The hardest part about being a writer is accepting it. Even if you’ve been writing all your life, to actually step forward and allow yourself the freedom, even the indulgence, of calling yourself a writer, is not easy. Even after three published books, one of which was an award winning novel, I tend to shrug and dismiss my writing as an all-consuming hobby, rather than a vocation or career. Mark David Gerson isn’t having any of that. He’s adamant that not only am I a writer who can write coherently, flowingly, engagingly, with ease, able to change the world; but also that you are too. The key is linking into what he calls the “muse stream.” The Muse Stream is the welter of unwritten stories (the “ocean of stories”) that, Gerson suggests, we all have within us. It’s our creative subconscious; our intuition and sensual experiences; the magic in our perceptions. We need only listen, open our hearts, and keep writing, and those stories will naturally take shape.
Much of Voice of the Muse is an incantation. There are a number of guided meditations designed to help you listen to your voice, rather than fight it, so you can approach the place inside of you where creativity begins. For those who prefer a pragmatic ‘how-to’ book full of checklists and rules, this might be a hard approach to swallow. It’s much softer than that. The first rule is that there are no rules. The second is that you must get out of your own way. Leap into the void, and then just write. It doesn’t much matter what you write, as your “muse”, which you can call by any name that suits, from the collective unconscious if you like Jung, to God if you’re religious, to the “muse” if you like the idea of a female spirit, to your own inner voice if you don’t like labels:
You believe your inner place is devoid of ideas? Trust in the darkness and silence of the earth. Trust in the fertility of your creative process. Trust in the seeds that lie dormant beneath the surface. (139)
The key message here, and it’s repeated in many ways, is that you must write, and that if you do surrender and listen, and keep writing, you will succeed in your writing. It’s a good message and one which Gerson delivers particularly well, sometimes with a subtle, underlying humour:
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