Pat Bertram's Blog, page 305

Grief: All Things Considered . . .

Another Saturday gone, thirty-two of them since my life mate died. Saturday — his death day — always makes me sad. Even if I'm not consciously aware of the day, my body still reacts, as if it's been marking the passing weeks. For some reason grief hit me hard this past Saturday. Perhaps it was the lovely weather we've been having, weather he will never enjoy. Perhaps it was the homesickness for him that has been growing in me again. Perhaps it was just time for another bout of tears to relieve the growing tension of dealing with his absence. Grief doesn't need a reason, though. Grief has an agenda of its own and comes when it wishes.

I've been mostly doing okay, moving on with my life — walking in the desert, writing, blogging and doing various internet activities, making friends both online and offline — but nothing, not even my hard-won acceptance changes the fact that he is dead. At times I still have trouble understanding his sheer goneness. My mind doesn't seem to be able to make that leap, though I am getting used to his not being around. I don't like it, but I am getting used to it. Maybe that's the best I will ever be able to do.

Someone asked me the other day how I was doing. "I'm doing okay all things considered," I responded. His witty and wise response: "Then don't consider all things."

I've been taking his advice, and trying not to consider all things — trying to consider just enough to get through the day, especially on Saturday.

I don't expect much of myself on Saturdays. Often, I spend the afternoon and evening watching movies my life mate taped for us. It makes me feel as if we are together, if only for a few brief delusional minutes. I try not to consider that he'll never watch his tapes again. I try not to consider the long lonely years stretching before me. I try not to consider that I'll never see his smile again, or hear his laugh. I concentrate on the movies, and so Saturday passes.

By Sunday, I usually regain a modicum of equanimity, but Saturday always comes around again.

Tagged: death, death day, desert, grief, life, loss, Saturday, walking

Writers: Be Bold!

When writing, it's important to be decisive. Passive storytelling, passive events, passive motivations, passive characters, passive verbs, all lead to a story without risk or conviction, full of missed opportunities.

Get rid of the unnecessary qualifying words (quite, a bit, a little, some, somewhat, I guess) and non-specific words (someone, everything, huge, handsome, very, really). Such words detract from the authority and decisiveness of your writing.

Too many flashbacks rob a story of drive, give it a sense of aimlessness. So does a lack of focus. Thank heaven for rewrites! The grieving woman in my NaNoWriMo story keeps reflecting on the past, which makes sense, because for her there doesn't seem to be much of a future. Still, it does seem aimless since she's thinking instead of doing something. When I rewrite it, I'm going to take away the aimlessness by having the story revolve around a theme to give it focus.

The worst offense for indecisive writing is backing off from a major scene, skipping it entirely, or doing it in flashback. Many new writers don't feel they are capable of writing dynamic action scenes, so they skim past it and hope readers won't notice. Or they have a character other than the hero commit the final act, such a man showing up at the end to rescue the heroine in women-in-peril novels. This isn't as common as it once was, which is good. If the woman is the hero, she needs to put herself on the line during the final scene and not expect someone else to do it for her.

In More Deaths Than One, it might seem as if I passed the buck — the solution to the mystery of Bob's identity came in a letter rather than his doing the work himself — but the point of the scene was for him to interact with the waitress, not interact with the villain. I wanted to show her emotion on his behalf, show his reaction to her as together they learn the truth. It was the immediacy of their reaction that I needed. How a character feels, reacts, or emotes, is every bit as important as what a character does.

It's important to trust yourself as a writer. Trust that you will be able to recognize the truth of your scene and what you want to accomplish (as I did with More Deaths Than One). Trust that when it comes time to rewrite and edit, you will know what you need to do to create a dynamic story, and that you will be able to do it.

Most important of all, don't skirt around the story. Get right to the heart of the action. Be bold.

Tagged: be bold, flashbacks, lack of focus, major scenes, missed opportunities, passive voice, passvie characters, theme, women-in-peril

Amanda, Amanda, Amanda

Since writing during this month is about word count, not producing a finished work, I haven't spent a lot of time or thought on visuals to ground potential readers in the scene, I just jumped in with the character and started writing. During rewrites, I'll go back and add the setting – it's not a good idea to start every every scene with the character's name (though many writers do it). Here are some of the sentences I temporarily used to open new scenes. Poor Amanda.

Amanda opened her husband's closet and stared at his clothes, wondering if she'd ever be able to get rid of them.

Amanda pushed the grocery cart through the aisles, looking for foods that didn't remind her of meals with David, but every time she reached for a can, bottle, or box, her stomach clenched. 

Amanda checked her emails.

Amanda went from eating nothing but yogurt to eating cookies, candy, cake, crackers, chips — anything she could grab and eat without cooking or having to sit at a table to dine.

Tired of crying, of holding the shattered pieces of herself together, Amanda hugged David's robe-wrapped ashes one more time and climbed out of bed.

Amanda stared at her reflection in the mirror. The woman looked familiar, as if she had known her intimately long ago, but the woman seemed to have nothing to do with her todays.

Amanda felt her life, her love for David rewinding.

Amanda checked to make sure the box was empty.

Amanda woke to light seeping in from between the slats of the closed blinds.

Amanda wandered through the house, seeing not the shabby furniture, the shelves overloaded with books, the 20-inch out-of-date television, but the home she and David had created.

Frenzied with grief-induced adrenaline, Amanda yanked open the door to David's closet and slammed his underwear into a garbage bag.

Tagged: first sentences, NaNoWriMo, rewrites, scenes, Setting

Don't Mess With a Grieving Woman

This is an excerpt from my NaNoWriMo novel:

Amanda was fumbling in her purse for her keys when a voice said, with low-toned menace, "Give me your purse or I will kill you."

She jerked her head up. Standing between her and her Corolla were two men who looked barely old enough to shave. One jiggled from foot to foot like a child who needed to go to the bathroom, but the other stood firm, his hands steady on a gun.

The scene didn't seem quite real. Perhaps she'd wandered onto a movie set? She looked around. No cameras. Just the two men standing before her in broad daylight.

Was there such a thing as narrow daylight? She giggled at the thought. Then stopped abruptly. I really am going crazy.

"What's with you, bitch?" screamed the man with the gun. "Gimme your purse or I'll kill you."

"Promise?" Amanda said, clasping her purse to her chest.

The jiggling man lifted his hands and pointed a finger at her like a gun. "Yeah, we'll kill you, bitch."

"Okay." Amanda stared at them, hope blossoming in her chest. God provides, David had been fond of saying. Maybe God was providing a way out of her grief.

The hand with the gun began to waver.

"Do it, man," yelled the jiggler.

"Yes, do it," Amanda said softly.

"I'm out of here." The gunman took off running.

The jiggler danced in place. "Where are you going?"

"She's crazy. Or a cop." The words floated back to them from between a pick-up and a mini-van.

The jiggler looked longingly at Amanda's purse, hesitated, then trotted after his companion.

Tagged: ficiton, grief, grieving woman, loss, NaNoWriMo, novel, writing

Opening a Vein

There's nothing to writing.  All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.  ~Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith

I always thought the above was a silly, though poetic thought. If a story really does mean that much to a writer, why are so many books barely adequate? They tell a story, but have no depth, demand no blood in response, give no transfusion.

Even from a writer's point of view, the idea seems rather overblown. Writing is more of an intellectual activity, at least it always has been for me. But not with this NaNoWriMo project, my grieving woman book. For the first time, I understand the sentiment. I feel as if I am opening a vein while writing the story. Or at least picking at scabs. I thought I was moving right along with my grief, handling it well, but yesterday while writing I hit too close to the truth.

I worried about doing this project, wondering if it was too soon to re-immerse myself into the world of grief, even if only through fictional characters, but I jumped in with both feet. And now here I am, crying again.

I have a hunch that the only way out of this writing dilemma is through, so I'll continue to open my vein of grief. As Ray Bradbury said, "You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you."

These are the final words of the scene that destroyed my equilibrium:

"Do you need some liquid morphine?" Amanda asked.

David looked up at her. "Is it time?"

"You can have the liquid whenever you want it."

"I don't want to go to Hollywood and be an actor.

An actor? Amanda tried to decipher his words. His mind seemed to take convoluted paths when the simpler words wouldn't come. Then all at once she understood. "You won't become a drug addict. I promise." She left the second part of her thought unspoken. You won't live long enough to become addicted.

Tagged: drunk on writing, grieving woman, NaNoWriMo, open a vein, Ray Bradbury, Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith, writing

Healing the Split In Ourselves

I've spent many hours walking in the desert during the past few months, which has given me plenty of time to contemplate grief, life, death and anything else that comes to mind. One thought that filtered through my mind was the idea that when my mate died, I split in two. The me that shared a life with him is grieving still, while the other me, the one who was born with his death, continues to live and grow. As long as I am in the person of this second me, I do fine — I'm strong, in control of my emotions, looking forward to what comes to me in life. The problem is that I keep slipping over to the other me, the grieving me, and when I do, the grief is as new as it was when it first hit me. The task is to reconnect the two parts — both the grieving me and the new me.

This might seem like dissociative personality disorder, though it's not really a disorder. It's how we all deal with life. I don't remember the name of the person, but a psychologist once hypothesized that there are no true moods. What we think of as moods are different personalities. This natural order becomes a disorder when you lose track of yourself during mood swings or when they cease to be a way of dealing with life and become a way of hiding from life. I don't know the truth of this, nor do I know the truth of my idea of splitting apart, but my idea feels true. I can almost feel the clunk of the gears as I switch from one mode to the other. I don't switch as often now, which makes me think I'll eventually be whole again.

Today, at my grief group meeting, I had a graphic example of how I am moving beyond my grief (at least for the moment. It does swing back and slam me in the gut from time to time).

During these meetings, there is a lesson — a topic — that we discuss before going on to personal updates. One of today's lessons started out: Grief brings with it a terrible and lonely loss. Instead of acknowledging the sentiment, and contemplating my terrible and lonely loss as I was supposed to, I looked at the words, and said, "No, it doesn't."

This brought the meeting to a standstill while everyone stared at me.

"Grief doesn't bring the loss. Loss brings the grief, " I said.

More silence. Eventually, they agreed with me, probably to shut me up and get the discussion going again.

The point is, I focused on the words, not on the emotion. Of course, this could be more that I'm in writing mode than that I'm moving on with my life, but I took it as a good sign. Because this is the truth: death brings a terrible and lonely loss. Grief is our reaction to the loss, and ultimately it's how we learn to heal the rift in ourselves brought about by that loss.

Tagged: a terrible and lonely loss, death, desert, dissociative personality disorder, grief, loss, moods, support group, walking

My Topsy-Turvy Writing Life

NaNoWriMo is good practice for me, this writing without stopping to think.

I've always been a slow writer, but I can also see that the way I wrote and the reason I wrote created the slowness. I used to write at night when all was quiet, then the next morning I would read the work to my mate. The piece had to be cohesive, well written, and most of all entertaining because that is why I wrote — to entertain us. That way of writing taught me to pull someone immediately into a scene, to make characters come alive in a few words, to add a hook or reward on almost every page.

I had my reward in his smile. Whenever I saw his lips curve in a secret little smile, I knew I'd hit the scene perfectly.

He and his smile are gone from my life. I've had to find a different way of writing and a different reason. For now, meeting the challenge of NaNoWriMo is reason enough. The very nature of the challenge is helping me find a new way to write. Instead of searching for the perfect word, I write any word that comes to mind, trusting that during the rewrites I will find the right one. If no word comes to mind, I leave a blank space and continue with my train of thought.

I also have no need to write a coherent story from beginning to end for there is no one to follow along as I write. I jot down whatever scene is foremost in my mind. I also write in the morning since it's quietest here then. Also, by writing in the morning, I can come at the task in an oblique way before excuses begin to get in the way.

Some of what I've written will need little revision. Other bits read more like notes for a novel than a fleshed out scene and will need to be completely revised. Other parts are redundant and will need to be junked. But I am keeping up with my word count (probably because I am leaving out the hard bits, like descriptions and sensory details), and that is an important achievement.

I'm getting into the rhythm of this topsy-turvy life. From being one of a couple to being alone. From living near the mountains to living near the desert. From writing at night to writing in the morning. From writing beginning to end to writing whatever scene catches my attention.

I'm still writing the same type of book, though — a non-literary literary novel. The way I understand it, a literary novel is a story that addresses the major themes of life, and the way it is written — the choice of words, the sentence structure, the imagery — is more important than what is written. I fail in the second part — I strive for a simple, easy to read style that doesn't detract from the story — but I do address major themes, especially in this work. Life. Death. Love. Grief. Relationships. The meaning of life. All while telling a good story. At least, that's the plan.

I'm hoping someday you'll be able to tell me if I succeeded.

Tagged: death, grief, life, literary novel, love, major themes, NaNoWriMo, perfect word, relationsips, telling a good story, writing fiction, writing style, writing to entertain

Desert Revelation

While walking in the desert this morning, I had a vision. Well, not a vision so much as a revelation.

I'd been thinking about my grieving woman novel, which is shaping up to be the story of a woman in search of herself. She is directionless after her loss, has a lot of unfinished business to take care of, and is trying to figure out who she is now that she is no longer a wife. I wondered if people would accept that this woman is finding out all sorts of things about herself that she didn't know — after all, a person in her early fifties should have some idea of who she is.

Then I realized that even if we have a strong identity and know almost everything there is to know about ourselves, it's still possible and perhaps necessary to revise our self-concept, especially after going through a trauma such as a major loss.

I saw that our psyches are like nesting dolls or boxes within boxes or doors within doors (choose your cliché). You never see the doors, so you think you know who you are, but a great emotional upheaval can cause a door to open, letting you see more of yourself and what you are capable of, revealing a part of your identity that might have been hidden from you until that moment.

You get to know who you now are, adding to or changing your idea of yourself, rethinking the past in light of this new awareness. You get comfortable with this revised self-concept and then BAM! More trauma, and another door. You never have to go through the door, of course, but if you do, you might find riches of which you were unaware.

What can I say? It was the desert. Wandering in the desert is traditionally a place for both sun-induced absurdities and great insights.

Tagged: desert, desert vision, emotional upheaval, grief, identity, identity crisis, loss, psyche, revelation, self-concept, unfinished business

Excerpt From My NaNo Novel

My grieving woman novel is taking shape. Amanda and her twenty-nine-year-old daughter Thalia are having problems that seem to antedate her husband's death. I'm not sure why the daughter has such a problem with her mother, but perhaps we don't need to know. It could just be more of the unfinished business the woman has to deal with.

In the scene I wrote today (keeping to my writing schedule, yay!), the daughter accuses her mother of hastily redoing her old bedroom:

"This doesn't look at all like my room any more," Thalia said. "There's not a trace of me here. You could hardly wait to get rid of me."

Amanda opened her mouth to reply, but for a few seconds, no words came out. She'd completely forgotten that when they first came to this parsonage, Thalia had been a sulky thirteen-year-old. Trying to put a smile on her daughter's face, she'd promised Thalia she could decorate the room any way she wished. Amanda hadn't expected pink paint and eyelet ruffles, but she'd been appalled by the black walls and red curtains that gave the impression of dripping blood. The posters of movie vampires and band members who looked as if they'd crawled out of a crypt seemed almost cheerful by comparison.

When Thalia went to college, David claimed the room for a den, but it had been Amanda who been cajoled into doing the work. "Shouldn't we at least wait until Thalia's out of college?" Amanda pleaded. For once, David had not been thinking of their daughter. "I need a place to work here in the house. We can put in a sofa bed. Thalia can use it during the summer." But Thalia had never come back, and secretly Amanda had not blamed her.

"I wish this house were bigger," Amanda said. "Then we could have kept your room for you."

"Yeah, right." Then, sounding like the little girl she had once been, she added, "couldn't you have turned the parlor into Dad's den? Nobody has a parlor and a living room anymore."

"I wanted to, but Dad said he needed a place for receiving visitors. He always thought it was important to keep the living room for us, so we could have some privacy as a family.

"I'm glad he had a place to get away from you."

Amanda flinched at her daughter's words, but didn't bother to correct them. When David had moved out of their shared bedroom into this room after his diagnosis, it had been to spare her his relentless pacing and allow her to sleep undisturbed, not to get away from her. Or so he said.

Could Thalia be right? Maybe he'd mentioned something to her that he wouldn't say to Amanda. The two often excluded her from their conversations. She used to worry about feeling jealous of her daughter, but she hadn't been jealous, not really. She'd liked that David and Thalia got along so well. She and her father had been virtual strangers.

Tagged: excerpt, fiction, grieving woman, mother's and daughter's, novel

Even Fearsome Creatures Have Enemies

While walking in the desert today, I saw a dead rattlesnake. I hesitated to take a photo, not wanting to memorialize death, but it was so beautiful lying there, that I went ahead and snapped an image of it. Although it looked vibrant, as if it were sleeping, I could see that it had been run over. This made me think how even such a fearsome creature as that Mojave green rattler had enemies, though its four-wheeled killer was one it could not even imagine.

And so it is with a story's villain.

For a hero to overcome her nemesis, she has to come at the villain from a different direction, not go at the villain from his position of strength. If the villain is the strongest person in the world, he cannot be vanquished by the second strongest person, but he can be vanquished by intelligence, perhaps even middling intelligence. If the villain is strong and smart, he can be vanquished by a determination to win at all costs. If the villain is smart, strong, and equally determined, he can be vanquished by esoteric knowledge, something the villain cannot even imagine.

My NaNoWriMo project has no villain. My poor character has to deal with her husband's death, the loss of her home, the loss of her daughter's respect. Since he had been the focus of her life, his death left her unfocused. Moreover, she finds out he is not who she thought he was, so to find out who she's been all those years, she has to find out who he was. I'm wondering if her way out of this conundrum is to do or be something she's never thought of before, something that until now has been unimaginable to her. Like what? I don't know, but it will give me a direction to follow.

What about your characters? Do you have a hero/villain situation? What special strengths does your villain have? What special strengths does your hero have?

Tagged: desert, heroes, loss, mojave green rattlesnake, NaNoWriMo, vanquishing the villain, villains, walking