Quantcast

Pat Bertram Shares her Writing Space

Pat Bertram is the author of three novels — More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am IHer novels can be found on Smashwords and at other retailers.  She recently agreed to share with us her writing space, and she’s included beautiful photos of her book stacks.  Please welcome Pat Bertram, photo of the author taken by D. Bertram, to the blog.

Okay, I admit it: I am a closet pencilphile. Seems silly, I know, in this electronic age, but I write in pencil on loose-leaf paper. There. I’ve outed myself. I feel so much better now.

I am not being contrary. It’s just that I have a better mind/writing connection using pencil and paper than I have with a keyboard, a mechanical pencil is easier on my fingers than pen, and paper is easier on my eyes than a computer screen.

I do have an office with a double folding table for a computer desk, which gives me plenty of space to spread out all the “to do” notes I make but never read. 

The walls behind me are lined with books like three-dimensional wallpaper. I spend hours in my office every day, especially now that I blog and network more than I write, but for creative writing I sit in bed, clipboard propped against my knees or on a pillow. If, as Mel Gibson said, “A movie is like public dreaming,” then novels are like shared dreaming, and where better to dream than in a comfortable bed?

For me, fiction writing is largely a matter of thinking, of trying to see the situation, of figuring out the right word or phrase that puts me where I need to be so the words can flow. I don’t know the entire story before I writing, but I do know the beginning, the end, and some of the middle. That way I can have it both ways: planning the book and making room for surprises.

So, there you have it. That’s how and where I write. As for why I write, what inspires me — there are stories I want to read, and since no one else is writing them, I have to.

Pat Bertram is a native of Colorado and a lifelong resident. When the traditional publishers stopped publishing her favorite type of book — character and story driven novels that can’t easily be slotted into a genre — she decided to write her own. Daughter Am I is Bertram’s third novel to be published by Second Wind Publishing, LLC. Also available are More Deaths Than One and A Spark of Heavenly Fire.

About Daughter Am I: 

When twenty-five-year-old Mary Stuart learns she inherited a farm from her recently murdered grandparents –grandparents her father claimed had died before she was born — she becomes obsessed with finding out who they were and why someone wanted them dead. Along the way she accumulates a crew of feisty octogenarians –former gangsters and friends of her grandfather. She meets and falls in love Tim Olson, whose grandfather shared a deadly secret with her great-grandfather. Now Mary and Tim need to stay one step ahead of the killer who is desperate to dig up that secret. 
 

So what did you think of Pat Bertram’s writing space.  Isn’t it great?  I love the lines and stacks of books!  A bibliophile’s dream.

Also, check out my two-part interview with Pat Bertram, here and here.