Mark David Gerson's Blog, page 14

Overcoming the Ultimate Writer's Block

When author Howard Engel opened his front door and picked up his morning paper a dozen years ago, nothing on the front page made any sense to him. At age 70, the dean of Canadian mystery writers and creator of the Benny Cooperman series had lost his ability to read.

As it turned out, Engel had suffered an overnight stroke that left him with alexia sine agraphia, a rare condition that made it impossible for him to read, while still being able to write.

Many writers would have given up at that point. Not Engel, though with 10 Cooperman books, a handful of short stories and novellas, and a pair of radio and TV adaptations behind him, he could easily have walked away from the book world with no loss to his reputation.

Instead, he relearned the alphabet and dictated a new Benny Cooperman mystery --  Memory Book -- in which his sleuth wakes up in a Toronto hospital with a condition similar to Engel's.

He then penned a memoir,  The Man Who Forgot How to Read . It's a testament, writes renowned neurologist Dr. Oliver Sacks in the afterword, "to the resilience and creative adaptation of one man and his brain."

It's a testament, too, to a love of the written word and a commitment to creation that would not be stifled.

• How does your commitment to your creativity express itself?
• Where have you been blocked and how have you overcome that block?
• If you haven't yet overcome it, what's holding you back?

Photo of Howard Engel: Joshua Sherurcij

(A version of this post originally appeared on this blog in 2008.)
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Be Inspired: Time to Write I

"Determine that the thing can and shall be done, 
and then we shall find the way."~ Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln quote from...
The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write
("Time to Write" Section)


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Watching My Life Flash Before My Eyes

Every book I have written, beginning with The MoonQuest , has challenged me not only creatively but emotionally. Not surprisingly, each successive book has stepped up the challenge.

My fifth book (after The Q'ntana Trilogy and The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write ) is this Acts of Surrender  memoir that I have been posting about off and on since I began work on it in 2009. As I have mentioned before, the book itself is an act of surrender, as I never wanted to write it. Curiously (or, perhaps not), my Muse pushed me into putting together a memoir-writing workshop and then, when it was over, surprised me with this announcement: "Now, it's your turn!"

There is little in Acts of Surrender that I haven't already revealed -- in classes, in talks, in coaching sessions or in this blog or its predecessor. Yet, there is something about revisiting all those stories at one time and shaping them into a book that pushes more buttons than I thought possible.

Writing this memoir is what I call a portal experience...the kind of experience after which life is never the same...the kind of experience that propels you into the unimaginable, into a world that, from this side of the threshold, your mind could never recognize. It's a kind of death leading to a new kind of life. So it's fitting that in crafting this book, I get to watch my life flash before me, however slowly. I get to not only revisit the triumphs and tragedies, but to relive them...to feel their emotional power again, just as, ironically, Ben must do in Q'ntana's final act, The SunQuest.

The buttons I referred to earlier are healing buttons. With every moment of physical or emotional distress, and there have been many, I befriend another ghost from my past and free it to move on, just as it frees me to do likewise. As I wrote in my notes to that memoir-writing workshop three years ago, in a sentence that has now found its way into Acts of Surrender, "Every day’s writing about the past brings more revelation about the present." And every day's revelations about the present propel me into a future that I cannot yet see but that I know awaits me in the turning of the next page.

• More on Acts of Surrender, including illustrated excerpts

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An Act of Surrender

It’s May 6. I have just finished breakfast, and as I stare into my empty coffee cup, I contemplate my immediate future. It has been less than twenty-four hours since I completed a final draft of my novel The SunQuest and, along with it, an odyssey that has occupied nearly one-third of my life: Eighteen years ago I surrendered to the words that would become the first draft of The MoonQuest , a story I knew nothing about, a story that would launch a fantasy trilogy that I did not yet know existed. Now that I have written “The End,” both to The SunQuest and the trilogy, what’s next for me?

As I stare into that coffee cup, I am certain that another draft of this memoir, of Acts of Surrender, must follow The Q’ntana Trilogy on my creative agenda. How can it not when The SunQuest is, among other things, about Ben’s coming to terms with his past? How can it not when Ben’s story, like Q’nta’s and Toshar’s before him in The StarQuest and The MoonQuest, is also my story? Hardly a day went by, while I worked on The SunQuest, that I failed to notice a parallel between Ben’s life and mine, between what he discovers through reliving his journey on the page and what I have already discovered through living mine on these pages. 

At the same time, I ask myself: Wouldn’t it make sense to wait a month before taking on a new draft of Acts of Surrender? Between the Q’ntana screenplays and novels and the early drafts of this memoir, I have been writing nonstop for nearly two years. Maybe it’s time for a break. Besides, I have a business trip to Las Vegas coming up in a few weeks. Wouldn’t it make sense to wait until I get back?  You would think that after writing three fantasies where conventional sense is an elusive commodity, not to mention penning two drafts of a memoir that exposes similar threads in my own life, I would have more sense than to ask questions about sense. Apparently, I don’t.

The coffee cup is still empty, and my mind wanders, away from my creative life and on to my life — not that it’s altogether possible to separate the two. I have now been back in Albuquerque for eighteen months. A 2010 move from here to Los Angeles ended after ten weeks, when I felt a call to return to New Mexico. Through this, my third sojourn in Albuquerque, I have become aware how much my life here has come to resemble my 1994-95 time in rural Nova Scotia: a hermit-like existence where little occurs beyond my writing. In Nova Scotia, my focus was on the first two drafts of The MoonQuest; once they were finished, I found myself back in Toronto, my monkish tendencies forgotten.

There is, however, one significant difference between these two periods in my life: In Nova Scotia, I had no conscious desire ever to leave. I thought I had rebirthed myself on the East Coast and, when the call came for me to go back to the big city, I was initially startled and dismayed. Here in Albuquerque, I have never stopped longing to get back to L.A., to resume a life that has felt on hold since I returned here. 

Suddenly, the opening scene of The MoonQuest pushes my mental wanderings aside. In it, the dreamwalker Na’an interrupts an elderly Toshar, who has long resisted writing his story. 
“It is not for me to boast of my exploits,” Toshar argues. But Na’an is firm. “It is your story to tell,” she says. “It is for you to fix it in ink, to set the truth down for all to read.” 
I cannot move on to other realms and set off on other journeys until I have told my story, I hear myself speak out loud, paraphrasing Toshar’s thoughts in The MoonQuest. The words catch in my throat, and I’m gripped by an emotion so strong that I find myself on verge of tears.

I can’t know what those other realms and journeys might be. I can’t know whether, in another parallel to my time in Nova Scotia, they will mark the end of my creative retreat and launch me back into the world’s bustle — this time to L.A. instead of Toronto. What I can do is recognize the charge I experienced and the truth that underlies it: Like Toshar, I must tell my story, this story, or I will not be free to move forward with my life. 

I know one other thing: Whatever the “sense” of the matter, I cannot wait a month to begin. In the act of surrender that is the book, I must make Acts of Surrender my primary focus, and I must begin now...in that realm where all stories begin: Once upon a time...

• An excerpt from Acts of Surrender: A Journey to the Other Side of Fear, my memoir-in-progress. (c) 2012 Mark David Gerson

Photos: Coffee mug and L.A. billboard by Mark David Gerson. Flag is the Nova Scotia provincial flag. MoonQuest book cover designed by Angela Farley. Acts of Surrender cover is a working cover only and features a photo of the Kukuipuka he'iau on Maui.
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The Unexpected Joys of Authorship

Being an author comes with many rewards. The first, of course, involve the joy of creation and the sense of accomplishment when the final period drops onto the final sentence of the final draft...often years after the first word of the first draft found its way onto the blank page. 
As miraculous as that instant of completion felt for me with  The MoonQuest , another moment was more powerful still: when I ripped open the FedEx envelope that held my advance copy of the published book, my first. Thirteen years, two months and a few weeks after the beginnings of a story I knew nothing about had pressed themselves into my consciousness, I cradled the results in my hand and wept. Only the birth of my daughter eight years earlier surpassed the emotion and exultation of that experience.
As the weeks, months and years passed, first the The MoonQuest and then my second book, The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write, offered up many more occasions for joyful tears: multiple awards, glowing reviews, enthusiastic reader response and, of course, a movie deal encompassing not only The MoonQuest but its two Q'ntana Trilogy sequels. 
While neither book is yet a runaway bestseller, both The MoonQuest and The Voice of the Muse have attracted intensely loyal readers who have never hesitated to share with me all the ways that my books have deeply moved them and profoundly transformed their lives. In turn, their comments have deeply moved me and, in some cases, transformed my life. 
I can't speak for all creative artists, but this one still carries some core insecurities about his abilities and his work. It's not always easy for me to grasp how much my books are loved...and reread. As gratified as I am by the praise, I am sometimes equally baffled. "Me?" part of me still asks. "How?"
Thankfully, I have grown past the phase when I worried that perhaps I was a fraud. Still, when circumstances prompted me to reread the opening 40 pages of The MoonQuest a few weeks back, for the first time since proofreading its galleys five years ago, not only was I startled by how good it was, I was startled by how startled I was! Perhaps it has taken five years' distance to begin to be able to read those words as others read them.
Or, perhaps I'm not quite there yet. 
Last night, I received an email from singer/songwriter Amy Robbins-Wilson inviting me check out a video she had just recorded and asking my permission to release it publicly. Inspired by a scene in The MoonQuest, she had written and performed "Eulisha's Song," a stirring, evocative prelude to the journey that Eulisha's grandson, Toshar, would be called to undertake in the book.
Toshar, Amy explains, has just retired to his room after Eulisha urges him to embark on The MoonQuest. "I wondered," she says, "'What would Eulisha do while he slept?' It felt like she would sing and pray and send her power forward into the darkness to light his way."

I watched and listened to Amy's creation in rapt astonishment — not only because of the content of the song and by her haunting rendition, but because of the fact of the song. Although many, as I noted earlier, have shared with me their passion for The MoonQuest, this is the first time, to my knowledge, that any of that passion has inspired a work of art separate from me. 
"I started work on the song a couple months ago," Amy says, "and it all came together in a long car ride where I had to pull over at least three times to write down what I was singing. There are so many songs to be written for The MoonQuest."
So many songs...so much inspiration... For me...from me. Perhaps that's the ultimate reward of authorship: knowing that even as I have moved on to other stories, this one lives on --  not only inspiring others but also inspiring new creations in a never ending cycle of creativity. What could be a better life for a story that, at its root, is about the rekindling of blocked expression. And what could be a better gift for its author.

Thank you, Amy.

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• Candle photo: rgbstock. 
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The Power of Your Pen

Pick up your pen and hold it in your hand. Feel its weight and texture. Study its form and aspect. Sense its potential.

Can you see or imagine the ink that sloshes around in the barrel as you move it this way and that? Can you visualize the waves that crash from one shore to the next — waves of blue or black or, if you're more fanciful in your implements, magenta or fuchsia?

Your words bob up and down in that sea of ink, in that ocean of story that ebbs and flows from barrel to nib to page.

Don't push your pen as you set it down on the pristine whiteness of the virginal page. Follow it. Allow it to carry you on a wondrous journey as you surrender to it and allow it to chart the course of your creativity.

Follow your pen. Let it guide you on a safari into the darkest of Amazon jungles, the uncharted territory of your deepest self.

Your pen will map out the journey, inking your itinerary as it forms before your eyes, allowing you and your readers the freshness of new experience.

Follow your pen, as I do at this moment, not knowing where it will carry me, allowing my terror to exist side-by-side with my awe and wonder, each word emerging despite my resistance to it.

I, too, fear the unknown, despair at the necessary surrender. I, too, long to know how this sentence will end and who I will be when it does.

I cannot know...need not know...at times dare not know.

All any of us can do who are called to this journey is place one word after the next and then another and then another, allowing the power of our pen — or of our fingers skipping across the keyboard — to chart the way, pen stroke by pen stroke, pixel by pixel, moment by moment, breath by breath.

~ excerpted from The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write by Mark David Gerson (c) 2008

For additional tips and inspiration, pick up a copy of The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write and The Voice of the Muse Companion CD from my online bookstore, and be sure to ask for a signed copy of the book. Both are also sold on Amazon

The ebook is available for Kindle, Nook, iBook and Kobo. Download an MP3 version of the CD at CD Baby, iTunes and Amazon

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The Magic of Story

Without the magic of writing, the magic of reading could not exist.

If you have a story in you (and who doesn't?), now is the time to listen to its call and start freeing it onto the page.

You're not sure how? Start with one word, any word. Then, surrendering yourself unconditionally to your story, add another and another. And then another. Don't think about what the story is or where it's taking you. Don't struggle for the right word, right character or right plot. Just start, follow that free-flowing river of creativity I call your Muse Stream and trust in the journey...the journey beyond your imagination.

Need some help launching your story or keeping the momentum going? The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write can help -- with inspiration, tools, techniques and exercises to get you writing and keep you writing.

And whether you're writing or not, it's always a good time to pick up a book and dive into the storytelling world of its author.

Original photo at Bookshelf Porn

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Maya Angelou: The Call to Write

"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."
~  Maya Angelou

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.

• For more writing inspiration, go to www.calltowrite.com for excerpts from The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write


Photo: Dwight Carter www. mayaangelou.com

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

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


• To view the video on YouTube, click here.
• For more videos about writing and the creative process, visit my YouTube page.
• You'll find additional tips and inspiration on my web site, where you can read my "Rules for Writing," join my mailing list and read/hear free excerpts from The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write.
Buy The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write and The Voice of the Muse Companion: Guided Meditations for Writers from my online bookstore, and be sure to ask for a signed copy of the book. Both are also available on Amazon
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48 Hours of March Madness: $10 Books and CDs

This year, the Ides of March is not something to beware! Rather it's an opportunity for unprecedented savings on my books and CD.

From now through 11:00 PT on March 16, get
• The MoonQuest, 
• The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write and 
• The Voice of the Muse Companion (CD): Guided Meditations for Writers...
...for $10 each!

That's a savings of up to 60%!

This is the lowest these award-winning books and CD have ever been offered...and this never-before price is good for less than 48 hours. So act now!

These prices are exclusive to my website. Order now at www.markdavidgerson.com/onlinebookstore.html.

Sorry, no signed copies available during this promotion.