Showing posts with label video. Show all posts
Showing posts with label video. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

In Freeing My Story, I Freed My Life

I never intended for The MoonQuest to be such a powerful metaphor both for my creative journey and for creative blocks and the creative process. But that's what it turned out to be...through my act of surrender to the story that wanted to be told through me.

In the book excerpt I share on this video, the main character is visited by a Muse-like being who insists he tell his story.

Na’an says it is my story. Perhaps she is right. Is that why the words come so reluctantly? So many seasons of storytelling and still I hesitate. Of all the stories to stick in my throat, how ironic that it should be The MoonQuest, a tale of the freeing of story itself...



• Look for The MoonQuest and its two Q'ntana Trilogy sequels (The StarQuest and The SunQuest

For more about the personal and creative journey that led to The MoonQuest, pick up Acts of Surrender: A Writer's Memoir.

All my books are available in paperback or ebook from your favorite online bookseller or signed by my to you from my website.

Sunday, June 21, 2015

For Father's Day: A Tale of Love &Reconciliation

Few of the stories I share about my father in Acts of Surrender: A Writer's Memoir are flattering. Physically and emotionally absent in my early childhood and dead before my 14th birthday, Sydney Gerson was not the kind of parental figure one thinks of as, well, much of a parental figure. 

On top of that, it turns out that he was probably not my natural father, something I learned long after all the principals in that drama – him, my mother and my natural father – had passed away (another story I tell in Acts of Surrender). 

And yet I carry his name, and of the three fathers I have experienced in my life, he is the only one I ever think of as "Daddy." 

So on this Father's Day, nearly a half-century after his death, I share this tale of love and reconciliation, adapted from Acts of Surrender... 

It's August 11, 1997. After nearly two months of full-time road travel, Roxy (my cocker spaniel) and I check into the Shilo Inn in Boise, Idaho. Once I get Roxy situated, I change into my bathing suit and settle into the white-tiled steam room that is a fixture in many of the chain’s properties.

I have no plans, other than to shut my eyes and relax into the steam. But after a few minutes, I feel another presence in the room. I open my eyes and peer through the clouds of steam. I see no one.

“Hello?”

No answer.

I close my eyes again. Immediately, I sense a white-robed man staring at me from across the room. He is tall, dark-haired, with a trim beard and mustache and a muscular build. A gold coronet rests on his head.

“Who are you?” I ask silently.

“My name is Arctur,” I sense rather than hear.

“Right,” I think dismissively. My mind is playing tricks on me.

“This is no trick. I am Arctur,” he repeats.

A silent conversation ensues, but for how long I cannot say. Time has no meaning among the mystical swirls of steam.

“There is someone here who wants to speak with you,” Arctur says after a while.

I wait.

“Because this is so close to the anniversary of your father’s death...”

Suddenly I sense my father’s presence. My heart starts to race.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be the father you wanted me to be,” I hear my father say. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be there for you in all the ways you deserved.”

I begin to sob.

“But I loved you and still love you,” he continues. “And I’m so proud of what you are doing and who you are becoming. I couldn’t be a role model for you, but you are now a role model for me. I’m watching you. I’m with you. I’m learning from you. Thank you.”

Moments later, still crying, I sense that Arctur and my father have left. I open my eyes. The steam room is empty. I wipe my face, collect myself and return to my room.

How close to the anniversary is it? I fire up my laptop and open my file of significant dates.

As close as it can be. My father died 29 years today — August 11, 1968.


© Mark David Gerson

• • • Get your copy of Acts of Surrender today – on most Amazon sites, from select other online booksellers, from my website (signed to you, while supplies last) or from your favorite ebook store

• • I share a different kind of Father's Day story – this time I'm the father – in this Acts of Surrender excerpt on video: "Guinevere, My Daughter" – https://youtu.be/M-1vgCCj_04.

• Photos (long before I was born) – My parents, around 1940 or 1941, and a family gathering in the later 1940s









Tuesday, June 9, 2015

Your Story, Your Life

"What you have lived is unique. What you have learned through your years of living is beyond price. And the value of all you share through your words, and of all the ways you awaken and grow through your words, is incalculable."

You are a storyteller — not because you are unusual (though your experiences may well be), but because we are all storytellers. We each carry an infinite potential for self-expression-through-story that, if we open to it, can reshape our lives and the lives of others in ways we cannot begin to imagine.

In a sense, we are also all memoirists. From the moment the first caveman returned from a day’s hunting and grunted his experiences to his mates over the cooking fire, we have been not only telling stories, but telling our story. From the moment of our first newborn gurgle, we have been communicating something of our brief life. From the moment the first diary entry reflected back on days, months or years past, we have been unconsciously crafting memoir.

Yet writing a memoir involves more than reciting dates, facts and what-happened-next’s. A memoir is an intimate journey into what underlies those dates, facts and occurrences.

A memoir is also not autobiography. Autobiographies are vast and encyclopedic. Even should it span your life from conception until last week, a memoir is both more subjective and less comprehensive than any autobiography. Like an Impressionist painting, it includes more shade and texture than detail, more personality than panorama.

Nor is a memoir simply a published journal. While it may draw on your journals and may even quote from them, a memoir is more focused and less self-indulgent. It’s a story built, however unconsciously, around a theme. It’s a story that transforms the personal into the universal. It’s a recounting of your experiences that transcends your experiences. It’s a story designed to be shared.

Perhaps you have come to this book willingly — in order to leave a legacy for your children or grandchildren. Perhaps you hope to communicate your story to a larger audience — to strangers, as well as to family and friends. Or perhaps you come to this memoir-writing journey, as I did to mine, reluctantly, doubtfully, skeptically. Perhaps you don’t believe you have stories worth sharing, stories that others would want to read, stories with the potential to inspire. Of course you do. We all do.

Here’s the thing: What you have lived is unique. What you have learned through your years of living is beyond price. And the value of all you share through your words, and of all the ways you awaken and grow through your words, is incalculable.

It’s true for you. It’s true for me. It’s true for everyone.

It doesn’t matter whether you are eager or resistant, overflowing with anecdotes or unsure where to find yours. Whoever you are, whatever your experiences, whatever your perceived writing ability, From Memory to Memoir will connect you with the stories you remember and, perhaps even more important, with the stories you have forgotten...with the stories you are keen to tell and, perhaps even more powerfully, with the stories you are reluctant to reveal. It will serve up the inspiration guaranteed to get you writing and keep you writing, the tools and techniques guaranteed to help you craft a rich, compelling narrative, and the support guaranteed to sustain you from the initial word of your book’s first draft to the final word of its ultimate draft.

That’s why you are here. That’s why I am here.

So what are you waiting for? Turn the page and join me on this adventure of a lifetime...this journey into the experience of your own creativity as, together, we write the stories of your life.

© Mark David Gerson All Rights Reserved

Get your copy of From Memory to Memoir today --
 on most Amazon sites and in Kindle, iBook, Google Play, Kobo + Nook stores worldwide



Thursday, June 6, 2013

A New Look for an Old Video

With The MoonQuest book getting a new look and its paperback edition going out-of-print on June 15, I needed to find a way to update the one-minute book trailer that was created for it a year or so ago.

If I'd had the raw footage, I could have done it easily. But in one of those many miracles that surrounds my Q'ntana books -- and my life -- someone created the original trailer for me for free. Unfortunately, he disappeared from my life soon after, taking the raw footage with him.

Still, while not an iMovie expert, I was able to use the program to tweak the video...and here it is!



The only downside is that in replacing the video, I lost all my YouTube views. So please take a minute and watch it again if you saw the original, or for the first time if you missed it the first time around. If the video doesn't show up for you, use this link.

And, as a reminder, you can pick up a copy of the soon-to-be-discontinued paperback edition of The MoonQuest for only US$6.29 on Amazon.com or for US$5.99 (signed, if you want) from my website. But only until June 15, when the paperback edition goes out-of-print.

If you'd rather go digital, you'll find the ebook in the Kindle, Nook, Kobo, iBook and Google Play stores for your e-reader, tablet, computer or smartphone.

Now's a great time to read The MoonQuest. Why? Its sequel, The StarQuest, comes out on July 9...with the final installment in The Q'ntana Trilogy, The SunQuest, following on October 3 (in celebration of my birthday)!


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Thursday, November 29, 2012

Feeling Rejected? Don't Be Dejected!

Remembering author Madeleine L'Engle, born this day in 1918... 

Through both her fiction (ie, A Wrinkle in Time) and non-fiction (memoirs and books about spirituality/writing) author Madeleine L'Engle has long been a major influence in my life. I didn't discover A Wrinkle in Time until I was an adult in the early years of my spiritual awakening. But when I did, I found it to be a gem of a book, filled -- as is all L'Engle's writing -- with spiritual truths for young adults and adults alike. Today, two decades after that first reading, the profound wisdom of this prolific author and devout Episcopalian continues to inspire me.

One of my favorite L'Engle stories, apart from the one that follows, comes from one of her nonfiction books -- I don't now remember which. In it she describes legions of white-bearded Old Testament prophets, their faces raised to the sky, shouting up at God, incredulously: "You want me to do what!?" There are still days when I know just how they felt!

It would have been a supreme privilege to have able to meet Madeleine L'Engle, but she died in 2007, before I had the opportunity. To mark her birth and celebrate her life, I am reprinting this, one of my most popular blog posts.

Feeling rejected? When you read L'Engle's story, I guarantee you won't be dejected!


Author Madeleine L'Engle received two years' worth of rejections from 26 publishers for her novel A Wrinkle in Time, which, once it was finally published in 1962, went on to win major awards and be translated into more than a dozen languages.

Toward the end of that two-year period, L'Engle covered up her typewriter and decided to give up -- on A Wrinkle in Time and on writing. Then on her way downstairs to the kitchen, a revelation: an idea for a novel about failure. In a flash, she was back at the typewriter.

"That night," as she explained in April 1993 on the PBS documentary Madeleine L'Engle: Stargazer, "I wrote in my journal, 'I'm a writer. That's who I am. That's what I am. That's what I have to do -- even if I'm never, ever published again.' And I had to take seriously the fact that I might never, ever be published again. ... It's easy to say I'm a writer now, but I said it when it was hard to say. And I meant it."

Today, the bibliography on L'Engle's web site lists 62 works spanning the period from 1944 through 2005, plus a 63rd, published posthumously in 2008. Sadly, Madeleine L'Engle died in September 2007.

"I cannot possibly tell you how I came to write A Wrinkle in Time," her New York Times obituary quotes her as having said. "It was simply a book I had to write. I had no choice."



Whether you're published or not, if you're writing, you are a writer.

Need some help believing that? watch the video meditation, "You Are A Writer." The audio was drawn from The Voice of the Muse Companion: Guided Meditations for Writers.



Tuesday, April 24, 2012

The Unexpected Joys of Authorship


Being an author comes with many rewards. The first, of course, involve the joy of creation and the sense of accomplishment when the final period drops onto the final sentence of the final draft...often years after the first word of the first draft found its way onto the blank page. 

As miraculous as that instant of completion felt for me with The MoonQuest, another moment was more powerful still: when I ripped open the FedEx envelope that held my advance copy of the published book, my first. Thirteen years, two months and a few weeks after the beginnings of a story I knew nothing about had pressed themselves into my consciousness, I cradled the results in my hand and wept. Only the birth of my daughter eight years earlier surpassed the emotion and exultation of that experience.

As the weeks, months and years passed, first the The MoonQuest and then my second book, The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Writeoffered up many more occasions for joyful tears: multiple awards, glowing reviews, enthusiastic reader response and, of course, a movie deal encompassing not only The MoonQuest but its two Q'ntana Trilogy sequels. 

While neither book is yet a runaway bestseller, both The MoonQuest and The Voice of the Muse have attracted intensely loyal readers who have never hesitated to share with me all the ways that my books have deeply moved them and profoundly transformed their lives. In turn, their comments have deeply moved me and, in some cases, transformed my life. 

I can't speak for all creative artists, but this one still carries some core insecurities about his abilities and his work. It's not always easy for me to grasp how much my books are loved...and reread. As gratified as I am by the praise, I am sometimes equally baffled. "Me?" part of me still asks. "How?"

Thankfully, I have grown past the phase when I worried that perhaps I was a fraud. Still, when circumstances prompted me to reread the opening 40 pages of The MoonQuest a few weeks back, for the first time since proofreading its galleys five years ago, not only was I startled by how good it was, I was startled by how startled I was! Perhaps it has taken five years' distance to begin to be able to read those words as others read them.

Or, perhaps I'm not quite there yet. 

Last night, I received an email from singer/songwriter Amy Robbins-Wilson inviting me check out a video she had just recorded and asking my permission to release it publicly. Inspired by a scene in The MoonQuest, she had written and performed "Eulisha's Song," a stirring, evocative prelude to the journey that Eulisha's grandson, Toshar, would be called to undertake in the book.

Toshar, Amy explains, has just retired to his room after Eulisha urges him to embark on The MoonQuest. "I wondered," she says, "'What would Eulisha do while he slept?' It felt like she would sing and pray and send her power forward into the darkness to light his way."

I watched and listened to Amy's creation in rapt astonishment — not only because of the content of the song and by her haunting rendition, but because of the fact of the song. Although many, as I noted earlier, have shared with me their passion for The MoonQuest, this is the first time, to my knowledge, that any of that passion has inspired a work of art separate from me. 
"I started work on the song a couple months ago," Amy says, "and it all came together in a long car ride where I had to pull over at least three times to write down what I was singing. There are so many songs to be written for The MoonQuest."
So many songs...so much inspiration... For me...from me. Perhaps that's the ultimate reward of authorship: knowing that even as I have moved on to other stories, this one lives on --  not only inspiring others but also inspiring new creations in a never ending cycle of creativity. What could be a better life for a story that, at its root, is about the rekindling of blocked expression. And what could be a better gift for its author. Thank you, Amy. • Purchase The MoonQuest on my website or Amazon MoonQuest ebooks for Kindle, iBook, Nook or Kobo • Candle photo: rgbstock Direct YouTube link to Amy's video Please "like" my Facebook pages: • Acts of Surrender book • The Q'ntana Trilogy Movies • The MoonQuest book • The Voice of the Muse book • Mark David Gerson

Friday, March 16, 2012

Have You Heard the Call? ... The Call to Write?

Have you heard the call? 
The call that thrills as it terrifies you?
The call to set something down on paper? 
The call to inspire others...in ways you do not yet understand? 
The call to write? ...
~ author Mark David Gerson reads "Have you Heard the Call" from The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write.


• To view the video on YouTube, click here.

• For more videos about writing and the creative process, visit my YouTube page.

• You'll find additional tips and inspiration on my web site, where you can read my "Rules for Writing," join my mailing list and read/hear free excerpts from The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write.

Buy The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write and The Voice of the Muse Companion: Guided Meditations for Writers from my online bookstore, and be sure to ask for a signed copy of the book. Both are also available on Amazon

Please "like" my Facebook pages:
• The MoonQuest movie
• The MoonQuest book
• The Voice of the Muse book
• Mark David Gerson

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Write What You Know? (video)

"Write what you know," the writing guides insist. But what does that really mean?

In this video and in The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write, I insist that it's not about external expertise (although research can certainly be required sometimes). Rather, it's about writing from that inner place of emotional truth where you already know all you need to know.

Write what you know? If you dare!



Direct to link to the video

Please "like" these Facebook pages...
• The Voice of the Muse book
• The MoonQuest movie
• The MoonQuest book
• Mark David Gerson

Monday, September 12, 2011

The MoonQuest: Introducing a New Video Trailer for the Book

Imagine... 
a land where stories are banned and dreams suppressed...
a land where dreamers are tortured and storytellers killed...
a land stripped of vision, hope and imagination. 


This is the Q'ntana of The MoonQuest... 
a land where "once upon at time" is a forbidden phrase
...where fear rules and storytelling spells death

Imagine it...if you dare
  
Part 1 of The Q'ntana Trilogy of fantasy novels
Soon to be a major motion picture!

"An exceptional, timeless novel."

Please "like" The MoonQuest's book and movie pages on Facebook!

• MoonQuest book trailer produced by John M. Burkhart
• Toshar portrayed by Eric Esparza

If the video link is not live, view it on YouTube

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Feeling Rejected? Don't Be Dejected!

I didn't discover Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time until I was an adult in the early years of my spiritual awakening. It's a gem of a book, filled -- as is all her writing -- with spiritual truths for young adults and adults alike. Today, nearly two decades after that first reading, the profound wisdom of this prolific author and devout Episcopalian continues to inspire me.

One of my favorite L'Engle stories, apart from the one that follows, comes from one of her nonfiction books -- I don't now remember which. In it she describes legions of white-bearded Old Testament prophets, their faces raised to the sky, shouting up at God, incredulously: "You want me to do
what!?" There are days I know just how they felt!

I first posted a version of this piece about rejection in June 2008. But I get so many requests for it, that I've decided to make it new again by reposting it.

Feeling rejected? When you read L'Engle's story, I guarantee you
won't be dejected!


Author Madeleine L'Engle received two years' worth of rejections from 26 publishers for her novel A Wrinkle in Time, which, once it was finally published in 1962, went on to win major awards and be translated into more than a dozen languages.

Toward the end of that two-year period, L'Engle covered up her typewriter and decided to give up -- on A Wrinkle in Time and on writing. Then on her way downstairs, a revelation: an idea for a novel about failure. In a flash, she was back at the typewriter.

"That night," as she explained in April 1993 on the PBS documentary Madeleine L'Engle: Stargazer, "I wrote in my journal, 'I'm a writer. That's who I am. That's what I am. That's what I have to do -- even if I'm never, ever published again.' And I had to take seriously the fact that I might never, ever be published again. ... It's easy to say I'm a writer now, but I said it when it was hard to say. And I meant it."

Today, the bibliography on L'Engle's web site lists 62 works spanning the period from 1944 through 2005, plus a 63rd, published posthumously in 2008. Sadly, Madeleine L'Engle died in September 2007.

"I cannot possibly tell you how I came to write A Wrinkle in Time," her New York Times obituary quotes her as having said. "It was simply a book I had to write. I had no choice."


Whether you're published or not, if you're writing, you are a writer.

Need some help believing that? watch the video meditation, "You Are A Writer." The audio was drawn from The Voice of the Muse Companion: Guided Meditations for Writers.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

What Makes a Good Writer? (Video)

How do you define a "good writer"? It's a question I'm often asked in interviews and by coaching clients, and there are probably as many definitions as there are definers.

Is being a good writer about your content? About your process? Or is it about surrendering to the Muse Stream and letting your story have its way with you? Watch the video below for my answer.



Click here if the video doesn't appear above.

(If you're on my mailing list and seeing this in an email, click the image above, which links to my blog and the "What Makes a Good Writer" video.)

• For more videos about writing and the creative process, visit my YouTube page.

• You'll find additional tips and inspiration on my web site, where you can read my "Rules for Writing," sign up for my mailing list and read/hear free excerpts from The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write.

Buy The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write and The Voice of the Muse Companion: Guided Meditations for Writers from my online bookstore, and be sure to ask for a signed copy of the book. Both are also available on Amazon

Thursday, June 24, 2010

You Are A Writer (Yes, You Are!)

You are a writer.
You are a writer of power, passion, strength
and, yes, courage.
For writing is an act of courage.

You are a writer.
What you write is powerful.
What you write is vibrant.
What you write, whatever you believe in this moment, is luminous.


These words are from my guided meditation, "You Are A Writer," which appears in The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write and is the final recorded meditation for writers on The Voice of the Muse Companion CD.

"You Are A Writer" is now also a video, an empowering meditative experience designed to reaffirm your innate creativity, your writing ability and your identity as a writer.

Sit back...and take a few deep breaths as you relax, look and listen...



(If you're on my mailing list and seeing this in an email, click the image above, which links to my blog and the "You Are A Writer" video. Clicking on the thumbnail of my June 23 mailing, "Facing the Void: Coping with a Blank Page," will take you to another inspiring video.)

• For more videos about writing and the creative process, visit my YouTube page. And watch for the debut of MuseTV, my new series of video interviews with writers and creators of all types and stripes.


• For more tips and inspiration, visit my web site, where you can read my "Rules for Writing," sign up for my mailing list and read/hear free excerpts from The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write.


• Need help with your projects or creative process? Consider one-on-one coaching/mentoring (over the phone of via Skype) or my upcoming online coaching group (starts Tuesday, June 29 at 6:30pm PT and runs five weeks, skipping July 6).

Buy The Voice of the Muse Companion: Guided Meditations for Writers and The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write from my online bookstore, and be sure to ask for a signed copy of the book. Both are also available on Amazon


Photo/video credits: "Guiding Light" photo, Oceanside California. Title video shot, "River Flow," Olympic National Park, Washington State. All other video photos, Sandia Foothills, Albuquerque, NM. All photography/videography by Mark David Gerson (c) 2010