning by that witnessing. During these years of grief, I have used this blog as my witness, writing about all that I have been going through. This witnessing of my grief gave it importance — because of what I have written, I’ve connected with people in a similar situation, and we’ve helped each other get through each new phase of grief.

For all these months (years, now!), I’ve been worried about becoming one of those forgotten old women who lives alone in a dingy apartment, with no one to care about and no one to care about her. It’s not an unusual fear — many women in my situation have the same worries, but we go on with our lives and hope that the fates are kind to us somewhere along the way.

The truth is, even if no one witnesses our life, it still has meaning because each of us witnesses our own live. It has meaning because we live it. That forgotten old woman living in her dingy apartment remembers who she is, who she once was, who she hoped to be. She remembers that she once was loved. She remembers that she once had worth. I only hope she knows she is still important because she still is.

***

Posted in writing. Tags: forgotten old women, marriage, Shall We Dance, Susan Sarandon, witness to our lives. 10 Comments »

Writing: Art vs. Commerce

August 20, 2013 — Pat Bertram

Ever since the death of my life mate/soul mate, I’ve been struggling to find reasons to write. It didn’t seem important to write another book that would languish in the dark alleys of non-bestsellerdom, and it especially didn’t seem important to write if he, my most avid fan, were no longer here to read what I wrote.

Today, though, I had an epiphany. Writing is separate from selling books. Writing is art, a thing of the spirit, eternal. Selling books is merely commerce, and so is everything that goes along with the business — writing to be read, finding readers, trying to make a niche in the publishing world.

Often, we writers are told that we need to write what people want to read. It’s good advice, especially if we want to make a living as an author, but in my case, I can only write the books I can write. Even if I knew what readers wanted, I couldn’t write those books. Someone else is already writing them.

Although it would be nice to make a living off writing, money is not the only reason to write. In fact, contrary to popular belief, money is not the reason behind most of what is worth living for.

Take a smile for example. That curvature of the lips and sparkle in the eye is fleeting and ephemeral, not to be stored or purchased anywhere here on this earth, and yet, a smile from a loved one is precious. I would give anything to see my life mate/soul mate smile at me once more, but now his smiles exist only in my memory.

Smiles aren’t the only valuable thing that has no meaning beyond the moment. We go walking on a cool sunshiny day without ever stopping to think what we will get out of it other than a pleasant interlude. We watch a movie or read a book simply to pass the time, without ever worrying about its importance. We talk with friends, and those words become lost in the eternal spectrum of sound waves. Sometimes we talk to a person who is no longer here, such as I do with my lost mate, and as seemingly meaningless as those conversations might be, they are important.

Is writing any different?

Some writers, of course, are so full of their importance they believe their words are immortal, no matter how trite or uninspiring their writing is, but many of us need the possibility of readers to give our writing importance, or at least purpose.

And yet, there is the side of writing that is often ignored in the business of writing — writing is art, or it can be. Art is the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination. Nowhere in that definition does it say art needs readers or viewers or buyers to be art. Art is merely expression. And that is what writing should be.

In a perfect world, writers would never consider their readers, would never put commerce above inspiration, would never count words or the hours spent creating. They would simply write.

For myself, I can create that perfect world

The past few weeks, I have been working a bit on a novel I started three years ago about a grieving woman. Maybe when the book is finished, I will turn the manuscript over to my publisher, but for now, I’m not even considering the commerce of writing. The book is for me — an expression of my grief, inspired by all I’ve gone through the past few years.

My writing.

My art.

***

Posted in being me, culture, writing. Tags: importance of smiles, more precious than gold, smiles, why write, writing as art, writing as business. 6 Comments »

Is the Unexamined Life Worth Living?

August 18, 2013 — Pat Bertram

Many people live full rich lives without ever once stopping to think about what they are doing or how they are doing it. Of course, if people continually make the same disastrous mistakes, such as falling in love with abusive mates or giving in to addictions, a bit of self-examination is necessary to keep from repeating those mistakes, but for the most part, people muddle along, doing the best they can.

Sometimes, the examined life is not worth living — well, that’s not exactly true. The examined life is worth living, as are most lives, but sometimes the examination becomes the life itself, as often happens with me, and it’s necessary to step back and simply live without examination. (Or do I mean live simply without examination?)

Some of the greatest moments of life are unexaminable and incomprehensible, such as falling in love or fallling in grief — for the most part, you have to experience these moments raw, Afterward, of course, those of us with a philosophical bent try to make sense of what we experienced, but if we dissect these moments too soon, they fall into nothingness, like the scientists who try to dissect life itself, breaking life into smaller and smaller particles until the particles become waves and the waves become . . . nothing. And yet we know we are something. Or at least we think we know.

I’ve been blogging daily for almost two years now, and often I look to myself, my thoughts, my life for blog topics, holding up pieces of my life and examining them to see where I am and where I am going. For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been taking a break from this introspection and dissection of my life by posting a series of articles about creating incredible but credible characters. (The articles were previously published in Novel Writing Tips and Techniques From Au thors Of Second Wind Publishing.)

I still don’t know what I’m doing or where I’m going now that I’m alone. I’m still haunted by the hard questions such as the meaning of death and the scope of eternity. (I’ve given up trying to figure out the meaning of life, or rather, I’ve come to the conclusion we create our own meaning.) Novelist Anatole France wrote, “We do not know what to do with this short life, yet we want another which will be eternal.” Eternity is too much for my poor human brain to handle, as are so many of the unanswerable questions of life, so it’s been refreshing not to feel the need to think, but to do things just for the sake of doing them. It’s been refreshing not to analyze what’s left of my grief process, but to ride the swells of sadness and then move on.

It’s been refreshing just to be.

So yes, the unexamined life is definitely worth living, at least temporarily.

***