Monday, April 22, 2013

Writer's Block Unblocked: An Act of Surrender

It's October 2012, just a few days after my birthday, and I'm on the phone with Aalia, my former wife and still a good friend.

"You have so much terrific material on writing and creativity," Aalia says, "you should write a series of books on the subject, as companions to The Voice of the Muse. Ebooks," she adds, "because you could probably write one and get it up in a few weeks."

I'm not opposed to Aalia's suggestion. But nor do I pay much attention to it. I'm immersed in another round of revisions to my Q'ntana Trilogy books and screenplays. Who has time to take on another project?

The months pass, and I think nothing more about it.

It's now late March 2013. I have completed all my Q'ntana final drafts and brought to completion the nineteen-year odyssey that began when The MoonQuest's first words spilled unexpectedly out of me during a writing workshop I was facilitating. The last thing I'm thinking about is another writing project.

Then I remember Aalia's words. I dismiss them at first, even as I recognize not only their rightness but the track record of their messenger, clearly one of my Muse's most reliable envoys.

We were living in Hawaii and still married when Aalia first suggested I write a book about writing. It was also her idea to combine the book with a recording of my guided meditations for writers. And when I had written an early version, it was she who came up with the title, The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write.

Aalia's direct line to my Muse is also, in part, responsible for The Q'ntana Trilogy Movies, for it was during another phone call, before The MoonQuest was published, that she urged me to try my hand at a screenplay adaptation of my fantasy novel. It took several months and a few reminders before I surrendered to that notion.

Within days of remembering all this, I surrender again -- this time to the book that almost immediately titles itself Writer's Block Unblocked: 7 Surefire Ways to Free Up Your Writing and Creative Flow and that gushes out of me with dizzying speed.

I begin on April 5 by designing a book cover and start writing the following day. Although the writing flows easily (no writer's block there!), I am skeptical about the April 22 publication date that I'm intuiting and push it back by a few days: Somehow, I promise my Muse, I will release Writer's Block Unblocked on April 24, even as that deadline also seems ridiculously unrealistic.

Oh, me of little faith: I completed my final read-through and revisions to Writer's Block Unblocked on Friday evening (April 19), and the ebook goes on sale in a few hours, on April 22, the very deadline I doubted I could meet.

When I wrote my first draft of The SunQuest novel in three weeks, I was astounded. I had never written anything that quickly before. But now, this: Sixteen days from surrender, through multiple drafts and all the way to completion. I'm stunned...and, of course, grateful.

I'm grateful to Aalia for continuing to channel the Ideas Division of MDG's Muse, Inc. I'm more grateful still for the precepts and philosophies in this and all my books -- ways of writing and living that have brought me, once more, to the place of surrender where a book like this could write itself through me so quickly and painlessly.

Writer's Block Unblocked may have taken me only sixteen days to write, but it took me more than sixteen years  to reach that place of surrender where those sixteen days could be possible.

In the end, surrender is what this book is all about. It's what all my books and talks and workshops are all about. It's what my life is all about. It's about trusting in the superior wisdom of the story we are living as much as the story we are writing and doing our imperfect best to get out of the way so that that those stories can flow through us.

May Writer's Block Unblocked help you rediscover that same place of surrender within you and may your stories always flow through you naturally, effortlessly and with ease.

• Adapted from "Opening Words," my introduction to Writer's Blocked Unblocked: 7 Surefire Ways to Free Up Your Writing and Creative Flow

To celebrate the launch of Writer's Block Unblocked
all my Kindle, Nook, Kobo & iBooks ebooks are on sale for $2.99 each through May 5
(the following links are for Amazon/Kindle)
Writer's Block Unblocked: 7 Surefire Ways to Free Up Your Writing and Creative Flow

Please note that sale prices will show up on Amazon over the next several hours

• Writer's Block Unblocked: 7 Surefire Ways to Free Up Your Writing and Creative Flow is available exclusively for Kindle, Nook and Kobo apps and readers.


Please "like" these Facebook pages...
Please follow Mark David on Pinterest and Google+


Writer's Block Ends Today: Two Days Early!


You don't have to experience writer's block.
Ever! 

 You don’t have to sweat over a blank page. 
You don’t have to wonder where your next word is coming from.

All you need to write naturally, effortlessly and flowingly is
Writer's Block Unblocked:
7 Surefire Ways to Free Up Your Writing and Creative Flow 

Free Up Your Writing and Creative Flow Today!


To celebrate the launch of Writer's Block Unblocked
all my Kindle ebooks are on sale for $2.99 each through April 24
• Writer's Block Unblocked: 7 Surefire Ways to Free Up Your Writing and Creative Flow

Please note that sale prices will show up on Amazon over the next several hours

• Writer's Block Unblocked: 7 Surefire Ways to Free Up Your Writing and Creative Flow is currently available exclusively for Kindle apps and readers. Versions for Nook, Kobo and iBooks are coming soon.


Please "like" these Facebook pages...
Please follow Mark David on Pinterest and Google+

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Flying On Your Own

Leaving's not always the hardest
It's knowing when to go
Rita MacNeil, Knowing When to Go


I don't normally post obituary notices on my blog, but yesterday's passing of Canadian singer/songwriter Rita MacNeil has both saddened me deeply and touched me personally.

I did not know Rita MacNeil and only saw her perform live once -- at Toronto's Ontario Place one summer a few decades ago, before my own move to her native Nova Scotia had lodged itself in my psyche. But I think I would like to have known her.

Humble and modest, MacNeil overcame a legendary shyness and went on to record more than 30 albums that sold in the millions and to garner many honors, including an Order of Canada. Her music was powerful and inspiring, and she was proof that you don't have to be a physically stunning extrovert to succeed publicly with your art.

Rita was also part of a cadre of Atlantic Canada artists who kept me inspired both as I turned my life upside-down in 1994 to relocate to Nova Scotia and during my time in the province -- creative and transformative periods that produced The MoonQuest and that I chronicle in Acts of Surrender: A Writer's Memoir.

Two songs in particular from that era continue to resonate powerfully for me: Flying On Your Own, an anthem to empowerment and to following your dreams, and She's Called Nova Scotia, which, all these years later, still speaks to me of the place that will always be one of my heart homes. Both those songs blasted out of my car stereo nearly nonstop in the fall 1994, as I made the thousand-mile drive to my new Atlantic home in the days before my 40th birthday.

At every stage in my life since I first heard Flying On Your Own, whenever I find myself on the threshold of a new adventure or on the cliff-edge of another leap of faith, these words, in Rita's voice, always play in my head to remind me of the miracles I have experienced and of the faith that made them possible.

And when you know the wings you ride
Can keep you in the sky
There isn't anyone holding back you
First you stumble, then you fall
You reach out and you fly
There isn't anything that you can't do...
You're flying on your own

Finally, this from Rita herself: "You can be shy. You can work through all kinds of struggle. But somewhere deep down, you have to have belief, or nothing's going to happen."

I believe, Rita. And thank you.


Please "like" these Facebook pages...
Please follow Mark David on Pinterest and Google+


Thursday, April 4, 2013

Maya Angelou: The Call to Write


"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."
 Maya Angelou



What stories are you carrying inside you that are yearning to be freed onto the page?

What stories are you carrying inside that, once freed onto the page, will also free you?

Whatever they are, write one of them. Now.

Write your story, and feel the healing freedom that all creative acts inspire.

• For more writing inspiration, go to www.calltowrite.com for excerpts from The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write

• Today, April 4 is Maya Angelou's 85th birthday

Photo: Patrick Schneider

Please "like" these Facebook pages...

Please follow Mark David on Pinterest and Google+