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Wednesday 7 March 2012
UN humanitarian chief to visit Syria (AP)
[unable to retrieve full-text content]AP - U.N. humanitarian chief Valerie Amos says Syrian authorities have confirmed that she can visit the country after repeatedly ignoring her earlier requests.
Monday 5 March 2012
Ways to Accomplish Success with Outsourcing | cchdesign.net
Posted by Stan on March 4, 2012
How to Get Great Results From Outsourcing
Outsourcing has turned out to be an essential part of managing an Internet business that is a hit these days. A lot of the big shot web marketers and webpreneurs are doing really well at outsourcing, which is leading to the growth of their business. Outsourcing is not a new-fangled concept, on account that it has been utilized by multi-national corporations for quite awhile now. Yet, because of the introduction of the Internet, anybody who has gobs of money to spend can start outsourcing their business chores. So the question that comes about in this situation is what do you need to do in order to be certain of success with outsourcing? Within this article, we will be talking about some hints for understanding outsourcing. Fix Cleaner
Always make sure that you define the scope of your project and also its schedule in a clear cut manner. The more clear you are in your directions for the candidate, the more excellent your results will be. When the scope and timeline is concerned, there should not be any missteps in communication. For illustrative purposes, what if we say that your desire to get your project over with in about two weeks. If you do not make this clear right in the beginning, your worker may take longer than that. The same is relevant to the scope of the project; do not suspect that the potential person you are hiring simple understands everything. You should put things into words right from the get-go. Singorama Review
Don?t forget to ask for the support once the project is completed. Certain technical issues may arise or you may have questions that need answering. So when you agree upon a certain price for such a task, be sure that a reasonable amount of support is included in the bargain. You don?t want to have to outsource twice for the same project, so make sure that support is part of your original agreement. If you?re dealing with a pro, they?ll be glad to include a certain amount of support in the arrangement; if not, find someone else. It?s always best to have everything on the table before you make an agreement. Model Trains For Beginners
In many cases, outsourcing is the most effective way to get a task done, but not always; you should calculate whether or not you could do it more efficiently. Many people find that when they discover outsourcing, they suddenly want to find someone to perform every task for them. But if it?s not saving you time then it?s better you avoid it. There?s no reason to pay someone to do something that?s not going to help you save time. It?s therefore a good idea to think about it and decide whether or not a particular task should be outsourced. Save your outsourcing budget for those projects that it really makes sense for. It?s much easier for you to relax when you feel like you have outsourced your project to the right person. You can focus more easily on the strategic part of your business and making it grow. The exact moment you get it wrong and hire the wrong person your issues are going to explode. Basically, doing your homework and understanding the basic rules of oursourcing will help you in a major way. It could take you some time to get through all of the prep work but it will definitely be worth it. A professional who offers timely and high quality results and who is willing to take on long term work is absolute gold.
Source: http://cchdesign.net/ways-to-accomplish-success-with-outsourcing/
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riki feldmann ? Blog Archive ? Brain wave Entrainment Hypnosis ...
04.03.12 / Projects / Author: Riki
Tags: brainwave entrainment
A a hypnotic approach recording and brain wave entrainment technology are special resources which you can use for you to reprogram our brain for much better self improvement and more significant achievement in life. On the other hand, there?s been some sort of disputes concerning which will of these two resources works more effectively if employed for the proper applications. Very well, some sort of basic exposition built in is important in order to discover which ones resource works more effectively.
A recording displays with form of common cassette that had visited easily use in the years and months prior. A recording is definitely utilized in hypnotizing a person for much better self improvement. This typically delivers the voice of any skilled consultant that attempts to slowly move the person regarding how to gain a significantly laid back perspective and body when he or maybe your woman learns this. Could also be a few comfortable new music compliment the information from the recording. While in the recent times, the recording is still utilised however the a hypnotic approach Dvds and Dvd videos looking to change it.
This is a special technology utilized in subjecting our human brain to the periodic government for example noise or maybe impulses of sunshine. It is also often known as brain wave synchronization. It involves the use of a piece of the human feelings. Whether it is properly used, our mental abilities are commonly ignited even as it lets out a few electronic charges responding to your arousal. We now have is usually a form of brain development and that is with different obvious homework. It is further for you to demonstrating the reality of electronic action occurring from the neural. If you take the time to tune in to the looks or maybe shades of the government, ones brainwaves will start to coordinate the frequency that is definitely linked to the government. Typically, the brain wave entrainment is built to feel free improvement once you go through approaches required. We now have is actually nicely packaged to present you greatest results from the concerns with human brain and self improvement.
Having seen your a look at a hypnotic approach recording and brain wave entrainment, you can effortlessly have the solution to the query lingering in your thoughts concerning which ones is more preferable. In the above, it is extremely apparent this a hypnotic approach recording is quite traditional although brain wave entrainment is a lot more of any today?s technology. We now have utilizes nicely designed processes with stirring our human brain for much better steps as the a hypnotic approach recording uses purely wordings and looks which are pre-recorded in helping the consumer.
Certainly, it?s far more far better utilize brain wave entrainment technology for those who want to observe quick and effective cause your mind and self improvement practice. A a hypnotic approach recording is able to get you into a levels just after many intervals of using this however, not truly delivering final results that you are ready for. You might need to do it again repeatedly. It?s good you make use of the brain wave entrainment mainly because it seems to be far more specialised and classic. You can track down the technology coming from efficient methods on the web.
Source: http://rikifeldmann.com/2012/03/04/brain-wave-entrainment-hypnosis-video-tape/
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Sunday 4 March 2012
Mark Hyman, MD: How Hidden Food Sensitivities Make You Fat (Huffington post)
Saturday 3 March 2012
What Counts More: Exercise or Diet? | Sleeping Naked After 40
In 3 minutes, Craig Ballantyne was able to burn 43 calories during an uphill treadmill sprint. In those same three minutes, his partner Brad Pilon, stood nearby and consumed over 1,000 calories worth of pizza and soda. Their YouTube video ?Diet vs. Exercise? gets their point across; no matter how intense a workout plan may be, it will never be enough to counter a poor diet.
With spring right around the corner, you may have plans of increasing exercise in order to get in beach-body shape, but that is only half the battle. A proper diet is crucial to weight loss success. Before starting your journey be sure to avoid these five common diet mistakes.
?
- Crash dieting. Waiting till the week before vacation to implement a crash diet is not the way to reach your goals. Lose the fake stuff and get real. Give yourself time to make healthy eating changes to your diet. Get rid of fried foods, sugar and anything white. Make greens the bulk of your diet, with beans, nuts, seeds, and fruit.
- Drinking Your Calories. For God Sake, don?t drink your calories. A glass of wine (or 2) ,? and your specialty blended coffees drink like Caramel Mocha Frappucino Lattes with extra cream are packed with as much calories as a small meal, so why not just eat a meal?
- ?Choosing unhealthy add-ons. Healthy food choices can easily be infiltrated by unhealthy sauces or dressings drenched on top. Pay attention to portions because even healthy dippers like peanut butter or hummus could pack on extra calories by mindlessly consuming extra servings.Watch what I did at the restaurant when trying to order a healthier option for my salad topping.
- ?Taking the weekends off. Treating yourself to a less healthy meal on the weekend should not be enough to knock you off the weight loss wagon, however it is important to understand that weight loss through healthy eating is a 24/7 commitment. Every meal is an opportunity to improve your health, so you?ve got lots of opportunity. Take advantage of extra time on the weekend for food shopping and preparing healthy snacks and meals for your busy work week ahead. This will insure success.
- Eating CRAP! There is no excuse for not knowing what the frig? you are eating.? Crap consumes supermarket shelves and I admit it can be damn confusing. But be forewarned that when you eat crap, you feel like crap. Did you know that food that is labeled as low fat can be worse for you than its original form? Foods that are naturally low in fat and products that are chemically altered to be ?low fat? actually have added sugar and other unnatural additives. Research has shown that people are more likely to over eat ?low fat? or ?low calorie? foods.? Fat is a necessary part of our diet and is a component of the meal that leaves us feeling full and satisfied. ?Low fat? cookies that have added sugars to replace the fat may leave us craving more than if we had the actual full fat original. Healthy fats like almonds and avocado have been shown to actually increase weight loss. (and healthy fat is a separate blog topic)
Source: http://sleepingnakedafter40.com/general/what-counts-more-exercise-or-diet.html
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BlackBerry 9320 leaks out, looks like every other Curve
If you thought RIM's decline would inject a need to give its handsets a major makeover, think again. The folks from BGR have smudged their fingertips all over an India-bound BlackBerry device and, well, it shamelessly resembles just about every member of the Curve family. The purported 9320 is said to come sporting OS 7.1 at its core, along with a 2.44-inch, 320 x 240 qVGA+ display, 512MB of RAM as well as a 3.2-megapixel rear shooter. Allegedly, the BlackBerry is also rocking a BBM button on its left spine, which should come in handy to those who love some Berry-specific instant messaging. Word is the Curve 9320 will be ready to hit the streets next month for around 12,000 Rupees (or around $245). Hopefully by then you haven't spent your cash on one of those shiny new talkers we saw in Barcelona.
BlackBerry 9320 leaks out, looks like every other Curve originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 01 Mar 2012 22:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Friday 2 March 2012
Investment firm president writes book on retirement savings
GENEVA ? KDM Investment Management of Geneva announced the publication of a new retirement savings and investment book, ?Strategic Diversification: Retirement Planning That Works,? by Jeff Martin, company president.
?Strategic Diversification? provides a blueprint to build a retirement saving and investing plan customized to specific needs and situation, while avoiding investing fads and scams.?
The book includes detailed sample portfolios for five stages of the retirement investing life cycle: early savers, mid-life accumulators, pre-retirees, early retirees and experienced retirees.
KDM is an investment management firm that develops and maintains retirement savings plans and investment portfolios, using the principles of ?Strategic Diversification.?
For information, visit www.kdminvest.com. The book is available at Amazon.com.
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Mark David Gerson: A Writer's Life II
This is an updated version of an interview that appeared last month at Writers Unite, an international online writers' community out of the U.K.?
Writers Unite:?Firstly, congratulations on your trilogy becoming a movie! Can you tell us about your Q'ntana Trilogy novels?
Mark David Gerson:?Thanks. The Q?ntana Trilogy books consists of The MoonQuest, The StarQuest and The SunQuest. The MoonQuest takes place in Q?ntana, where stories have been banned and storytellers put to death and where the moon, saddened by the silence, has cried tears that have extinguished her light. The quest is to restore story to the land and light to the moon. Because The StarQuest and SunQuest are still in process, I?m not prepared to reveal their plots, other than to say that the evil force behind the tyranny in The MoonQuest spans all three books.
WU:?Did you have any goals for this collection when you wrote it ? to get published, or just to finish, etc.?
MDG:?I have to give you some background before I answer the question. When I began The MoonQuest (or, rather, when The MoonQuest began me), I had no plans for a trilogy, nor did I even have a conscious desire to write a fantasy novel. In fact, I knew nothing about the story, including its title, when the first words found their way out of me onto the page. I tell a longer version of the story on my blog. In short, though, The MoonQuest birthed itself during a Toronto writing workshop I was facilitating when, in an unprecedented in-the-moment inspiration, I did the same exercise I had just presented to participants. What I wrote that evening became the opening scene of the first draft of a novel I knew nothing about. From there, I just kept writing, discovering the story as I went along, until I was done. The StarQuest and SunQuest stories emerged similarly.
I don?t remember now when I knew this would be a trilogy, but I suspect it wasn?t until after I had written The MoonQuest?s second draft. At that point, I knew the titles of the two subsequent books. But I had not the remotest idea what they would be about. As it turns out, Q?ntana (named after the land in which the stories are set) is not a traditional trilogy given that, for the most part, each story focuses on different characters. It?s more a time-bending generational epic, with The StarQuest featuring the daughter of The MoonQuest?s protagonist and The SunQuest featuring her son, although, I said above, the evil Bo'R? K'n character is present in all three books.
As for goals, I would be lying if I said I didn?t care whether or not the books would be published and movies produce. But the truth is that I had to write them, regardless of outcomes or consequences. I had no more choice on my journey than did Toshar, The MoonQuest?s protagonist, on his.
WU:?How long did the novels take you to write?
MDG:?Not only did I write each novel differently, each took a different length of time to complete.
It took me six months over the course of a year to write the first draft The MoonQuest: two three-month segments of writing broken up by six months when I didn?t work on the book at all. In one of those curious synchronicities that seems to follow me around, I finished the first draft a year to the day after that Toronto writing workshop mentioned above. Although early drafts were completed in the mid- to late 1990s, the book didn't come out until 2007.
In some ways, The StarQuest was the most challenging of the three. Believing (erroneously) that I was finished with The MoonQuest, I began The StarQuest in April 1998. After two aborted attempts to complete a first draft, spread out over a decade, I finally started a new first draft in late 2008 and finished it in July 2009. Last month ?(February 2012), I completed what I believe to be a publisher-ready draft of the book and a production-ready draft of the screenplay.
Two things set the trilogy's third story,?The SunQuest, apart. The first is that I wrote the screenplay before tackling the novel. With The MoonQuest, I sourced my screenplay adaptation from a largely complete book manuscript. For The StarQuest screenplay, I used that finally completed, ultra-chaotic first draft as my foundation. I decided to challenge myself with The SunQuest by beginning with the screenplay. Once that was done, I wrote a first draft of the novel in what for me was a record-breaking three weeks!?
WU:?How long have you been writing?
When I begin a project, I rarely know the story in advance. So far, the closest thing I?ve come to an outline was having The SunQuest screenplay in front of me when I wrote the novel. But there was no outline for the screenplay!
When I began The MoonQuest, as I said earlier, I knew nothing about the story, except what emerged in each day?s writing. I didn?t have a title until about halfway through and I had no idea of the ending until about two-thirds of the way through. It was an experience in surrender: in surrendering unconditional control to my Muse and to the story. And it was tough! It was tough to keep writing with no plot, no outline and not even the remotest clue where the story was taking me. But it taught me how to get out of the way and let the story have its way with me. That?s still how I write -- regardless of the form, genre or project. Fortunately, I now do it with much less resistance than I did it on The MoonQuest. But it?s still, sometimes, the most challenging aspect of the work...even as it?s also the most exhilarating and is, for me, the key to the magic!
WU:?What was your writing routine for the novels?
MDG:?One of my so-called "rules? for writing, abridged on my website from my book on writing, The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write, is that there are no rules, that what works today may not work tomorrow. From that place, I have no strict routine that I have carried through from project to project.
With the first draft of The MoonQuest, I was so stressed by this notion of surrendering to the story (despite the fact that I had been teaching that philosophy for a few years in workshops!), that I nearly always wrote first thing in the morning, often before getting out of bed. If I wrote first thing, I didn?t spend the rest of the day stressing about writing!
I wrote large chunks of The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write longhand, in the car...although, to be accurate, I didn?t know at the time that I was writing a book. I thought I was writing stream-of-consciousness, self-inspiration at a time when I was once again stuck on The StarQuest. A few years later, those scribblings would form the basis of The Voice of the Muse book and its companion CD, The Voice of the Muse Companion: Guided Meditations for Writers.
When, in 2008, I began the third version of my first draft of The StarQuest, I was in a unpleasant, time-consuming job. On one hand, I had no time or energy for much other than work. On the other, I knew that writing was my only key to mental and spiritual health. I considered all the oft-written-about options for the time-challenged (writing late into the night, getting up at 4 a.m., etc.) and dismissed them all as, for me, unsustainable. In the end, I chose to set my alarm for a wake-up call 15 minutes earlier than needed and spent those 15 minutes, still in bed, working on??The StarQuest. Some days I wrote a sentence, some days I wrote a paragraph. But I wrote every day. Not only did it keep me sane but when, a few months later, the job ended, the momentum I had achieved with my 15-minutes-a-day routine carried me through to completion. I finished the draft five months later.
With The SunQuest, I felt so driven that I wrote all day every day, six or seven days a week, during the three weeks it took me to complete that first draft. It was November (2011), so I used NaNoWriMo to help motivate me.
A few days after that SunQuest draft was finished, I returned to a memoir manuscript (Acts of Surrender) and, apparently still in that passionate/obsessive flow, finished that first draft, too...also in three weeks.
WU:?Has your life changed in anyway since writing the novels?
MDG:?That?s a hard question to answer. Nothing about my life is constant. Everything is in unending transition and transformation. While writing is very much a part of that, I?m not sure I can attach particular changes to particular writing projects. I can say, though, that writing The MoonQuest in that day-to-day, in-the-moment fashion freed me to live my life more in that way. Without The MoonQuest, for example, I probably wouldn't now be living in the U.S. I certainly wouldn't be a father.?
WU:?How much of the book is realistic?
MDG:?The MoonQuest is subtitled "a true fantasy,? but not because it?s conventionally realistic. Set in a mythical time and place, and in a land with two suns and a hidden moon, it can hardly be said to be an accurate representation of any real place.
The architect Frank Lloyd Wright once said that "the truth is more important than facts? and I wholeheartedly agree with that. For me, the notion of "true fantasy? is about the concept of fiction speaking to deeper truths than fact ever can. Although The MoonQuest is not an objectively true story, it is a story about larger truths.
In one sense, there is no such thing as objective fact. Even history -- supposedly a delineation of facts -- is always colored by those who put it forth. You know the saying, "history is always written by the winners.? Even something as apparently factual as your birthday falls on different days depending on which calendar calculates it (ie, Gregorian, Jewish, Muslim, Chinese, Julian, etc.).
However, the human heart at its deepest levels always speaks truth. That?s where our most powerful stories come from. That?s where our truth resides.
WU:?What is the message in your book?
MDG:?I don?t believe in consciously writing "message books"...even though I have an ebook titled The Book of Messages!?Not only did I not know the story as I was writing the three books in The Q?ntana Trilogy, I was also unconscious of their themes. Yet, the themes are there...for in surrendering to the superior wisdom of the books, I freed the stories to delineate and illuminate their own themes, without any interference from me. The obvious themes in The MoonQuest involve censorship, including self-censorship, freedom of expression, transcending creative blocks, and surrender...the same type of surrender I used in getting the book onto the page. Again, I knew none of that during the writing and, I believe, that that?s just as well. By letting the themes emerge as organically as the story did, they are (I hope) not at all heavy-handed and integrate well with the plot.
But there are other themes as well, ones readers discover and share that I knew nothing about. Those are the most exciting for me, as they reveal the book as a living organism that exists independent of me.
WU:?What are your readers? reactions to it?
MDG:?Although winning awards and getting great reviews for both The MoonQuest and The Voice of the Muse have been tremendously gratifying and validating, and although having a producer primed to turn the trilogy into a series of feature films is fabulously exciting, what?s most rewarding is when individual readers tell me how one or both of my books has affected them and, in some cases, changed their lives. This moving video, for example, was sent to me by one of my readers. And I have equally wonderful testimonials for both books on my website and on Amazon
.
WU:?Where can readers find your books and learn more about you and your work?
MDG:?Hard-copy editions of The MoonQuest,?The Voice of the Muse and The Voice of the Muse Companion?are available on my website and Amazon.com. Both books are also sold as ebooks for Kindle, Nook, iBook and Kobo. A downloadable version of the The Voice of the Muse Companion?CD is available at CD Baby and on Facebook.
For more about the full Q?ntana Trilogy, books and movies, click here.
You can also find me on my website and blog, as well as on YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest, and Google+.
Writers Unite:?Firstly, congratulations on your trilogy becoming a movie! Can you tell us about your Q'ntana Trilogy novels?
Mark David Gerson:?Thanks. The Q?ntana Trilogy books consists of The MoonQuest, The StarQuest and The SunQuest. The MoonQuest takes place in Q?ntana, where stories have been banned and storytellers put to death and where the moon, saddened by the silence, has cried tears that have extinguished her light. The quest is to restore story to the land and light to the moon. Because The StarQuest and SunQuest are still in process, I?m not prepared to reveal their plots, other than to say that the evil force behind the tyranny in The MoonQuest spans all three books.
WU:?Did you have any goals for this collection when you wrote it ? to get published, or just to finish, etc.?
MDG:?I have to give you some background before I answer the question. When I began The MoonQuest (or, rather, when The MoonQuest began me), I had no plans for a trilogy, nor did I even have a conscious desire to write a fantasy novel. In fact, I knew nothing about the story, including its title, when the first words found their way out of me onto the page. I tell a longer version of the story on my blog. In short, though, The MoonQuest birthed itself during a Toronto writing workshop I was facilitating when, in an unprecedented in-the-moment inspiration, I did the same exercise I had just presented to participants. What I wrote that evening became the opening scene of the first draft of a novel I knew nothing about. From there, I just kept writing, discovering the story as I went along, until I was done. The StarQuest and SunQuest stories emerged similarly.
I don?t remember now when I knew this would be a trilogy, but I suspect it wasn?t until after I had written The MoonQuest?s second draft. At that point, I knew the titles of the two subsequent books. But I had not the remotest idea what they would be about. As it turns out, Q?ntana (named after the land in which the stories are set) is not a traditional trilogy given that, for the most part, each story focuses on different characters. It?s more a time-bending generational epic, with The StarQuest featuring the daughter of The MoonQuest?s protagonist and The SunQuest featuring her son, although, I said above, the evil Bo'R? K'n character is present in all three books.
As for goals, I would be lying if I said I didn?t care whether or not the books would be published and movies produce. But the truth is that I had to write them, regardless of outcomes or consequences. I had no more choice on my journey than did Toshar, The MoonQuest?s protagonist, on his.
WU:?How long did the novels take you to write?
MDG:?Not only did I write each novel differently, each took a different length of time to complete.
It took me six months over the course of a year to write the first draft The MoonQuest: two three-month segments of writing broken up by six months when I didn?t work on the book at all. In one of those curious synchronicities that seems to follow me around, I finished the first draft a year to the day after that Toronto writing workshop mentioned above. Although early drafts were completed in the mid- to late 1990s, the book didn't come out until 2007.
In some ways, The StarQuest was the most challenging of the three. Believing (erroneously) that I was finished with The MoonQuest, I began The StarQuest in April 1998. After two aborted attempts to complete a first draft, spread out over a decade, I finally started a new first draft in late 2008 and finished it in July 2009. Last month ?(February 2012), I completed what I believe to be a publisher-ready draft of the book and a production-ready draft of the screenplay.
Two things set the trilogy's third story,?The SunQuest, apart. The first is that I wrote the screenplay before tackling the novel. With The MoonQuest, I sourced my screenplay adaptation from a largely complete book manuscript. For The StarQuest screenplay, I used that finally completed, ultra-chaotic first draft as my foundation. I decided to challenge myself with The SunQuest by beginning with the screenplay. Once that was done, I wrote a first draft of the novel in what for me was a record-breaking three weeks!?
WU:?How long have you been writing?
MDG:?Perhaps the better question would be, "How long did you resist writing?" I often joke that my Muse tricked me into writing, given that for most of my early life, I resisted anything remotely creative. My first jobs out of university were in public relations, where I had to write, even if what I initially wrote was largely formulaic. However, that experience gave me the confidence to try my hand at freelance work and, before I knew it, I was a full-time (self-taught) freelance writer and editor, doing mostly magazine, newspaper, corporate and government work. It wasn?t until my early 30s, when the double-whammy of a creative and spiritual awakening whacked me over the head, that I began to explore more creative avenues. And it wasn?t until I was 39 that The MoonQuest, my first foray into serious creative writing, began to have its way with me. I?ve been hooked ever since.?
WU:?Did you outline, and if so, how does it help you??
MDG:?Apparently, I?m congenitally unable to outline. Even when I was in high school and was required to turn in an outline with my essay, I always wrote the essay first. I then crafted the outline.When I begin a project, I rarely know the story in advance. So far, the closest thing I?ve come to an outline was having The SunQuest screenplay in front of me when I wrote the novel. But there was no outline for the screenplay!
When I began The MoonQuest, as I said earlier, I knew nothing about the story, except what emerged in each day?s writing. I didn?t have a title until about halfway through and I had no idea of the ending until about two-thirds of the way through. It was an experience in surrender: in surrendering unconditional control to my Muse and to the story. And it was tough! It was tough to keep writing with no plot, no outline and not even the remotest clue where the story was taking me. But it taught me how to get out of the way and let the story have its way with me. That?s still how I write -- regardless of the form, genre or project. Fortunately, I now do it with much less resistance than I did it on The MoonQuest. But it?s still, sometimes, the most challenging aspect of the work...even as it?s also the most exhilarating and is, for me, the key to the magic!
WU:?What was your writing routine for the novels?
MDG:?One of my so-called "rules? for writing, abridged on my website from my book on writing, The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write, is that there are no rules, that what works today may not work tomorrow. From that place, I have no strict routine that I have carried through from project to project.
With the first draft of The MoonQuest, I was so stressed by this notion of surrendering to the story (despite the fact that I had been teaching that philosophy for a few years in workshops!), that I nearly always wrote first thing in the morning, often before getting out of bed. If I wrote first thing, I didn?t spend the rest of the day stressing about writing!
I wrote large chunks of The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write longhand, in the car...although, to be accurate, I didn?t know at the time that I was writing a book. I thought I was writing stream-of-consciousness, self-inspiration at a time when I was once again stuck on The StarQuest. A few years later, those scribblings would form the basis of The Voice of the Muse book and its companion CD, The Voice of the Muse Companion: Guided Meditations for Writers.
When, in 2008, I began the third version of my first draft of The StarQuest, I was in a unpleasant, time-consuming job. On one hand, I had no time or energy for much other than work. On the other, I knew that writing was my only key to mental and spiritual health. I considered all the oft-written-about options for the time-challenged (writing late into the night, getting up at 4 a.m., etc.) and dismissed them all as, for me, unsustainable. In the end, I chose to set my alarm for a wake-up call 15 minutes earlier than needed and spent those 15 minutes, still in bed, working on??The StarQuest. Some days I wrote a sentence, some days I wrote a paragraph. But I wrote every day. Not only did it keep me sane but when, a few months later, the job ended, the momentum I had achieved with my 15-minutes-a-day routine carried me through to completion. I finished the draft five months later.
With The SunQuest, I felt so driven that I wrote all day every day, six or seven days a week, during the three weeks it took me to complete that first draft. It was November (2011), so I used NaNoWriMo to help motivate me.
A few days after that SunQuest draft was finished, I returned to a memoir manuscript (Acts of Surrender) and, apparently still in that passionate/obsessive flow, finished that first draft, too...also in three weeks.
WU:?Has your life changed in anyway since writing the novels?
MDG:?That?s a hard question to answer. Nothing about my life is constant. Everything is in unending transition and transformation. While writing is very much a part of that, I?m not sure I can attach particular changes to particular writing projects. I can say, though, that writing The MoonQuest in that day-to-day, in-the-moment fashion freed me to live my life more in that way. Without The MoonQuest, for example, I probably wouldn't now be living in the U.S. I certainly wouldn't be a father.?
WU:?How much of the book is realistic?
MDG:?The MoonQuest is subtitled "a true fantasy,? but not because it?s conventionally realistic. Set in a mythical time and place, and in a land with two suns and a hidden moon, it can hardly be said to be an accurate representation of any real place.
The architect Frank Lloyd Wright once said that "the truth is more important than facts? and I wholeheartedly agree with that. For me, the notion of "true fantasy? is about the concept of fiction speaking to deeper truths than fact ever can. Although The MoonQuest is not an objectively true story, it is a story about larger truths.
In one sense, there is no such thing as objective fact. Even history -- supposedly a delineation of facts -- is always colored by those who put it forth. You know the saying, "history is always written by the winners.? Even something as apparently factual as your birthday falls on different days depending on which calendar calculates it (ie, Gregorian, Jewish, Muslim, Chinese, Julian, etc.).
However, the human heart at its deepest levels always speaks truth. That?s where our most powerful stories come from. That?s where our truth resides.
WU:?What is the message in your book?
MDG:?I don?t believe in consciously writing "message books"...even though I have an ebook titled The Book of Messages!?Not only did I not know the story as I was writing the three books in The Q?ntana Trilogy, I was also unconscious of their themes. Yet, the themes are there...for in surrendering to the superior wisdom of the books, I freed the stories to delineate and illuminate their own themes, without any interference from me. The obvious themes in The MoonQuest involve censorship, including self-censorship, freedom of expression, transcending creative blocks, and surrender...the same type of surrender I used in getting the book onto the page. Again, I knew none of that during the writing and, I believe, that that?s just as well. By letting the themes emerge as organically as the story did, they are (I hope) not at all heavy-handed and integrate well with the plot.But there are other themes as well, ones readers discover and share that I knew nothing about. Those are the most exciting for me, as they reveal the book as a living organism that exists independent of me.
WU:?What are your readers? reactions to it?
MDG:?Although winning awards and getting great reviews for both The MoonQuest and The Voice of the Muse have been tremendously gratifying and validating, and although having a producer primed to turn the trilogy into a series of feature films is fabulously exciting, what?s most rewarding is when individual readers tell me how one or both of my books has affected them and, in some cases, changed their lives. This moving video, for example, was sent to me by one of my readers. And I have equally wonderful testimonials for both books on my website and on Amazon
.WU:?Where can readers find your books and learn more about you and your work?
MDG:?Hard-copy editions of The MoonQuest,?The Voice of the Muse and The Voice of the Muse Companion?are available on my website and Amazon.com
. Both books are also sold as ebooks for Kindle, Nook, iBook and Kobo. A downloadable version of the The Voice of the Muse Companion?CD is available at CD Baby and on Facebook.For more about the full Q?ntana Trilogy, books and movies, click here.
You can also find me on my website and blog, as well as on YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest, and Google+.
Please "like" these Facebook pages...
??The Voice of the Muse book
??The MoonQuest movie
??The MoonQuest book
??Mark David Gerson
Source: http://markdavidmuse.blogspot.com/2012/03/mark-david-gerson-writers-life-ii.html
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