Mark David Gerson's Blog, page 13

Please Take This Quick Survey...

Have you read The MoonQuest  book? If you haven't yet, are you interested in reading it at some point and/or seeing the film version that we're now gearing up for ( The Q'ntana Trilogy Movies )?

If you've answered yes to either of those questions, I'd love it if you would take a minute to complete a lightning-quick survey. Please, too, share it with your friends.

The survey results will be invaluable when the Q'ntana film producers and I meet with potential distributors and investors next month at the American Film Market in L.A.

Thanks for your help! Once again, here is the link to the survey: www.surveymonkey.com/s/3YH8Y9X.

For more on The MoonQuest, The StarQuest and The SunQuest books and films, visit www.theqntanatrilogy.com.

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Again, thank you for your help in bringing these stories to the big screen!

Press Release: Writer Mark David Gerson to Direct The Q'ntana Trilogy Movies

The award-winning Q’ntana creator “the only credible choice” 
to catapult The MoonQuest, The StarQuest and The SunQuest 
to screen success, says producer
Anvil Springs Entertainment has announced that Mark David Gerson, author of The Q’ntana Trilogy books and writer of its screenplays, will direct the Q’ntana trio of adventure-fantasy films.

“As creator of The Q’ntana Trilogy, Mark David is ideally placed to bring its three epic tales to the screen,” Anvil Springs CEO and Q’ntana producer Kathleen Messer said today. “His intimate connection with stories he has lived with for nearly two decades, his innate filmic style and a vision that has already garnered him national and international awards for The MoonQuest, the Trilogy’s first book, make him the only credible choice to take creative charge of this project. We are grateful to have him aboard.”

The Q’ntana Trilogy’s time-twisting, interlocking tales span hundreds of years as three generations of rebel bards battle a cruel king, a corrupt sorceress and the nightmare villain who rules over them. Although offering a unique and compelling spin on the fantasy genre, The Q’ntana Trilogy is also part of a fantasy pantheon that includes The Lord of the Rings, the Harry Potter films and The Chronicles of Narnia.

The MoonQuest book, critically acclaimed and popular with readers of all ages, has won multiple awards in various categories, including Fantasy and Young Adult Fiction. Its StarQuest and SunQuest sequels will be published in 2013.

In addition to his Q’ntana books and screenplays, Mark David Gerson has written the popular and award-winning The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write based on his two decades of creativity/storytelling workshops and mentoring. His memoir, Acts of Surrender , was released earlier this year.

In agreeing to direct The Q’ntana Trilogy, Gerson joins a distinguished roster of filmmakers whose first feature film as writer was also their first as director, among them Quentin Tarantino (Reservoir Dogs), Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption) and Zack Snyder (300).

“The opportunity to give these stories and characters a new life on the screen was one I couldn’t refuse,” Gerson said of his new role. “At the same time, I’m not sure I had a choice. It feels, some days, as though the Q’ntana stories created me, not the other way around!”

The Q’ntana Trilogy is slated to go into production in 2013. Its first installment, The MoonQuest, will be in theaters in 2014.

Mark David’s books are available in paperback on Amazon and as ebooks for Kobo, iBook, Kindle and Nook.


*** Please respond to this  quick survey  about The MoonQuest book and The Q'ntana Trilogy movies, and ask your friends to do likewise. The results will be invaluable when we meet with potential investors and distributors. Thanks!

Please "like" my Facebook pages:
• Acts of Surrender Book• The Q'ntana Trilogy Movies• The MoonQuest book• The Voice of the Muse book• Mark David Gerson
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Press Release: Writer Mark David Gerson to Direct The Q'ntana Trilogy Movies:

The award-winning Q’ntana creator “the only credible choice” 
to catapult The MoonQuest, The StarQuest and The SunQuest 
to screen success, says producer
Anvil Springs Entertainment has announced that Mark David Gerson, author of The Q’ntana Trilogy books and writer of its screenplays, will direct the Q’ntana trio of adventure-fantasy films.

“As creator of The Q’ntana Trilogy, Mark David is ideally placed to bring its three epic tales to the screen,” Anvil Springs CEO and Q’ntana producer Kathleen Messer said today. “His intimate connection with stories he has lived with for nearly two decades, his innate filmic style and a vision that has already garnered him national and international awards for The MoonQuest, the Trilogy’s first book, make him the only credible choice to take creative charge of this project. We are grateful to have him aboard.”

The Q’ntana Trilogy’s time-twisting, interlocking tales span hundreds of years as three generations of rebel bards battle a cruel king, a corrupt sorceress and the nightmare villain who rules over them. Although offering a unique and compelling spin on the fantasy genre, The Q’ntana Trilogy is also part of a fantasy pantheon that includes The Lord of the Rings, the Harry Potter films and The Chronicles of Narnia.

The MoonQuest book, critically acclaimed and popular with readers of all ages, has won multiple awards in various categories, including Fantasy and Young Adult Fiction. Its StarQuest and SunQuest sequels will be published in 2013.

In addition to his Q’ntana books and screenplays, Mark David Gerson has written the popular and award-winning The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write based on his two decades of creativity/storytelling workshops and mentoring. His memoir, Acts of Surrender , was released earlier this year.

In agreeing to direct The Q’ntana Trilogy, Gerson joins a distinguished roster of filmmakers whose first feature film as writer was also their first as director, among them Quentin Tarantino (Reservoir Dogs), Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption) and Zack Snyder (300).

“The opportunity to give these stories and characters a new life on the screen was one I couldn’t refuse,” Gerson said of his new role. “At the same time, I’m not sure I had a choice. It feels, some days, as though the Q’ntana stories created me, not the other way around!”

The Q’ntana Trilogy is slated to go into production in 2013. Its first installment, The MoonQuest, will be in theaters in 2014.

Mark David’s books are available in paperback on Amazon and as ebooks for Kobo, iBook, Kindle and Nook.


*** Please respond to this  quick survey  about The MoonQuest book and The Q'ntana Trilogy movies, and ask your friends to do likewise. The results will be invaluable when we meet with potential investors and distributors. Thanks!

Please "like" my Facebook pages:
• Acts of Surrender Book• The Q'ntana Trilogy Movies• The MoonQuest book• The Voice of the Muse book• Mark David Gerson
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All That Matters Is That I'm Telling This Story

"Every choice you have ever made, Toshar, has led to this moment. Your moment."
~ The MoonQuest: A True Fantasy (The Q'ntana Trilogy, Book I)

There's a chapter in Acts of Surrender: A Writer's Memoir  that chronicles a bleak period in my life. It was late 2008. My finances had crashed and I had taken a physically demanding, poorly paying job that would be unlikely to save me from losing both home and car. Then one day, in the midst of my panic and despair, I had an aha. I realized that none of those external circumstances mattered. All that mattered was The StarQuest , the MoonQuest sequel that I had launched and aborted twice during the previous decade. All that mattered was that I set my situation aside and recommit to the novel, which I did. I titled the memoir chapter "All That Matters Is That I’m Writing."

I thought about that chapter a few mornings ago during a meditative stroll through the Rio Grande bosque. I had felt the need to escape the relentlessly scrubby desert near my home and to surround myself instead with the leafy cottonwoods and willow thickets that fill out the riverbank. Perhaps the rustling trees would speak over my anxieties. Perhaps the rippling water would calm my fears.

God knows, I needed some fresh voices. Since agreeing to direct The Q'ntana Trilogy Movies last month, I had teetered between excitement and angst, exhilaration and terror. Part of me acknowledged the perfection in this new role -- both for the stories and for me. Another part, its buttons pushed multiple times a day, was shrouded in doubt and overwhelm. The emotional teeter-totter was dizzying!

As I ambled through the woods, those fresh voices spoke to me with the same unequivocal clarity they had done four years earlier. It wasn't about writing this time. I had written what needed writing: novel and screenplay versions of all three Q'ntana tales (The MoonQuest, The StarQuest and The SunQuest ). In fact, I had completed all drafts of both versions of The StarQuest and The SunQuest in a frenzy of unprecedented -- for me -- creative output: through an 18-month period during which I also finished and e-published Acts of Surrender.

No. Writing wasn't the issue. But the story was. The Q'ntana story. "All that matters," I heard from a deep inner place, "is that you are telling this story."

A film director, I realized when I first contemplated taking on this new role, is also a storyteller. And as I wrote a few weeks ago in "Taking Storytelling to its Next Level," the Q'ntana story is a story that not only wants to be told by me in this as in its previous forms, but that is insisting it be told by me.

As has happened so often in my life, and as I relate repeatedly in Acts of Surrender, that Infinite Mind within me that is wiser than my conscious mind ever could be has made my next steps clear to me, and I have no choice but to surrender if I am to live from my heart...if I am to step up into my potential...if I am to be true to everything I write and teach.

"This is your story to tell," that inner voice continued, in an echo of the opening scene of The MoonQuest book and film. "Only yours to tell."

Arguing was futile.

"No one else has lived these stories as you have. No one else carries the vision for these stories that you do. No one else can bring these stories to life the way you can. No one else."

It didn't matter that I had never directed a film before. I had also never written a novel before tackling The MoonQuest. I would learn what I needed to learn. Others would help and support me. And everything I had ever done -- writing, teaching, coaching, inspirational speaking, art and photography -- had already prepared me for this moment, this opportunity.

"You already carry much of what you need within you. Can you trust that?"

Could I? Could I trust the intuitive knowingness that had always guided me so powerfully and rightly in the past?

"This is different," I said, knowing it wasn't.

"You either trust or you do not. There is no halfway in between." Those words had followed me relentlessly since I first penned them in The MoonQuest. They were still true.

As I continued on my walk, I wondered what the Q'ntana stories' theme was. Of course, I had written the stories, but I don't write to a theme. I allow a theme, as I do the story itself, to emerge organically through the writing. I had never contemplated an overarching theme for the trilogy. Now, though, as its director, it would be useful to be aware of one. A moment later, my inner voice spoke again: "When you acknowledge and move through your fear, you can accomplish great things -- for yourself and for others."

This was not only The Q'ntana Trilogy's theme, it was mine -- has been mine since a spiritual awakening two decades ago made me aware of the fears that, until then, had paralyzed me. Of course, this was my story, and not only because I had written it. And, of course, it was mine to tell...and would be until all the ways of telling it had been exhausted.

As I left river and bosque behind, I knew that, once again, nothing else mattered. In 2008, I had been called to surrender to my writerly self through The StarQuest. Now, only the Q'ntana story mattered. Only the Q'ntana film mattered.

Today, as I pen these words, I know that it cannot matter that, in some ways, my life is even more on the edge that it was four years ago. What matters is that I surrender to the story -- my story -- and that I free myself to grow into all that I can become through this new Q'ntana journey.

All that matters is that I am telling this story.


Photos by Mark David Gerson: Rio Grande Nature Center State Park, Albuquerque, NM. Q'ntana film posters by Richard Crookes.

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New Directions

I doubt that I could ever stop being a writer, even if I wanted to. Words flow through my veins as freely and naturally as does blood. But today I'm letting go of the direct book-selling that has been integral to my writerly self since 2007 -- by removing direct sales of my books and CD from my website (and, with it, the availability of author-signed copies). Why? To make space and energy for new directions...most significantly, for my new role as director of The Q'ntana Trilogy Movies: The MoonQuest, The StarQuest and The SunQuest.

In practical terms, the demands of the director's job will make it increasingly difficult for me to fulfill individual and personalized website orders. More important, though, is the symbolism of the act: I'm letting go one aspect of my storyteller persona to make room for another, one that's more expanded and expansive...one that invites in new levels of success and achievement, along with new risks, new fears, new challenges and new opportunities.

Quite possibly, other outmoded pieces of me will also fall away in the months ahead. That's a good thing. I can't add new clothes to the closet of my beingness unless I get rid of some of the old ones. Or, as I put it in Acts of Surrender: A Writer's Memoir...

"In a coaching session with a client, I had likened the stripping-away process she was experiencing to a demolition that removes everything of a building but its skeletal structure. She was finding the process unnerving, and I assured her that new walls, floors, ceilings, fittings and furnishings could only be installed once the old ones had been shed. I found myself in that same place in the days after my birthday..."

I wrote that about an experience I had in 2010. Today, a month before another birthday, I find myself in a similar place. Once again, it's unnerving. This time, though, I welcome the unsettledness, am excited by the certainty of r-evolutionary change and look forward to growing into my expanded self.

In this moment, we project that production on The Q'ntana Trilogy films will begin in 2013, with the first movie, The MoonQuest, slated for a 2014 release. What a ride it's going to be! I hope you'll stay with me on the journey as I chronicle about it here and on Facebook.

In the meantime, if you want a signed copy of The MoonQuest, The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write or both, act now! This is your last chance!

For right now, you can still opt for a copy signed to you (or, as a gift, to a friend) from my website through this direct link: markdavidgerson.com/onlinebookstore.html. But I will be shutting down my site's online bookstore some time tomorrow morning (Sept. 1), along with the option for signed copies.

Once I make the switch, paperback editions of both books (along with the CD version of The Voice of the Muse Companion: Guided Meditations for Writers ) will be sold only on Amazon (with ebooks/MP3 downloads still be available in all the usual places).


Photo: Wilson State Park, Plymouth Township, Kansas (c) Mark David Gerson

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What's Your Vision?

Do you know who you are as a writer?
Do you have a vision for your writing?
Do you have a vision for the project you’re working on? For the project you have barely begun to conceive?

Connecting with and holding a vision for yourself as a writer and for your work can help you more easily move into writing and hold the energy of your creation through the entire process of conception, creation, revision and release.

One way to hold that vision is by creating a writing invocation or vision statement that propels you into the energy of your day’s writing. It can be as brief as a sentence or as long as a page. It can speak in general terms about your role as a writer or in specific terms about a particular book, poem, article, song or story — whether you already know what it is or just that you’re called to write it.

I used a vision statement for Acts of Surrender: A Writer's Memoir, which helped me continue to write through and past my initial resistance to the project.

For The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write, I crafted both an invocation and a vision statement; together they formed part of the ritual that awakened me to my Muse, activated my inner writing space and ensured that all I wrote hewed as closely as possible to the book’s true essence.

Invocations and vision statements are not fixed in stone. As The Voice of the Muse progressed, as I matured through the writing of it, I continued to refine both my invocation and vision statement.

Here's my vision statement for The Voice of the Muse:

The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write is about freedom — freedom to grow, freedom to create, freedom to write. Through a dynamic blend of motivational essays, inspiring meditations and practical exercises, it nourishes, nurtures and reassures its readers, inspiring them to open their hearts, expand their minds and experience, with ease, a full, creative life.

To read my writing invocation, turn to page 172 of The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write.

To help you create your own vision statement and/or writing invocation, follow the Vision Quest meditation that starts on page 174 of the book, or listen to track 9 of The Voice of the Muse Companion: Guided Meditations for Writers.

Regardless, awaken your passion, energize your vision...and write!!

You'll find additional tips and inspiration on my website, 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.

• Do you have a vision for your writing? Feel free to share it here.

Photos: Avenue of the Giants, Garberville and Fortuna, California; Sunset, Albuquerque, New Mexico (c) Mark David Gerson

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Taking Storytelling to Its Next Level

TOSHAR: How do I start? This story has so many beginnings.
NA'AN: Where all stories begin: Once upon a time.
~ The Q'ntana Trilogy: The MoonQuest Movie

In this moment, I feel like Toshar in one of the earliest scenes in The MoonQuest book and film: I have a story to tell you, but I don't know where to begin.

Do I begin with the genesis of The MoonQuest book? Do I go even farther back to share, as I did in  Acts of Surrender , all the ways I denied my creativity its expression through so many years? Do I leap ahead to the moment I knew, without it making any sense, that I needed to adapt The MoonQuest as a screenplay? Or do start closer to the present moment, with the completion of The SunQuest , the final story in The Q'ntana Trilogy?

Na'an, the single-minded Tikkan Dreamwalker of my Q'ntana stories, would have me begin where all stories begin, and so I shall...

Once upon a time there was a Story and a Storyteller. Although, somewhere back at the beginning of  time, The Story chose its Storyteller, The Storyteller knew naught of that...knew not, in fact, that he was any kind of storyteller, let alone this Story's teller.

The Storyteller moved through many lives in many forms until he reached this one. But though The Story had brushed up against him often through those lifetimes, it had never lingered. It had whispered on the breezes that danced around him, caressed him gently in the falling of the rains, and crooned to him softly at the setting of the sun and the rising of the  moon.

Still, he knew nothing of The Story, or of the hidden destiny that linked his story to The Story...until the moment he did. In that moment, The Story he did not know so filled him that he had no choice but to begin to let it out, even as he did not know what he was doing, even as he did not understand the import and implications of his actions.

He wrote first one part of The Story, which titled itself The MoonQuest. He wrote it in one form, and then another. Before long, a second part of The Story began to push its way through him. It called itself The StarQuest  and also emerged in two forms. The ink had barely dried on his parchment when the third and final part of The Story insisted itself onto the page: The SunQuest -- once again in two distinct forms.

Somewhere through that lengthy journey, The Storyteller grew to realize that he could no longer separate The Story from his story, that they had always been indivisible and that his destiny had forever been to tell them.

Then one day, finally, The Story was told. And although it had not fully achieved its final form in the world, The Storyteller believed that his work with it was done. He had, after all, set it to parchment as he had been instructed to do. The final form would be for others to realize, for that form was beyond his purview as Storyteller.

Or so he thought.

The Story thought otherwise. The Story knew otherwise. The Story knew that its every form could only be The Storyteller's responsibility, for every form was, itself, a story-telling.

At first, The Storyteller closed his ears to this. But his heart would not close, for his heart knew the truth: that this, too, was his destiny and that he could no more turn his back on it than he could have turned his back on The Story's original form.

And so with the same blend of excitement and exhilaration, terror and trembling, which which he had freed its first words onto his parchment, he embarked on a new journey with The Story. And in the same ways he had surrendered to its initial two forms, consciously knowing little about them, he surrendered to a third -- this time not as scribe but as visual impresario....as director of  The Q'ntana Trilogy Movies .

A few days ago, I agreed to direct the three films that comprise The Q'ntana Trilogy --  The MoonQuest, The StarQuest and The SunQuest. In a life filled with imperatives that make no conventional sense, this is certainly one of them. After all, I have never directed a motion picture.

Yet I recognize the perfection in this call and remind myself that before The MoonQuest book, I had never written a novel and before The MoonQuest script, I had never written a screenplay. For that matter, as I posted on Facebook the other day, "I have no formal training for anything I have ever done, succeeded at and/or earned a living from." It was the Q'ntana stories themselves that showed me how to write them. It will be those same stories that will show me how to direct them. And despite a certain degree of trepidation, I have no choice but to trust them...and get on with it.

I'm gratified by the confidence that Anvil Springs Entertainment has shown me in declaring me "the only credible choice to take creative charge of this project." I'm more gratified still by the confidence The Story has shown me, and I will do everything in my power to meet its potential and honor its essence in the months and years of work ahead.

In one of my first acts as director of The Q'ntana Trilogy Movies, I was asked to write a "director's statement." At first I didn't have any idea what to say. Then, as with the rest of my involvement with Q'ntana, the following flowed onto the page as the perfect expression of my relationship with its story...

"This story has always been bigger than me — from the moment it insisted itself onto the page as first a series of novels, then as a series of screenplays and now as its director. It’s a story that has so long been such a part of my life that it’s as though it lives deep within my cells. I am every one of its characters, villain and hero, and have lived each of their joys, triumphs, disappointments and disasters. For decades, I have watched its themes play out in the world around me...just as I have experienced them play out in my own life. In the end, I am as much the story as its storyteller, as directed by it as I am its director."

A new journey begins.

• To celebrate this new road for both me and The MoonQuest, I have discounted The MoonQuest book on my website by 44%. The hard-copy paperback is now $8.99 instead of $16, but only through Aug. 8...and I will continue to sign copies to you through that time, even at the reduced price. Order yours today!


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Light and Dark: Some thoughts on Chick-Fil-A

I have been wanting to write a blog post on this subject for a long while and have even started several. Not specifically about the Chick-Fil-A controversy, because this is bigger than one company and one series of incidents. What I have really wanted to explore is what happens when light is cast into the darkest corners of the world...and of ourselves. Today, finally, I found the words...

The good thing about all the anti-gay, racist and misogynist hate that has been surfacing in recent months in the U.S. is that it's now out in the open for all to see and experience. After all, the hate and bigotry now being exhibited is nothing new. It has always been present, simmering angrily, invisibly -- and fearfully -- in the shadows. But as long as it was hiding, unseen and unexpressed, most people remained unaware of it...or could pretend to themselves that it didn't truly exist.

The thing is, unless we shine light into the darkness, we will never see what lurks there. But once something like this becomes visible and is expressed, in however an ugly manner, two things can happen:

1) We who are directly impacted can act...although action rooted in equivalent anger and fear will never have a lasting effect. We can act both out in the world and by facing whatever levels of internalized fear and hatred we all carry and that will always reflect back at us from the outside world.

2) We who are not directly affected can clearly see a level of bigotry that was previously invisible to us and can, hopefully, be shocked enough to work for and support more enlightened attitudes and legislation.

Whenever there is an increase in light in the world and in our inner worlds, an opportunity exists to shine that same light into the shadowed corners of our inner and outer lives. Only then can we heal the festering, infected wounds -- personal and societal --  that cannot be dealt with as long as they remain hidden from view.

Only then can we be free.

Photo (c) Mark David Gerson

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Surrendering to Acts of Surrender...Again

As I have shared here before, Acts of Surrender: A Writer's Memoir is a book I never wanted to write. Yet, as I discovered through the writing of it, and as you'll discover in the following excerpt, it has proved to be the most personally important -- and healing -- of any book I have written to date. 

The key difference between today's excerpt and all the others that I have posted is that the book is not only finished but published. Nearly three years to the day since I reluctantly penned the first word of the first draft of a still-untitled memoir, Acts of Surrender is in book form and ready to be read.
Why did I feel the need to release it so quickly, and why in ebook form? Read on...and I'll tell you. 
(Acts of Surrender: A Writer's Memoir is available for Kindle, Kobo, Nook and iBooks and is readable on a dedicated e-reader, using a free app for your tablet or smartphone, or using a free app or web reader for your desktop or laptop.)

The Next Surrender
It’s July 9, 2012. I’m driving home from Starbucks after an afternoon’s revisions to Acts of Surrender. The book is nearly complete, and I’m looking forward to being able to put it aside and move on to other projects. From the moment nearly three years ago when I set down the first words of the first draft, this book has remained one of my most profound, and difficult, acts of surrender. As Toshar does in The MoonQuest , I have had to overcome my reluctance to write my story or risk a form of stasis. As Q’nta does in The StarQuest , I have had to accept the predominant role that storytelling plays in every aspect of my life or risk living without passion. And like Ben in The SunQuest , I have had to not only recount my past but re-experience its emotions with sometimes disturbing fidelity, or risk betraying my human potential.

More daunting than all those challenges has been my anxiety around releasing this book into the world. In one sense, that’s odd. There are few stories shared here that I have not told before — to friends and clients or, more publicly, in talks and workshops. Some have been disseminated even more widely through my blogs and The Voice of the Muse .

But my life until now has been compartmentalized. Through the decades of my journey, I have lived very distinct lives as I have traveled from Marky to Mark to David to Akhneton/Aq’naton to Mark David and as I have redefined my sexuality, my spirituality, my sense of self, my work and most things about me — multiple times. Few of you have known me through even half those changes, and the parts of me that still fear judgment wonder how the rest of you will respond to the mosaic that is me.

Fear of judgment is not a new issue in my life, as you will have read in these pages. I picked it up early on from my mother and, as much of it as I have shed through the years, I have retained more than I realized...more than I care to admit. That has been one of my discoveries as Acts of Surrender has moved closer to completion. It’s a discovery that snuck up on me, masquerading as a weird panoply of physical and emotional symptoms, before exploding into full awareness on this twenty-minute drive home.

Until the moment before this one, I have been feeling safe, despite my stress. With no publisher and no resources to produce the book myself, all I can do is finish it, show it to a few friends for feedback and file it away. Its day will come. That day, clearly, is not today.

Then, a voice — once again, the voice of my Muse. Today, it’s seductively indirect, recognizing that the blunt tone it has employed in the past would only feed my fear, not usher me past it.

What about all those Acts of Surrender excerpts you’ve posted — on your website, on Facebook and elsewhere? Won’t all that promotional investment be wasted if you shelve the manuscript?
I say nothing.
I’m approaching the corner of Paseo del Norte and Unser, four minutes from my front door, and I am not responding as my Muse had hoped I would. A delay is required. When I reach the intersection, a police cruiser blocks the way, forcing a ten-minute, bumper-to-bumper detour. As I crawl through traffic on a street that is never anything but free-flowing, a flash of Muse-inspired insight strikes.

I could produce Acts of Surrender as an ebook. It wouldn’t be as perfect as I might prefer, but— 
In that instant I know that I must produce Acts of Surrender as an ebook — for reasons that have nothing at all to do with promotional investment. That argument was a devious ruse. If my biggest fear is of exposing myself to the world — of walking the earth naked, clothed only in my truth — then the only way to face that fear is by releasing the book. As speedily as possible. Not for anyone else. For me. That’s the only way I will move through and past my terror. And if my only option for getting it out quickly is as an ebook, then that’s my best course of action...my only course of action.

If I were to choose an archetype to describe my life’s journey, it would be The Fool, a Tarot character often pictured stepping off a cliff into the unknown. His may be a leap of faith, but it’s never blind faith. For he knows that even as he trades the certainty of solid ground for the mysteries of the void, the infinite wisdom of his infinite mind will guide him forward. This knowingness frees him to surrender again and again. And again. Not without resistance and not without fear, but in the conviction that resistance is futile, fear cannot stop him and meaning is always present, even when it is invisible.
The Tarot Fool may appear to have a choice in his folly: In many decks, one of his feet is still firmly anchored. He could step back. Or could he? In my favorite representation, from The Osho Zen Tarot, it’s too late: One foot hangs off the edge; the other only barely touches the earth. That’s the kind of Fool I am: always in motion, with a momentum that keeps pressing me on to the next act of surrender. Any other choice breaks faith with a choice I made long ago, a choice that banished conventional free will from my life, a choice to live my passion as authentically as humanly possible, whatever the consequences.

As I pull into my driveway I realize that if Toshar could not move forward until he had written his story, I cannot move forward either, as the Fool that I am, until I make mine public. And so I make the commitment — to this next leap of faith, to this next surrender.
There will be more acts of surrender after this one. There always are. Each one will push me harder than the last. Each one will nudge me closer to my essential truth. Each one will require a greater leap of faith. And through each, I will continue to trust in the story. Whether it’s the story I’m writing or the story I’m living, it always knows best.

Excerpt from Acts of Surrender: A Writer's Memoir (c) 2012 Mark David Gerson
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Be Inspired: Creation

"Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing."~ Helen Keller

Helen Keller quote from...
The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write
("Creation" Section)
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Please "like" my Facebook pages:• The Q'ntana Trilogy Movies• The MoonQuest book• The Voice of the Muse book• Mark David Gerson
Please follow me on Pinterest