What a Difference a Year Makes!
When I “landed” in Sedona a year ago today, after one of the most financially and emotionally challenging periods in my life, I couldn’t know that I was about to make this place my home.
For the third time.
I certainly couldn’t know that I would end up living on the same street I lived on when I got here that first time, 23 years ago. Then, I had also just come off a three-month, open-ended road odyssey – although a much easier one. And in another of the strange Sedona synchronicities that follows me around, the dog accompanying me in 1997 was about the same age as Kyri was last August. She was also a similar size and coloring.
Just as I didn't expect to stick around when I pulled into town on Sept. 16, 1997, I had no plans to stay when I got a here a year ago.
Yet here I am. Still somewhat surprised to be here and deeply grateful that I am
And what a year it has been! Despite the global and national upheaval that ushered in 2020, I have experienced a profoundly creative and productive time over these past 12 months.
Thanks to Eve Hunter and her Literate Lizard bookstore (closing for good, alas, at the end of September), I taught more writing workshops in my first seven months here than I have ever done in such a short space of time. And I have been teaching for nearly 30 years.
Even before COVID shut the country down, my Literate Lizard workshops had inspired me to stream my workshops online for the first time.
Once COVID struck, I recreated nine of my most popular writing and personal growth workshops as videos. I now stream workshop videos weekly (www.markdavidgerson.com/events) and also sell downloadable versions (www.markdavidgerson.com/videos).
In the past year I have published new editions of five of my books: The Book of Messages (originally conceived in 2002, during my second Sedona sojourn), my three Sara Stories novels (Sara's Year, After Sara's Year and The Emmeline Papers) and my classic book for writers, The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write. This third edition of The Voice of the Muse is a third longer than the second edition and 50 percent longer than the 2008 original.
Since returning to Sedona I have written and published my 18th(!) book – The Heartful Art of Revision: An Intuitive Guide to Editing. What's particularly cool is that its publication date is in just over a week – on Labor Day, the day after my first Literate Lizard workshop back in 2019!
What will Year Two bring? If Year One was beyond unpredictable, Year Two is even more so, given the bizarre nature of these times. What I do know is that within the next few weeks, I will get back to work on The Bard of Bryn Doon, the fourth book in what I have unofficially dubbed The Q'ntana unTrilogy. (Now that more stories are showing up, the official name of the series is The Legend of Q'ntana.)
"Back to work" is a bit of an exaggeration: I have written only a couple of scenes on Bryn Doon, which I started before leaving Portland 15 months ago. I know bits of the story (I never plan, plot or outline) and I know the title (even if I'm not yet sure what it means). But if I've learned anything over my decades of writing and teaching, it's that my stories are smarter than I am. This isn't the first time a title has been "revealed" without an accompanying plot. All I can do is trust.
When I say my stories are smarter than I am, I'm referring as much to the story I'm living as to the ones I'm writing. I've given up trying to plan, plot or outline those, too, because just as in my writing, the stories that unfold in my life are profoundly more engaging, compelling and innovative than anything my conscious imagination could ever produce!
Years ago, during my first time living here, I remember hiking up Airport Mesa and "hearing," in that "intuitive knowing" way that I consider to be an expression of my highest wisdom, "Your books will support you."
Of course, I immediately assumed that to mean Oprah, The New York Times Best Seller list and movie deals – all resulting in untold wealth and all, initially at least, from The MoonQuest, which was my only manuscript at that time.
That's the problem with finite human interpretations of infinite energy. My books have always supported me, if always (so far) indirectly and never in any of the ways my mind imagined. At least not yet!
But after 18 books, I have come to trust that as long as I keep writing and as long as I continue to listen to the same highest wisdom that dropped me in Sedona a year ago, I will be supported and taken care of. If this past year has proven nothing else, it's that my stories and my story are smarter than I am.