Diving Off the Deep End

January 20, 2011 — Pat Bertram

I never learned to swim as a child, so when I went to college, I signed up for beginning swimming for my PE credit. On the first day of class, the teacher had us line up at the deep end, then she said, “Dive in.” What????? I stared at her, totally out of my depth. Well, not really out of my depth since I didn’t even jump into the pool. I just stood on the sidelines while everyone else dived. The teacher kicked me out of the class. Apparently, though the syllabus clearly stated the class was for those wanting to learn how to swim, there was an undeclared understanding that people who could swim took the course as an easy way to satisfy the PE requirement, and she had no patience for someone who could barely float.

Today, I’m feeling the way I did that long ago day standing on the edge of the edge of the pool. I mentioned a year or so ago that I was asked to be a speaker at the Scribblers Retreat Writer’s Conference on St. Simon’s Island in Georgia, but I had to cancel due to a death. (Not mine, though it felt like it.) I thought that was the end of it, but conference organizers contacted me and asked me to reschedule. So I did. I’ll be speaking at the May 2011 conference at 3:00 on Friday the 13th. Perhaps an auspicious date? I hope so! This will be my first ever speaker engagement. (No honorarium, but an incredible honor.)

I had no idea of the scope of the conference until today when I learned that the conference was recently voted one of the “Top Ten Organized Conferences in the U.S.” by Writer’s Digest. I also learned that Phillip Margolin will be fellow a speaker. Gulp. This is the big time. The deep end. Shouldn’t I dip a toe in first? Test the waters? Nope. Have to learn to dive very, very quickly.

Oddly enough, despite my lack of experience and a niggling worry that someone made a mistake by inviting me, I know I can do a good job. I plan to use my character questionnaire and, with audience participation, show how to develop a character (and subplots and tension) by making a series of small decisions. I realize talking before a group is not the same thing as moderating online discussion groups, which is my usual venue for talking about writing, but I plan on having fun. And anyway, it’s not as if I’m going to drown — or get kicked out of class — if things don’t work out right.

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It’s a Breeze!

January 18, 2011 — Pat Bertram

I’ve never paid much attention to the weather except to figure out how to dress when I go for a walk. Nor have I paid much attention to the wind except to stay inside when the velocity picks up. But lately, I’ve been tracking the weather where I’m staying since this tends to be a windy area, and I do not like walking in strong winds in the desert. (Sand blowing in my eyes is not something I particularly enjoy.) So, when I see that winds of 8 to 15 mph are expected, I plan my walks for the calmer times. To me, anything more than a gentle breeze is a wind, and one to be avoided.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I discovered that winds with speeds of 4 to 31 miles per hour are considered to be breezes. A thirty-mile an hour wind is a breeze? Not in my world! I always thought the term “gentle breeze” was redundant, but apparently not. What I considered to be a gentle breeze — anything less than 4 miles per hour — is not even a breeze. It’s just light air movement. A gentle breeze is a wind with a speed of 8 to 12 miles per hour. A fresh breeze is a wind with a speed of 19 to 24 miles per hour. A strong breeze is a wind with a speed of 24 to 31 miles per hour. A gale is a wind with a wind speed of 32 to 63 miles per hour. My dictionary defines a gale as a strong current of air. Who knew Webster had such a sense of understatement! (In case you’re interested, a storm is stronger than a gale, and a hurricane strongest of all.)

In light of this information, a person with a breezy disposition would an uptight harridan, and something that’s “a breeze” would be hard enough to blow you away. “The test was a breeze” no longer seems to make sense, but saying, “the test was a light air movement” loses something in the translation. I’ve always been a stickler for using words properly, but breeze is such a light, breezy word, that I will probably continue to use it the way I always have, to mean a gentle air current, something easy, or someone cheerful and free.

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Why Write?

January 12, 2011 — Pat Bertram

A fellow Second Wind author posted a bloggery today about Keeping the Faith as a writer despite lackluster sales. It’s a concern so many of us published writers have. The percentage of novelists who actually make a living at writing is ridiculously small, and to make matters worse, the top one percent of writers make more than all the rest of us combined.

When you consider how few writers ever make enough to quit their day job, (and this includes some writers who hit the bestselling list), the word “success” when it comes to writing needs to be redefined. Seems to me if writing brings you pleasure that makes you success. So does having your book chosen from thousands of submissions to be published. So does your willingness to write another book despite dismal sales figures. This puts you in a rarified group. Sure it would be nice to make money, but if we were really in it for the money, we wouldn’t be writers. We’d be lawyers or accountants or even sales clerks.

There are good things about writing not being a paying job: we don’t need to write to deadlines, don’t need to worry about wordcount, don’t need to fulfill anyone’s expectations except our own. And that is reason enough to write.

Someone once said that the best thing a writer can do when they’ve finished writing a book is to write another. I thought that was silly advice because if you can’t sell one book (or three), what’s the point of writing more? I now know the point is writing. A writer does not attain maturity as a writer until he or she has written 1,000,000 words. (I’m only halfway there.) So write. Your next book might be the one that captures people’s imaginations and catapults you into fame and fortune. Not writing another book guarantees you will never will reach that goal. It also keeps you from doing what you were meant to do.

One thing I know for a fact: sales do not make a writer a writer.  Of course, sales are nice, but in the end, writing is what makes a writer a writer.

So, let’s all keep the faith. And write.

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Grief Takes as Long as It Takes

January 5, 2011 — Pat Bertram

I’ve been thinking about writing a book about grief, combining my grief blogs, the letters I’ve written to my dead mate, the journal I kept those first few months after he died, and the various bits of information about dealing with grief I’ve collected during the past nine months. Now I’m wondering if anyone will want to read such a depressing book.

This morning, for the first time, I read some of those letters I wrote, and I couldn’t believe the raw pain. The writing chronicles my journey, and perhaps people will see beyond the pain to the insights and the struggle to find meaning after such a soulquake, yet jeez! It’s so damn sad. On the other hand, people might find comfort knowing they are not the only ones going through such trauma. On the other other hand, I might want to bury my head in the sand before I get halfway through putting the book together. On the other other other hand, it could be cathartic.

I did notice something interesting, though. The letters I first read this morning were the ones I wrote four or five months ago. Since those were so agonizing to read, I was afraid of looking at the first ones, but I held my breath and jumped in. Oddly, those first letters are more chatty than angst-ridden, like I was writing to someone who was only going to be gone for a short time. I remember the pain hitting me right after his death, which it did, but apparently it kept on growing until by the end of the first month (when I naively thought I’d be over it) I was so desperate, I went to a grief support group hoping someone could tell me how to survive. They couldn’t tell me, of course. They could only show me by their progress that it is possible to survive.

Good thing I don’t have to make a decision about the book for another three months. Or even longer. I don’t want to write it before the first year of grief is up because I don’t want to skew my healing, and besides, I’m hoping that after a year I’ll be more hopeful, wiser, stronger. Seems to me I’ve been saying that very thing for months. First, it was the end of the first month that was supposed to bring me hope, wisdom, strength. Then I thought I’d have achieved those things by the third month, then the sixth, the seventh, the ninth. Maybe twenty-four or thirty-six months is more realistic. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately?) grief takes as long as it takes.

Posted in grief, writing. Tags: , , , , , . 11 Comments »

Getting Sass From My Character

December 22, 2010 — Pat Bertram

Sometimes when I can’t think of where I am going with a story, I talk to my characters. Sort of. My characters don’t take on a life of their own — I am always aware they are my creations — but sometimes when I begin to make choices for a character, the character seems to be determining her own fate. If a character has a particular daughter, a particular problem, a particular job, then all those things bind the character and make her act a particular way.

In the case of poor Amanda, the hero of my newest work in progress (the one that got its start as a NaNoWriMo project), her life is bound by a dead husband, a rebellious twenty-something daughter, and an online lover she’s never met. Once a preacher’s wife with an entire support system, she now has to deal with everything on her own. In addition, she’s going to have to leave the parsonage where she’s lived for the past fifteen years, and she barely has enough energy to get out of bed in the morning. All these problems bind the poor woman, creating more dilemmas than she can handle. Still, with all her trauma, she seemed boring to me, so I sat her down and tried to find out why I am having a problem with her. Don’t know if I solved the problem of why I find her so boring, but at least I got a better understanding of who she is and where to go with the story.

Bertram: I can’t get into writing your story. You’re nothing special, just a woman grieving. Boring.

Amanda: Sam thinks I’m special and unique.

Bertram: Who’s Sam?

Amanda: Don’t you know?

Bertram: Of course I know. I created him. I just wondered if you knew.

Amanda: I know he’s a special man. We met online at a support group for people whose mates are dying of cancer. His wife and David—my husband—were both told they had three to six months to live. Having something so real to talk about cut through all the usual crap people go through when the meet, even online, so we got to know each other very quickly. And we fell in love. Took us both by surprise. Neither of us were looking for that, and we didn’t know you could develop such powerful feelings without ever having met.

Bertram: What happened to Sam’s wife?

Amanda: She rallied. Is in remission right now. Still not well, but doesn’t seem to be terminal. Sam is staying with her. We want to get together, but he lives halfway across the country. In Ohio. I need so much to feel his arms around me. I am stunned by the depth of my grief for David. I thought I was over him—he took such a long time to die, you see. Over a year. I thought I’d finished with my grief and moved on, but when he died, it felt as if I were dying, too. If I didn’t love Sam, I couldn’t have gone on.

Bertram: I don’t understand how you can love one man while mourning another.

Amanda: I don’t understand it either. Sam says I’m a complicated woman. He says that there’s a part of me that will always belong to him, a part David never knew. Apparently I need to men to fulfill me. Yet here I am . . . alone. And grieving.

Bertram: What part belongs to Sam?

Amanda: The passionate part. I always thought I was a passionless woman—I’d have to be, being David’s wife. He wasn’t much for sex. I think it had something to do with his childhood, something that happened to shape his life, but he never talked about it. I’ll find out, though—it’s important to the story. See, when I find out that he’s different from the man I knew, then I panic and wonder who I am. For most of my adult life, I defined myself by my relationship with him. He gave my life focus and meaning. Which is why finding out the truth about Davis is important. I need to know who he is so I can find out who I am.

Bertram: And who are you?

Amanda: I don’t know. Isn’t that your job, to create me?

You can read the entire conversation here: Pat Bertram Introduces Amanda Ray, Hero of a New Work-in-Progress

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Excerpt from Light Bringer by Pat Bertram

December 12, 2010 — Pat Bertram

Light Bringer is my latest novel, scheduled for release by Second Wind Publishing in March, 2011.

Description of Light Bringer:

Becka Johnson had been abandoned on the doorstep of a remote cabin in Chalcedony, Colorado when she was a baby. Now, thirty-seven years later, she has returned to Chalcedony to discover her identity, but she only finds more questions. Who has been looking for her all those years? Why are those same people interested in fellow newcomer Philip Hansen? Who is Philip, and why does her body sing in harmony with his? And what do either of them have to do with a shadow corporation that once operated a secret underground installation in the area?

Excerpt (Prologue):

Helen Jenks gripped the steering wheel and squinted into the darkness beyond the beam of the Volkswagen’s headlights. Nothing looked familiar. Was she almost home? The snow had stopped falling, but in these hills so far from town, the county didn’t bother to plow. She didn’t know if she drove on the right road, or any road at all. There were no other cars, no tire tracks.

Where was everyone?

She sighed. Home in bed, probably, where she would be if she hadn’t pulled a double shift at the hospital.

Hearing an odd drone, she cupped a hand behind an ear and tried to isolate the sound from the rumble of the Volkswagen engine. Was something wrong with the bug? Oh, please, no.

All at once the sky lit up. She leaned forward for a better view and caught sight of a brilliant star that seemed to throb in time with her heartbeat, growing brighter with each pulsation.

She sat back and rotated her head around her stiff neck. Maybe it was Venus. Hadn’t she read that at certain times of the year, under certain conditions, Venus could be as big and as bright as the moon?

Leaning forward again, she saw the star pulse one last time, then wink out. As she became used to the darkness it left behind, it reappeared, darted toward the horizon, and vanished. So, not Venus. Perhaps a meteor or two.

She listened for the drone, but no longer heard it. Good.

Ten minutes later, she noticed a pin prick of light in the distance: her porch light. Her car slid to the side, and she gripped the steering wheel harder. Be careful, she cautioned herself. You’re not safe at home yet.

When at last she parked in front of her old frame house, she pried her fingers off the steering wheel and stumbled out of the car. Except for the dings and pops of the cooling engine, the world was silent, appearing so new and un-touched, she hesitated to mar the opalescent expanse with her footprints. Then her eyebrows drew together. The snow wasn’t untrodden after all. Tracks led to the house where a small gray creature huddled against the door.

She clapped her hands. “Shoo. Shoo.”

The creature did not stir.

“Go on. Get,” she shouted.

The creature still didn’t move. Was it dead? This wouldn’t be the first time a dying animal had been attracted to the warmth seeping from beneath the front door.

She approached gingerly, relaxing when she saw what appeared to be an old gray blanket that had somehow ended up on the stoop. She bent over to collect the wad of fabric, then straightened. Bad idea. Who knew what vermin had taken refuge in the folds.

Before she could figure out what to do, the blanket moved. She jumped back and stared at it. The blanket moved again, giving her a glimpse of a coppery curl.

She lifted the bundle, cradled it in her arms, and drew back the blanket. Two dark eyes, shining with intelligence, gazed at her.

She sucked in a breath. An infant, no more than nine months old.

As the infant continued to gaze at her, its eyes brightened to gleaming amber. Then it beamed at her—a welcoming smile, both joyous and knowing, as if it had recognized a dear friend.

Helen’s face felt tight. “Who are you?”

The baby chortled in response.

“And who left you here?” She glanced at the tracks. They led in only one direction—toward the house.

Feeling dizzy, she crouched to examine the tracks more closely.

They were footprints. Tiny footprints in the snow.

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Owing His Memory?

November 30, 2010 — Pat Bertram

I found this paragraph in a book I read recently, and it’s a graphic example of why I want to write a novel about a grieving woman — so few understand the nature of grief:

Jean-Pierre was gone; nothing could bring him back, and her feelings for him, feelings that had risen suddenly, had been ebbing just as quickly as evidence of his involvement with illegal drugs had surfaced. If Jean really had been running drugs, she owed his memory nothing.

Owed his memory? What does that mean? This example seems to have been written by a person who knows little of grief. In all these months of steeping in the world of grief, I have not heard a single person mention owing the dead person’s memory anything.  Memories are all we have left and we treasure them, but we also know that memory is not a living creature to whom we must pay homage. We might feel obligations to those who are gone, obligations such as honoring their wishes as to funerals and disbursement of treasured possessions, but we fulfill those obligations out of love and because we find comfort and continuity in still being able to do things for our loved ones. But owing the memory we have of the person? Doesn’t even make sense.

We bereft are all struggling to find a way to live with the hole in our lives, with the ongoing sadness, with the reality that grief is an unending (though perhaps diminishing) journey. No griever I have met has said, “Wait! I can’t be happy. I owe too much to his memory.” Grieving is a process, something we do, something that happens to us, but it is seldom the choice that is hinted at in the above example. Quite frankly, we are all sick of grieving, of being sad, but the only way not to be sad is to have our loved ones back with us, and since that is impossible in this world, we continue on as best as we can with our shattered lives. But we owe that to ourselves, not to his memory.

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Finding Inspiration From Uninspiring Sources

November 29, 2010 — Pat Bertram

Deserts have traditionally been mystical places where one goes to find inspiration, themselves, the meaning of life, but nowadays people use the desert as a park, a place of recreation rather than re-creation. They whiz by on dirt bikes and all-terrain vehicles, they honk their dogs (let the dogs out of the vehicle and and follow along behind, honking whenever the creatures go to far astray), they have drunken parties, and they dump trash, including old furniture.

I used all of these bits to set the scene for the first chapter of Rubicon Ranch: A Collaborative Novel, a novel being written online by me and eight other Second Wind authors, especially the discarded furniture. I do believe I have seen enough old furniture in my walks to furnish a living room, but the piece that most captured my imagination was the television sitting out in the middle of nowhere. No road led to the television, just a footpath. Yet there it was. And so it appears in my chapter:

She turned around to get shots of the trail she’d just climbed and saw a glint of metal reflecting the sun. She squinted. What was that? A television? She found herself smiling—her first smile since Alexander died. She scrambled back down the trail. The television had been dumped a long time ago judging by the creosote bushes that had grown up around it, but footprints leading to the box suggested it had been visited recently. She took several shots from the trail, about fifteen yards from the television, then moved closer. The television had no screen, and she could see that something had been stuffed inside. A doll? She crept closer. Ten feet away, she stopped to take another photo, and the truth washed over her. Not a doll. Crammed inside the console was a child, a girl, her eyes half-eaten by some desert predator.

We’ve now posted the first six chapters of Rubicon Ranch, the latest one by Christine Husom, author of the Winnebago Mystery Series.  The most fun of a project such as this is that we do not yet know who killed the little girl (if in fact, she was killed) and we won’t know until all but the final chapter has been written. I hope you will enjoy following our story as we write it.

  • Chapter 1: Melanie Gray — by Pat Bertram
  • Chapter 2: Seth Bryan — by Lazarus Barnhill
  • Chapter 3: Jeff and Kourtney Peterson — by J B Kohl and Eric Beetner
  • Chapter 4: Dylan McKenzie — by Nancy A. Niles
  • Chapter 5: Mary “Moody” Sinclair — by JJ Dare
  • Chapter 6: Cooper Dahling — by Christine Husom
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    Thinking While Writing

    November 28, 2010 — Pat Bertram

    Although I finished the challenge of writing 50,000 words in a month, I am still writing, though I’m back to my usual snail pace and my habit of thinking while I write. It’s not so much that I’m reverting to my old ways, but that I’ve written all the easy parts. Now, besides figuring out how to put the book together, I have to write any missing scenes, write the connective tissue that turns isolated scenes into a cohesive story, and write descriptions, which has always been hard for me. I am not fond of long descriptive passages, but I understand the need to anchor a reader to the story with visuals, so I try to describe a scene in as few words as possible. Generally I do this by finding a significant detail — the one thing that will make a scene come alive, such as a green lizard on the ceiling of a hotel room in Thailand or a razor-wire-topped fence hidden in the trees.

    All those parts of the story take thought, which means no more writing at break-finger speed. Still, I’ve come away from the experience with a better appreciation for the writing process (though, drat it! It was supposed to be a vision quest, and I had nary a vision.)

    The most important lesson I’ve learned from this experience is that by jumping around and writing scenes as I think of them rather than trying to write them chronologically, I can see what I need to include. For example, in my other WIP, the apocalyptic allegory that’s been paused for the past three years while I dealt with life, I need to have my hero preparing for the future. I couldn’t think of all that he would need, but after writing a scene where he assisted at the birth of a baby, I could see he needed something with which to cut the cord. I already had him sharpening a bit of flint, but since these end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it-survivors have no clothes but loincloths, which traditionally do not come equipped with pockets, he pulled the flint out of a pouch. Aha! So now I not only have to have him make the flint, I have to have him carrying it around. He started out working on it in secret and hiding it before returning to the group, no he will have to make a pouch (out of what? and how?) and start carrying the makeshift knife. But why would he go through all that trouble? Perhaps too many people have shown an interest in his activities. Perhaps someone went searching for the knife. Perhaps he just likes knowing it is available if he should need it.

    Answering why is a vital part of keeping our writing cohesive. Without character motivation, we end up with a series of happenings that aren’t connected, which means no story. Knowing what the story needs, such as the flint in the pouch, I can go back and figure out why he’d have it, otherwise it seems too coincidental. And to keep from things being coincidental, I have to think, which means writing at a slower pace. At least for a while.

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    I Am an Eight-Month Grief Survivor

    November 27, 2010 — Pat Bertram

    When you love someone deeply, their well-being is as important to you as your own, but what do you do with that feeling when your someone is gone? Eight months ago, my life mate died, and now he has no need for stories to amuse or outrage him, no need for tasty meals to tempt his appetite, no need for comfort or caring or kindness, and yet my habit of thinking of him remains. Eventually, I imagine, the habit will wear itself out, but for now I still find myself thinking of ways to make his life a bit easier or a bit more enjoyable.

    After eight months, I am still in . . . not shock, exactly, but a state of non-comprehension. I can’t comprehend his death, his sheer goneness. I can’t comprehend his life, though perhaps that is not for me to bother about. Most of all, I can’t comprehend my sorrow. I never saw much reason for grief. Someone died, you moved on. Period. I thought I was too stoic, too practical to mourn, and yet, here I am, still grieving for someone who has no need for my sorrow.

    Despite my continued grief, I am moving on. My sporadic tears do not stop me from accomplishing the goals I set myself, such as NaNoWriMo and daily walks. My sorrow doesn’t keep me from taking care of myself — or mostly taking care of myself. (I don’t always eat right, and I don’t always sleep well.) Moving on, as I have learned, is not about abandoning one’s grief, but moving on despite the grief.

    Grief is much gentler on me now, and I can sidestep it by turning my mind to other things, but I don’t always want to. I have not yet reached the point where thoughts of him bring me only happiness, and I need to remember him. If tears and pain are still part of that remembrance, so be it.

    We shared our lives, our thoughts, our words — we talked about everything, often from morning to night — yet even before he died, we started going separate ways, he toward his death, me toward continued life. I often wonder what he would think of my grief, but just as his life is not for me to try to comprehend, my grief does not belong to him. It is mine alone.

    And so the months pass, eight now. Soon it will be a year. Sometimes it feels as if he died only days ago, and I expect him to call and tell me I can come home — I’ve proven that I can live without him, so I don’t have to continue to do so. Sometimes it feels as if he’s been gone forever, that our life together wasn’t real, perhaps something I conjured up out of the depths of my loneliness. Sometimes my grief doesn’t even feel real, and I worry that I’ve created it out of a misguided need for self-importance. Such are the ways of grief, this strange and magical thinking. This could be magical thinking, too, but it seems to me that having survived eight months of grief, I can survive anything.

    ***

    Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

    Posted in culture, grief, writing. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , . 18 Comments »
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