Dare to Feel. Dare to Connect.

"Go to the emotional epicenter, where it hurts most, and write on. If you dare."
~ Bill Donovan, editor/publisher, Creative Screenwriting

"Only connect."
~ E.M. Forster

The call to write is a call to share our emotional depth with others. It's a call to be vulnerable. It's a call to connect.

Thing is, we don’t touch others at a deep level when we connect mind-to-mind, though that connection is a powerful and important one. We touch others at a deep level when we connect heart-to-heart.

Unless we write from our deepest heart, unless we tell the stories that move us, we will never move our readers.

I spent the first chunk of my writing career avoiding writing from what Bill Donovan calls the "emotional eipcenter." I observed and reported, intellectually and dispassionately. I told stories, but without heart.

In not revealing my feelings (at times, not even to myself), I failed to engage my readers in any but superficial ways. I failed them and I failed myself.

I didn't connect.

Do you want to write truth, the truth from which both powerful fiction and nonfiction arise? If you want to write truth, if you want to write words that will touch the deepest emotions and connections and truths of your reader, then you must write what your heart calls on you to write. You must go where you've never dared go before -- in your writing, certainly; in your life, perhaps.

You must, as I write in The Voice of the Muse's "Thirteen Rules for Writing," go for the jugular, for your jugular: "Go for the demon you would run from. Go for the feeling you would flee from. Go for that emotion you would deny. Once you put it on paper, you strip it of its power over you. Once you put it on paper, you free it to empower your work."

You free it, as well, to empower your readers. You empower them to feel their emotions, to be vulnerable and to share their stories.

"We tell our stories in order to live," Joan Didion writes in The White Album

We tell our stories, too, to connect.

There is neither life nor connection outside the heart.

• Where are you refusing to be vulnerable in your writing?

• Where are you afraid to reveal your feelings, perhaps even to yourself?

• In what ways are you reluctant to connect, heart-to-heart, with your readers?

• Where, right now, can you go for the jugular – your jugular – and dare to write from your emotional epicenter?

Adapted from The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write © Mark David Gerson

Part of answering the call to write and birthing the book that's inside you involves tapping into that emotional epicenter. That's some of the work I do as a writing/creativity/life coach. Need help getting there? Drop me a line.

Photo by Mark David Gerson: Tonopah, AZ 

Dare to Feel. Dare to Connect

"Go to the emotional epicenter, where it hurts most, and write on. If you dare."
~ Bill Donovan, editor/publisher, Creative Screenwriting

"Only connect."
~ E.M. Forster

The call to write is a call to share our emotional depth with others. It's a call to be vulnerable. It's a call to connect.

Thing is, we don’t touch others at a deep level when we connect mind-to-mind, though that connection is a powerful and important one. We touch others at a deep level when we connect heart-to-heart.

Unless we write from our deepest heart, unless we tell the stories that move us, we will never move our readers.

I spent the first chunk of my writing career avoiding writing from what Bill Donovan calls the "emotional eipcenter." I observed and reported, intellectually and dispassionately. I told stories, but without heart.

In not revealing my feelings (at times, not even to myself), I failed to engage my readers in any but superficial ways. I failed them and I failed myself.

I didn't connect.

Do you want to write truth, the truth from which both powerful fiction and nonfiction arise? If you want to write truth, if you want to write words that will touch the deepest emotions and connections and truths of your reader, then you must write what your heart calls on you to write. You must go where you've never dared go before -- in your writing, certainly; in your life, perhaps.

You must, as I write in The Voice of the Muse's "Thirteen Rules for Writing," go for the jugular, for your jugular: "Go for the demon you would run from. Go for the feeling you would flee from. Go for that emotion you would deny. Once you put it on paper, you strip it of its power over you. Once you put it on paper, you free it to empower your work."

You free it, as well, to empower your readers. You empower them to feel their emotions, to be vulnerable and to share their stories.

"We tell our stories in order to live," Joan Didion writes in The White Album

We tell our stories, too, to connect.

There is neither life nor connection outside the heart.

• Where are you refusing to be vulnerable in your writing?

• Where are you afraid to reveal your feelings, perhaps even to yourself?

• In what ways are you reluctant to connect, heart-to-heart, with your readers?

• Where, right now, can you go for the jugular -- your jugular -- and dare to write from your emotional epicenter?


Adapted from >The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write.

Part of answering the call to write and birthing the book that's inside you involves tapping into that emotional epicenter. That's some of the work I do as a writing/creativity/life coach. Need help getting there? Drop me a line.


Photo by Mark David Gerson: Autumn by the Tesuque River, Tesuque, NM

Acts of Surrender 7: The Heart of Desire

This excerpt from Acts of Surrender, my memoir-in-progress, is a present-day story, centered around 9/11 and the days leading up to it.

“What do you want?” Adam asked as we walked along Laguna’s West Beach. The surf was gentle that afternoon, pushing toward us with no urgency and with just enough roll for the lone surfer to find some easy action.

I didn’t answer. I’d been in Southern California for four weeks and this was only my second time on the beach. But I’d been spending regular writing time near the water, either here in Laguna or at what had become a favorite Starbucks, a few minutes up the coast in Newport Beach. I loved being down here and, since arriving at Adam’s, had made the hour-long drive up to the city only once. If Los Angeles had pulled me here, Laguna Beach was seducing me.

“I don’t know,” I said after a time. “When I’m in L.A. and feel the buzz of the city, that’s where I want to be. When I’m down here in Laguna, I don’t want to be anywhere else. It’s as though there are two parts of me competing for my future.”

We walked in silence. I had taken my shoes off, and the sand squished between my toes. At the asphalt path to the street, I brushed off my feet, put my flip-flops back on and started up the hill toward the tiny Camel Point subdivision at the top. I stopped halfway up and looked back. In the silence of that no-man’s land between sea and city, I heard my voice echo back at me from a few days’ earlier, when I’d come to this same place with Adam and his realtor, to look at a Camel Point home. It was an amazing property, modern in design, with ocean views from every room but one.

If I lived here, I heard myself repeat from that earlier visit, I’d never leave.

“Shit,” I said out loud.

“What?” Adam asked.

“It’s L.A. It has to be L.A.” I started to cry.

When the call to leave Albuquerque for Los Angeles began to crystallize earlier this year, I realized it was about leaving my years of retreat and stepping back into the world. My most recent Albuquerque home had eloquently symbolized aspects of that retreat. Although I saw clients and facilitated workshops there, it was perched at the very edge of the city, high in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains, with nothing behind me but open space and mountain wilderness. I was living apart, as I had so often in the past. L.A., I sensed, would be about reinserting myself in the world — not as the world would have me, but as who I’d grown into.

My tears weren’t for Laguna Beach. They were for those parts of me that I was leaving behind, parts of me that wanted to stay in retreat but couldn’t, parts of me that I had outgrown. I was saying goodbye to what remained of the me-in-hiding, a me I could never be again.

If I chose Laguna, I’d be choosing the past. If I chose L.A., I would be stepping into my future...into fearlessness.

The next afternoon I drove into the city, with no set agenda other than to feel what it felt like to be there. As I raced up the 405, I kept glancing into the rearview mirror — not at traffic but at my new haircut. The old, fearful me would have put off dealing with my hair until some money had shown up. Had my hair grown too straggly to ignore, he would have settled for a SuperCuts-style walk-in. He never would have made a salon appointment.

I made a salon appointment.

It was the most expensive haircut I’d ever had...and the best. I felt great. I’d had an instant’s panic at the register, but it passed in a heartbeat. Now, the new-look me was driving to my new city, knowing only that I could no more settle for less than I knew I deserved in L.A. than I could for a second-rate haircut.

I didn’t know how it would all come together. I only knew that it would...that it would have to, not because I was afraid, but because I wasn’t.

I didn’t know how it would all come together. I only knew that it would...that it would have to, not because I was afraid, but because I wasn’t.

It was a new feeling — at the same time liberating and disorienting — and it carried me all the way through my apartment viewing at the resort-like Palazzo complex across from a favorite L.A. hangout, the outdoor Grove mall. I’d decided during the drive up that I would take a look at the Palazzo, without knowing precisely what lay behind its gates.

What will I say to the leasing agents? I wondered. After all, in that moment, both my finances and credit made it conventionally unlikely that I would be living there any time soon.

Convention be damned! I said out loud. I’ll tell them the truth, that it’s not about the size or type of unit. And it’s not about the cost. It’s about the feel of it. That’s all that matters.

When I drove away an hour later, I had one certainty: The Palazzo apartments weren’t good enough for me.

Again, it was a new feeling — acting as though money was not an issue and knowing with a certainty that surprised me with its ferocity that when the right place showed up, I’d know it. I’d know it and I’d be living there.

The “how” wasn’t part of my job description. My job was to declare my desire and act on it. The rest was up to God or Spirit or the Universe, all of which are only higher expressions of me, higher expressions eager to step fully into my life...as soon as I step fully into theirs. Fearlessly.

“Act as though and make it so,” I’d written a few years earlier in the The Wisdom Keepers Training, a multimedia personal-growth manual I’d created. It was time to live that statement more baldly than I’d ever dared.

The haircut was a beginning. After all, as Adam had said to me the previous week when he’d sprung for a haircut at the same salon, “If I’m too scared to spend $40 on a haircut, why would the Universe give me a multimillion-dollar home?”

Indeed.

The next day was September 11. I would be back in L.A. for my daughter’s 11th birthday, and I planned some neighborhood reconnoitering on my own before joining Guinevere and her mother for the day’s festivities.

September 11 is about many things for many people. That’s the day, of course, when Al Qaeda terrorists forced a passenger plane to slam into New York’s World Trade Center. Many say that those emblematic towers should never have crumpled at the impact. That they did carries for me a significance even more earth-shattering than the tragic loss of life and property: An unexpected force took down established structures of order and convention, destroyed the indestructible and offered us an opportunity to look fearlessly at our own outmoded structures — inner and outer.

If, like the rest of the world in 2001, I was too shocked to see anything but the immediate horror, in the years since I’ve noticed that old constructs have often fallen away dramatically for me on September 11. In fact, in writing this book, I now see that 9/11 carried paradigm-altering significance for me even before the events of 2001. It was in 1997, as I’ve already written, that events triggered a move to Sedona that would knock down the bulwark of my identity. Two years later, in perhaps the ultimate life-changing event, my daughter was born.

On Saturday, that symbolic airplane smashed into both my professional and home life. In a flash as fiery and unexpected as that of any terrorist attack, my life as a writing coach and workshop facilitator collapsed in a smoldering heap. I knew that if I was to continue coaching and teaching, that the work would have to look different. My old structure, I now saw, carried traces of the fear-based codependency I was ejecting from my life. It had to come down. Any new structure would have to follow the same road beyond courage and surrender I was paving for myself.

Once again I felt liberated...and disoriented.

A personal 9/11 experience of radical evolution not suitable for the faint of heart...

(Although this is still evolving, I’m now looking to replace my current model of ongoing coaching sessions with one-time two-hour, half-day or full-day intensives: one-on-one consultations that would focus on life at least as much as they would on creativity: a personal 9/11 experience of radical evolution not suitable for the faint of heart.)

The other aha came as I drove through neighborhood after westside L.A. neighborhood that day, scouting for a place I’d like to live. Once again, money was not to be a deciding factor.

I was on a quest beyond the sensible and conventional. I was on a quest to discover the heart of my desire.

Sometimes, the heart of desire is transparently clear. Sometimes, it’s buried under years of convention, decades of disappointment and lifetimes of fear. Writing, for me, was such a hidden treasure, long invisible to a conscious mind paralyzed by fear. It’s been many years since that treasure was unearthed. But it took single moment in the run-up to my Albuquerque exodus for me to finally feel its significance.

I was on the phone with my friend Sander, at the tail end of a harrowing conversation during which I had finally agreed to give notice on my Albuquerque rental, despite not knowing how I could financially manage my L.A. move. (Sound familiar?)

“Take the rest of the day off,” Sander urged.

“No,” I said, “without thinking. “I think I’ll go to Starbucks to write.”

Sander argued with me, tried to convince me not to work.

“You don’t understand,” I countered. “Writing is the only thing that makes sense.” Then, to my surprise, I started to cry. I’d always known that writing lay at the heart of my desire. But it was an intellectual “knowing.” Until that moment, I’d never felt it. That same visceral response was waiting for me in Beverly Hills.

On my way back to Albuquerque in February, I stopped in Sedona for a night, to see Guinevere in a school play. That afternoon, her mom and I went for lunch at New Frontiers, the local health food store that’s as big an energy vortex as any of the town’s well-known red-rock formations. We were standing at the deli counter when we ran into Sao, a shamanic astrologer neither of us had seen since we were married.

After running through the same set of questions with Guinevere's mom, Sao turned to me.

“How old are you?”

“Fifty-five.”

“When’s your birthday?”

“October 3.”

He paused, staring into me.

“You’re entering into the most powerful period of your life,” he intoned. “Whatever you truly desire will be yours.” He paused again. “Start asking yourself this question: By the time you turn 57, who do you want in your life, what do you want to be doing in your life and where do you want to be living?”

To the first two parts of Sao’s question, I heard nothing. At “where do you want to be living,” I heard, with crystal clarity from somewhere deep inside me, Beverly Hills.

I was already planning my L.A. move and I had considered some areas of town I thought might be appealing. None was Beverly Hills. Not because of the cost. It just wasn’t on my conscious radar. I gave it more credence a few weeks later, back in Albuquerque. I was walking through a Target parking lot when I passed a silver Ford Escort bearing a faux California license plate under the grill. Instead of a license number was the name Beverly Hills.

Still, I didn’t know what to do with it. And when I did my 9/11 neighborhood meander, Beverly Hills wasn’t high on the travel agenda. Instead, I covered a swath of territory east of Beverly Hills, searching out, as I had vowed to do on my way to the Palazzo apartments, the feeling. I never found it.

Suddenly, on the eastern fringes of Beverly Hills, I was done. Although I'd made no discoveries, I had launched my exploration, and that felt good. Besides, it was lunchtime and I needed to get over to see Guinevere. I called to see if we could all get together for lunch.

“We’ve only just finished breakfast,” Aalia, her mom, said. “Why don’t you just grab a light bite for now. Guinevere will be hungry again in a few hours, and then we can have lunch.”

I figured fast food, then realized I wasn’t in a fast-food part of town.

I studied the map on my iPhone for inspiration. To my surprise, I had one: the Beverly Hills Whole Foods Market. I remembered it from a previous visit and knew it was only a mile or so away. Soup and a bread roll would be perfect.

As I walked into the store, I suddenly felt as though it was my Whole Foods, as though I shopped there all the time — a feeling I’d never had about Whole Foods in either Albuquerque or Santa Fe. I filed it away as curious and got my lunch. After lunch, I walked down the block to The Crescent Beverly Hills, a luxury apartment building I’d noticed from the car. A doorman smiled and opened the door. No leasing agents were on duty over the weekend, he told me, then scribbled a name and number for me to call on Monday. As I left, I experienced that same natural feeling I’d felt in the market.

Back in the car, I took North Crescent to Santa Monica Boulevard, and then North Beverly to westbound Wilshire for the 20-minute drive to Guinevere’s. Now, everything about the area felt normal, natural, home-like. I could see myself sitting in the Starbucks on North Beverly, working on this book. I could see myself on the patio of a Wilshire café, people-watching over lunch. There was a Twilight Zone quality to the experience that left my mind in a muddle.

A few minutes later, I had crossed the city line back into Los Angeles. I gazed at all the Westwood high-rise apartment towers and tried to imagine myself living there. I couldn’t. It was like forcing Cinderella’s glass slipper onto her stepsister’s foot. There was no way it could fit without causing discomfort and pain. In a flash, I was back at the New Frontiers deli counter, hearing “Beverly Hills” in response to Sao’s question. And just as quickly, I started to cry.

The quest was over. I had found the heart of my desire.

How would I realize that desire? There was only one way: to “act as though” and leave the rest in more capable hands.


Adapted from Acts of Surrender: A Writer's Journey of Faith, my memoir-in-progress. Please share as you feel called to. But please, also, include a link back to this post.

Previous excerpts were published here on July 30, August 25, September 1, September 9 and September 10.

Photos by Mark David Gerson: Laguna Beach, Sandia Mountains, the fountain at The Grove, California license plate. Other photos: source unknown.

Facing the Void: Coping with a Blank Page

What do you do when you face a blank page? It's all about trusting the mystery and taking that leap of faith into the unknown...into the infinite realm where your stories reside.




• 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.


Art Credits: Creative Community Image from ehow.com

Living a Creative Life

If you're looking to live a more vibrant life, you can't do better than to listen to Spiritual Coaching, a weekly online radio program from the Unity online radio network hosted by Rev. Carla McClellan of Unity of Independence, Missouri.

Mind you, I'm not entirely objective. I just appeared on Carla's show on October 6, and it was one of the most fun interviews I've ever done. We talked about writing, creativity, spirituality and life -- and it was so enlightening, inspiring and entertaining for both of us that we've agreed to have me return monthly, on the second Tuesday of each month (4pm ET).

For now, though, please listen to this week's show...and post your thoughts and comments below!

Anatomy of a Writing Coach

A version of this interview first appeared last month on Aggie Villanueva's Visual Arts Junction blog.

Awakening Your Muse: Writing Coach Mark David Gerson

by Aggie Villaneuva

Stumbling across Mark David was a treasure trove for me, even as a professional writer. He asks multilayered questions that will strengthen any writer who plumbs them, but more, he offers personal coaching to achieve that end. ~ AV

VAJ: Mark David, you fill a void in writing education. When and how did you get started in this nontraditional type of education? What is the story behind your web pages?

Mark David: Thanks, Aggie. I suppose my unconventional approach comes from the fact that I hated writing and pretty much any creative pursuit all through school. Somehow, at some age, I got shut down creatively and continued to do my best to avoid having to write well into my teens.

In a sense, my Muse tricked me into becoming a writer. Or, rather, she pulled me along -- “safe” step by safe step -- until I was hooked.

It began in high school when I was volunteered to coordinate publicity for a school play and had to learn how to write press releases. That PR-related writing continued through college and into my earliest jobs out of university. From there I ultimately moved into newspaper and magazine work as a freelance writer and editor. It was during that period that a colleague somehow talked me into attending a writing workshop.

Until then, my stereotyped view of writing workshops had involved public humiliation: You’d read what you’d written and would then be viciously critiqued. This workshop was nothing like that. It was nurturing, supportive and creatively awakening, and it became the foundation for my coaching and for everything I’ve taught and written about writing ever since.

The teaching and coaching ultimately led to my book, The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write and its companion recording, The Voice of the Companion: Guided Meditations for Writers (I used often guided meditation as a tool in my writing classes and workshops). It also led to this blog of tools, tips and inspiration for writers.

I also have a personal web site and a blog more related to personal/spiritual growth. These are not unrelated to my work with writers, as I strongly believe that life and creativity are intrinsically linked, which, of course, feeds right back into my nontraditional approach!


VAJ: What type of writer most commonly comes to you for coaching?

Mark David: I’ve worked with all sorts of writers -- both as a coach and in my classes and workshops. My approach transcends genre and experience level. Having said that, though, I tend to attract writers who are open to writing from a deep inner place and who are prepared to express themselves authentically. I work best with writers who see writing as more than a job, but as something that is a vital part of their self-expression.


VAJ: Are your coaching sessions only for the novice with an urge to write, or do you work with long-established professional writers too?

Mark David: Again, my clients and students come from the full spectrum -- from novices who don’t believe they can write to published authors. I work a lot (though not exclusively) with people experiencing creative blocks. These can express themselves equally as an inability to get going, an inability to keep going or an inability to complete. Writers at all levels of experience have these issues, and all have benefited from working with me.


VAJ: In a nutshell, how would you explain your offerings to the writer or would-be writer who wonders if your course is for them?

Mark David: The first thing I like to point out is that I offer no single course or program. I work intuitively with each individual (or, in the case of a class, each group) to discern their particular needs. No two coaching series are alike. For that matter, no two of my classes are alike — even those that carry the same name. In fact, I’ve had students take the same class with me multiple times, because they know each experience will be unique.

Perhaps the most important thing I share with prospective coaching clients is that my work as a writing coach often intersects with my work as life coach. As I said earlier, life and creativity are inextricably linked. Our writing issues are often expressions of our life issues. If a client truly desires to get to the root of the former, he or she must be prepared to also deal with the latter.

Of course, not all coaching issues are deep issues. More often than not, though, they are. Even something as simple as making time for writing can relate to how we make time in our lives for ourselves.


VAJ: Your title is “Coach.” Do you spend personal coaching time with your students in workshops, over the phone, teleseminars? How exactly are your courses set up?

Mark David: I call myself a “coach,” but I really see myself as a guide and catalyst and I work with people in whatever ways that time, logistics and technology permit. Most of my coaching clients are not local; even when they are, I often conduct sessions over the phone. It’s just more convenient for everyone. While I still offer most of my classes and workshops in person, I have offered teleseminars in the past and am now exploring video-conferencing technology so as to make my workshops and classes more widely available.


VAJ: Mark David, when a writer first starts working personally with you, where is the very starting point at which you begin?

Mark David: The starting point is the writer him- or herself. As every session and series of sessions is unique to each writer’s needs and issues, there is no common starting point, other than identifying what’s going on for each individual and responding accordingly. Creativity is not about formulas and repeating what’s been done before. It’s about invention and individuality. Therefore, there are rarely boilerplate solutions, even when dealing with something as common as writer’s block.


VAJ: Mark David, you coach us to delve into our spiritual and psychological sides. How far do you take your students into the practicalities of writing?

Mark David: As far as they need to go! I’m happy to focus on craft and technique if that’s where the session or class needs to go. But even there, clients and students often find my take to be nontraditional! For example, my attitude toward editing is much more intuitive and respectful than most conventional approaches, which you can probably tell from my workshop on the topic, which I call “The Heartful Art of re-Vision.”


VAJ: Based on past students, just how effective are your sessions towards becoming a professional writer versus a self-aware writer?

Mark David: Unless you choose to treat writing as a 9-5 job divorced from passion and calling, the road to being a successful professional writer begins by being a self-aware writer. The subtitle of my book says it all: “answering the call to write.” I work best with writers who feel that profound call and are ready to answer it. If they’re not, I may not be the best coach for them.


VAJ: For the writer or would-be writer reading this and still wonders if your sessions are for them, what would you say?

Mark David: The catchphrase I use on my book and in most of my work with writers is, “You’ll never feel the same about writing again.” If you’re ready to write from the heart, to surrender to the stories that have always been inside you, to revolutionize your writing life and/or to live your creativity, then I’m your guy!


VAJ: Any parting words of wisdom to all writers?

Mark David: Trust the story, even if you don’t yet know what it is. Trust your innate creativity. Take it word by word and allow your pen or the keyboard to spell out the story for you. Allow yourself to be the passenger on your creative journey, not the driver. And, of course, read The MoonQuest and get a copy of The Voice of the Muse -- both the book and CD set! Seriously, if you can begin to believe that your story always knows best, you’ll never go wrong.


VAJ: Thank you so much for your time and your insights. Yours is a work we will all remember.

• Aggie Villanueva's original interview

• More about my coaching services