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Mark David Gerson
a book bubble about
Birthing Your Book
Self-Help
Author Insight
Forget Everything You Think You Know About Writing
I was living in Nova Scotia, taking an unplanned hiatus from work on my first book (The MoonQuest), when I happened to read my horoscope in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald: "Lose your mind and follow your heart," Libras were counseled to do. It was apt advice for a newbie (but not young) novelist who was struggling to control a story he didn't understand, to surrender into a story he thought he knew nothing about. Of course, I knew the whole story...but I knew it in my heart, not in my head. And it was only by losing my mind and following my heart that I was able to write it. A few weeks later I returned to the novel. A few months later, I finished my first draft. And today, the story that lived in my heart has won multiple awards and is on its way to the big screen as an epic fantasy film!
Book Excerpt
Birthing Your Book
Forget your grade school teacher who was a stickler for spelling, punctuation and grammar. Forget your high school teacher who forced you to turn in an outline with your essay. Forget your college professor who forced you to write to a certain form or style. Forget the writers, classmates and instructors who cruelly critiqued or ridiculed you. Forget every writing manual and book-writing how-to you have ever read (including, where appropriate, this one). Forget everything you think you know about book-writing, and remember this:
Rule #5
Lose Your Mind and Follow Your Heart
Your heart? Yes. Because that’s where your book resides, where it has always resided…where it has been waiting for you to acknowledge it so that you can release it onto the page.
Your heart is the smartest brain, strongest muscle, most developed tool in your body. Your heart is your connection to your creativity, to your Muse, to your book.
Your brain isn’t that muscle, although without it you couldn’t translate that connection into words, sentences, chapters and books. Your brain is not that connecting place. Your heart is.
When you follow your heart and lose your mind, you free yourself of fear, worry and anxiety. When you follow your heart and lose your mind, you silence your second-guessing inner critic. When you follow your heart and lose your mind, you free yourself of all restrictions and constrictions, all expectations and preconceptions, all should’s, must’s and have-to’s.
When you follow your heart and lose your mind, you are never derivative, manipulative, hackneyed, conventional or trite. When you follow your heart and lose your mind, you are creative, innovative and original.
When you follow your heart and lose your mind, you write the book only you can write in the way that only you can write it.
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