Writing My Life

September 23, 2012 — Pat Bertram

I’m writing a short story for the Second Wind Publishing holiday anthology, and it just occurred to me that the main character is the first one I have created since the death of my life mate/soul mate who isn’t a grieving widow.

I started a novel a couple of years ago, wanting to capture what it felt like to lose a spouse while my feelings were fresh, but I haven’t finished the book. The pain that seeps into the story is too raw for me to handle yet, and besides, I still don’t know what the point of the story is. Is it primarily to show what it feels like to grieve? Is it primarily the mystery of why her minister husband would get out of his deathbed to kill a neighbor? Is it primarily the mystery of who she is now that she is no longer a minister’s wife? Is it a story of renewal, love, acceptance? Unless I figure it out, that poor widow is doomed to grieve forever in the pages of that unfinished manuscript.

The next piece of fiction I attempted was in Rubicon Ranch, a collaborative mystery series I’m writing online with other Second Wind authors. My character is Melanie Gray, a writer whose husband died in a car accident, but certain inconsistencies are showing up in the investigation, pointing to something other than an accident. Melanie’s attempts to come to terms with her life and to find the truth of his death are a couple of the unifying themes in the series, though they are not the focus of the stories.

The third piece of fiction I wrote was “The Willow,” a short story I did for Change is in the Wind, a previous Second Wind anthology. My character in that story is a woman who found renewal in the spring of her second year of grief.

My fourth project is a steampunk collaboration I am doing with several authors I met online. It should come as no surprise that my character is grieving woman. The deaths of her husband and his mother are the catalyst for the story, since her father-in-law goes back in time to try to save them. This sentence hints that maybe her grief (and mine) is waning: Flo stood motionless and stared at her husband. She wanted to run to him, to embrace him, but he looked different somehow. Unapproachable. There seemed to be a bit of flabbiness around his middle, a discontented tilt to his head, a defeated slump to his shoulders. What had happened to the radiant young man she remembered? Had her vision of him changed over the past year, become idealized? Or had she stopped seeing the truth of him even before he died?

In the story I am currently writing, the character’s boyfriend doesn’t die. He leaves her. She doesn’t go into paroxysms of grief, at least not much, but she does cut her hair in an entirely unconscious symbol of mourning (so biblical!). I had her lopping off her long tresses more out rebellion than out of sorrow, since he had always demanded that she didn’t change.

It is strange to see such a pattern show up in my writing. From stark grief, to sustained grief, to a semblance of peace, to seeing the deceased as not so perfect, to easing the focus on grief. Apparently, no matter what I write, I am somehow writing my life (though oddly, the characters are getting progressively younger).

I’ll be interested to see what I write next.

Posted in being me, life, writing. Tags: , , , , , , . 13 Comments »

What are You Going to Do With the Last 100 Days of the Year?

September 22, 2012 — Pat Bertram

Tomorrow begins the last one hundred days of the year. What are you going to do with those days? Will you finally get around to the New Year’s resolutions you made and promptly forgot? Are you going to slack off, giving yourself permission to take a break from the breakneck speed of your life? Are you going to get going on that novel you wanted to start, continue, finish, or edit? Are you going to make inroads in the pile of books on your nightstand, or finally read some of those ebooks you downloaded? Are you going attempt the photography project you always wanted to do? Are you going to make a commitment to blog every day?

That’s what I’m going to do — make a commitment to blog every day. I’ve been blogging every day for the past 364 days, and I intend to extend that commitment to the end of the year. (I’ll try to make the blogs interesting because posting something just to post something sort of negates the “challenge” part.) Feel free to join me! We can help each other, offering encouragement or topics when the will begins to wane.

Just to make things fun, I’m also going to give up sugar (and sweets of all kinds). I used to forego sugared products except for occasional splurges of chocolate, but after the death of my life mate/soul mate, I got on a sugar jag, eating all sorts of sweets I hadn’t eaten for years. When one is grieving, it always feels like three o’clock in the morning — your mental and physical defenses are down and your blood sugar feels as if it’s at a low ebb — so I got in the habit of treating myself. I stopped eating sugar and flour a couple of weeks ago, and I intend to continue doing so. (Sugar is a poison, screwing up the system, causing myriad problems, including weight gain. This has been known for many decades despite the front page news this morning that “new research offers the disturbing suggestion that regular consumption of high calorie sugared beverages may turn on genetic switches that incline our bodies to becoming fat.” Duh. Can you believe researches actually got grants for that? And artificial sweeteners are even worse — true poison! Besides, they make you crave sugar, and have been implicated in obesity, so I won’t be substituting artificial sweeteners for sugar.)

And a final challenge (the hardest of them all) — I’m going to stop obsessing over things I cannot change. When things happen that I have no control over, I tend to work them over and over in my mind, trying to make them come out right, but that only puts me on the treadmill of circular thinking. As I wrote once a long time ago (showing that I’ve always had this tendency):

it is real, yes
and it does exist
but that does not mean
i should have given it
so much of my reality

So, have I shamed you into taking a 100-day challenge?

Posted in blogging, culture, life. Tags: , , , , , . 11 Comments »

My 1000th Blog Post!!!!

September 21, 2012 — Pat Bertram

This is my 1000th blog post for this blog, and what do you know. I haven’t a thing to say. You’d think after writing 1000 articles on subjects that range from reading to writing, from being in grief to being in the moment, from social networking to socializing, I’d be able to come up with a few pithy words to celebrate the occasion,  but here I am, at a loss for ideas.

You’re probably curious how I managed to write all those articles — well, it took five years, one topic at a time, one word, at a time. You can see all the posts here: Archives — All My Posts.

Here are are a few of my favorite posts, though to be honest, a list of my favorites would include either my entire ouevre or merely the last one I wrote. I enjoyed writing all of them, and at the time of writing, each was my absolute favorite. Life changes, though, and so does perspective; what once seemed profound later seems merely mundane.

The Slang Game
Write Lofty and Carry a Big Chisel
How Often Has This Happened To You? (Close Encounters Of the Buffalo Kind)
What Kind of Blogger Are You?
Sports As Story
A Terrible Writing Accident
The Living Language of Dying
Pat Bertram And Lazarus Barnhill Discuss Writing as Destiny
Waiting For an April Time
Self-Editing — The List From Hell
Creatures of the Corn
On Writing: Looking Up
Free Exclamation Points for Everyone!!!
The Slamming of the Doors

These posts are all from my first couple of years of blogging. I don’t remember why I wrote some of them, such as The Slamming of the Doors, perhaps as a writing prompt. Others I had fun creating, such as my list of bloggers in What Kind of Blogger Are You? and my quiz The Slang Game, and I was disappointed at how few people ever saw the posts.

Thank you, everyone, who has read any of my posts or commented on them. It’s been a pleasure blogging with you.

Posted in blogging, internet, writing. Tags: , , , , . 10 Comments »

Using the Whole Sphere of my Being

September 20, 2012 — Pat Bertram

In a yoga class I took yesterday, the teacher made a comment that caught my attention. She said that we live in a personal sphere, the space taken up by outspread arms and legs. As we age and become more fearful of missteps, we shrink into the center of our spheres, shortening our stride, hunching into ourselves.

Even if we’re not to the point where age is making us shrink into that sphere, our sedentary ways certainly do. Here I am sitting at a computer, taking up very little space, making tiny movements of fingers, eyes, head. Not exactly using the whole sphere of my being, am I? So I paused, stretched out my arms, and suddenly I’m not so hunched into my space any more, and I feel a tad more alert.

Grief has the effect of drawing us away from the outer limits of that sphere, too. Life has dealt us the worst blow of all when it removes the one person who connects us to the world, and we shrink from additional punches.

As my grief has waned, I have tried to open myself up to the world, going out to the desert, flinging my arms wide, taking deep breaths, but until now, I’ve never paid any attention to my personal sphere. A beautiful image, isn’t it? Living in our own sphere, on the sphere of the earth, in the sphere of our solar system, on the edge of the sphere of our galaxy. Okay, so the galaxy isn’t a sphere, but still, it’s an interesting concept, all these spheres within spheres.

It doesn’t take any training to live more fully within one’s sphere. All we have to do is unfold our arms, raise our ribcage, lift our head, roll back our shoulders, take longer strides. I tried taking longer strides today while out walking, and it felt good for the first twenty minutes or so, and then — ouch, ouch, ouch. I could feel the painful stretch of my inner thighs. Apparently, without my even being aware of it, I’ve been taking smaller and smaller steps.

I will keep at it and see where this awareness of my personal sphere takes me. Perhaps it will help me live more expansively, maybe even help me think more expansively. At the very least, using more of my personal space will help my posture, and that in itself is not a bad thing.

Posted in being me, grief, life. Tags: , , , , . 10 Comments »

There is No Journey Through Grief

September 19, 2012 — Pat Bertram

People often talk of the journey through grief. (I myself have iterated this adage.) During the past few months as my grief is waning, I’ve come to see that there is no separate journey through grief. There is only the journey through life. Grief accompanies us part of the way, maybe even most of the way, though not always with the intensity of new grief. Grief, in fact, has driven me through the steep rocky path of my life during the past few years, first a numbing grief at my life mate/soul mate’s dying, and then later, a soul-shattering grief at his death.

Like many bereft, I was not always sure I want to continue living, but I wasn’t particularly ready for death, either, so I did the only thing I could do — continue my journey, taking each day as it comes, trying new things, finding comfort in knowing that nothing lasts forever.

By sheer waves of happenstance, I’ve been temporarily beached in a residential area that borders the desert. (If you have been following the Second Wind online collaboration called Rubicon Ranch, you will be familiar with this community, though so far, unlike my hapless alter ego, widow Melanie Gray, I have not yet stumbled upon body parts out in the desert.)

Someday, those waves of chance might sweep me into other climes, so I am making sure I use this opportunity to get to know my desert self. There are few frills in the desert, no vibrant colors or showy flowers (though brilliant cactus flowers do bloom in the spring). There are just stark hills, creosote bushes, hard-packed sandy soil. The bleak landscape suited me when I first came here, sodden with tears and steeped in pain, and it suits me still. There is peace in starkness — no particular sight rivets my attention, no exotic sounds or aromas tantalize my senses. There’s just me, the hills, the air I breathe.

Other waves of happenstance landed me in a yoga class. The teacher has a different approach, focusing not on the forms so much as breathing and being. That, too suits me.

I’ve added a few of those exercises to my morning perambulations. I stand out in the desert, away from the things of humankind, open my arms and breathe in the desert. In that moment, I am happy. There are no shadows of grief, no sad memories or niggling fears. There’s just me, believing I am where I am supposed to be.

Posted in being me, grief, life. Tags: , , , , , . 12 Comments »

Why the Struggle to Write?

September 18, 2012 — Pat Bertram

While checking my Facebook feed yesterday, which is mostly comprised of updates by other authors, it struck me how many of them are struggling with writing. They are struggling to find the time to write. They are struggling to reach word-count goals. They are struggling to overcome writer’s block. So much struggling!

One writer posted an article about how to find the time to write, and the post had such a drill sergeant approach that it appalled me. The point of the article was that we must find time to write every day, and to do so we might have to sacrifice an outing with a friend, a trip to the movies, and other such “treats.”

Why? What is so important about writing that we need to forego time with family and friends in order to string a few words together? Truly, it is an unimportant skill. It can’t comfort a crying baby, can’t smile at a friend, can’t add another minute to a dying man’s life. It’s an inherently selfish activity since it’s about communing with ourselves. It’s also an unhealthy activity because we sit with limited motion for hours at a stretch. The hope is that ultimately others will read and understand what we write (and so understand us), and perhaps even allow us to make a living from our efforts, but still, writing is communication at one reserve. We are not sitting conversing with a loved one, and to supplant such a real conversation in the now with one in our heads seems a paltry trade.

Of course, if you have a contract that must be fulfilled, that is one thing, but if you are merely writing to satisfy yourself (and if you’re not, what’s the point of writing?) that is something completely different.

I can hear you now. “But I have to write!” If writing fulfills a need, then you don’t need to be urged to write — you are already doing it. If you have to write but don’t, then obviously, you don’t have to write. The world is not coming to an end because you are not writing. It hums along just fine without your words.

Many people do feel more in tune with themselves when writing, and why not? It’s therapeutic to let all the built-up words and pent-up emotions flow out of your head, just as blowing out a deep breath lets pent-up stress flow out of your body. And yet, for some people, such as mothers with small children and a demanding outside job, there simply is no time. To make such writers feel as if they are doing something wrong by not writing every day is unconscionable. For other people, such as those caring for a dying spouse or an aged parent, they might have the physical time but not the mental time — they might not be able to let themselves get immersed in their writing since their inattention could have disastrous results.

Nowadays, books aren’t even a physical thing — they are merely stray electrons temporarily held together by creative energy. So why the struggle to write? I truly don’t know. It seems simple to me: write, or don’t write.

For me, writing is a tool I use to help me make sense of life. It’s a means of being creative, a way of being playful, even, but writing is not life. Living is what’s important. If I don’t live, sense, experience, there’s nothing to write about. When I don’t feel like writing, I don’t struggle to overcome that feeling, and I certainly don’t let drill sergeant tactics make me feel bad about not writing every day. I know the truth: it’s not how much you write that makes you a writer, but what you say.

So I go with the flow, being me, living each day as it comes, and eventually, when the time is right, when I have something to say, I simply start writing.

Posted in being me, life, writing. Tags: , , , , . 19 Comments »

Who gave you the best writing advice you ever received and what was it?

September 17, 2012 — Pat Bertram

The best writing advice I ever received I read in an old book called The Practical Stylist by Sheridan Baker: “Clarity is the first aim; economy the second; grace the third; dignity the fourth. Our writing should be a little strange, a little out of the ordinary, a little beautiful with words and phrases not met everyday, but seeming as right and natural as grass.”

Isn’t that beautiful? I paid particular attention to that advice when writing Light Bringer. I wanted the style itself to show that the characters were a little strange, a little out of the ordinary, a little beautiful. For example, “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.”

Here are some responses from other authors about how the best writing advice they ever received. The comments are taken from interviews posted at Pat Bertram Introduces . . .

From an interview with Sheila Deeth, Author of “Flower Child”

I met Jane Kirkpatrick shortly after we moved to Oregon. She told me to keep writing. In fact, she’s told me several times to keep writing. It’s probably the most valuable piece of advice I’ve had.

From an interview with Eric Wasserman, Author of Celluloid Strangers

Frederick Reiken’s literature course on the short story was my very first graduate school class. The very first thing he said to all of us was, “If you’re not willing to submerge yourself in the world of reading fiction, give up now on being a serious writer of fiction.” I wrote this down the moment he said it, went back to my dingy Boston studio apartment that evening, and taped it across the screen of my TV.

From an interview with Sandra Shwayder Sanchez, Author of “The Nun”

The best advice I ever received was from J.R. Salamanca (Lilith, A Sea Change, Embarkation, Southern Light and more) who said the permanence of the written word has more influence on readers than spoken words and to take that influence seriously and try to create a good influence and that is the advice I would give aspiring writers.

What about you? Who gave you the best writing advice you ever received, and what was it?

(If you’d like me to interview you, please check out my author questionnaire http://patbertram.wordpress.com/author-questionnaire/ and follow the instruction.)

Posted in books, How to, writing. Tags: , , , , , , . 18 Comments »

Yet Another Saturday, My Sadder Day

September 16, 2012 — Pat Bertram

Yesterday was Saturday, my sadder day. The love of my life died one Saturday almost two and a half years ago, and I have not yet managed to get completely over it. You don’t ever get over such a grievous loss, of course, but you can come to an accommodation with the absence, develop a new focus, perhaps even find happiness. It just takes a very long time — three to five years, or so I’ve been told. I’m doing well, all things considered, but I still struggle to find my way.

I loved him with all my being, and I continue to love him. My love for him has no outlet — I can no longer do anything for him or with him — so his share of my love fills my heart like a pool of unshed tears. I try to use that love to propel me into my future, knowing he wouldn’t want me to be sad for him, but the truth is, he has no say in the matter. (I don’t always a have a say, either — grief comes and goes as it pleases, following a timetable I seldom understand.) He’s gone, and that goneness continues to shadow my life. I feel his absence like an itch deep in my soul. I feel it in the world around me, in the very air I breathe. I’m practicing being part of the world, planting my feet on the ground, feeling connected to my self and my surroundings. Still, the world feels alien with him not in it.

I’ve come a long way from the shattered woman who screamed her pain to the uncaring winds. I’ve made new friends, seen amazing sites, tried different activities, sampled exotic foods, wrote hundreds of blogs, walked more than a thousand miles. I’ve done the best I can to life fully, but the truth is, I’m tired. I’m tired of his being dead, tired of having to put a positive slant on a situation that has no upside, tired of trying to live whole-heartedly with half a heart. Just . . . tired.

I’m not young anymore, but I’m not old, either. Sometimes the future yawns before me like a bleak and empty landscape. Most times, of course, I can look to the future with hope, though I probably will always be saddened and bewildered by his goneness, especially on Saturday, my sadder day.

Posted in being me, grief, life. Tags: , , , , , , . 16 Comments »

A Place Where I Can Connect With Myself And The Mystical World

September 15, 2012 — Pat Bertram

It’s amazing we ever manage to communicate with each other, considering that different words mean different things to different people. We do have common ground, though, so perhaps that keeps us connected. We know basically what words mean, such as “desert,” “reading,” “writing,” but we also imbue the words with our own connotations, and that’s where it gets interesting.

For most people around where I am staying, “desert” means a place of rattlers, a place to ride dirt bikes, ATVs, and other noisemaking machines, a place to honk their dogs. (That’s what I call it anyway. They let their dogs run free and drive behind them, honking to keep the animal from straying too far.). But for me, “desert” means a place away from the bustle of everyday life, a place where i can connect with myself and the mystical world around me, a place where I get in touch with the truth inside me (the truth that resides in all of us.) Even those who do see the desert as a place away from every day life, see it as a place to run, all the while connected to an ipod or whatever is connected to those wires coming out of their ears.

For most people, “reading,” fiction, in particular, means entertainment, a way to kill a few hours, an indulgence in fantasy. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course — it makes people happy and fuels the book industry — it’s just not what reading means to me. For me, “reading” means a place away from the bustle of every day life, a place where I can connect with myself and the mystical world of books, and get in touch with the truth inside me. It came as a real shock when I discovered that’s not what reading means to others. It’s often true that people see reading as a place away from the bustle of every day life, but for most people it’s an escape from themselves, not an escape into themselves.

Writers each have their own meaning for the word “writing.” Most often it’s the same as reading — to entertain, to communicate with readers. Sometimes they don’t know what it means to them, except that it fulfills a need. Occasionally, it means a way of making money. It should come as no surprise that writing, for me, means a place away from the bustle of every day life, a place where I can connect with myself and the mystical world of my own story, and get in touch with the truth inside me. Writing bloggeries, such as this one, helps me figure out what I think, but writing fiction puts a “face” on what is inside me, creating a metaphor or a parable for my thoughts and experiences.

I’ve never been one to count words since the number of words don’t count. What counts is what the words say, what they mean. I’ve never been one to inform others of how my writing is going since the writing is for me. Once the book or bloggerie is published, however, it becomes something else, not something that was written so much as something to be read. Does that make sense? I might have walked too long in the desert this morning, and brought some of its mysticism back with me.

Posted in books, fiction, life, writing. Tags: , , , , , . 4 Comments »

Using Twitter the Wrong Way

September 14, 2012 — Pat Bertram

People tell me I tweet wrong. I use Twitter.com like a bulletin board, mostly posting links to my blogs, sometimes retweeting my publisher’s book links, and occasionally posting links to samples of my books. All that is considered spam, though what I post is closer to ham than spam — it has a bit of meat to it. But of course, it’s all in how you look at it. (Are unwanted posts really spam, though? When you are spammed in your email, you often have no recourse, but if someone posts things you are not interested in at a social networking site, you can unfollow or unfriend.)

Most people seem to post the same sort of things I do, though some are heavy on quotes, some are heavy on retweeting, and others push their agendas (and books) incessantly, posting every few minutes. Yikes.

I once participated in a reciprocal promotion where each of us authors agreed to tweet everyone else’s book links several times a day every day for two weeks. Now that embarrassed me. I felt like a shill, particularly since I had no interest in the books. Still, I try to follow through on my promises, so I tweeted and tweeted and tweeted until I discovered that most of the others weren’t doing anything at all. That was the last time I ever did anything of the sort.

I’ve tried to do different things on Twitter, commenting on other people’s posts, joining in on discussions or starting discussions of my own, but I don’t see the fun in it, especially since few people ever respond. Those who do respond generally know me from Facebook, so it seems a duplication of effort.

So, if I’m using Twitter the wrong way, what is the right way? According to Twitter help, they are an information network, and “reading Tweets and discovering new information whenever you check in on your Twitter timeline is where you’ll find the most value on Twitter. Some people find it useful to contribute their own Tweets, but the real magic of Twitter lies in absorbing real-time information that matters to you.” They also suggest that you retweet and reply to other people’s tweets rather than tweet your own, especially those of celebrities you admire.

Truth be told, I often unfollow those who use Twitter “correctly.” I have no interest in “news” in 140 characters. For all the talk about grassroots news and news from the people themselves, most of the news articles that get retweeted into virality originate from the major media.

I also have no interest in celebrities, in pithy sayings, or one-liners. And I certainly am not interested in following private conversations. (Some people use twitter to keep in touch with their friends and families rather than text. Reading those texts makes me feel as if I am at a party where I know no one and no one knows me. Do people have no sense of privacy anymore?)

Hmm. Doesn’t leave much, does it?

I guess I’ll continue to use Twitter wrongly. After all, if anyone doesn’t like what I tweet, they are free to unfollow.

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