A Super-Saver Pre-Holiday Special!

You never know what you'll find when you open your storage unit.

What I found when I rummaged through mine recently was a small stack of unexpected cartons of the first editions of my first two books: The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write and The MoonQuest (The Q'ntana Trilogy, Book I).

Unexpected, because apart from a handful of "souvenir" copies of these early editions, I didn't know I still had any left. Both first editions were superseded by newer versions a few years back.

With the holidays coming up, I decided that it was the perfect time to take this "storage surprise," throw in some of the few remaining copies of my 2-CD album, The Voice of the Muse Companion: Guided Meditations for Writers, and create a Holiday Supersaver package for you at an unprecedented discount: The Voice of the Muse book and CD at a combined price lower than either sells for separately – $16.77. On top of that, I'm throwing in a bonus copy of The MoonQuest, absolutely free!

GET YOUR COPIES NOW!

Factoring in the free MoonQuest, that's more than 70% off the regular retail price of the two books and CD set!

Even without the killer discount, The Voice of the Muse and MoonQuest books, along with The Voice of the Muse recording on CD, would make ideal gifts for both the writers and fantasy lovers on your holiday list...starting with you! 

But for $16.77, it's an absolute no-brainer!

The Voice of the Muse contains all the practical, inspirational and motivational content that turned it into an instant classic and got it named Best Writing Book of the Year not once but twice. As for The MoonQuest, the critically acclaimed story is an even more relevant allegory today than it was when it was first published more than a decade ago.

These two books were my first award-winners and are still my best-sellers. And The MoonQuest is on its way to the big screen as the first film in an epic fantasy trilogy!

So you won't want to miss this deal!! 

ACT NOW: CLICK HERE TO ORDER!

A few "fine print" details...

• This promotion will continue through Oct. 31...or until these last copies of the two books are gone. Because I have a limited number left, I urge you to act now! (I'm also running low on the CD version of The Voice of the Muse Companion; so its days of availability are also numbered.)

• I cannot sign copies of these super-sale editions. If you prefer signed copies, please order the new editions from www.markdavidgerson.com/books.

• To make the process more efficient, all books will be shipped within 7 days of the end of the promotion.

DON'T WAIT UNTIL THERE ARE NONE LEFT: ORDER YOUR COPIES NOW!

Photo of Storage Unit: Original Flickr image by MyBiggestFan; licensed under Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0); https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode. This version additionally processed in Luminar.

Mark David Gerson: A Writer's Life Revisited

This is an updated version of an interview that originally appeared on Jean Vallesteros's Book Nerd blog a few years ago. Read the original and related material here. 

Book Nerd: What inspired you to pen your first novel? Where did you get your ideas for The MoonQuest?

Mark David Gerson: I have written about the birth of The MoonQuest in my Acts of Surrender memoir. In short, though, I had no plans to write a MoonQuest, nor did I have a conscious desire to write a fantasy novel, let alone a trilogy. The MoonQuest birthed itself during a Toronto writing workshop I was facilitating when, in an unprecedented in-the-moment inspiration, I did the same exercise I had presented to participants. What I wrote that evening became the opening scene of the first draft of a novel I knew nothing about. From there, I just kept writing, discovering the story as I went along, until I was done. The StarQuest and SunQuest stories emerged similarly.


BN: What tools do you feel are must-haves for writers?

MDG: An open heart and mind and a willingness to surrender to your story and travel wherever it takes you (and to break all the rules getting there).

BN: How long have you been writing?

MDG: Perhaps the better question would be, "How long did I resist writing?" I often joke that my Muse tricked me into writing, given that for most of my early life, I resisted anything remotely creative. My first jobs out of university were in public relations, where I had to write, even if what I wrote at first was largely formulaic. However, that experience gave me the confidence to try my hand at freelance work and, before I knew it, I was a full-time (self-taught) freelance writer and editor, doing mostly magazine, newspaper, corporate and government work. However, it wasn’t until my early 30s, when the double-whammy of a creative and spiritual awakening knocked me over the head that I began to explore more creative avenues. And it wasn’t until I was 39 that The MoonQuest, my first foray into serious creative writing, began to have its way with me. I’ve been hooked ever since.

BN: What is The MoonQuest about?

MDG: Imagine a land where storytelling is banned, where storytellers have been put to death, where dreams and visions are outlawed, where imagination has been stripped from the land and its people. This is the Q’ntana of The MoonQuest, a land where, as Toshar, the main character, puts it, "'once upon a time' is a forbidden phrase and fact is the only legal tender." In this land, legend has it, the moon has been so saddened by the silence and tyranny that she has cried tears that have extinguished her light. As a result, the moon has not been seen for many generations. The MoonQuest, then, is the journey undertaken by a reluctant Toshar and his three companions to restore story and vision to the land and to rekindle the light of the moon. Check out the book trailer on YouTube.

BN: Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing? Did you learn anything from writing The MoonQuest and what was it?

MDG: When I begin a project, I rarely know the story in advance. When I began The MoonQuest, for example, I knew nothing about it, except what emerged in each day’s writing. I didn’t have a title until about halfway through and I had no idea of the ending until about two-thirds of the way through. It was an experience in surrender: in surrendering unconditional control to my Muse and to the story. And it was tough! It was tough to keep writing with no plot, no outline and not even the remotest clue where the story was taking me. But it taught me how to get out of the way and let the story have its way with me. That’s still how I write — regardless of the form, genre or project. I now do it with much less resistance than I did it on The MoonQuest. But it’s still, sometimes, the most challenging aspect of the work...even as it’s also the most exhilarating and is, for me, the key to the magic!

BN: If you had to choose, which writer would you consider a mentor?

MDG: I’d probably have to say Madeleine L’Engle, author of A Wrinkle in Time. I didn’t discover A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels until I was an adult, when I also discovered, through her nonfiction writings, L’Engle’s deep spirituality, one that informed her creativity and her life. While L’Engle’s spirituality found its expression through the Episcopal Church and mine is largely unstructured, she was a profound influence on my writing and my life. In a sense, she already was a mentor without me knowing it. Now, if she were still alive, I’d like to thank her for that.


BN: What is your work schedule like when you're writing?

MDG: For the most part, I don’t believe in fixed routines. Rather, I operate intuitively — in my writing and in my life. I’m not one of those people who writes at the same time every day or who believes that you should sit down to write regardless of how you feel. While other coaches and instructors recommend applying a regular routine to creative production, that method never works for me for very long. Rather, I remain as in-the-moment as I can and follow wherever the inspiration leads me — in my life as well as in my writing. That way of living and writing is both exhilarating and, at times, terrifying. But it does keep things in an organic balance!

BN: What was one of the most surprising things you learned in creating The MoonQuest?

MDG: Three things, I suppose. The first was that I was actually creative. The second, that the methods I had been teaching (what I call "writing on the Muse Stream": writing nonstop, without thinking, without worrying about where the story was going) actually worked on something as long as a novel. And the third, related to the second, that the story was, truly, way smarter than I was!

BN: How many books have you written? Which is your favorite?

MDG: I have 12 books out: the three books in The Q'ntana Trilogy (The MoonQuest, The StarQuest and SunQuest), five books for writers, including the award-winning The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write, two memoirs, the inspirational Book of Messages and my latest, a novel called Sara's Year. Plus, I have a Sara's Year sequel in progress. (As well, I have adapted the three Q'ntana stories for the screen.) But asking which is my favorite would be like asking a parent to choose a favorite child. Each is meaningful to me in particular ways and each is a favorite for particular reasons! 

BN: What were your feelings when  you first saw the cover of of your first published book?

MDG: When I opened the FedEx envelope and pulled out my advance copy of The MoonQuest, I burst into tears. I didn’t expect to have that same reaction with my second book, The Voice of the Muse....but I did!

BN: If you gave some of your characters an opportunity to speak for themselves, what would they say?

MDG: What took you so long to get our story out??!? Seriously, I spoke to my characters while writing all three books in the fantasy trilogy. It was some of those conversations that led to some of the most surprising (to me) and powerful scenes in the books.

BN: Are there any tips you would give a book club to better navigate their discussion of The MoonQuest?

MDG: I would invite readers not only to look at the book from the outside, as readers, but to look at the journey the main characters undertake in the book through the lens of their own life experience. In other words, where does The MoonQuest speak to you, personally, in your life? In addition, I have a Reader's Guide to The MoonQuest, available free from my website.

BN: Who is your favorite character in The MoonQuest, and why?

MDG: I’ll answer this question as long as you don’t reveal my answer to the book’s main characters! My two favorite characters, I think, are the two quirkiest...the ones that always make me smile and sometimes make me laugh out loud: the Ferryman (he’s so minor that he has no name) and Pryma, a giant, one-eyed turtle-like creature, who makes a return appearance in The SunQuest.

BN: What was your favorite chapter to write and why?

MDG: Given that the first draft of The MoonQuest was one 400-page chapter, that one’s impossible to answer! As I mentioned earlier, I had no idea what the story was or where it was taking me, so I just kept writing, with no chapter breaks, until the first draft was done. I only added chapter and section breaks in later drafts. I did include chapter breaks in the first draft of The StarQuest and The SunQuest. Although they felt arbitrary at the time, my intuitive sensings must have been fairly accurate as most of those chapter breaks have changed.

BN: Can you see yourself in any of your characters?

MDG: Authors who claim that they don’t see aspects of themselves in all their characters are either lying, blind or woefully un-self-aware. I am in all my characters, even (I hate to admit) the nastiest! In The MoonQuest, though, the character I most identify with is Toshar, the main character whose first-person account the story is. This young man who discovers his stories and his storytelling ability through his MoonQuest journey was very much a metaphor for the creative deepening that writing the book represented for me at that time in my life.

BN: Has a review or profile ever changed your perspective on your work?

MDG: I haven’t had that experience with a review. But I have had it with reader comments. Two experiences in particular were surprising, and gratifying. In the first, a reader told me why the most difficult scenes in the book supported the story’s theme. Those were scenes that had been challenging for me to write, were often challenging for readers to read and, although I intuitively knew they belonged in the book, I couldn’t explain why. In the second instance, a reader brought up a theme that I hadn’t known was there but that made perfect sense to me once he mentioned it. Truly, my books are smarter than I am!

BN: Tell us your most rewarding experience since being published.

MDG: Although winning awards and getting great reviews for both books have been tremendously gratifying and validating, and although having a film producer primed to turn my books into movies is fabulously exciting, what’s most rewarding is when individual readers tell me how one or both of my books has affected them and, in some cases, changed their lives. This moving video, for example, was sent to me by one of my readers.

BN: What are your current projects?

MDG: As I mentioned earlier, I'm working on a sequel to Sara's Year, tentatively titled After Sara's Year. It wasn't a book I planned to write, but so many Sara's Year readers asked for a sequel that I felt I had to give it try. Now, I'm excited to be discovering aspects of the original story and its characters that I didn't know when writing Sara's Year. 

BN: If you couldn’t be an author, what would your ideal career be?

MDG: My secret ambition would be to be a singer! More realistically, I’m also an artist and photographer and would be quite happy devoting more time to those creative pursuits. You can see some of my art and photography on my fine art website, as well as on Instagram.

BN: Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?

MDG: This is for all writers, not just aspiring ones! 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, get a copies of my books! Seriously, if you can begin to believe that your story always knows best, you’ll never go wrong.

BN: Where is your favorite place to read/write?

MDG: I’m a bit of a café freak. I love reading and writing at Starbucks (as my Facebook friends/followers have discovered)!

BN: One of your favorite quotes?

MDG: From The MoonQuest: “You either trust or you do not. There is no halfway in between.”

BN: Where can your readers stalk you?

MDG: I'm easily stalkable in all the usual places! lol

The best place to contact me is either via my website or Facebook, or by leaving comments on my blog.  I’m also on Google+ . FYI: I do my best to respond to all comments and queries...but sometimes it’s just not possible. But I read and appreciate them all.

Free Your Stories, Free Yourself!

"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."
– Zara Neale Hurston

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.

• Need help getting going or keeping going? Look for my books and recording for writers, all designed to help you reawaken, access, experience and express your innate creativity! You'll find them online on Amazon and on all major ebook and music-download sites. And check out my free videos on YouTube.

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 

Only You Can Write the Story That's Yours to Write

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice...
– Mary Oliver, from her poem "The Journey," collected in Dream Work

Only you can write the story that's yours to write. And write it you must, regardless of the voices, inner and outer, that cry out for you to stop, that claim they're trying to save you.

There is no salvation in stopping, in turning away, in listening to those voices, however sensible they seem.

Your only salvation is the word that must emerge from the prison of your fear and into the light of your potential. This word, and now this one. And now this one.

One word following the next and the next, crashing through what you think you know -- about yourself and the world -- and carrying you into the Kingdom of the New, that wondrous realm beyond your imagining that has been waiting for you since the beginning of time.

But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do...
~ "The Journey"

Only you can write the story that's yours to write. Have you begun? If so, it's time to continue. If not, close this browser window and begun. How? With one word. Any word. And then with another...and another...and another...one word following the next until the story is done.

Need help, motivation or inspiration? 

• Pick up one of my books for writers in paperback on most Amazon sites, from select other online booksellers or from my website, or download the ebook from any major ebook seller. 

• Looking for more personalized attention? Drop me a line to learn more about more one-on-one services for writers.

Renewing the Past, Stepping into the Future

These are the final hours for the original edition of my award-winning first book for writers, The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write. By the end of the day (perhaps even by the time you read this), a new, expanded edition – complete with new cover – will have superseded it.

Just as I had mixed feelings earlier this year when I let The MoonQuest's original cover go in favor of its current updated look, it's with a certain ambivalence that I bid a grateful farewell to the original edition of The Voice of the Muse.

The MoonQuest and The Voice of the Muse were my first two published books, my first two literary babies. But they – and I – have grown up and matured in the years since their original release. It's now time for that maturity to be reflected in their public face.

The MoonQuest's cover – like its StarQuest and SunQuest sequels – now better reflects the dark, dystopian reality of the worlds in which they are set. It's a world where the story's colored horses are not the fairy tale-like creatures they appear, at first glance, to be on the original MoonQuest cover. Magical they may be, but Rykka and Ta'ar are also sentient beings of immense power – for good, fortunately!

In all other ways, except for an inside-the-book redesign and the inclusion of a long-requested guide to the pronunciation of the story's sometimes-challenging names, The MoonQuest is unchanged.

The same cannot be said for the new edition of The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write.

The cover, of course, is a radical departure. Gone is the Muse figure so evocatively designed by Richard Crookes, even as, on the new cover, the Muse's ocean of stories remains – Malibu's El Matador Beach, in this instance. Replacing the Muse on the new cover is a current photo of me, not for any egotistical reasons but as a way of empowering myself to more clearly take ownership of the book and its sometimes radical concepts and to match the look, tone and feel of my other books for writers.

But there have been changes inside the book as the well. The Voice of the Muse is now 20 percent longer and, I hope, 20 percent more effective!

What has changed?

• I have expanded the section on craft, "Breathing Light and Life into Your Writing," with two new, full-length meditations to help you deepen your explorations and expressions of character and setting.
• I have added a new section to help you cope with something all writers dread but must inevitably face (“On Rejection”). 
• I have expanded what to me is one of the most important sections of the book, “Living Your Creativity,” to help you more effectively apply your passion for creativity to the rest of your life.
• I have remedied my only regret about the original edition by inserting a chapter on how reading makes you a better writer...and a better person.
• Finally, I have expanded many of the exercises, updated the technology references and made a host of other minor and not-so-minor tweaks to the rest of the text.

It has been quite the journey, reexperiencing a book I had not read cover-to-cover since proofing the final first-edition galleys nearly seven years ago. In revisiting it, I was reminded that its first words were originally intended not for you, but for me.

I didn’t set out to write this book. It crept up on me when I wasn’t looking, when I didn’t know I was writing it. Many of the essays in this volume began as journal entries, self-motivating vignettes penned during a time when I needed inspiration.  

I need that inspiration again today, as I launch into a new novel – my first since The SunQuest and a radical departure from my fantasy trilogy.

The Voice of the Muse wasn't the only one of my books I have reread over the past six months. Rather, it was the last of them. Since December, I have reread all three Q'ntana novels, my Acts of Surrender memoir, Writer's Block Unblocked and The Book of Messages. (My other two books, Organic Screenwriting and From Memory to Memoir, were written and published during that same period.) It has been an instructive, not always comfortable exercise – sort of like watching your life flash before your eyes, but via the written word!

The Voice of the Muse, however, is the only one of my books that I have altered, and I didn't do it lightly.

A book is a photograph in time, an expression of who the author was when he or she wrote it. His life, her world view, his thoughts, her philosophies, his prejudices, her quirks – they are all captured in a fixed, freeze-frame moment. Authors change and grow; the words, paragraphs and pages of their books cannot.

Perhaps they should not. In one sense, revisiting and updating a six-year-old book  as I have done with The Voice of the Muse – is like Photoshopping an old picture to make its subject appear fresh and contemporary. Wouldn’t it be better to leave the old book alone and write a new one that better represents who I am today?

That was my initial thought as I began to reread the book. In that moment, releasing a new edition felt almost fraudulent, as though I would be manipulating history.

Yet the more I read, the more I realized that The Voice of the Muse has grown with the times. Somehow, it has not only remained relevant over the years but has grown even more relevant.

In a world where public schools are being stripped of their arts programs and creativity is continually devalued in favor of “utility,” it has never been more important to rekindle passion, foster intuition and encourage self-expression. The Voice of the Muse still does all that and remains, to my astonishment, as cutting edge as ever.

At a personal level, this Voice of the Muse reunion of mine has been more than the step back in time I expected it to be. As I have read and reread the book in preparation for this expanded edition, I have discovered new depth and meaning in its words, words that, as I already pointed out, were originally intended for me. Apparently, they still are.

I suggest in all my books for writers that our books, screenplays and other writing projects are sentient entities with minds and imperatives of their own. This latest experience with The Voice of the Muse has once again proven that to be true.

I'm gratified to have been given the gift of its words, not once but twice. And I'm excited to be sharing this new edition with you!

• The new paperback edition of The Voice of the Muse is propagating through Amazon's websites and search engines right now – a curious process that produces strange glitches and odd hiccups, so be patient! (If it's not currently showing on my Amazon author page, alongside all my other titles, it's a temporary anomaly that will soon correct itself. You can get around it by using this direct link.) Over the next weeks and months, the new, expanded paperback will also be available through other online booksellers and by special order from your neighborhood bricks-and-mortar store.
• At this writing, a few discounted copies of the original Voice of the Muse paperback are still available on Amazon.com. If you want one of them, don't wait. Unsold copies will be withdrawn from sale by week's end. You'll find them through this link.
• The new Kindle edition is currently available, and your purchase of the new paperback edition on Amazon will get you a Kindle copy for only US$1.99 through Amazon's Kindle Match program.)
• The new Kobo, Nook and iBook editions will be available in the next days.
• The Voice of the Muse Companion, my recording of meditations that are included in all my books for writers, continues to be available (with its original cover, for now) as an MP3 download on iTunes, Amazon, Google Play and CD Baby. The original 2-CD album is also sold on Amazon.com.

Photo by Mark David Gerson: El Matador Beach, Malibu, CA, where the new Voice of the Muse cover image was shot by photographer Kathleen Messmer. Visit my gallery website to browse or buy this and more of my photos and artwork.

• Let's Be Friends! Please look me up on Facebook, Twitter and/or Google+.

The Voice of the Muse: A Reader's Journey

Rather than offering a traditional ranking and critique, reviewers at The Uncustomary Book Review chronicle their experiences and relationship with the books they write up.

Kat Kiddles's review of The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write, which I reprint here from a few years back, offers a too-rare window on the journey you travel, as the book's reader. If you've already made that sojourn, you'll undoubtedly recognize some of Kat's experiences in your own. If you haven't, she offers a movingly personal up-close view of what you might expect.

• Unlike when this review first appeared The Voice of the Muse is now available in ebook form as well as paperback. Get the ebook in the Kindle, Nook, Kobo or iBook/iTunes store; the paperback is at Amazon.com. The Voice of the Muse Companion recording of guided meditations is sold on CD at Amazon.com and as an MP3 download from iTunes, Amazon, CD Baby and Google Play.


The Voice of the Muse

Review by Kat Kiddles

Reprinted from The Uncustomary Book Review ~ May 29, 2011
Full Title: The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write
Author: Mark David Gerson
Format: Paperback and ebook
Number of Pages: 248
How long it took me to read: 1 year, 2 weeks, 3 days
Where I got this book: A heavily hinted at Christmas gift
Audio Excerpt: Guided Meditation #10: You Are a Writer


Like a Moth to a Flame
I’m not really sure why I was drawn to this book. I remember watching an interview with the author on a webcast. I think it was during a stage in my development as a writer when I was just warming my mitts to the idea of working with a muse. The creative process was still foreign and uncomfortable; holding my pen brought back ridiculous memories of grade school when we used sausage-sized pencils to learn how to print and the idea of calling myself a writer made me want to cower behind desperate attempts at topic changes so that people would get back to talking about themselves. (Not quite sure how that differs from today, but that’s too large a can of worms to open this late in the evening.)


Favorite Five Quotes
Whittling 13 down to 5…I propose that the top 5 quotes from this book are:

5. “The pain is in the resistance.” (p.113)

4. “You ask why you fear the blank page even as you know that the act of writing will make you feel better. It’s simple: The fear of the void far outweighs any perceived benefit that might arise from allowing it to be filled.” (p.112)

3. “Your imagination is limited by what you think you know. When you let go of that, when you leap off the bridge or cliff with nothing but trust, that’s when you fly.” (p.233)

2. “The fiercest ridicule and loudest, cruelest judgment will come from those who are touched most deeply by your words…Your critics are touched at a place deeper than they feel comfortable going, so their reaction and response is one of cruelty.” (p.69)

…and my pick for the No.1 quote is…

1. “Writers often have the cleanest windows, floors, fridges and toilets, the most up-to-date filing system or the best record for returning calls or e-mails because, in the moment, just about any task seems more palatable than sitting down to write.” (p.136)

New Words
Words are wondrous creatures. Put them together and they paint a picture. Rearrange them and the scene changes. But to be able to see what they are saying, we must first know what they mean.

• New Word: egress (noun)

Definition (Source: WordBook iPhone App): 1) (astronomy) the reappearance of a celestial body after an eclipse; 2) the becoming visible; 3) the act of coming (or going) out; becoming apparent
Synonyms: 1) emersion; 2) emergence, issue; 3) egression, emergence
Origins: 1538; from Latin ‘egressus,’ from egredi ‘go out,’ from ex- ‘out’ + -gredi, comb. form of gradi ‘step, go.’
As in: “If you would but open your heart and allow what longs to flow from you easy egress, there would be no block.” (p.113)

Conversation with the Reader
While I read, I write, and as I write, I read. Here’s some of what I wrote while I read this book:

“I so often feel I’m writing books I don’t know about yet. Is it because the words I’m writing are going to be published one day, or because my scribbled notes will become the fuel of future stories? It’s strange, living a life that you know is going to be something someday, but that still isn’t. I suppose it’s akin to being a gardener, sewing seeds in the soil, knowing that one day the garden will be there, its form only visible in the imagination.”

•
“Gerson’s book is asking me a question, so I suppose I’ll attempt to answer it.

Where are you now? Where are you now in your writing? In your life?

“Well! I can see we’re starting off on an easy note this morning! Alright, where am I now in my life? Well, I’m in a funny place that has me looking to past relationships as I position myself for my next step. I’m in a place of searching and building. I suppose part of that process is about tying up loose ends, taking these last few moments to indulge in reflecting on the unresolved experiences that have made me who I am today, and making sure I’m as ok as I can be about what it took to get me here.

“Where am I in my writing? Well, a few months ago, I was struggling to write 500 words every other day. Today, words flow into everything I do. They spill onto the sheets of my notebook and splatter onto the pages of my blogs. I write job proposals and professional profiles. I contribute to magazines and draft content for clients. I’m seeing many value-added opportunities through the marriage of writing and education (my passions); however, what I’m not seeing is the coming along of my book…or books (perhaps it’s better to just use the singular for now). So, wherever I am in my writing, it’s a place wrought with the guilt of not doing more work on it, overgrown with the fear of facing it, and polluted with clouds of uncertainty that make it all the more difficult to see the path ahead.

“When I close my eyes and think of a word that represents where I am in this moment, change gurgles up my creative esophagus, followed by a reflux of transition, metamorphosis, chameleon, creation, building blocks, turning corners, cultivation, honing, fine tuning, tweaking, experimenting, listening, silence, soliloquy, crafting and obstacling.

“Although not a ‘real’ word, obstacling feels as though it encompasses so much of my current reality – the act of overcoming obstacles. Obstacling. Maybe that’s my word of the day.

“Next, Gerson asks about his readers’ expectations,

What do you want from this book?

“My first thoughts are of what I don’t want. I don’t want homework or assignments. I don’t want exercises every few pages or activities that make me stop to reflect. Then again, a wise man recently told me that ‘children don’t always know what’s good for them,’ so perhaps I would benefit from focusing less on what I don’t want.

“What I want from this book, then, is a friend – a friend that reassures me that I’m not alone, that reminds me that I’m not crazy, and that encourages me to keep swimming (a reference that will make sense to those of you who’ve conversed with Goldberg on her Long Quiet Highway.”

•
“Humph. Is writing really as simple as tuning into the frequency of your heart, putting pen to paper, and then just…transcribing? I think I might have sort of maybe thought of it like that once before, but only now that I’ve read it on Gerson’s page is it really beginning to sink in. It might actually be that simple. I know that I’m not supposed to judge, that I’m supposed to trust, so maybe fine-tuned transcription is the perfect approach. But what do you do when you have pages and pages of writing, files of notes and a partial manuscript, all insisting on getting your attention? What do you do with all the words once you’ve poured them (at least some of them) out?”

•
“I fear my pen will run out soon. I suddenly see my pen as a powerful wand, a Harry Potter wand, a magical wand of words!”

•
“Enough dust has collected on the cover for me to be squeamish about picking it up. Although I’m aware that the message of the book is what I’m actually fearful of, I firmly believe that dust bunnies have no place in the literary equation.”

•
“Demand brings force. Force inspires fear. Fear drowns out the silence and muffles the gentle hum of creativity.”

•
[In response to Guided Meditation #1 - Meet Your Muse (pp.36-8)]
“I crossed the threshold of my imagined door, a door engraved with mystical carvings on glimmering, ancient wood. It felt cold on the other side. Everything was dark, black. My muse, a muse, something, approached; an outline of white, the skeleton of a winged creature. We stood, face-to-face, being-to-being, in an empty space of resolved (resigned) understanding. The gift I received before making my way back was a blank page and a pen. The unspoken message, something along the lines of, ‘Keep going.’

“The encounter hasn’t left me feeling fulfilled or inspired. It’s made me wonder what’s around the corner. It’s making me more aware of consequences, the way choices impact the courses of our journeys. I had thought, had assumed, that once the first drop dribbled over the cliff’s edge, there would no stopping the cascade. Am I about to experience a drought?”

•
[In response to the writing exercise on p.51]

“My healing lies in a place of self-embrace, where sizes are stretched and words are dressed in colorful tunics embroidered with lace from foreign lands no map can chart. My healing lies in the space between my breath – a place undisturbed by attempts to control and define. My healing lies outside of me, for everything inside pushes order ahead of the unknown. How can healing have enough room to spread and stretch in a space too small to measure? My healing lies in a place I haven’t found, in a direction I’m forgetting to look. Does healing mean succeeding, or is it just another sequence of letters defining acceptance?”

•
“What would you say if someone were to tell you that the book you were about to start reading was equivalent to a yoga class for writers, where the words were the teacher and the writing activities were the poses? How would you feel holding a verbal asana for minutes at a time, meditating on the imagery of the author’s vision, while trying to maintain a deep, even breath? To me, it feels as though I’m wobbling my way through tree pose, desperately trying not to fall on my face, not because of the inevitable pain but to avoid having to publicly admit that I couldn’t do it. When reading words turns into a strenuous exercise, it’s difficult to want to get back to the verbal gym the next day.”

•
[In response to the writing exercise on p.98]
“I follow my pen wherever it carries me. Today it carries me to…

“…the ends of the earth, where I can tickle the stars with the tips of my lashes and caress the sands with a hand touched by the mercy of a moment’s repose.

“…the center of the softest of all marshmallows, where there’s none of the stickiness and all of the joy these puffs bestow upon good girls and boys when the time comes to greet the forest and count the leaves and feel the freedom of sleeping outside.

“…a place with no walls and no keys and not even ripe cheese. All that exists is the nothingness in between.”

•
“I trusted today. I trusted, despite time constraints and inner fears. I trusted. I sat in front of the computer, and I trusted. What poured out was a story I discovered for the first time as it filled the screen. I trusted words today, and now I think I believe that words trust me. They trust me to carry them with me each day. They trust me not to lose them as I rifle through my bag for a piece of gum and dig through my change purse for my office key. They trust me to share them with you. It is for trust that I am grateful today.”

•
“Reading this book can be restful, which isn’t an adjective I expected to use when I started it. I expected a tormented experience that thrashed me against the waves of my resistance. Instead, or rather, in addition to what I expected, I also got a reminder to breathe, encouragement to withdraw from the tension and to splash in my frothing pool of unused words.

“I wouldn’t recommend this book to commuters who spend their time reading on trains, not unless you have a very steady hand when inspiration strikes. Then again, perhaps I shouldn’t assume people still write with quill on parchment. Gerson does inspire, but more than encouraging me to write, he continuously reminds me to relax – a welcome reminder he seems to have known I would need nearly each day of the year it took me to complete my journey with him. For that, I am thankful.”

•
“Near the end of the book, Gerson reflects on how the meaning of words is defined more by the meaning we put into them than by the meaning we find in the dictionary. He talks about what the word feedback means to him.

“On first thought, feedback is something I feel as though I’m supposed to like, supposed to be open to, supposed to want to invite into my writing process. On second thought, I admit to fearing the process – fearing being told to go back and rewrite what I thought had already taken full form. But if I’m honest with myself, if I open up to the core of my truth, then the process of receiving feedback is akin to (slowly and patiently) unwrapping a present.

“Even when you know you’re going to get a gift, that first moment of receipt is so often filled with excitement. You see the beautiful promise of potential coming your way. There is so much possibility in that moment, so much fuel for the imagination.

“Then you begin to unwrap it. You notice the slightly ripped paper, the uneven folds, the off-centered ribbon, the strips of wrinkled tape. You disregard them, refusing to give them permission to ruin the perfect image of your first impression.

“Once you get past the paper and bows, you reach the box – undecorated, unimaginative, disappointing. You may even discover that it’s a recycled box of crackers or of discounted muffin mix that’s been forming the shape of your gift.

“It’s only when you work through the process of unwrapping your present, tearing apart its shell of generic packaging, that you begin to capture a glimpse of the true gift hidden inside. The more you unwrap, the closer you get to your truth.

“The best part of feedback is the realization that the real gift was better than what you first expected. Yes, sometimes you get a gift you don’t want or that you don’t think you need, but that’s just life’s way of helping you learn acceptance. And, as is often the case when the festivities are over, you’re left with lots of used wrapping paper, some of which will get tossed, and some that can be salvaged for future gifts.”

• Reprinted from The Uncustomary Book Review: A Conversation with the Reader, 5/29/2011

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The Art of Surrender

"I still couldn’t call myself an artist. The way I saw it, I created energy-enhancing tools and just happened to employ the same instruments used by 'real' artists." 
~ from "The Art of Surrender" in my memoir, Acts of Surrender: A Writer's Memoir

•     •     •     •     •

Some years back I was coaching an accomplished writer who had already published several short stories. She had even won awards for a few of of them. I'll call her Sally, but she's a composite of several clients, all of whom carried a reluctance similar to the one I'm about to describe.

Sally asked me to help her with a novel she was conceiving. As we worked together over the weeks, I discovered that she refused to call herself a writer. "A writer has written a book," she insisted. "I've just written short stories."

"A writer writes," I retorted, quoting the You Are A Writer meditation included in my two books on writing. The meditation continues: "That’s what you have done. You have written."

For homework, I insisted that Sally listen to the recording of that meditation at least twice a day for a month.

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. 

Trust that to the best of your ability, in this moment. 

Acknowledge the writer you are, in this moment. ...

You are a writer.

In less than a month, thanks to You Are A Writer, Sally could finally state clearly and unequivocally, "I am a writer."

I have no difficulty calling myself a writer, perhaps because my writerly identity snuck up on me so sneakily and surreptitiously, and over so many years. But I have never been comfortable calling myself an artist. 

Never mind that I've had photographs published in The Globe & Mail, Canada's most prestigious English-language daily, and that I've sold my artwork all over the U.S.

Yet if a writer is one who writes, then an artist must be someone who creates art. Given that I have been creating art for decades, isn't it time for me to surrender to that part of my identity?

All artists in all media are storytellers. At our best, we create from that innate heart-spark that everyone carries. We also create from that place of authenticity, discovery and revelation that can make us feel vulnerable and scared, that can hold us back from sharing our work...that can keep us in hiding.

I realized, when I recalled the Sally story a few days ago, that I can no longer hide this part of myself -- from me any more than from the world. It's time to claim my artist identity. It's time to do what I inspired Sally to do. It's time to say it, publicly as well as to myself:

I am an artist. 
I am an artist. 
I am an artist. 

There. That feels better.

But there's more to do. Without action, those artist-words could easily be empty words.

What's my next step? The answer is clear before I finish asking the question: I must claim my professional artist identity.

I start by ordering new business cards, long overdue. For the first time, these add "artist" and "photographer" to "author," "screenwriter" and "creativity catalyst."

It's a start, but I know that it's not enough. I need to do something more concrete. What I decide to do is to create a new website, a dedicated online gallery for my work.

Suddenly, my drawings, photographs and inspirational art are being sold in a professional setting, and it surprises me to discover that I feel more anxious about releasing my visual art into the world than I do about putting my books out. (I've probably forgotten how scared I was when my first words hit print 37 years ago!)

Yes, I'm feeling anxious. But I'm also excited. It's energizing to share the fruits of my creation in more than a casual way. It's even more exhilarating to integrate into my "family" an orphaned inner child that I have long been reluctant to acknowledge, to give yet another part of me a voice in this sometimes messy, often paradoxical, always unfolding agglomeration of bits and pieces that is Mark David Gerson.

In the end, though, isn't coming back into wholeness what this journey is about? It's certainly what I have written about and taught for more than two decades. Whether I'm aware of it or not, I'm sure that even my art reflects it.

And so my artist website is launched, with more images -- art, photography and what I'm calling "inspirational art" -- being added to it every day. Apparently, I am an artist!

Please check out my drawings, photography and inspirational/motivational art at
• Mark David Gerson Fine Art/Photography
• Instacanvas


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Photos (c) Mark David Gerson: "Passion Flower," "An Open Heart Knows No Limits" and many other images are available from Mark David's fine art/photography website unframed and as framed/matted prints, canvas wraps, acrylic prints, metal prints, greeting cards and iPhone cases.

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My Readers' Gallery - #8

Welcome to the latest installment of my online Readers' Gallery, featuring photos and videos of people from all over the U.S. and beyond reading my books and ebooks and listening to my CD. (Look up previous posts here, here, here, here, here, here and here.)

Today's installment is devoted almost entirely to The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write.

I had not yet written The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write when I first met author Estelle Blackburn in Sedona, Arizona in 1997. She was visiting from Australia and I, unknowingly, was at the end of the three-month road odyssey I write about in Acts of Surrender: A Writer's Memoir. 

After Estelle returned to Australia, the work we had done together in Sedona catapulted her forward with her book Broken Lives, which freed a man wrongly convicted for murder and went on to win multiple awards. "I have so much gratitude for the help and confidence you gave me," she would write me soon after. 

A decade and many lifetimes later (for both of us), we would reconnect in Sedona, where this photo was taken. Read more about Estelle and her work on her website.

From all the way in Jakarta, Indonesia, Maria Theresiya Kussoy (above) is plumbing The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write for inspiration for her writing projects. 

Across the world in Northern Arizona, Sam Farmer Hightower (below) is gearing up to do much the same thing!

I recently interviewed writer/director/actor/producer Luke Yankee (below) for my Electric Muse radio show about his work and his about critically acclaimed book, Just Outside the Spotlight: Growing Up with Eileen Heckart. 

Imagine my surprise when he inserted this testimonial for The Voice of the Muse into one of his answers: "I was desperately looking for some kind of affirmations for writers and stumbled on The Voice of the Muse, your incredible book and companion CD. Now, anytime I get stuck I go back and listen to your 'You Are a Writer' meditation. So, the common thread is that I'm a storyteller and you, Mark David Gerson, have really helped to feed that and get me through some of the lean times." Hear my complete Luke Yankee interview here.

And finally, from across the ocean in Paris, translator Laurent Delpit, featured in one of my very first Readers' Gallery posts (below right), sent me this view of his fridge!

Read more about these and other readers and their projects in my Facebook gallery.

Why not join the online fun 

and get your book, business, event, blog, website

or other success promoted here, on Facebook and on Google+! 

Interested? Read on...

If you have a copy of any of my books/ebooks or of my CD, I'll post a pic of you to my Readers' Gallery Photo Album on Facebook and on Google+. Just make sure that your face is clearly visible in the photo and that the book/ebook cover and/or CD cover are visible as well.

And to help you promote your book, event, business, success, blog and/or website, I'll include in the photo caption not only your name but your promotional info/link. I'll also post the next batch of reader pics here in a future blog item.

Simply email me your pic and caption information, or contact me via Facebook, Twitter or my website.

Feel free to send one pic or several and to include one book, all books, the CD or any combination. Just send separate photos for each item (unless you really are reading both books at the same time!).

And if you like my books, please "like" my Facebook pages:

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