Pat Bertram's Blog, page 114

Why is Writing Important?

[image error]I’ve been asked to give a brief talk to seventh graders about the importance of writing, which has led me to question if writing really is important. Luckily, the ceremony has been postponed for a week, which gives me plenty of time to come up with an appropriate answer.

Only a small percentage of writers have ever made a living at writing (and most of those were people who wrote books on how to make a living at writing), and that percentage seems to be shrinking. More than 80% of books sell fewer than 100 copies. Maybe 50% sell only about ten copies or so. So, why write? The wonder of writing fiction is that a story born in one mind grows to full power in another mind. But what if you don’t have readers, or at least not many? And why take the time to learn the craft since some of the books that do sell are poorly written tripe?

In the end, it’s the writing that counts. The story.

So much of communication for us humans is story telling. A joke is a story. What you tell about your day is a story. Something you post about yourself online is a story. An advertisement is a story — it tells a story of what your life will be like if you buy that product.

But writing isn’t only about story. It’s about us. About life.

Writing is a super power. What we write can change people, events, the world, and even ourselves.

Writing is the primary basis upon which our work is judged—in college, in the work place and in the community.

Writing is magic. At its core, writing is the ability to transform thoughts, ideas, and emotions into to written word, into something tangible.

When we talk of writing, we often mean writing stories, writing to entertain people. This sort of writing truly is magic since the story that is born in one mind grows to full power in another mind.

Writing, whether fiction, nonfiction, blogs, or social updates is about communicating. Writing helps us with communication and thinking skills. If we write well, we communicate well. If we communicate well, we can succeed.

Writing brings worlds to life and recalls them from ages long past.

Writing makes our thoughts, our learning, our memories permanent and visible to others.

Writing can preserve thoughts, emotions and ideas long after the writer has left this earth. Sometimes, other people’s writing is all we have to learn about previous eras.

Writing helps us develop our ideas and allows us to explain those ideas to others and to ourselves. Writing expresses who we are as individuals and as a people. Writing can help us understand our lives.

Writing is good for health. It helps relieve stress, improves our mood, and increases brain function. And since writing helps us understand our life, it improves our mental health and guides us through traumatic times.

Writing is a left-brained structured/regimented activity that can marry with right-brained images/insights/artistry and create something powerful and life-changing

Writing is at the center of everything we do. Language is part of our DNA. It is part of our birthright as human beings. Whenever we write, whatever we write — a story, a diary entry, a post on the internet, an essay, we are engaging in a form of wizardry using letters and words.

***

A special thanks to Rami Ungar and everyone else who contributed to this list.

***

[image error]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.

Giving a Talk to Seventh Graders

If you were giving a talk to seventh graders about writing, what would you focus on?

The historical museum sponsored an essay contest, and tomorrow night is the award ceremony. A woman from the museum will be talking about the historical aspect of the contest, and I have been invited to talk about the writing aspect.

One suggestion was for me to talk the importance of writing, and how it could lead to a writing career, but I so do not want to disillusion the poor kids before they find out that writing is a career for only a select few. For so many of us, writing is important in various ways, and though we would like to make a living at it, writing itself has to be the reward.

Another suggestion was to talk about how the grasp of writing is important in getting a job, but I don’t know if that’s still true. Is it? The world is changing so quickly that much of what used to be considered slang seems to be acceptable (like, duh). Now it’s anyone’s guess as to the place writing will have by the time these kids enter the job market.

If it were a group of adults, I could talk about the importance of writing (journaling) when one is going through a crisis, but I certainly can’t talk about how writing can help one deal with the loss of a spouse, and I certainly won’t give them nightmares by talking about writing in dealing with the possible loss of a parent.

I could talk about the importance of story, but “story” isn’t always about writing — it can be also be visual or spoken. (Or unspoken if one has ESP) Or I could talk about the importance of writing as communication, but again, there are other ways of communicating besides just writing.

The talk doesn’t have to be very long, but it needs to be fun, entertaining, and helpful. And something seventh graders can relate to. Eek. How did I get myself this situation? Oh, right — I agree to do it.

So, any suggestions for what should I say?

[image error]

***

[image error]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.

Overcoming Inertia

You’d think, after all these years of doing things by myself, I wouldn’t have a problem with motivating myself, but I do. Ever since Jeff died, I’ve tried to be more spontaneous, but sometimes I simply cannot overcome inertia to just . . . go.

The Union Pacific Big Boy steam engine passed within seventy-five miles of here, and I sort of wanted to see it. But the time for leaving came, and I didn’t go. Apparently, “sort of wanting” is not enough motivation. If I had really, really wanted to see it, I might have gone — after all, I did go searching (in vain) for tarantulas. But maybe not. My days of simply hopping into my car and taking off seem to be diminishing — not just because of no motivation, but because the thought of pulling the cover off my vintage Beetle and folding it up seems too much of a big deal. Also, because I’m not driving all the time, I tend to worry.

Luckily, I can walk most places around here and save driving for the days when the ritual of uncovering and recovering my car doesn’t seem so daunting or if I simply want to drive, worry or no. It might be easier to go somewhere on a whim when (if?) my garage is done, but I doubt it. I won’t have to uncover the car (though a neighbor car guy recommends still covering it), but I will have to unlock and open the garage door and gates, then get out of the car and close them once I’m on the street. Just the thought makes me weary! It’s not an immediate problem, though, since my contractor has disappeared on me again.

Now that it’s getting dark so early, my activities are a bit curtailed — I’m not used to walking in the dark around here, and to be honest, I’m not sure it’s all that safe of a place to be on foot at night — so I don’t attend evening events by myself.

Although all this makes it seem as if I don’t do much anymore, that’s not true. There are many scheduled events I attend during the day, such as the art guild meetings. The meetings are on my calendar, so there’s no need to overcome inertia — I just go. Other times, I hitch a ride with a friend. For example, there was a community dinner last night, and a friend invited me to go with her. It was a wonderful meal, a full turkey dinner, though it amused me — there I was in a Baptist church, eating dinner with my friend and the Presbyterian minister. Only in a small town . . .)

And that won’t be my only Thanksgiving dinner. The senior center will be hosting a potluck dinner for all of us strays. They will provide the turkey; we will provide everything else. (My contribution will be my own creation — a cranberry/apple compote.) Although Thanksgiving as a holiday doesn’t hold the emotional hazards for me that it does for many who have lost their mates, it’s nice knowing I’ll won’t be missing out on anything (except maybe the contention that sometimes come with family get-togethers).

The dinner is already scheduled and circled on my calendar. I’m committed to bringing the compote, It’s during the day. And I can walk. So there won’t be any inertia to overcome.

But it’s not exactly spontaneous, either.

[image error]

***

[image error]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.

More Adventures in Baking

Yesterday I mentioned my woes in translating a cookie recipe from grams to cups and such to use with an embossed rolling pin, and today I decided just to wing it. My guesses as to amounts was pretty accurate, though the cookies aren’t really sweet and crisp enough, and the rose pattern does seem to thin out a bit, though I have to admit, they photograph extremely well!

[image error]

My idea of painting the cookies before cooking worked, too.

[image error]

I used only a small part of the dough since I didn’t want to waste it if the cookies didn’t work out, so there is still plenty to experiment with. Maybe refrigerating the cut-out cookies longer to keep the indentation from thinning out? Maybe pressing harder on the rolling pin to make a deeper impression of the pattern? Maybe more butter to make them crisper?

[image error]

I’ll figure it out, but surprisingly, the cookies turned out great for a first attempt.

***

[image error]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.

Adventures in Baking

I’ve wanted an embossed rolling pin for years, ever since I first saw them advertised, but it seemed silly to get a utensil that would sit unused in a storage unit. Now I have a kitchen and reasons to make cookies (ah, those ubiquitous pot lucks!), so I ordered the rolling pin from the original makers in Poland since I didn’t want a cheap knock-off, and wouldn’t you know, the recipe that came with the rolling pin is in grams rather than cups.

I wasn’t worried since I have the internet to help me make the conversions. So no problem, right?

Wrong!

According the conversion charts, one cup is equal to 201.6 grams (or maybe 198.6, depending on the website).

And yet, according to those same sites, 200 grams of butter converts to 14.109585 tablespoons or approximately 7/8 of a cup.

150 grams of sugar converts to 3/4 of a cup. But wait! The recipe calls for powered sugar, which converts to 1.3 cups.

400 grams of flour is 3 1/4 cups, but not always. If you scoop a cup of flour, sometimes that cup is 120 grams and sometimes its as much as 180, depending not just on the type of flour, but on whether it’s sifted, how much it’s sifted, and how full you filled the cup. The preferred way of measuring flour in a cup to get a consistent number of grams is to use a small scoop or spoon, shake the flour into the cup and then level off with a knife. This should yield 150 grams of all-purpose flour. Now I’m really confused about how much flour I need to measure. 2 2/3 cups?

[image error]

As far as I know, an egg is an egg, and even though there are various sizes of eggs, apparently it makes no difference when it comes to cookies. At least I hope not. And a pinch of salt seems to be a pinch of salt in any measuring system.

The recipe calls for baking the cookies at 200 degrees. I presume that’s Celsius, since that temperature seems way to low to do anything but boil water (here at an elevation of 3,898 feet, water boils not at 212 degrees Fahrenheit but at 204.5 degrees.) 200 degrees Celcius converts to 392 degrees Fahrenheit. Is that even a possible oven temperature?

As if this weren’t bad enough, the recipe needs to be altered for high-altitude cooking, which means I need to decrease the butter by 2 to 4 tablespoons, decrease sugar by an unspecified amount, maybe add a tablespoon or two of liquid, increase flour by 1 to 2 tablespoons, increase baking time by 1 to 3 minutes, or perhaps decrease baking time by 1 to 2 minutes. Or maybe just increase the oven temperature by up to 25 degrees.

You think I’m making this up? Nope. Not even a smidgen (a smidgen equals .18 grams) of hyperbole.

But where does it leave me?

Looking for a good bakery!

***

[image error]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.

Actually

After I made a comment to a friend the other day, she said, as if to herself, “Actually.” Then she smiled, not derisively, but in delight.

“Did I say “actually” too many times?” I asked. “I actually do have a tendency to overuse the word.”

She responded, “No, I like it. It’s not a word you hear that often.”

Well, if you hang around me, you will actually hear “actually” a lot. Since I actually do overuse the word, I actually have to go through my manuscripts try to edit “actually” out of my work. (See List From Hell to see what other words I tend to overuse.)

I’d actually never realized I had an actual problem until I once played back a blog radio show where I’d been interviewed. And there it was . . . actually. Actually, there were a lot of “actually”s. I don’t remember how many times I said “actually” in that half-hour segment, but enough that by the time the program ended, I was actually appalled.

The next time I was on blog radio being interviewed, I was very careful with my “actually”s. For a while, I actually tried to censor my everyday speech, but somewhere along the way I actually forgot, so now I’ve reverted to overusing the word “actually. Actually, now that I think of it, I even forgot to de-actually my last couple of finished manuscripts.

I actually don’t know why I use the word so much. It could be from my need to always set the record straight, but I don’t know for sure, actually.

[image error]

***

[image error]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.

Fun Raiser

Yesterday the art guild had a wreath-making day just for fun. (Not a fundraiser as we usually do, but a fun raiser.)

The art guild president (who happens to be half of the couple I bought my house from) set out tools and supplies along with tubs of ribbons and ornaments all sorted by color, and let us rummage for whatever we fancied. Apparently, I was in a blue mood — or mode — because the tub of blue sure caught my attention.

Although I’ve done many different crafts, I’d never made a wreath before, so I followed her instructions as best as I could and ended up with a froth of blue.

[image error]

The color doesn’t match anything inside or outside my house — the outside trim is a completely different shade of blue — but I kept the wreath anyway. One day, if the foundation and floor of my garage are ever finished being fixed, I’ll be turning one wall into an art gallery for all the pictures and projects I’ve been collecting. Unlike most people, I prefer plain walls in my living quarters, and yet, the pictures and decorations deserve to be hung.

As if the wreath weren’t enough to satisfy my taste for blue yesterday, and since there was still time while the others finished their projects, I had to decorate a hat. (The folks around here call me Pat in the Hat for a reason!)

[image error]

So, the day was a success. We not only ended up with several wreaths (and one hat) but we did what we intended, and raised some fun.

***

[image error]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.

It’s All Small Stuff

Yesterday’s post, “It All Matters” was not supposed to be so much an explanation of why I blog about the things I do but rather an explanation of why small things are important (and important enough to blog about).

There is a saying, “Don’t sweat the small stuff. It’s all small stuff.” Believe me, it’s not all small stuff. Dying. Death. Grief. Loss. Love. Birth. These are all huge. You can’t choose not to “sweat” them, because they sweat you. So much of the accompanying emotional, mental, chemical and hormonal changes occur without your volition. They all work to propel you into a new way of being so that you can eventually handle those immense and intense life events.

When you are dealing with changes, especially traumatic changes, it’s the small things that keep you going. A cup of tea. A flower blooming in the desert. A smile from a stranger. A shadow. (After Jeff died, I so often walked with my head down to keep people from seeing the bleakness in my eyes, that I was very aware of shadow play.)

[image error]

Although I didn’t realize it at the time, there was something I once did that helped train me for grief. Jeff and I lived on a lane that was less than a third of a mile long. At one end was private property. At the other end a busy highway. To take a walk of any length, I had to walk up and down, up and down that lane. It was like a treadmill in that the scene never changed. It could have been horrendously boring, but I learned to look for the small things: a flower growing in the gravel, a reflection in the irrigation ditch water, a pretty weed. I also learned to look through the eye of a camera. Focusing on one of those small things (or even a big thing like the mountains in the distance) helped make that walk as interesting as a hike in the forest. (Well, maybe not that interesting, but it did keep me going.)

After Jeff died, what kept me going were the small things. What brought the world into focus was the eye of the camera. (I was too raw at the time to be able to see life as a whole. I had to break everything up into small, lens-size pieces.)

Conversely, it was also the small things that brought me low. One of the first upsurges of grief came when I broke a mug. The mug was unimportant but it was something gone from our shared life. One of the worst upsurges of grief came when I was blindsided by lilacs. Jeff had loved lilacs, and we had planted them all around the property where we lived. I’d never seen any lilacs in the desert I’d moved to after he died, but one day, shortly after the first anniversary of his death, the scent of a stray lilac bush in a vacant lot called to me, and I was once again awash in grief.

Mostly, though, focusing on the small things helped. I could not deal with the enormity of death, but I could focus on a dying leaf. I could not deal with the immenseness of learning to live without the one person who had made it all worthwhile, but I could focus on a budding flower. I could not embrace life quite yet, but I could focus on a hug or a smile; I could focus on a single bite of food or drink.

Grief is such a hard thing to deal with, but it does come with its lessons, and one such lesson is that in comparison to the immensity of loss, it’s all small stuff. And the small stuff really is important.

***

[image error]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.

It All Matters

[image error]Some people take exception to the things I blog about, whether apples or tea, grief or gardening, writing or planning murder mystery games for local fundraisers. But whatever blog theme I choose to develop, it’s all life, and life matters.

Life can’t consist solely of immense and intense moments, such as love, dying, grief. Life is what we do and how we feel on a daily basis. Life is what we find important enough to disclose. Life is deadly serious, but it is also whim and whimsey — fanciful impulses and ideas. And life is, for a writer, a constant source of blog topics.

It’s a challenge for me to blog every day. Once, everything that happened to me was important — the death of my soulmate made it so. But now the only things that are important are the things I choose to spend my time on — making a home for myself, developing friendships, seeing beauty in the arid earth around me (rather than going in search of more majestic scenery).

When it comes time to blog, I think about something I did or thought or learned that day, and I try to show why it’s important to me, why you might want to know about it. Most people don’t want to know and don’t care, and that’s okay.

Because I care.

I care enough to choose my words carefully, to try to interject a bit of wit or whimsey when appropriate. I care enough to treat each blog with respect even if the topic borders on the inane.

I care because it’s life, and everything that makes up our lives is important for no other reason than because it is our life.

I’ve always wanted to live a life that matters, to do something significant, to learn something vital, to see beyond the trivial to something cosmic, but I’ve come to realize that it is not us that makes life matter; it is life that makes us matter (both literally and figuratively).

When I was dealing with the most angst-ridded part of my grief — learning to live without the one person who made my life worth living — I took heart from the words posted on the blog “Leesis Ponders”:

Life matters.

The search for self that blends into all matters.

The way we act towards others matters.

It’s taken me a long time to truly believe her words, but now I know. Life does matter. Whatever is important to us at any given moment — life, death, grief, growth, homes, writing, apples, tea, the significant experiences and the insignificant concerns — it all matters. It’s all worth blogging about.

***

[image error]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.

I Am an Escribitionist

[image error]Escribitionists are those who blog about themselves, their experiences, and their reflections. It sounds like such a bad thing, connoting, as it does, exhibitionism, but it’s simply a way of distinguishing the diary-like bloggers from those who write from a more journalistic point of view.

The danger of being an escribitionist is that it leaves a blogger vulnerable, not just emotionally, but also physically. People have been known to retaliate offline for online disagreements and, more commonly, people with a felonious bent will take advantage of those bragging about being the Bahamas for a week. So not a good idea to advertise when your house will be vacant!

In the beginning, I was very careful not to say anything of a personal nature. I didn’t make my birthday known, where I went to school, where I lived. For a long time, I didn’t post photos of myself, and I protected my gender (some people were shocked when they found out I wasn’t who they thought). I even refrained from offering opinions about anything but writing and books (but even then, I sometimes got an argument from those who misunderstood what I was saying. See: “Ah, the Difference a Comma Makes!”)

I was especially careful during the years of Jeff’s illness, particularly the last few months when he was so bad off, not to write anything about my life. I was trying to establish myself as an author at the time, perhaps with a male pseudonym, and we both agreed a professional demeanor would be best. Besides, I felt it would be a betrayal of him to talk about what we were going through, and he was afraid I would seem pathetic.

After he died, though, all that care we had taken in laying the groundwork for my career as an author no longer mattered. I was in such terrible pain and so bewildered by what I was feeling (I’d never before encountered even a mention of the utter mental, physical, emotional, spiritual agony of profound grief), that my pain burst out of me. First I screamed my pain offline (I was pacing the house one day, feeling as if I needed to scream; when I realized no one could hear me, I just let the pain rip out of me). Then I spewed my pain onto this blog.

That’s when I discovered the adage “we all grieve differently” is wrong. Many people told me that they experienced the same thing that I did. We might show our emotions differently, but the pattern of grief for a spouse, life mate, or soul mate often follows the same timeline.

By the time my pain became manageable, I was in the habit of talking about my life, so I wrote about my experiences taking care of my nonagenarian father and my frustrations with my abusive homeless brother. I wrote about my travels (making sure always to post after the fact so that no one would know where I was at any given moment).

If I made a mistake and gave too much information, it didn’t matter because I was never in one place long enough for my indiscretion to catch up to me. But now that I am in my final home and not going anywhere, I can’t run away from the mistake of giving out too much information, though I fear it’s too late.

I do try to be careful, but any hope of anonymity (at least pertaining to geography) is long gone. Too many online friends have become offline friends. Too many offline friends have become online friends. Anyone who is paying attention can string together the crumbs of my life that I scatter online, and find me if they really wanted to, though why anyone would want to go through all that trouble, I don’t know.

Still, it is a concern. Unfortunately (fortunately?), it’s way to late to change my ways. If we writers are supposed to write about what we know, well, I know writing, grief, and me. Few people like to read posts about writing (they are either writers themselves who know it all already or non-writers who don’t want to know). I’ve said all I can possibly say about grief in my five hundred grief posts (https://bertramsblog.com/archives-grief-posts/) and my two books about grief: Grief: The Great Yearning and Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

So that leaves . . . me.

It’s always hard to admit the truth, but there’s no getting around it. For better or for worse, I am an escribitionist.

***

[image error]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.