The Life-Affirming Experience of Reading

This week I have been reminded time and again of the experience that literature brings to life.

You would think that in this 11th hour of holiday hubbub, shoppers would be frantic to buy whatever books remain on the shelf. But no, the readers who are giving books as gifts are very particular about the gift of language. They are calm and methodical in their quests for the perfect book, patiently listening to my staff about this storyline or that plot twist. . . .

So in our busiest season, I've realized just how much literature has a calming effect. We read so that we can have the life-affirming experience that reading a book brings. And that's why we give the gift of books.

~ Sarah Bagby of Watermark Books, Wichita, Kan., in her store's e-mail newsletter

Are you still giving books as gifts? To yourself?

What are you buying? What are you reading?

Photo: Watermark Books & Cafe, from Watermark's MySpace page. Thanks to the Shelf Awareness newsletter for this story.

The Implausible Miracle of Movies

The world of novels, there's corruption and mediocrity, but in the end it's still a republic of letters.

But film is a tyranny, and the tyrant is money.

The great thing is that, in spite of that, impossibly, some people keep on smuggling out messages of hope from the other side, past the tyrant.

I mean, there shouldn't be one good movie made given the way it's structured, and yet there are many good movies made. That seems to me to be implausible and marvelous at the same time.

~ Richard Flanagan, screenwriter, Australia

The creative process is a miracle. Let the miracle unfold and trust in the magic of creation -- the magic that gets your words onto the page and the magic that gets those pages out into the world.

Don't worry about how the miracle works. Just sit down to write and let it.

Photo -- ABC Local Radio: Jane Munro.
Thanks to Creative Screenwriting magazine's CS Weekly newsletter for the quote.

Everyone Loves Coffee...

And no one loves coffee more than longtime coffee connaisseur Susan Zimmer.

Zimmer self-published I Love Coffee!: Over 100 Easy and Delicious Coffee Drinks and, pumping lots of caffeine into her sales efforts, moved more than 40,000 copies of the book. With that kind of high-octane record, literary agent Albert Zuckerman easily brewed up a publishing deal for her with Andrews McMeel Universal.

There are now more than 100,000 copies of Zimmer's I Love Coffee! in print in five languages.

“Success," says the Calgary author, "is finding your life work in the work you love to do. Then do it with passion (disregarding the opinion of others). Focus on your goal, and never, ever give up!"

Thanks again to John Kremer of www.bookmarket.com for alerting me to this inspiring story.

Just for Fun

Here's a fun little video I created at with the help of Florida's orange growers.

Create Your Own: When you click on "create your own" in the video box below, you're prompted to pick a persona and voice and type in up to 500 words. The result is a video like the one below. You're then able to email it, post it to a social networking site or post it to your own web site.

If you do create your own, feel free to leave a link in the comments to wherever you've posted it!

Thanks to John Kremer of www.bookmarket.com for sharing this with me.

Mark David Gerson's The MoonQuest Wins 2008 New Mexico Book Award

Mark David Gerson’s win, for The MoonQuest: A True Fantasy, was announced on November 21 at an Albuquerque awards banquet designed to honor authors in more than 30 categories from New Mexico and beyond.

His award, in the statewide contest, was in the Fantasy/Science Fiction category.

The MoonQuest, Gerson’s first novel, is part of a fantasy pantheon that includes The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia.

It’s the compelling tale of a young bard’s quest to restore vision and imagination to a mythical land where stories have been banned and storytellers put to death.

This is The MoonQuest’s fifth award and its second this year. In March, it won a Gold Medal for Visionary Fiction in the Independent Book Publisher Awards.

The fantasy, popular with adults and young adults alike, has also been recognized in the USA Best Book Awards (visionary fiction), the Reader Views Awards (young adult fiction) and the New Mexico Discovery Awards (unpublished fiction). This is its first fantasy/science fiction prize.

As well, The MoonQuest has been lauded by U.S. critics as “an evocative and emotionally moving tale of adventure” (Midwest Book Review) and “an exceptional, timeless novel” (The Mindquest Review of Books). Library Journal praised it as an “emotionally solid tale” whose “songlike prose [offers] a match for its ethereal characters and allegorical message of inner truth.”

For Gerson, who moved to New Mexico in 2005, this award carries particular significance. “This is where I finally finished The MoonQuest,” he says. “It’s also where I finished my second book, and hope to complete my third!”

Gerson is also author of The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write (LightLines Media 2008), based on his 15-plus years of teaching creative writing in the U.S. and Canada. He is now seeking a producer for his screenplay adaptation of The MoonQuest and is working on a sequel to the novel.

This is the second year for the New Mexico Book Awards, established to acknowledge the best in New Mexico books. Over the next year, The MoonQuest will be featured, along with other winners, in special displays in bookstores and libraries across the state, including in all New Mexico Borders outlets.

Both Gerson’s books are available from Amazon.com and other online retailers, from the publisher at www.lightlinesmedia.com and at selected U.S. retailers coast-to-coast.

You Are a Writer

You are a writer of power, passion, strength and, yes, courage. For writing is an act of courage...

Find some place where you can relax, be comfortable and remain uninterrupted for five to ten minutes. Then click here and listen to words that will uplift you, inspire you and remind you what it is to be the writer you are.

Then return here and leave a comment to share your experiences.

This guided meditation is one of 10 on the 2-CD set, The Voice of the Muse Companion: Guided Meditations for Writers, available from LightLines Media and Amazon.com

The Voice of the Muse Companion CD set works in conjunction with or independently from the book, The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write. Click here for other excerpts from both.

Special holiday offer from Lightlines Media: Order The Voice of the Muse book and CD together and pay shipping only for the book.

CD Cover by Richard Crookes

Why Do You Write?

A Guest Post by Julie Isaac

Why do you write?
What do you love about writing?
Why did you start writing?
What do you get out of writing?
What do you want to give others through writing?

The answers to these questions are what motivate us to sit down and write, are what get us to put writing first and everything else second.

When was the last time you sat with these questions and answered them? Do it now, and make a list of your most compelling answers.

Keep a copy of that list with you, and one where you write. When you're procrastinating, when you're writing tweets instead of your novel, when you're stuck, read your list. Read it slowly and really feel your answers.

Julie Isaac, the founder of www.WritingSpirit.com and author of the upcoming book, "Unleash Your Writing Genius," posts daily creativity tips for writers on Twitter.

Read Julie's review of my book, The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write.


Note from Mark David

When I first read Julie's "tweet" on my Twitter page, I knew I had to reply. This is the answer that (to my surprise) came out of me:

Why do I write? Because I can't not write, anymore than I can't not breathe.

Why do you write? Please share your thoughts, reasons and perspectives here as a comment.

Cities Literate

A study by Central Connecticut State University names Minneapolis America's most literate city for 2007, up from second place in each of the two previous years and replacing Seattle, former champion.

Washington, Atlanta and Pittsburgh also lost ground in the annual rankings, while St. Paul, Denver, St. Louis, San Francisco and Boston all moved up and are now rated more literate.

When it comes to bookstores per 10,000 population, though, Seattle is still tops, followed by San Francisco, Minneapolis and Cincinnati.

Here's the full 2007 Literary Top 10:

1. Minneapolis, MN

2. Seattle, WA
3. St. Paul, MN
4. Denver, CO
5. Washington, DC
6. St. Louis, MO

7. San Francisco, CA
8. Atlanta, GA
9. Pittsburgh, PA
10. Boston, MA

Click here for the top 69 on the list and for links to other breakdowns, including by newspaper circulation, education level and library resources.

Are you a writer living in one of the top literate cities? Does a good city for readers mean a good city for writers?

If you're not in one of those cities, how do you think your city rates -- for readers and for writers? Would you consider moving to a more "literate" city?

Read to Write

"No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance."
~ Confucious

There are three reasons why it's important for a writer to read.

1) The reason set out by Confucious.

Reading expands us as human beings, as conscious beings and as writers.

Writing is most often a solitary act, one that can pull us out of the maelstrom of daily living and into a monastic place of creative retreat. Whether or not we're in the midst of a writing project, it's important to be part of the shared world of creation and imagination inhabited by fellow artists.

Read, listen to music, view art. You'll learn more about the human enterprise and about yourself from those sources than from all the newspapers and magazines on the planet.

It doesn't matter what you read (or view or listen to). Whether you read in your genre or another, you'll connect with the heart of creation and the Creator of heart and art.

2) Craft.

Once again, genre doesn't matter. Depth of topic doesn't matter. What does matter is that you read good writing by accomplished writers.

Osmosis is one of the most powerful learning tools available to the human heart and mind. When we read good writing, we absorb the author's craft and technique. We sense at a deep level what works and what doesn't. Without having to know or understand how or why, without needing to analyze or parse, the power of the words we're reading finds its way into our writing.

You won't be copying. You'll be absorbing, filtering and adapting. You'll be learning -- in the easiest and most fun way imaginable: by doing nothing other than enjoying another's words.

2) Blatant self-interest.

Do you want to be read? Do you want your words to find an audience? If you as a writer aren't reading, what sort of example are you setting for your readers?

The creative/literary community isn't a one-way delivery system. It's a bustling marketplace of ideas and concepts where readers not only learn and grow from writers, but where writers learn and grow from readers and from each other. If we write, in part, to be heard, then we must also be prepared to listen.

Again, genre and subject are less important than engagement, than opening a book -- any book -- and surrendering to the words and imaginings of a fellow artist.

Right now, I'm reading The Lighthouse by that master of mystery, P.D. James -- reading for pleasure, learning with pleasure and engaging in the world of words.

What are you reading now? Why is reading important to you? What books have you read this month? Share them here if you choose or join one of the online readers' communities (Shelfari, Goodreads, etc.).

If you're not reading, visit your local bookstore or public library and discover the words and worlds that are waiting for you on its shelves. Or start with some of the authors whose links you'll find on this blog. Or, if the world of storytellers and storytelling is important to you, discover what life would be like if it vanished, in my novel, The MoonQuest: A True Fantasy.

Whatever you do, step beyond the walls of your creative enterprise and engage!

Reader image found at Julie's Realistic Fiction Web Site; Confucious quote found at A Starry Night Productions.

Arkansas: Where Stories Come From?

Story, Arkansas, where bikers are bards.


Then, if you drive down the road a spell, you find what you need to get that story on the page...




Okay, we've discovered where the Why ("Y") resides. All we need now is the Who, How, Where, What and When....

I discovered these towns and signs in western Arkansas two days ago. (It's a 55-mile drive along Hwys 27, 88 and 270 to get from Story, through Pencil Bluff to "Y" City.)

I also once slept in Story City, Iowa (itself in Story County) and have photographed and drawn the Book Cliffs of Utah and Colorado. What writerly locales have you found?

Photos by Mark David Gerson