Joy in the Mourning

 

                                 Tricia Pimental

 

At some point you have probably prepared a tribute: a birthday or a wedding toast, a speech at someone’s retirement, or perhaps a eulogy. Such an exercise not only honors the subject but can be a blessing to the one who crafts it, as it requires introspection, sifting through memories, and thoughtful assessment of the past.

 

One afternoon in late 2019, our canine companion of almost fourteen years went to sleep and never woke up. The loss was unexpected, a shock that sent me to a cardiologist, where I discovered it is indeed possible to a literally suffer a broken heart.

 

My husband, Keith, and I and our pup, Carson, were a well-traveled trio. “The Great Carsoni” had accompanied us on journeys all around the United States and Europe. While we were still grieving, the pandemic descended on the world, and our trips came to an immediate halt. I was scheduled to speak in the States, as I did twice each year, at an International Living conference about overseas retirement. I had come out of my own retirement to join the working force again, signing a contract with them as their Portugal Correspondent. On those junkets I always visited my daughters and grandchildren in California, regardless of where I was speaking. Not in 2020. Conferences went virtual.   

 

With the multitude of changes in my work situation and after much deliberation, I resigned from my position. Working at IL, I had a calendar full of due dates for articles, videos, Facebook posts, fillers, and more. I had managed to write some poetry and flash fiction, and a few short stories, but my personal writing life was neglected. Suddenly free from a demanding schedule, it was time to reassess.

 

After I retired from a longtime job in 2011, I wrote three books, all for different reasons. My first was published that year, a spiritual memoir titled Rabbit Trail: How a Former Playboy Bunny Found Her Way. In that book I shared my story of how I came out of false religions and New Age practices and became a Christian. The following year brought Slippery Slopes, born of a fast, fun, romp with National Novel Writing Month. (If you haven’t ever taken the NaNoWriMo challenge, I highly recommend it. I broke—at least for a while—the pesky habit of editing every word I type as it appears on my screen.) A Movable Marriage, its title inspired by A Moveable Feast, was my second memoir, published in 2016.

I wasn’t ready to tackle another full-length book, but at the close of 2020, after the anniversary of Carson’s passing, I wrote an essay about him. A few months later the Florida Writers Association was open for submissions for their Royal Palm Literary Award Competition. I entered “Joy in the Mourning” in the short nonfiction category.

 

We all know the feeling once a project has been completed. What next? The answer to that question came easily, growing naturally out of what I had just written.

 

My husband and I are avid photographers and put our cameras and phones to good use while exploring much of the world. Typical dog lovers, we featured Carson in many photos. In my essay I had portrayed him as the savvy traveler he was and regretted not being able to accompany “Joy” with pictures, as I had my memoirs.

 

And that’s how the concept of a pictorial calendar was born.

 

Unfortunately, an online search for information about designing and self-publishing a wall calendar was disappointing. Units would have to be priced at about $25 apiece, a cost I considered prohibitive for successful marketing.

 

I had used CreateSpace for my first books, and its new incarnation, Kindle Direct Publishing, for my third. But investigating the possibilities there, I learned that I could not create a calendar through their services. Undaunted, I moved on to a datebook/calendar, filling it with all the features I would want in a such a book. “The Great Carsoni Maltese 18-month (January 2022 through June 2023) Planner Calendar” included a personal message from me to the reader as well as my essay, which had gone on to become a finalist in the RPLA competition. I wrote playful captions for the eighteen monthly photos featuring Carson in locations from Roswell, New Mexico to Ljubljana, Slovenia. I researched quotes applicable to each month, from famous folks like Shakespeare and Steinbeck to British horticulturist Gertrude Jekyll. Her quote graces the February 2023 page: “There is always in February some one day, at least, when one smells the yet distant, but surely coming summer.” I have always loved Moleskins, so I made a hardcover format available.

 

I never dreamed when I sat down to record special memories of a very special little guy that my work would morph into what it has. It’s been a journey of learning and love, of surprise and sadness, and of accomplishment. I encourage you to look closely at your work, to “think outside of the page” and reinvent your creations. The possibilities are endless.

Five-time Royal Palm Literary Award recipient Tricia Pimental has lived overseas since 2012. Born in Brooklyn, Tricia is a former actress and Toastmaster. In addition to short stories, poetry, and flash fiction, she has written three award-winning books: A Movable Marriage, Slippery Slopes, and Rabbit Trail: How a Former Playboy Bunny Found Her Way.

Other writing credits include two travel books for International Living, when serving as their Portugal Correspondent: The Old-World Charms of Portugal and Escape to Portugal, and a 14-part video series entitled Portugal 101.

Tricia and her husband traded sunny Portugal for snowy Sweden a year ago.

 Contact her at amovablemarriage@mailbox.org.


The Great Carsoni Maltese 18-month (2022-2023) Calendar/Planner

A Movable Marriage

Slippery Slopes

Rabbit Trail: How a Former Playboy Bunny Found Her Way

ENDS

 

 

Read Then Write

By Tricia Pimental

Confession time. I’ve been bingeing. Not on chips—although I do lose my train of thought when I spy an Utz bag—but books.

SWM Editor-in-Chief Susan Reichert reminded us in April about the importance of reading if you want to write. She began her post with this from William Faulkner: “Read, read, read. Read everything - trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it.”

So, I embarked on an ambitious program. But where to begin? We’re familiar with suggestions of classics: Moby Dick, To Kill a Mockingbird, Crime and Punishment, etc. Thanks to family, friends, and my book club, I put together the list below.

Some were not for me. I found The Secret History too dark. Likewise, The Master and Margarita, a book club selection I did not finish. Nor did I complete Private (rough language), but I wanted to see why Patterson is so popular. Frankly, I thought The Sun Also Rises disappointingly self-indulgent. (Sorry, Papa.) Okay, here we go.

Fiction:

Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand and The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson

Commonwealth by Ann Patchett (Read last year: Bel Canto)

The Secret History by Donna Tartt (Read last year: The Goldfinch)

A Moveable Feast and The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

Making It Up by Penelope Lively

Confinement by Carrie Brown (Read last year: The First Last Day)

Private by James Patterson

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Biographies and Autobiographies:

His Way: The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra by Kitty Kelley

Agatha Christie: An Autobiography

Wait for Me! Memoirs of the Youngest Mitford Sister Deborah Devonshire

Non-fiction:

The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig

Lisbon: War in the Shadows of the City of Light 1939-1945 by Neill Lochery

Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton

Upcoming book club selections:

A Man Called Ove by Frederick Backman, “…a comical and heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul. All of which will change one cranky old man and a local residents’ association to their very foundations.”

and

One True Thing by Anna Quindlen, where “…Ellen has never felt she had much in common with her mother, a homemaker and the heart of their family. Yet as Ellen begins to spend time with Kate, she discovers many surprising truths, not only about herself, but also about the woman she thought she knew so well.” (Descriptions from Amazon.) 

Finally, with all that reading—and writing—ahead of you, it’s important you have your space arranged. SWM’s Magnolia Corner has featured authors describing their garrets, offices, and coffee shop nooks. In Rooms of One’s Own: 50 Places that Made Literary History, Adrian Mourby selects authors from Kipling to Kerouac, Pushkin to Proust, Runyon to Rowling, and takes the reader on a journey around much of the world to visit where these literary giants lived, loved, and wrote their enduring works.

Inspired yet? Good.

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Born in Brooklyn, Tricia Pimental’s first book was a memoir about her circuitous path to faith in Jesus: Rabbit Trail: How a Former Playboy Bunny Found Her Way. It was followed by a novel, Slippery Slopes. A second memoir, A Movable Marriage, was published in 2016. All three books have received Royal Palm Literary Awards in the annual competition sponsored by the Florida Writers Association. Other work has appeared in A Janela (the quarterly magazine of International Women in Portugal), anthologies compiled by the Florida Writers Association and the National League of American Pen Women, and elsewhere. She writes for International Living Magazine since signing on in January 2017 as Portugal Correspondent. Tricia and her husband live near Lisbon with their Maltese who, like them, has learned Portuguese. A member of the SAG-AFTRA and a former Toastmaster, she blogs at www.triciapimental.com. Find her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/amovablemarriage and on Twitter: @Tricialafille.

Memoir Writing: Seven Tips

By Tricia Pimental

Putting your past on paper is an intimate form of communication. Blog posts are personal, but memoir writing is another thing. Here’s what you need to know.

Choose your purpose.

Do you want to encourage, telling your story of overcoming abuse, or cancer? Or entertain, with tales of celebrity friends, assuming you have them. My intent with Rabbit Trail: How a Former Playboy Bunny Found Her Way was to instruct about the pitfalls of false religions. Have a clear idea before you start.

Focus on a theme.

One risk with memoir writing is getting distracted. You’ll include many vignettes in your work, and just as with any well-written fiction, they should make sense as a cohesive unit. With A Movable Marriage, however tangential some description might have seemed, it was always directed to my message: it is possible to not only adjust, but thrive, in changing circumstances.

Tell the truth.

This means being honest. It does not mean telling every event that happened in your life. A friend objected to my leaving out something she considered pertinent in one of my books, but I knew it didn’t move the plot forward. Remember, it’s your story. If people want to tell it differently, they can write your biography.

Deal with—not out—pain.

Here’s a two-parter. First, as you delve into the past, you will uncover memories that not only make you laugh, but cry. Expect it, embrace it, and then let it go. Second, don’t be like Hemingway—at least this way: when his Torrents of Spring was published, it was said, “all Montparnasse was talking of ‘six characters in search of an author—with a gun!’” Bitterness negatively colors what you want your readers to hear. Rise above it.

Use fiction elements.

You wouldn’t expect to read a novel without sensory description that draws you into the narrative. I’ve shared sights and smells of candy stores and pizzerias in Brooklyn and what it’s like to travel on the Venice-Simplon Orient Express. Take your readers to another time and place as you take them into your confidence.

Turn off your inner critic.

One of the benefits of participating in National Novel Writing Month is, in having to get 50,000 words on the page in 30 days, you must stop backspacing a dozen times in each sentence. (If this is an issue for you, I recommend you try NaNoWriMo.) Let your thoughts flow freely. You can excise in a rewrite, but censor as you go and you may miss an instrumental connecting idea.

Don’t rush.

Years ago, I had dinner with Judith Krantz. When I said writing a book seemed overwhelming, she replied, “Write a page a day, and in a year, you’ll have a book.” It didn’t take you three months to live your life, so don’t expect to write a memoir in three months. Savor the process.

Do it right and they’ll be thanking you for the memories.

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Born in Brooklyn, New York, Tricia Pimental’s first book was a memoir about her circuitous path to faith in Jesus Christ: Rabbit Trail: How a Former Playboy Bunny Found Her Way. That work was followed by a novel, Slippery Slopes. A second memoir, A Movable Marriage, was published in 2016. All three books have received Royal Palm Literary Awards in the annual competition sponsored by the Florida Writers Association. Other work has appeared in A Janela (the quarterly magazine of International Women in Portugal), anthologies compiled by the Florida Writers Association and the National League of American Pen Women, and elsewhere. She writes regularly for International Living Magazine and their affiliates since signing on in January 2017 as Portugal Correspondent. Tricia and her husband live near Lisbon with their Maltese who, like them, has learned Portuguese. A member of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and a former Toastmaster, she blogs at her website, www.triciapimental.com. Find her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/amovablemarriage and follow her on Twitter: @Tricialafille.