A few mornings later, I’m preparing for a writing workshop I am to teach when The Celtic Tarot catches my eye from across the room. As I thumb through the deck with its evocatively illustrated cards, I realize why I had to have it: I will use it as part of a writing exercise for the workshop.
That evening, I have each student draw, closed-eyed, one of the cards. I then have them open their eyes as I guide them through a meditative journey into writing.
Everyone immediately launches into a frenzy of creative output and I’m relieved, not only because the exercise is working but because it has justified my extravagant purchase.
I rarely write during a workshop that I’m facilitating. Instead, I keep an eye on participants in case anyone needs help. This class is different. Within moments, some inner imperative insists that I also draw a card. I reach into the deck and pull out The Chariot.
Without full awareness of what I’m doing, I pick up my pen, pull my yellow-paged notepad toward me and begin to write. What emerges, after a rambling preamble, is the tale of an odd-looking man in an odd-looking coach. Pulling the coach are horses as oddly colored as those on the Chariot card.
I know nothing about this man and his horses. I know nothing about this story that seems to be drawing me into it. All I know is what emerges, word by word, onto the page.
Next morning, lured back into the story, I add to it. I continue adding to it daily, almost obsessively, rarely knowing from one day to the next what the story is about or where it is carrying me. A year later on the anniversary of that Toronto class, I complete my first draft of the fantasy novel that has become The MoonQuest.
I didn’t know as I was crafting those initial drafts of The MoonQuest that this book I never expected to write was destined to become not only trilogy of fantasy novels but a trilogy of epic films. After all, I had never written a book before, let alone a novel! But at some point after The MoonQuest’s first few drafts, I suddenly knew there would be sequels. There would be a StarQuest and there would be a SunQuest. What I didn’t know, any more than I had known The MoonQuest’s plot at the outset, was what they would be about or what the resulting trilogy would be called. As with The MoonQuest, I discovered those stories — and plenty of surprises — in the writing of them.
• Adapted from Birthing Your Book…Even If You Don’t Know What It’s About by Mark David Gerson. Get all three Q’ntana books (The MoonQuest, The StarQuest, The StarQuest), along with Birthing Your Book and all of Mark David’s other titles on most Amazon sites (www.amazon.com/author/markdavidgerson), from select other online booksellers, from Mark David’s website (www.markdavidgerson.com/bookstore) or from your favorite ebook store.
