Pat Bertram's Blog, page 261

Writing as a Metaphor for Life

I love to talk about the elements of storytelling and the mechanics of writing even though I seldom write fiction any more. For me, writing is a metaphor for life. People don’t seem to want to talk about the philosophical aspects of human motivations or the meaning of life, but if I phrase these questions as part of a discussion about fiction, writers are more than willing to share their ideas.

I’ve had online discussions about the importance of feeling important, about our self-concept and how it motivates us, about how we are only as good as that which angers us, how kindness can drive our lives, how our family and our background creates us, what we win by losing and what we lose by winning. Outwardly, all these discussions were about creating believable characters so real they come alive, but beneath the discussions of characters and place and background, we were talking about us. What gives us worth. What makes us real. What life means.

Life, like writing, is all about connections. Writing coaches often describe a story and its conflicts as war, but a different way of looking at story conflict is connection and disconnection. Like our characters, we relate to other human beings in a constantly changing series of connection and disconnection — from birth to death, from falling in love to grieving, from listening to ignoring, from embracing to turning away, from anger to forgiveness.

Life, like writing, is about learning, perfecting one’s craft, whether breathing life into words or simply breathing life.

Life, like writing, is a puzzle. We follow our story however and wherever it leads us, trying to fit all the pieces into a coherent whole. In writing, we must find the coherency. In life, sometimes coherency eludes us, yet we still puzzle it out the best we can.

Someday, perhaps, I’ll get back to writing fiction. In that case, I’ll probably stop talking about writing. Or maybe it works the other way around. If I stopped talking about writing, maybe I could write.

Tagged: character change, conflict, human motivations, talking about wriitng, writing and life

Do Readers Have an Obligation to Writers?

In a current writing discussion on Facebook, authors are trying to figure out why so few readers leave reviews of books, even books the readers loved. This expectation of reviews seems just another example of the upside-down book world that exists today. Writers have come to feel that because they publish a book and make it available for people to read that readers have an obligation to them, but readers have no obligations to writers.

Writers have obligations to readers, and they often fail to honor those obligations. Writers have an obligation to make sure what they write is readable and free of error. They have an obligation to present a finished product, one that has been edited and presented in the best possible manner. And they have an obligation to fulfill the promise of the book. If a story starts out strong, tantalizing readers with a wonderful premise, the author has an obligation to fulfill the implied promise of an equally dazzling ending, but so often books simply fizzle at the end, as if the writer ran out of ideas. (Many big name writers do this, yet people still continue to buy their books. Maybe they keep hoping that one day the ending will be spectacular? I’ve given up hope, and no longer read books by these authors, but considering their continued success, I can see I am a very small minority.)

Writers ask readers for their money, for their time, for their suspension of belief. Even if the book is a free download or a library checkout, authors are still asking for time, and time is worth more than money these days. So why should readers be obligated to pay for the book — again — with a review?

Not only do many writers expect reviews, they expect readers to critique their books, to tell them what works and what doesn’t. This is one of the many ridiculous results of the current anyone-can-publish-anything world — people do publish anything. They publish first drafts as if the drafts were finished books and expect readers to tell them what works and what doesn’t. It is not the readers’ obligation to help writers hone their craft — it is the writer’s responsibility to present an already honed product. (Writers have actually told me they publish their book to get feedback. And they charge readers for the privilege. There is something dreadfully wrong about knowingly publishing a first draft and selling it as a finished book.)

It’s amazing to me not that so few readers follow through with reviews, but that so many do. I am grateful for every review I have received, and I am thrilled every time someone tells me they love my books either via email or through a review left on Amazon or Goodreads, but I don’t expect it. I know readers have no obligations to me as a writer, just as I have no obligation to the writers of the books I read.

Tagged: are readers obligated to write reviews, book reviews, fulfilling the premise of a book, why write a review, writers' obligations

A Kinder, Gentler Grief

A few days ago, I posted an article on this blog saying that a story begins when the world becomes unbalanced. If this is also true in real life, then my story began when my life mate/soul mate died. Nothing else I have ever experienced unbalanced my world the way his death did. It rocked me to my very core, and I am just now recovering a sense of equilibrium.

In a story, as the character strives to restore the balance, matters get worse. That usually happens in the case of grief, too (though generally not because of anything the bereft did — it’s simply the way life is). In some cases, the bereft had to move soon after the funeral, sending them further into grief. In other cases, more losses followed, leaving the bereft feeling as if they were drowning in death. Sometimes nothing happened, which at times is even worse, since it leaves the bereft alone in a limbo of sorrow.

I am on my way to finding a new balance, but I am not there yet. I still have upsurges of grief, though for the most part the surges are gentler and easier to handle. A few nostalgic tears, a brief indulgence remembering, an acknowledgement that I miss him and want to go home, then I go on with my life.

My most recent upsurge began on Saturday, always a sad day, and culminated in a walk in the desert. I haven’t called out to him in a long time, though I still talk to him, but today, I desperately needed to feel some sort of connection, so I yelled, “Can you hear me?” He didn’t answer, at least not in any way I understood.

I’m not sure how one finds a new balance after such a devastating imbalance as losing a life mate. Perhaps it’s a matter of making additional changes, the way small controlled fires can help put out major fires. Maybe it’s a matter of continuing to take one step at a time and waiting until the world rights itself. Or it could be a matter of being present, of being in one’s body, of simply being.

I’ve had to make changes, of course — I had to leave our shared home so I could look after my father — and I will be making other changes when this part of my life comes to an end. Meanwhile, I am trying to take life one step at a time, to capture each moment as it comes, to be present in my life, to be. In a story of course, such passive actions don’t create a compelling plot, but in real life, sometimes “being” is the best we can expect at any given moment.

And anyway, my story hasn’t ended yet. In some respects, it feels as if this new story hasn’t even begun, as if I’m still in the first chapter, sorting out the imbalance.

Tagged: continued grief, grief and loss, making changes, restoring the balance after grief, world becomes unbalanced

Don’t Get in a Lather

I got an email from my brother yesterday with “My Pride and Joy” in the subject line. I wondered if perhaps he finally got the dog he wanted, or even a new car, but this is what he sent:

He sent the same photo to a friend in London, and his friend paid him back with this photo of Bolt near the finish:

A fab idea dawned on me — I could play the game, too, and send him a photo to pledge good cheer. The thrill wasn’t there, though, and it would gain me nothing at all. The idea didn’t seem bold enough or have the right tone, and anyway, it might cause a cascade of suds as a payback. Still, someday or some era I might. Perhaps when the tide comes in.

Tagged: Bolt near the finish, pride and joy, puns, the joy of puns

Murder in the Wind

Murder in the Wind is an anthology of crime/mystery short stories contributed by the authors of Second Wind Publishing. Murder, mayhem and the unexpected are rife in each riveting story.

I’m a bit biased, but my favorite story is “The Stygian Night” by . . . drum roll . . . me! As a reviewer said, “In this delicious little story by the master of misdirection, Pat Bertram so draws us into the fantasy life of would-be author Silas Slovatksy that we scarcely recognize a “real” story unfolding in the background.” Poor Silas, he wants so much to be an author, but he just doesn’t get it.

The anthology is on sale for only $0.99 this month. Click here and use coupon code FR82G when purchasing. Not only will you be able to read “The Stygian Night,”  you will save $3.00!

***

Excerpt from “The Stygian Night”:

It was a dark and stormy night.

Silas Slovotsky leaned back in his chair and studied the words he’d typed into his computer.

He grinned. Perfect. The very words he needed to set the scene. And they had the added benefit of being true. It was a dark and stormy night. Except for his porch light, of course. And the thunder and lightning—

He leaned forward and peered at the computer screen. Did the sentence seem a bit trite? Maybe he needed to spiffy it up. He opened his thesaurus to the word “dark” and ran a finger down the page. “Stygian”. That might work.

He cleared his computer screen and typed: It was a stygian night.

Nope. Didn’t have the euphoniousness of the original sentence. Perhaps if he reread what he’d already written he could figure out how to proceed.

He printed out the manuscript he’d been working on for the past four months and read the single page. Dark as Night by Jack Kemp.

A thrill ran up his spine. He could see it on the shelf in the bookstore. Kemp, King, Koontz. He’d chosen his pseudonym specifically so the reviewers could call them the unhallowed trinity. And he deserved the accolade.

A knock on the door startled him out of his dream.

Who could that be? His friends—all two of them—knew he didn’t like to be disturbed when he was writing.

***

A few of the other stories included in the anthology are:

 “A Whiff of Murder” by Lazarus Barnhill: Barnhill reintroduces a pivotal character from The Medicine People. Old, wiser, sober and cynical, Bob Vessey hasn’t lost his touch in examining crime scene evidence.

“Hanging Around” by J J Dare: This marvelous tale begins playfully with squirrels sporting around a human body, hung seventy feet off the ground and quickly suspends the reader.

“This Time” by Claire Collins: A swiftly moving, smoothly written love story that turns into serial murder and mayhem. Well, all’s fair in love and revenge.

“The Strange Disappearance of Comrade Wang” by Mickey Hoffman: Becka, an innocent and vulnerable girl, finds herself at the mercy of the authorities in a strange and hostile place.

“Murder at the Manor” by Juliet Waldron: To read Waldron’s work is to be not transported but immersed in different, distant times and places. We genuinely regret it when her story ends.

“The Spot” by Deborah J Ledford: The Spot is just what Ledford hits in this awesome little tale of revenge, remorse and restoration.

Tagged: Anthology, It was a dark and stormy night, Murder in the Wind, Second Wind Publishing, The Stygian Night

My Knights in Denim

I had rather an interesting experience yesterday. The accelerator cable broke just as I drove out of a parking lot with a car full of groceries. Within minutes, two young men who did know each other simultaneously stopped to help. They pushed my car into a parking space (the car did not want to go in straight, but went in at an angle, which turned out to be the optimal placement for the tow truck). One of the men watched my car while the other took me and my groceries home and then brought me back to wait for the tow truck. Both of them left to finish their errands, then returned later to see make sure I was okay. Such chivalry! My knights in denim.

What could have been a disaster turned out to be a rather fun and entertaining day. (It was the first time I ever used my cell phone for an emergency. It was also the first time I ever used my insurance company’s new roadside service, which actually turned out to be easy and effective. Amazing.) And I enjoyed talking to the two fellows, neither of whom I would ever have met in the normal course of my life.

I’m not sure what if anything I learned from the experience except to relearn what I already knew — it’s nice when things work out, but if they don’t, it’s an adventure. Of course, even considering the broken cable, everything did work out. The breakdown could just as easily have become a real horror, but except for the groceries, I wasn’t worried. (And even the groceries weren’t much of a problem. I could have returned them and walked home.) I have no real reason to be one place other than another, and after dealing with death of my life mate/soul mate and the ensuing grief, I really do believe I can deal with anything.

This bodes well for my future travel plans. If things go as I intend, the trips will be nice, but if things go wrong, well . . . adventure awaits.

(This experience might turn into a story someday. My chauffeur looked a bit like one of my brothers and sounded exactly like him. Even had the same laugh. Sounds to me like a great jumping off place for a “what if.”)

Tagged: adventure, car emergency, story idea, what if

I’ve Been Freshly Pressed and You Can Be, Too

On Monday, I got an email from WordPress:

Hi there Pat Bertram,

Congrats! We’ve picked your post ( http://ptbertram.wordpress.com/2012/08/13/a-perfect-grasp-of-storytelling/ ) to appear on Freshly Pressed on the WordPress home page.

We really enjoyed your well-written, sharp, and succinct take on perfect characters, unbalanced worlds, and good storytelling in general, and we know the rest of the WordPress community will too. Your post will appear on the site in the next day or two, so get ready to welcome your new readers.

Once your post goes live, shout it from the rooftops! Tell your family, friends, and readers to check out the WordPress home page, and share the good news with your social networks (we’ll do the same).

Most importantly, keep up the great work. To boost your blogging prowess even more, check out “So You Want To Be Freshly Pressed” ( http://en.support.wordpress.com/freshly-pressed/ ) for tips on everything from enhancing your theme to becoming a grammar guru, and visit The Daily Post ( http://dailypost.wordpress.com/ ) for pro tips, blogging challenges and more.

Thanks for making the internet a more interesting place!

***

The post appeared on Tuesday evening. This was the third time I’ve been Freshly Pressed. The other two articles that made the WordPress front page were I Am a Three-Month Grief Survivor and I Am a Six-Month Grief Survivor.

All three times, the honor came as a surprise, but the truth is, I had prepared for such an eventuality by following the guidelines in “So You Want To Be Freshly Pressed.” Until I read that article, I’d never used photos in my posts. I’d also over-tagged and over-categorized (though that doesn’t seem to be something they care so much about now). On the off chance that the WordPress editors would notice my little corner of the blogosphere, I cut down to no more than ten tags and categories combined, and I started adding an image to my posts. (That became an art in itself, taking the perfect photo to accompany my words.)

I’ve always aimed for typo-free text and eye-catching headlines, but I don’t always have a strong point of view. (I don’t much like contention.) Apparently, though, I’ve managed to strike the right chord with the WordPress editors three times, and you can, too. Just keep blogging. If you write it, they will come.

Tagged: adding photos to blog posts, freshly pressed, perfect characters, tags, unbalanced worlds, WordPress

The Denizens of Route 66

In previous posts, I talked about the Route 66 festival I attended this past weekend, but I didn’t really talk about the people I saw except for a brief mention of the beauty pageant entrants.  And I saw a wide variety of folks.

Some came alone and acted very strange, as if they were alien residents from another planet, but that is typical of the high desert, or so I’ve been told.

Others came in groups, such as the red hat ladies. I wonder what Jenny Joseph thinks of that society. She is the author of the poem “Warning” (When I am an old woman I shall wear purple/With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me) which inspired the group. A society of women who all dress alike seems the antithesis of the spirit of the poem, which extols the virtue of shucking convention and striving for personal eccentricity. But then, I’ve never been a joiner and don’t much see the point of dressing like everyone else. (I’ve never owned a pair of jeans, so that tells you more about me than you would ever wish to know.) Still, it was interesting seeing a whole slew of purple-pant-suited women in red hats. Added a bit of color to the otherwise drab room.

I met a few writers, though that is nothing new — writers seem to be everywhere, especially writers who are looking for a publisher though they have not written a single word. It’s a good thing not many people showed up, otherwise you’d probably have heard my screams resounding around the word if I had to listen to one more stale and trite plot. (This is the real reason would-be writers are cautioned to read. If they’d been readers, they would know how typical their “brilliant” idea is.)

I sound a bit caustic, don’t I? Being around people does that to me. I did meet a few intriguing people — a couple of artists and a woman who reads Agatha Christie in Chinese for the fun and challenge of it. (I hope she doesn’t get upset with my revealing that, but she was such a fascinating woman, I’d hate to leave off any mention of her.)

One artist (Pete Morris) and I had a delightful conversation about truth in art and writing. He believes that if there is no truth, you have a pretty picture, but not art. The truth may be in the eye of the beholder, the truth might be the artist’s personal truth, or the truth might be a different perspective on a common theme, but there needs to be truth. It’s this lack of truth that bothers me so much about books today. Writers insist they write to entertain, which is fine, but I don’t read to be entertained. I read for truth — the writer’s truth, a different perspective on my truth, or some other facet of truth. I used to find truth even in genre fiction, though now I don’t see much even in literary fiction. (But maybe that’s more because of the vast numbers of books I’ve read than an actual dearth of truth in novels.)

A friend came to keep me company on Saturday, which made the day go by fast, and Pete painted a picture of us. I don’t know what’s the truth of the painting, but the artist did it to preserve a good memory. (Later, he kindly offered the picture to me, but I am not one to have pictures of myself hanging on the wall, so I asked if I could take a photo instead. That way we were both happy.)

Here is the painting Pete did of me. I was so oblivious, I didn’t even know he did it until he showed it to me. If you’d like to see more of Pete Morris’s work, you can see a whole gallery of paintings on his website. (Click here and use the gallery controller to the left of the images to see his pictures.)

Tagged: artists, Pete Morris, Red Hat Ladies, Route 66, truth in art, truth in writing

A Perfect Grasp of Storytelling

I don’t know who started the whole “characters need flaws” concept of writing, but whoever it was did a disservice to the writing industry. People keep saying that perfect characters are boring, but the way I see it, there are no perfect characters, only writers with an imperfect grasp of storytelling.

A story begins when the normal world becomes unbalanced. In A Spark of Heavenly Fire, the normal world of Colorado became unbalanced when a deadly disease decimated the population. In More Deaths Than One, the normal world of the main character became unbalanced when he found out the mother he buried twenty years before is dead again. In Daughter Am I, the world of the main character became unbalanced when she learned that the grandparents she’d been told had died before she was born had just now been murdered. In Light Bringer, the world becomes unbalanced in a variety of ways, each POV character experiences his or her imbalance, and the nearing of an unknown planet literally unbalances the earth.

A story continues with the characters’ efforts to restore the balance. These efforts result in a worsening of the balance, either in a ripple effect of actions, such as when Jeremy King decided to do anything he could to leave Colorado in A Spark or Heavenly Fire or when everything the character learns deepens the mystery, such as Bob Stark’s search for himself in More Deaths Than One.

A story ends when the balance is restored, a new balance is attained, or the world remains out of kilter. My books all fall in the middle category — things never go back to where they were, but the characters and their world do establish a new balance.

Without this unbalance, there is no story, and within this unbalance, characters change.

Which brings me to the point I want to make about perfect character vs. imperfect understanding of storytelling.

If you create a perfect character — a gorgeous woman with a stunning figure, perfect hair, smart, successful, athletic, kind, talented, knows how to do everything, has no addictions — that is merely the beginning. It is what authors do with such a flawless character that shows their writing skills. For example, if the character always remains the same perfect character in balance with her world, it is not the character’s fault that her perfection is boring. It is the writer’s fault for not unbalancing the character’s world.

A gorgeous, intelligent woman who can do anything is only spectacular in the presence of lesser beings. What happens if she is thrown into a world of people exactly like her? What would she do to preserve her self-image of being extraordinary when all of a sudden she is ordinary? How would she reestablish the balance in her world? For example, a high school cheerleader/student body president/valedictorian goes to an ivy league university and discovers she is just one of many such achievers. Or a stunning and talented young woman enters a beauty pageant, expecting to win the crown and scholarship and a boost to her career, and finds out that she isn’t anything special. Or a perfect human being ends up in a robotic world of perfection. How would she prove that her perfection was natural, that she was a human and not a robot?

Sounds to me as if in the write hands, such a flawless character would be . . . perfect.

Tagged: balance, balance in storytelling, imperfect writers, perfect characters, storytelling, unbalancing the world, unknown planet

Beauty Pageants, Route 66, Old Cars . . . and Me

I went to a Route 66 festival this weekend, and though it had its disappointments — relatively few people showed up and I sold only a few books — it also had a few highpoints — I met some old friends, I made some new ones, and . . . I sold a few books!

The beauty pageant that took place in the center of the artists’ and authors’ pavilion was too surreal to be a lowpoint and too bizarre to be a highpoint. The first pageant event seemed more of a bitty pageant then a beauty pageant since it featured babies barely able to walk (one needed her mother to hold her upright). I couldn’t help wonder how that crown would affect the rest of the winner’s life. Will it be the highpoint of her life even though she’ll never remember winning it? Or will it be the first of many wins, giving her an inflated sense of her worth?

It seemed to me that the older girls and women who entered did have an inflated sense of worth. (The preschoolers and girls in the early grades just seemed sad with their make-up, mincing walks, practiced smiles, and regal waves. And the 11-year-old winner looked terrified as if the responsibility of being a queen weighed heavy on her skinny little shoulders.) During the speech portion of the event, one of the older girls (a young women, actually), vowed that if she were to win, she’d uphold the integrity of Route 66. Typical budding politician, she never explained how she would achieve this grandiose and absurd goal. For cripes sake, most of the road no longer exists. (The longest parts of the road still extant are in San Bernardino County, probably because that section of Route 66 meanders through undeveloped desert.)

I guess I don’t get the mystique of any of it — beauty pageants, route 66, old cars (some of which are remade beyond any semblance of authenticity) — but I seem to be in a minority. The economic impact of Route 66 is huge — according to a recent study by The National Parks Service, Route 66 generates over $132 million per year in the communities through which it passes. The economic impact of beauty pageants is astronomical — over $5 billion!!!

By selling a few books at the festival, I added to that gross revenue, even if my income from those books was in the low two digits. Don’t know whether to be proud of that or not.

Tagged: babies in beauty pageants, Beauty Pageants, festival, old cars, Route 66, San Bernardino County