Mark David Gerson, Author of The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write

June 4, 2009

Dr. Kent: Welcome back to Sound Authors. It’s my pleasure on this show to have my next guest, Mark David Gerson, and he is a Twitter friend of mine, and we’ve tweeted back and forth a good bit. If you know me well, I’m a big twitterer, or tweeter, as it will, and Mark David Gerson has written a book called The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write. Welcome to the show, Mark.

Mark David Gerson: Thank you so much, Kent, it’s great to be here.

Dr. Kent: I want to start out with Twitter, because you’re into Twitter, I’m into Twitter, what’s your take on this crazy engine of thought?

Mark David Gerson: I think it’s fabulous. I had a friend about a year ago who I’d actually met on MySpace, which was my first introduction to social networking, who tried to get me to go onto Twitter, and go on the website and I’d kind of shrug my shoulders and say, “I don’t get it.” That happened frequently, and then one day, probably when I was trying to avoid writing, I got on, (inaudible), nosed around, and before I knew it I was having wonderful conversations with lots of brilliant people.

Dr. Kent: So how does it help someone like you, and author of The Moonquest and The Voice of the Muse?

Mark David Gerson: Probably if it weren’t for Twitter, you and I wouldn’t be having this conversation, just to start. It’s been a great way to connect with other writers. It’s been a great way to market myself as an author. And it’s been a great way to just meet interesting people all over, and some of the people I’ve actually met on Twitter I’ve met in person, and they’ve been just as personable in (inaudible).

Dr. Kent: Absolutely. And what I find fascinating is that in 140 characters you can be so much more to the point than you would be in an email or an interview or a conversation or this and that.

Mark David Gerson: Well that’s true, it’s a great training for being concise, and also for being creative in your abbreviations.

Dr. Kent: So let’s talk about your book, especially the Voice of the Muse where it’s talking about something that I’m very familiar with, which is authors starting out, authors getting published, and what you were just talking about, which is getting into places like Twitter and saying, “Hey, here I am,” as an author.

Mark David Gerson: Sure. Well, the book, both my books, the other book is a novel called the Moonquest, both books (inaudible) to me, I didn’t sit down one morning and say I’m going to write a book on writing, or I’m going to a fantasy novel. They both just kind of snuck up on me, hit me over the head and dragged me to the computer, or the blank page, because part it was in longhand. I’ve been teaching writing, giving writing workshops, coaching writers for 15 years now, and out of all the wisdom I guess I had accumulated, which was mostly wisdom from me, because you know we do teach what we need to learn, and I think that is certainly true for me. It found itself onto the page, and before I knew it I had a book that I’m very grateful to say (inaudible).

Dr. Kent: And you are also a sound author in two ways, and I find it interesting on your website you have a title on the left side that says sound healing. And that’s very similar to sound authors, I like that punk. You’ve put out a lot of audio CD’s as well. Talk about your work, and what you do every day.

Mark David Gerson: Sure. Well, just briefly, the sound healing is something I have not, I don’t do a whole lot anymore, but I did regularly for a couple of years. It’s a form of energy healing, like reiki is, where I use the sound of my voice instead of my hands. I used to do a lot of teleconferences and live events and recordables, and those are a combination of kind of sound healing and guided meditation, and I do have a lot of CD’s, and they’re on my website. But my kind of daily routine right now is working on a sequel to my novel, The Moonquest, and my daily routine really is a writing routine. I write almost every day. My goal is to write every day, but I cut myself some slack, so as long as I’m writing 4 or 5 or 6 days a week, I’m satisfied. I tend to write in the mornings for a number of reasons. One is, it’s nice to have it done. Not that it’s a horrible thing to do, but writers tend to be very distractible, writers can be really amazing procrastinators, writers can find really all kinds of awful things to do that somehow seem much more interesting in the moment than writing. I find that if I get the writing done early in the day I don’t waste my time looking for things to do to avoid writing. That’s part of it. The other reason is that I find that writing does something to me, does something for me, it really shifts my mood and my energy in the morning, and I generally have a better day because I had written, not because I’ve done, I’ve gotten it over with, but because I’ve had the experience of writing, of connecting with that deep part of myself to let the story out. So I always start my day writing if I can. And the rest of the day is whatever it is.

Dr. Kent: It’s such an interesting thing, because different writers have different processes, and I’ve heard from many writers that they like to get up at dawn and do their few minutes of writing. What’s your process?

Mark David Gerson: I’m sorry, what was the question?

Dr. Kent: What’s your process? Do you get up at dawn and write a few minutes? Do you sometimes write all day long? What’s your process for writing?

Mark David Gerson: Right, well, I don’t like getting up, period. So getting up at dawn is never fun, but I do do it sometimes. I try to get up, and I have the advantage, most of the time I’m living on my own, I mean, it’s bad in some respects, but not in others, so that I can get up when I want and write when I want. I have a 9 year old daughter who’s with me sometimes, and that changes the routine when she’s here, but for the most part I get up about 6 or 7 in the morning, and sometimes I will actually write in bed. I have a laptop in the bedroom and I’ll just plop it on my lap and just get going. But the days that I’m going to write all morning, I usually get up and do my stuff, and have my breakfast, and then sit down and just go at it for 1, 2, 3 or 4 hours. I don’t usually write all day. I think that would be really awesome to be able to, I’ve got other things going on in my life that sometimes makes it difficult to do. But (inaudible). I don’t write at night for the most part. I know a lot of writers do. I’m just too fried at the end of the day to really be in a place where I can write, although I have. It’s just not my preference.

Dr. Kent: And we’re having just a little bit of technical difficulty, I think we lost you there for one second, but we got you back, so that makes me happy.

Mark David Gerson: Good.

Dr. Kent: Now, you’ve also written The Moonquest, and you won an “IPPY”, which is an Independent Publisher Book Award, a great honor, and a number of other awards. Tell us about that book, and are you doing a follow up to that, tell us about what you’re working on.

Mark David Gerson: Sure. Well, I’m very pleased and proud to (inaudible) award, won an “IPPY” gold medal last year, and it also won a New Mexico book award. (inaudible) …really gratifying. When I wrote the book I didn’t know I even had it in me. The story is a fantasy, obviously, that takes place in a time and a place in a land where stories have been banned. Storytellers have been banished or put to death, and the land, you may have no visions, songs, creativity, anything like that. The legend in this land is that the moon was so saddened by the silence that she cried tears that extinguished her life, so the moon has not been seen for many generations. So The Moonquest is a quest story to restore the light of the moon and bring stories back to land. It’s (inaudible) because I don’t think I could have done it that way, I think it really is a wonderful metaphor for a creative block and breaking through our creative blocks, it truly was for me in writing this story was a breakthrough of a creative block for me. And right now I’m working on a sequel, which is tentatively titled The Star Quest. It seems to me as though it’s going to be a trilogy. Not a conventional trilogy because the second book is really about the daughter of the main character of the first book, who is already dead by the time the second book begins, so it’s more of a generational thing than a trilogy. But that’s what I’m working on right now, and that’s what I’m working on every morning when I’m writing, for the most part, if I’m not working on a couple blogs. Some mornings I’m actually working on those.

Dr. Kent: Tell us where we can find your books and CD’s.

Mark David Gerson: Absolutely. The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write, and there’s also a companion 2-CD set, a recorded guided meditation called The Voice of the Muse Companion, and The Moonquest, all available through Amazon. They’re also available through the publisher at www.lightlinesmedia.com, and the two books, not the CD, are available through other online retailers, and in some bookstores across the US (inaudible). And people can find me on the website at markdavidgerson.com.

Dr. Kent: So at markdavidgerson.com we can find out everything, including all the stuff he just said, and information about The Voice of the Muse, and The Moonquest. Thank you so much for chatting with me, and for always tweeting with me online.

Mark David Gerson: A pleasure Kent, thank you.

Dr. Kent: Now my next guest on the show is a author and a musician. We’re going to talk to her in just a minute. Her name is Janet Paschal. Come on back.

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