An Interview with Mark David Gerson
Mark David Gerson is the founder of The Mark David Gerson School of Writing and award-winning author of more than twenty books, including classic works for writers, inspiring personal growth titles, compelling memoirs and The Legend of Q’ntana and Sara Stories novels. Mark David is also a popular writing coach, as well as dog dad to Kyri, named for a character in The MoonQuest, the first book in his Q’ntana “true fantasy” series.
What inspired you to start writing this book?
I like to joke that The MoonQuest snuck up on me, beat me over the head and took me hostage before I was even aware of what was going on! I say that because this was not a book I ever planned to write.
It was a sort of creative “ambush,” and it happened during a Toronto writing workshop I was facilitating. Until that evening, I had never written during one of my workshops. This time, though, once my students were writing, an inner imperative (the spirit of The MoonQuest?) insisted that I do the same exercise. Within moments, I found myself writing about an odd-looking man in an even odder-looking coach pulled by two odd-colored horses.
The following morning, intrigued by the experience, I continued with the story, not knowing from one day to the next—sometimes from one sentence to the next—what it was about or where it was going. I simply followed where the story took me.
A year later, on the anniversary of that workshop, I completed the first draft of a novel I never planned to write, a novel that, about a third of the way through that first draft, titled itself The MoonQuest.
In one of her memoirs, Madeleine L’Engle wrote this of A Wrinkle in Time: “I cannot possibly tell you how I came to write it. It was simply a book I had to write. I had no choice.”
That’s how I feel about The MoonQuest. It was a story I had to write, even as I had no idea what I was doing or what the story was about as I was doing it!
Tell us the story of your book’s current title. Was it easy to find, or did it take forever?
As I said in the previous question, the book just named itself. That has been the case with all four (soon to be five) books in The Legend of Q’ntana series, as well as with most of my other books.
Describe your dream book cover.
My dream cover is one that is so compelling that people can’t help but buy the book! If I knew what that cover looked like, enough to describe it, it would already be on one of my books!
What books are you reading (for research or comfort) as you continue the writing process?
I tend to not read fantasy while I’m writing it, so I’m currently reading Richard Russo’s Everybody’s Fool. To be accurate, I’m listening to the audiobook.
What other professions have you worked in? What’s something about you that your readers wouldn’t know?
I mention my public relations work in my next answer, but that job was colorless compared to some of the more unorthodox ones I’ve had—either to support my family, my writing habit, or both.
On the Big Island of Hawaii, I flogged food samples at Costco and timeshare tours on the streets of Kona.
On Maui, I drove a taxi—an aging, mud-brown Ford Aerostar held together with prayers and duct tape.
In Sedona, I hustled arty fossils and crystals at an upscale gallery and credit card services to wary local merchants.
And in Albuquerque, I worked as the world’s oldest stock boy (I was 54) at Hobby Lobby.
Although I detested every minute of it, it was the Hobby Lobby job had the greatest impact on my creative life. The pay was poor, the hours were long and every one of my muscles ached when I crawled into bed soon after dinner.
Still, it was because of Hobby Lobby that, after two aborted attempts stretching back more than a decade, I managed to finally finish a first draft of The StarQuest, second book in my Legend of Q’ntana fantasy series.
Just before Christmas that year, after six weeks of hateful Hobby Lobbying, I resolved that the only thing that would help me feel less desperate and miserable would be to return to The StarQuest.
Somehow, at a time when I had no time or energy, I managed to find both. And, somehow, it worked. Six months later—now, miraculously, freed from Hobby Lobby—I dropped the final period on the final sentence of my first draft The StarQuest.
Who/what made you want to write? Was there a particular person, or particular writers/works/art forms that influenced you?
I didn’t always want to be a writer. More to the point, I never wanted to be a writer! Even back in school, all I wanted was to get through English class and its writing burdens as painlessly as possible. My muse, however, had other plans…
My muse had always had other plans. How else can you explain my first typewriter? A gift in my freshman year of high school, it was a sleek, green Hermes—an unusual brand. Hermes, of course, was the Greek god of communication…and, thus, writers. And how can you explain why I agreed, a few years later, to be in charge of publicity for the senior high school musical? It was out of character for me to take on anything that involved not only writing but making my writing public.
I like to joke that my muse tricked me into becoming a writer, and that’s how it began—with that typewriter and the publicity gig.
It was my next second job out of college, though, that accelerated my transformation into a full-time writer. Not only did I prepare press releases, I wrote news and feature articles, something I had never done before. And thanks to the media contacts I gained on the job, I began freelancing on the side, thrilled to see my byline in major metropolitan dailies and national magazines. After a few years of that, I converted my side gig into a full-time one. To my astonishment, I was supporting myself as a self-taught writer and editor.
My writer’s story could have ended there, but it didn’t…nor did the behind-the-scenes machinations of my muse.
You see, I still refused to see myself as creative. A skilled artisan with words, perhaps. But certainly not creative.
That changed one morning during a simple water-cooler conversation. I was working in Toronto as an in-house freelance magazine editor when one of the staffers corralled me.
“I’ve just taken this amazing creative writing workshop,” she gushed. “You’ve got to take it.”
In a moment as out-of-character as the one when I agreed to run publicity for my high school Hello, Dolly!, I said yes.
Nothing was ever the same for me after that workshop.
Thanks to the instructor—to both her workshops and her mentoring—I discovered that I was creative. I started to go deeper with my writing, to write from my heart instead of from my head. Soon I was teaching my own writing workshops. And it was in one of those workshops, as I mentioned above, that The MoonQuest was born.
Where is your favorite place to write?
I don’t have a single favorite place to write, although I do like to write in cafés. For me, different books—different drafts of individual books, sometimes—have their own demands, not only in terms of where they get written but in terms of the kind of music I listen to as I write them and, strangely, whether I drink tea or coffee as I write them!
What advice would you give your past self at the start of your writing journey?
“Fasten your seatbelt. It’s going to be one hell of a ride!”
What’s one thing you hope sticks with readers after they finish your book?
There’s a line toward the end of The MoonQuest where Toshar and his companions are told, “You either trust or you do not. There is no halfway in between.” He is being reminded that it is only by trusting the voice of his heart—his intuitive mind, if you will—that his MoonQuest can have any hope of beating conventional odds, logic and appearances to have any chance of success. At the same time, it was only by trusting the voice of my heart—the voice of my muse, if you will—that I was able to write a book I not only knew nothing about but had no conscious desire to write.
“Your heart will guide you, always,” Toshar is told at another point in the story. I believe that when we listen to that voice, which is not the voice of our romantic heart but the voice of our deepest soul, anything is possible. I hope that’s one of the messages readers take away with them from The MoonQuest.
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