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 is available exclusively for Kindle, Nook and Kobo apps and readers.
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