My Muse: A Trickster Extraordinaire!

"Your book is a trickster!"
– Book-Birthing Rule #9, Birthing Your Book…Even If You Don’t Know What It’s About

The “trickster” exists in many cultures. In myth, think leprechauns (Ireland), coyotes (U.S. Southwest), the Greek god Dionysus and the Hawaiian/Polynesian demigod Maui. In literature and popular culture, think A Midsummer Night’s Dream’s Puck, King Lear’s Fool (along with every court jester ever conceived), Q in Star Trek: The Next Generation, Bart Simpson, the Pink Panther and Bugs Bunny.

In short the trickster is an archetypal figure that dupes its victims into doing its bidding. Mischievous by nature, it will lie unashamedly and break any rule to get its own way. 

To date, I have written five books on writing and each includes some version of what I say in Birthing Your Book’s Rule #9: “As you craft the book you think you are writing, [your book and your muse] will often trick you into writing something you never expected to write, something you never thought you wanted to write, something, perhaps, that is uncomfortable to write.”

When the idea came to me for The Emmeline Papers, the third book in my award-winning Sara Stories, it was going to focus on one of the minor characters in After Sara’s Year: Mac's quirky, eccentric, single-minded Aunt Emmeline Mandeville. The idea for the story arrived nearly fully formed (or so I thought), along with the title. 

Had I been smart, I would have remembered not only my Book-Birthing Rule #9, I would have recalled how that same tricksterish rule played out in Sara’s Year, the first of my Sara novels.

When I sat down in a Santa Monica Starbucks to begin Sara’s Year, I also had a concept and a title. The title never changed, but my original idea vanished within minutes of launching into that first day’s writing.

Because, like lightning, a trickster never strikes twice in precisely the same place or the same manner, my experience with The Emmeline Papers was entirely different, if with the same ultimate effect: The title has not changed but everything else about the book has!

Part of the impetus for that change came from a book that I was asked to not only edit and design but contribute to, an anthology titled Still Me…After All These Years: 24 Writers Reflect on Aging.

I began my first draft of Emmeline the same way I began my very first novel: in a writing workshop I was leading. This time, I was teaching at Unity Santa Fe, not in my long-ago Toronto living room. And this time, I assumed that I knew what I was doing. (Never assume anything!)

Twenty-three years earlier at that Toronto workshop, I had felt guided to participate in a writing exercise that I was facilitating. The result eventually became The MoonQuest, and that evening’s writing would become an integral part of the novel.

With Emmeline, I set out to begin a novel whose plot I believed I knew. Within a few weeks, however, I had trashed that opening scene and begun again, from an entirely different premise.

(This time I didn’t dare fight the title, which insisted on remaining intact. With Sara’s Year I did fight it, only to discover in the final scene of the first draft why that title was perfect!)

What happened to me that changed the Emmeline story? Author Karen Helene Walker, who had conceived and was compiling the Still Me anthology, sent me the first of its essays to edit.

Those, along with the essays and poems that followed in the ensuing weeks, moved me, inspired me, made me laugh, made me think and, in a few instances, made me cry. As a 62-year-old, I also recognized myself and my experiences, joys and concerns in many of them.

But the Still Me essays did more than that. The more I read, the more I began to think about Emmeline and her “papers” in a whole new way. It didn’t take long before I realized that the book I thought I was writing was to be something else altogether — something more engaging for its readers and, for better or worse, more emotionally and creatively challenging for its author.

Ironically, The Emmeline Papers is not a book about aging. All tricksters move in strange and mysterious ways, and my trickster-muse is no different. Aging is a component of Emmeline, but the story is more about many of the things that we experience regardless of our age. It’s about hopes and dreams. It’s about mortality and death. It’s about fear and courage. It’s about loss. It’s about relationship. It’s about life. It’s about many of the themes addressed — both touchingly and humorously — in Still Me…After All These Years. (And for fans of Sara’s Year and After Sara’s Year, it’s about far more than Emmeline: All your favorite characters are back for this third installment of the series.)

It will be a couple of months before you can get your hands on The Emmeline Papers (I’m aiming for a late spring release, but you can preorder your copy now). However, Still Me…After All These Years is available today and well worth the read, regardless of your age. And I’m not just saying that because I’m a contributor!

And what about my contribution? It also links back to The Sara Stories. It’s called “It’s Never Too Late to Follow Your Dreams” and it tells the story of how I came to write Sara’s Year. A series of age-related health scares forced me to ask myself the question many of us of a certain age find ourselves asking, even without medical prompting: “If I’m to die sooner rather than later, what is it that I want to make sure I do before I go?”

It won’t surprise you (though it did surprise me!) to discover that it’s a question that also pops up in The Emmeline Papers.

As I move forward with Emmeline, I continue to be struck by the creatively tricksterish wiles of my muse and I have to wonder whether the fourth and final book in The Sara Stories (as yet untitled) will bear any resemblance to my current notion of it!

Meanwhile, The Emmeline Papers continues to unfold, thanks in some measure to the gifted and engaging contributors to Still Me…After All These Years!

• Look for Still Me…After All These Years in paperback on Amazon or as an ebook for Kindle, Nook, Kobo or iBooks



• Look for The Sara Stories (Sara’s Year, After Sara’s Year and, soon, The Emmeline Papers) in paperback or ebook from your favorite online bookseller or signed by me to you from TheSaraStories.com. (You can also preorder The Emmeline Papers from my website.)

A Novel Approach to Birthing Your Book

There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
~ W. Somerset Maugham

Somerset Maugham may have been talking about fiction. But, for me, that statement applies to the birth of any book. And it's no surprise that I love that quote, given how perfectly it supports my first "rule" for birthing your book...

1. There are no rules.
This is the one rule that never changes. No matter what you’re writing or revising, the only unqualified certainties are that flow is fluid, your creation is unique and your book writes its own rules. Truly, there is no universal right or wrong way. There is only your way, the way of your book.

• Can you surrender to the higher wisdom of your story and its characters?
• Can you follow your book wherever it takes you, even if that direction seems to make no sense?
• Can you trust that your book knows its story/theme/content better than you ever will?
• Can you, as does Isabel Allende, give up your need to know why you've been called to a particular story or book? She says she rarely knows why she's writing a book until months after it's been published.
• Can you forego control and let your book and your muse be in charge of your creative journey?

If you need help birthing your book and you're in New Mexico, check out my upcoming workshop, Birthing Your Book...Even If You Don't Know What It's About.

And if you're not able to make it to the workshop, check out my super-discounted rates for private coaching -- part of my moving-to-LA celebrations!

Rule for birthing your book adapted from The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write. (c) 2008 Mark David Gerson

Image of Somerset Maugham from Somerset Maugham's Ten Best Novels of The World

Birthing Your Book...With Ease

If you're in Los Angeles this weekend, please drop by the Conscious Life Expo at the Airport Hilton and say hi. I'll be giving a talk on "Birthing Your Book with Ease" (free with Expo admission) on Friday, Feb 12 at 7pm. And I'll be at the Lighted Bridge Communications booth (#505) all weekend (Feb 12-14), signing books and offering discounted mini-coaching sessions on writing.

Whether you're in L.A. or not, if you need help birthing your book, consider private coaching sessions. Or join my new coaching group for writers, available wherever you live, as it's offered over the phone via teleconference, starting Feb 24.
* * * * * * * * * * *
I didn’t know anything about a book called The MoonQuest when its words began to flow through me.

I didn’t know The Voice of the Muse was a book when its words began pouring from me.

All I knew in both instances was that my Muse was calling me and that the only way to answer its call was to write.

As I wrote, the books took care of themselves.

One day’s writing led to the next. One draft led to the next. One book led to the next.

Each day, draft and book drove my pen. My pen, in turn, drove me.

My only job was to release all attachment to form, structure, content and outcome. My only job was to write and let the words go where they chose and create what was theirs to create.

As it turned out, what was theirs to create were books. They could have been short stories, articles, journal entries or exercises. They could have been anything at all.

My job wasn't to try to figure that out. My job was to write, to surrender to the imperative of my Muse -- a wiser soul in all things creative than I could ever pretend to be.

The StarQuest was different. Even before The MoonQuest was finished, I knew its sequel was in me, waiting to emerge. I knew it was a book. I even knew a smidge of its story before I began.

So how did I begin? The same way I begin every piece of writing: by beginning. Whatever you know of your book and its content, you start every piece of writing the same way, with a single word. With a single letter. With a single pen stroke or key stroke. Any word. Any letter. Any pen stroke or tap on the keyboard.

“In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God...”

Your first word also resides with God or your Muse or whatever creative source you acknowledge. So does your second and third and thirtieth and thirty-thousandth.

Whichever word gets you started is the right one. And that right one will inexorably lead you to the next and the next and the next. And the next...if you let it.

Ultimately, all those words will lead you through your book to its ending, an ending that has been waiting for you since the beginning of time. Of course it has, for your book has existed since the beginning of time, waiting patiently for you acknowledge it, open your heart to it and capture its essence in words on a page.

Are you ready to acknowledge it? Then pick up your pen or touch your fingers to the keyboard and free your first word onto the page.

You don’t know what your book is about? If you listen it will tell you. If you surrender, it will guide you. If you let it, it will write itself.

Life can be like that too. When God or our higher self or our intuition or our gut guides us in a particular direction, our responsibility is to surrender -- using our discernment, of course...a discernment that gets sharpened and honed with each experience.

We can no more figure out the bigger life picture with its infinite possibility than we can the bigger creative picture with its. In both cases, the full potential lies so far beyond our imagining that, truly, surrender is the only viable option.

• What can you surrender to today?

• In your writing?

• In your life?

Whatever it is, do it! Surrender, now.

Adapted from The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write, (c) 2008 Mark David Gerson

The Art of Surrender

I didn’t know anything about a book called The MoonQuest when its words began to flow through me.

I didn’t know The Voice of the Muse was a book when its words began pouring from me.

All I knew in both instances was that my Muse was calling me and that the only way to answer its call was to write.

As I wrote, the books took care of themselves.

One day’s writing led to the next. One draft led to the next. One book led to the next.

Each day, draft and book drove my pen. My pen, in turn, drove me.

My only job was to release all attachment to form, structure, content and outcome. My only job was to write and let the words go where they chose and create what was theirs to create.

As it turned out, what was theirs to create were books. They could have been screenplays, short stories, articles, journal entries or exercises. They could have been anything at all.

My job wasn't to try to figure that out. My job was to write, to surrender to the imperative of my Muse -- a wiser soul in all things creative than I could ever pretend to be.

Life can be like that too. When God or our higher self or our intuition or our heart guides us in a particular direction, our responsibility is to surrender -- using our discernment, of course...a discernment that gets sharpened and honed with each experience.

We can no more figure out the bigger life picture with its infinite possibility than we can the bigger creative picture with its. In both cases, the full potential lies so far beyond our imagining that, truly, surrender is the only viable option.

What can you surrender to today? In your writing? In your life? How can you start? Now?

• adapted from The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write, two-time award-winner in 2009: a New Mexico Book Award and an Independent Publisher Book Award


Give the gift of creativity and inspiration this holiday season...

For a limited time only:
Special Holiday Editions of Mark David's books and CDs

• Gift-wrapped books + book/CD packages signed by Mark David to your friends/family members, and shipped directly to them with a card bearing the holiday message of your choice. More information here.

• Gift-certificates for coaching sessions, for the writer or writer-wannabe on your holiday gift list. More information here.



Mark David's December Radio Show

• The Muse & You with Mark David Gerson
Special Guest: Karen Walker, author of Following the Whispers
Thursday, December 17 — 1pm ET