Ruth Perkinson

You have to offer something free – always.

Except, of course, if you are an airline.

Lucky for me, I am not an airline. I am just an old English teacher who knows that a little advice can go a long way. Here’s a little nugget from our recently departed Ray Bradbury – Relax. Don’t think. Write. Three short sentences that helped me write my first book. I scribbled the words on a notecard and taped it to the bottom of my computer screen. Whenever I was stuck or anxious or trapped in subject-verb-agreement, I would look down to the sagacious saying and get over myself and move on. I just kept tapping away and eventually a good word, sentence, or paragraph would emerge from its closed chrysallis state. It took me three manuscripts to mold my first book and twenty years of dreaming. This is what I don’t want for my dear reader reading this…that indescribable twenty-year wait. Even though the digital age has made writing a whole different platform from which to spring, people still need assistance getting started, staying accountable, or receiving advice or inspiration that will get them to their goal A LOT faster than I did.

I went the publishing route completely solo. I read and read and read and wrote and wrote and wrote till droplets of black font oiled out from my temples and dropped themselves to the scratchy page. I drove myself crazy with waiting, wishing, finagling…till one day, I got the call of a lifetime.

Call me. E-mail me. Let me help expedite your plan to express yourself to the world. I look forward to any way I can serve you. It is all about YOU! And, I am supremely happy about that.

Free session. No baggage. Plenty of leg room and you can exit any time you like.

So, are you a top or a bottom?

Frankly, I’m a top.

When writing a novel or a novella or a short story (or most anything), some writers will write in a “top down” style while others are “bottom up.” What does this mean? By and large, “top down” writers leave spaces and gaps in their descriptions allowing room for the reader (up there) to bring in their own ideas to the setting or the scene or even the tension in the room of the characters.  Top down writers write a shorter narrative but it does not mean that there is less substance. It is just a different style.  Less is always more. An example of a well-known top down writer might be Mitch Albom. He is a gapper for sure, but by the end of the story, the reader is no less informed, enlightened – entertained.

The “bottom up” writer leaves the reader with details and nuances of just about everything. The peanut butter residing on the kitchen knife…the kind of peanut butter…the age of the knife and design style…how long it has been sitting atop the counter, when the dog sniffed it and – oh, I forgot – the style and type of counter is central to this theme. You get the picture. A “bottom up” writer helps the reader (ahem, down there) get the complete gist of every scene – all the senses (taste, touch, smell, sight, and sound) plus an  etheric sense that the writer has, indeed, accessed the Akashic records and can truly put you there. Some readers love this insanely. A good example of a “bottom up” writer is most certainly John Irving or Pat Conroy.

As writers, however, regardless of being either a top or bottom – we, you, just need to write your story with enough detail that does NOT distract the reader and write ENOUGH to paint the picture fully so the reader can get there. We all just want to get there.

You and I need to, I guess, meet somewhere in the middle. Common ground. Common ground that is grassy – no meadowy – no, a field somewhere in England whose history…

You see…if I can just find that Long Island happy medium.

Writers are dreamers.

We waft in and out of the ether of our own consciousness and unconsciousness all the time. Find yourself staring off? Find a character run you over like an elephant while your getting the chicken out of the fridge to thaw? Are you at a stop light and see a bird and wonder, hmmm, what is it doing, right there in the line of my vision? How are birds symbolic for me? A genie would have you rub the writing vessel and tell you that the bird is a sign – an auspicious one – to get you to wake up! Time to pull over and write that great idea on the back of that water bill sitting in the passenger seat. You are leaking all over yourself with good ideas. You will NEVER have the time to write. Here’s a portion of the point; but the ideas will keep coming like the elephant in the room, the bird crossing your vision – dalliances appear like a genie released from a golden urn; however, these are the ones you need to right down, right now.

My writing suggestion for today is this. There is the hackneyed expression: No time like the present. Well, yes. But let’s turn the phrase. The present will give you time; the gift will be the words that are bubbling up from inside of you.

You are the genie and I have three wishes. Your words to appear – today. Your words to be WHO you are. Your words to feel the balm, the magic of how art can get you out of your own chrysallis and emerge with a scepter – triumphant till the next idea happens when you open the fridge or take a trip to the store.