Ruth Perkinson

When I got sober, I learned about doing the “next right thing,” in the rooms of AA where my friends showed me how to let go of me, me, me and serve others. One of my first sponsors told me that sometimes the next right thing was just going to the bathroom. Get up and make your bed, Ruth. Get on your knees and be thankful you never hurt anyone by driving drunk: dumbass.

Don’t overanalyze any of it. Give it over to God. She can handle it like most African-American women can.

Recently, however, I found myself in a severe slump and although I didn’t pee on myself, it was hard to surface from the crags of events that send us all over the edge sometimes — without a rope, not even a filament. My business had done well most of the year, but I am at a point where I re-thinking getting that part-time job in order to pay for my exorbitant healthcare. I have had an assortment of clients but nothing steady to keep my heart free from the shackles of worrying about financial security. The bills, the vet, the gas, food, the need for a new roof. The first mortgage — that lovely equity line, too…yahoo!

I’m sure I am talking to you. You out there in the same place I am.

Then I found a book, a line really, that saved me from thinking I was giving up the battle and ready to stand on the corner with the vets holding a sign (well-written, of course) about my plight. Prostitution is the one job I have not had. It crossed my mind but I don’t think I can stomach the dregs of working a truck stop. At least not yet.

Do the next right thing.

I went to the book store and picked up a book called the Law of Divine Compensation by Marianne Williamson. I’d seen her on Oprah and had liked her and wanted to read one of her works.

On Sunday night, I was on page 21 of her book. It states this, “If you cannot see this now — if despair and anxiety hang like a veil before your eyes, preventing you from mustering any faith in God at all — then in this moment lean on mine. One mind joined with another, regardless of their position in time or space, can remove whatever chains would find us and deliver us to that sweet, sweet realm where things come full circle and there is always a chance to begin again.”

I wept at the part where she said, “then in this moment lean on mine.” The words went straight to my heart and for the first time in many weeks, a writer from California (I think) saved me.

It takes a lot to save a big girl from Virginia. But, I put the book down and closed my eyes and imagined myself on a gurney in a dark room where Marianne was by my side. IV’s full of fluid called things like “Faith,” “Hope,” “Don’t take yourself so seriously,” were inserted into my veins and she just watched over my…held my hand…and helped me sleep.

We need each other.

The world needs more thinkers like Marianne Williamson. Today, I will pray for her and her family, her mission — through the airways of space and time, my words go to her.

Thank you, thank you, thank you — in an IV labeled so.

Writers have the fun job of unzipping their souls and spilling out the poetry of their lives to titillate the souls of the readers who pick up their stories.

Most writers, I imagine, drink a cup of courage before they begin showing, revealing, and dumping their ideas and emotions out on the page through characters and events. Recently, I was editing a nonfiction book and found that the writer had been locked away by her parents in a small anteroom so they–the parents–wouldn’t be bothered. Having children sometimes interferes with drug use and alcoholism: we wouldn’t want that now, would we? It horrified me but it was real and it was good and I was carried away. Carried away by the fact that it wasn’t happening to me but had happened to a young child of five or six. She unzipped and showed me. I was reminded momentarily of the three women recently found in Cleveland who had been harbored, tortured, and harangued for ten long years.

Readers make associations and are glad, internally, that it wasn’t them who endured a grisly gruesome event. Or, perhaps, the unzipping of a writer will allow for the reader who has been through a similar devastation a chance to heal knowing he or she isn’t alone during dark nights of the soul. Someone else has been there, too.

When I read Kay Redfield Jamison’s book, An Unquiet Mind, many moons ago, I was released from the bondage that I was the only person in the world who had been gang raped in the brain by bipolar disorder. She unzipped and she unzipped good. Years later, I had to unzip, too, when I wrote my third book about a character gone mad.

Our world is complex and painful and dark. But, when we let go as writers and readers and tell the bone truth about a difficult time or even a particularly joyful time, then the web of connection vibrates from author to reader, reader to author. We are lifted by each other.

Next time you go to write, think about sitting in your chair naked. There is a small invisible zipper at the top of your throat that moves down your body all the way to the floor. Tug at it. Inch by inch, slowly move it down to your belly and then see what flops out onto the page.

Whatever flops out is what I want to read.

I’m up for air.

I have been entangled in a computer web of word files and the rap-tap-tap of a keyboard since January and now, I am crawling out. I am itching the Times New Roman (12-point font) out of my eyes and my right thumb is in a sling from hitting the spacebar 4.2 million times. Not to mention the pads of my fingers have no more visible fingerprints…if the FBI needs me, it will have to be a retinal scan. At this juncture, however, my retina and macula are ready for a view from a mountain top somewhere and not a blinking cursor.

Ahhhh. The life of an editor and a writer. It is a bit sadistic. Even now as I’m scurrying off to run an errand, I figured, it would be a good time to chat about, well, writing.

I started a writing group back in October: The Featherstone Writers’ Group. I did it for two reasons. Other writers need assistance with what we “other” established writers already know. Writing is solitary–we all need help on the sea of doubt and the sea of exaltation. Writing is anchored in both vast bodies of water. The second reason is I needed to get back in front of people and talk. My talker was rusty and I wanted to get it oiled up.

Apprehensive at first, I find that now, months later, I look forward to the burgeoning group. We have a section called, Writerly News. Each writer is to bring in a tidbit of news about writing, a passage or an anecodote or a piece of wisdom.

I bring something, too. Show and tell. Or rather…show only in the writing world.

I found something the other day in a writing book I’m beginning to lean on. The writer, Stephen Wilbers, talks about being a bulldozer and not a bricklayer when writing your manuscript. The bricklayer has to make everything perfect before he or she can get to the next paragraph. The color of the hat, the lilt in her voice, the passerby’s act of gratitude. The bulldozer barrels right through from parapraph to paragraph not caring about the color of the ladies hat, not caring about any lilt in the voice, and not caring about a passerby–the passerby isn’t even in the scene. The bulldozer gets finished. The bricklayer wears out.

Today, I’m going to bulldoze through this. I don’t care if it sounds right or looks right or even has any meaning. When I edit, or when you edit, your magic palette will appear to do the spackling and the bricklayer will still be stuck on paragraph six of chapter one.

Since I’m up for air, I am now offering more free sessions as I did last fall. If you are a publisher or a writer looking for assistance with me and my arsenal of bulldozers and such, then shoot me a note and we’ll set up a time.

I’m down for more taps on the keyboard…more blinking cursors making me open my Times New Roman and font it for you. Font is now a verb.

Verbs are good. Active ones. So, is air…out to breathe for a bit.

xoxo,

Ruth

About a month ago, a new dog arrived. I wasn’t expecting the twist of fate that would bring us together. But, alas, I had been kanoodling over getting the fence finished and then going to a shelter to get one – even spending time on my Kindle viewing links to the pounds that abound.

It all happened out of order. Like our writing. Did you ever notice how are lines and our stories come in fits and spurts and it can wind up like a junkyard. Lines and commas and periods and images all stacked on top of each other with dangling participles, misplaced modifiers, an arcless plot of flat characters who have not a thing to say because our quotation marks are floating off on the wing of some errant seagull.

My friend, Steven, found “Sadie” on his way from Charleston to Richmond in late January.

She was discarded like rubbish in the woods near the I-95 corridor and has a host of problems, including an advancing stage of heartworms. I won’t discuss the trauma on her head and then the trauma of emaciation. Sadie is a mother. The vet said she’s had multiple litters in her short life.

Sadie survived her very long ordeal. While I work on editing books, she lies on the large dog bed behind me and sleeps. She eats roast chicken, Science Diet wet food, and all the kibble she wants. We wake up at 6:30, pee, eat, then go for a walk around the block. Then there is a large amount of healing through medicine, sleeping, and constant love by me, my partner, and various visitors. Since her arrival, the routine has put over five pounds on her and her ears are not flapping constantly from the infection that she’s gotten over. She hates those ear drops. So do I.

We still have the heart worms to contend with but I believe she will be just fine. Just like the lines in our junkyard. If we sift through the lines, the quotes, the bad grammar, the twistless plots, sometimes we find a gem. Like Sadie, it may not look like what you wanted but the end result of ritual and hard work and love can make all the difference in the world. Sadie came, the fence went up, a new journey began.

Good words. Good stories. Good girl.

“Come, Sadie, come,” I say. And, so she does. She is my new lovely dog making me, once again, believe that good triumphs over all the darkness any of us wallow in or go through.

In Hebrew, Sadie means “mercy.” Sometimes we need to bestow it on our animals, and each other, and our writerly selves.

Perkinson Post: WRIR 97.3 Interview with Liz Humes.

When publicity comes a callin’, all I can say to authors out there is you have to answer the phone, click on the e-mail, cancel your mammogram. GO!

Liz Humes, the Wordy Birds radio personality at 97.3 WRIR here in Richmond, e-mailed me last week and asked if I’d like to do an interview on her show. Yes. Of course. When can I chopper over to your pad and give you a free copy of my book? I panted as I typed what I hoped was a pithy yet salient response.

If you don’t know Liz, you should. Her mind is oozing with stacks of books she’s read and she’s interviewed some hottie authors.  When we met last week and then again yesterday for the mic to mic interview, she talked a bit about Charles Shields and his book called Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee. I swooned because she knows him, has talked to him, has interviewed him. I wanted to hold her hand and ask more about who he was. But it was Liz in front of me – the unpretentious, witty, and charming lure of a woman. She wears red lipstick that makes her pristine white skin glow and the black in her hair shimmer like some old poetic Bohemian sentiment. I love her.

Our show airs this Friday at noon on 97.3 WRIR here in Richmond and across the planet on the Internet.

I talk about my latest book, spirituality, and the Pope. I forget what else I said. But, I think that about covers it.

Listen in to hear what Liz asks me and how I answer as adroitly or unadroitly as I can;)

Perkinson Post: Blog Swap 2012 and 26 Voices….

Tag. I’m it again…another blog-swap-a-roo!

My really cool author friend, Marianne K. Martin, http://redroom.com/member/marianne-k-martin/blog asked me to do the swap again.

According to the rules of the hop, I will be answering some questions (the same ones for every other blog hopper) about either my newest release or my WIP (work-in-progress).

But, before I begin…a note on the crisis in our schools.

I know that Marianne is a former teacher and so am I. Today, I am asking all of my author friends across the presses to write to your congressman or congresswoman or to find a few minutes to take any action on your blogs or your public forums to take a firm stand on this gun crisis we have in our schools. By firm, I mean just that. I worked in a prison and never wore a gun, never carried a shotgun, or an assault rifle, although I was trained on all three. We didn’t carry them because the prisoners outnumbered the teachers (I was a teacher) and the correctional workers. No teacher, nor principal, nor anyone on school grounds should carry a weapon (I am speaking of what I saw in the Texas school system just the other day). Google it. You’ll see.

The idea is simple. Get the assault weapons out of the hands of anyone. Is that so hard? A simple pistol and shotgun will do it if you’re a hunter. Bambi doesn’t need 85 rounds shot in 2.4 seconds to die. One buckshot will do.

And, as far as self-protection. Really, you need that many weapons for whom? The terrorists and neighborhood bullies really aren’t as interested in you as you think you are. Down, ego, down.

The sale of these weapons has to stop NOW and then the powers to be can get the mental health crisis, um, ahem, that has been around for thousands of years, better managed. We need a loud voice…we need some money…we need authors or anyone reading this to take a stand.

There are 26 voices in the sky making the 911 to you.

To me, it is loud and clear.

Okay…here is the recap:

What is the working title of your book?

Book Six or The Magical Meditation Tour
Where did the idea come from for the book?

This book’s brainchild certainly isn’t the title. It is a series of meditations that have taken place since February of this year. It orbits in and around the astrology of deep meditation and it takes flight on an inner starship I’ve come to know as my own over-soul. One that is connected energetically to all that we know, all that we don’t know. How woo-woo can I go, right?

What genre does your book fall under?

Silliness. Can you believe what I just said up there? It sounds like I’ve been holding séances in my head. But, actually, there is much truth to it. We are evolving (now) into a different age and I am glad that meditation is one of the activities everyone can take part in if we could just stop worrying about what is going to happen next…like the next question here.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

I am going to select my second book, Piper’s Someday. I would choose Jodie Foster’s child star (has she had a kid yet?) to play Piper and then I would choose Allen Arkin to play her grandfather. We’d have to locate a pretty cute three-legged dog somewhere. As far as Jenny, the cute postal worker, I’d have to say Hilary Swank. Andrea, her girlfriend, should be played by a femmie star…oh, um, Emma Stone. I’ll check with Steven Spielberg and get back with you.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Space, the final frontier. Can I steal that from Gene Rodenberry?

What is the longer synopsis of your book?

If the truth be told, I have barely written a cohesive paragraph on this new one which might not come out for quite a while because it will not be lesbian fiction. But, I am noodling it over and have two or three notebooks full of meditations and will be harnessing the energy of those to create a mythic experience for the reader. This is the goal: to transcend, to entertain, and to inform. To sell, sell, sell and then invite all my friends on an Olivia Cruise with Kate Clinton.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I have no idea.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

Most of my first drafts take anywhere from ten weeks to ten months, depending on how much I have going on. My best books come when I write them very fast. My second novel was written in ten weeks. The pads of my fingers were on fire by the time I finished that one.

Who or What inspired you to write this book?

The death of a good friend from pancreatic cancer and the death of my own sweet dog from cancer as well. The idea of death was a really foreign concept to me for many years and right as they were going through the “passing,” I got highly interested in what that was. What it looked like from a human perspective. The idea that we are all spiritual beings having a human experience did not resonate with me till I began reading, book by book, a series of authors who helped me conjugate the losses. It has been one of the most powerful years of my life. So, I thought I might share it with some people.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

Look around you. Everyone is talking and walking the spiritual line. We have ayurvedic medicine, yoga, green grass shots at your local health food store, breathing spaces, Super Soul Sunday with Oprah, and a host of activities that are mind, body, spirit. Nutty, crunchy, earthy, and fun. To me, it seems as if religion and church are a fading entity. Thank God. While they give one structure, history, and biblical (or other great book) perspective, I think many people are challenged instead these days by moving forward into a different belief system that just works better. One that is based on new beliefs, new mindsets, new technology, a re-creation of who we are and why we need to wake up to better possibilities rather than stay stuck in outdated insular thinking that just, frankly, doesn’t do it for most people anymore.

It is just downright more provocative and fun.

I want to cross the spiritual line and enter into a new age. It’s coming, you know. December 21^st, 2012 will put us into the Age of Spirit. The veil on the other side is thinning. I am elated and can’t wait to follow the yellow brick road to a better us.

Happy Holidays to all of you,

Ruth

p.s. I’m calling on all of my author friends across the blogosphere to answer these questions for next week if you have time. If you don’t, then at least take that stance on gun control. We need your help!

“If you go into the cave of your fear, you will find your power.”

It is a Sufi proverb, I think.

For the last several weeks I have been holding free sessions with established writers and ones who want to become established. A common theme resonating in the writing dialogue I am honored to be engaged in is that many of us are afraid of saying the wrong thing. Thing is a very wrong word and I just said it. It is vapid, doesn’t delineate anything – God, look at that hackneyed crustacean of a word, too; yet we use it a lot (there’s another horrible grouping) and tend to survive. It’s akin to this: it doesn’t mean a thing; or, you know the thing is, or another thing he/she does is _____.  Thing really nails it, huh?

You get the mottled picture. So, what we are attempting in these sessions is to find our fear, establish it and then try to let it fly away. But, as we all know, fears can rise up again and again. Writers are always afraid of saying the wrong thing, painting the wrong picture, or perhaps not even writing at all. It is part of the complexity that makes us artists. So fears are like large spiders to me. I tend grimace and look away from them when they are shockingly shown on TV as they bring up fantastical childhood movies about large spiders invading the earth and killing people and animals. Those suckers have been demonized for as long as I can recall. A flashed image of the hairy beast can send me running in jiggly wigglies into the next room. The have resided in my brain as a phantom fear for ages.

They aren’t bad. It’s my attitude toward them. It’s my darkened perception. Mythic images of Ariadne drum in me and I can’t see past the revulsive way in which they have been portrayed in books and film. What now. I’ve got fearful writers. Bad words. Bad groupings of words. And, now we are onto a childhood fear of spiders.

Here’s the point. Fears are a part of our genetic make up our DNA holds the space for these astral suckers. Sometimes, the harder we try, the more the fear will rear its small or large head. It can crawl under our skin and sprout large tendril-like legs in our mushy brains.

So, write about them. Write why you are afraid. Make one of your characters afraid of something. Establish your fear as a symbol – like a spider – and let its filaments flesh in a scene of irony or deception. The shadow (fearful) side of any character makes a reader WAY more interested in it. When we write about our fears, regardless of what they are, it makes the reader more intent on who or what the situation is. Fears always make us better writers. Readers love the shadow side.

So, go ahead. Be afraid. Then write about it. Your power will be revealed. I promise.

Call me or email me and let’s talk about it or them. It won’t cost you a thing.