Stories & Reflections - Episode 1 Transcript

*** Note that this is a largely unedited AI transcript, which means it’s not exact and could contain errors

Hi, I'm Mark David Gerson.

Welcome to Stories and Reflections, where my stories are also yours.

One of my favorite writer stories, and one I tell in several of my books and in most of my classes, involves Madeleine L’Engle, author of the young adult classic, A Wrinkle and Time.

I heard her tell it many years ago in a PBS documentary. And in my books and classes, I often use it as an example of persistence and resilience, of not giving up when the rest of the world seems determined to reject you.

But I have a different reason for sharing it with you today.

And it has to do with why I felt called to start this podcast, and to start telling my stories in this medium.

So 1st, Madeleine L’Engle.

Madeleine L’Engle had already been published when she wrote, um, A Wrinkle in Time.

She'd published several books for adults.

But when she wrote A Wrinkle in Time and submitted it to her existing publisher, it was rejected.

And then it was rejected 25 more times over the next 2 years.

Toward the end of that period, L’Engle covered up a typewriter and said, I'm done.

I'm done with A Wrinkle in Time, but I'm also done with writing.

She was giving up.

But you know what?

Her resolution was short-lived. On her way from typewriter to kitchen, she’s walking down the stairs, and inspiration strikes.

She has an idea for a novel, a new novel, this time about failure. And in a flash, she's back at the typewriter.

And in that PBS documentary, she said, “That night,” she said, “I wrote in my journal: ‘I'm a writer. That's who I am. That's what I am. That's what I have to do even if I'm never, ever published again.’ And I had to take seriously the fact that I might never, ever be published again.”

And of course, Madeleine L’Engle was published again.

Eventually, Farrar Strauss and Giroux picked up A Wrinkle in Time.

That was in 1962, and the following year, A Wrinkle in Time won the Newbery Medal, which is the most prestigious award for children's literature.

Since then, Wrinkle has been translated into more than 15 languages.

It's been made into a film.

It's been adapted for the stage multiple times, and it spawned 4 sequels.

In that same PBS interview, L’Engle said, “It's easy to say I'm a writer now. But I said it when it was hard to say. And I meant it.”

So I guess you can see why I would use this Madeleine L’Engle story when I'm talking about resilience and persistence and not giving up.

But that isn't the reason or not the main reason I shared it here with you now.

A couple of weeks ago or last month, I guess, I signed up for an online boot camp.

And what these online boot camps are usually 2 or 3 day intensives, um, designed to teach you a skill and maybe get you to sign up for uh, for some kind of uh, longer course or or event.

And this one was designed to help me transition my writing groups and my writing workshops into mastermind groups.

And it sounded like a great idea.

I could take what I was already doing and put some time and energy and effort into restructuring it and rebranding it, if you will, as a mastermind.

It was a powerful experience: 3 full days of nonstop motivation, inspiration, planning, practical exercise.

Even our lunch breaks had a guest speaker, so there wasn't even a lot of downtime.

And the material was powerful.

And all of it, or much of it at least, very much aligned with what I teach and what I write about, all coming from, you know, a pretty spiritual foundation.

But maybe that was both a gift and the problem, or the problem was the gift, I guess I should say, because about halfway through the 2nd afternoon the facilitator had us run through an exercise, a visioning exercise, something that I could easily have done in one of my classes or workshops.

He said, close your eyes, and I want you to imagine to envision what you will be doing in 6 months or a year, how you'll be taking this information and standing up in front of a group and being, you know, the mastermind facilitator, the mastermind leader that you're here to become.

Great, I thought.

I closed my eyes, but I didn't even have a moment to breathe before a vision appeared, you know, in my mind's eye.

But it wasn't a vision of me standing before a group or on a Zoom call in front of a group, and it had nothing at all to do with mastermind.

It had everything to do with one of the reasons why I'm here.

Because I didn't see, as I say, I didn't see myself in the situation that Jay invited us to see ourselves in. I saw myself sitting at a book signing table.There's a long queue of people waiting to have their books signed. And on the table next to me, on other side of me, are 2 tall stacks of books.

My books.

And what I see in this vision is kind of astounding.

The books are flying off the table.

It's like something from the Sorcerer's Apprentice.

They're just flying off the table, and as each stack gets depleted, books are replaced, so the books are flying off, flying off, flying off.

And when I open my eyes, I'm kind of stunned.

This vision has nothing at all to do with why I'm here.

Or maybe it does.

Later that afternoon, after the day's session is done, I’m walking my dog in a nearby park and think back on the day's experience and on that vision. And I say to myself, “I love to teach. I do love to teach. I love to work with writers, like with all creative artists, especially those struggling to get their stories out, to get their workout, to express themselves. But is it my primary passion? Is it my highest vision for myself?”

Because that's what the boot camp was really about. About vision, about purpose.

Of course, the focus was on mastermind as our vision and our purpose.

“But is it mine?” I ask myself again as I continue walking. And I hear for feel or sense. A shout of the word NO!

“No, it is not my highest vision for myself.It is not my primary passion, as much as I love to do it. It's not my highest purpose.”

And then I hear myself kind of echoing Madeleine L’Engle: “I am a storyteller,” I hear myself say out loud. “That's who I am. That's what I am. The author, the writer. The screenwriter, the speaker. They're all expressions of the storyteller I am. That's my primary passion. That's my highest vision for myself, that has always been the most important thing in my life. Even for many, many years, even when I wasn't consciously aware of it. It still is.

“And it's no accident,” I remind myself, “that so much of my writing is about storytelling. My legend of Q’ntana novels are about stories and storytelling. The main characters are storytellers, they're bards.The stories take place in a land where story is banned. Story, storytellers are persecuted, put to death even.

“My Sara Stories novels: The main characters are artists and writers. And so many of my books are about helping you tell your stories. And so again, storytelling, in one form or another, is at the core of everything I am and everything I do.”

And in that moment. In that moment, I realized a couple of things.

First, of course, I wasn't going to stop teaching.

I love to teach.

I love to inspire other writers, other creatives to get their stories out, tell their stories, to share their stories, to get them into the world.

But that that could not be my primary focus.

My primary focus had to be my stories, my storytelling, my books.

And if that was the case, then mastermind was out.

If I were to do it at least as conceived by this, by this boot camp, it would be only for the money, not for the passion, and that simply wasn't a good enough reason or a reason that was even in integrity.

And I also realized that I had spent the previous year, working with groups in classes, in workshops ,in coaching groups, trying to inspire my students and clients to commit more fully to their passion for writing, to be writing more regularly.

But I hadn't walked the talk.I wasn't writing regularly. I hadn't committed fully to my passion for storytelling.

I had been so focused on the teaching on the groups and getting people into my groups that I had neglected, my writing, my storytelling.

In that moment, I made a commitment to myself, a recommitment, I guess, to myself.

I would commit to finishing the book that I had, I had, um, started a couple of years previously, The Way of the Creative Fool, which I've been working on off and on over a year.

I would commit to finishing my 5th book in my Legend of Q’ntana series: The Lost Horse of Bryn Doon, and I would commit to having that out.

I would commit to having The Way of the Creative Fool out this year.

I would commit to having The Lost Horse of Bryn Doon, the 5th book in my Q’ntana series out next year.

And I would commit to completing the 3 memoirs in progress I've already started, that I've been working on in fits and starts for more than a decade.

And ironically, one of those memoirs— This is a funny story around that memoir. One of those memoirs is titled All that Matters Is That I'm Writing.

And what's funny about that story is when I was working on a previous book, I think it was The Way of the Abundant Fool, I was going through old files and old documents on my computer looking for something in particular and came across this manuscript for all that matters is that I'm writing.

And I was aware that I had that title.

I had not remembered that I'd started working on the book and I had like, I don't know, 14-15,000 words already written,.All that Matters Is That I'm Writing.

And this is what brings me to this podcast.

I would commit as well to finding new ways to share my stories. And one of those new ways would be a podcast, this podcast.

As an aside, as soon as the boot camp was over the following day, I went back to work on The Way of the Creative Fool in a really truly focused way, and the book is now out.

The Way of the Creative Fool: How to Bust Through Your Blocks and Unleash Your Full Creative Potential… in 12½ Super Simple Steps.

By the way, all 4 of my Way of the Fool books, including this one, include stories, stories from my life that illustrate each of the steps, and stories from others people's lives that also illustrate each of the 2½ steps.

Thing is, we're all storytellers.

I'm not the only one.

We're telling stories all day long.

Even something as banal, as trivial, as a shopping list, is a kind of story.

Everything I've told you so far in this in this episode is a story.

When you shared how your day went, it's a story.

And that's because storytelling is innate.

We're all storytellers. Again, we're all storytellers.

So it's easy to imagine that long before there was spoken or written language, our cave dweller ancestors would come back to the communal fire after days of days hunting, a day's gathering, and they would gesture and grunt and mime their adventures to their fellow cave dwellers.

As infants, as babies, before we had language we had story. We too would grunt and gurgle and mime our adventures, our desires, our dreams, to our stuffed animals, to anyone who would listen.

Everything we communicate, whether it's that shopping list I mentioned before, a casual water cooler chat at the office, or a deep conversation with a close friend or life partner, it's always some form of story.

Anne Foerst, who is a computer scientist and a theologian and the founder of the God and Computers project, which started out at Harvard and is now at St. Bonaventure University— Anne Foerst has suggested that we're not homo sapiens” the wise man. We are homo narrandus. And that translates as storytelling man.

We are all storytellers.

So that brings me to what this podcast is, what it's about.

So what is Stories & Reflections about?

Why am I here?

Why are you here?

Stories not only communicate our lives. They give meaning to our lives, and that's just as true of the stories we hear as it is of the stories we tell, and that's why I created Stories & Reflections: to share with you some of the stories that matter to me.

Because if they matter to me, chances are they're also going to matter to you. Because that's a thing about stories. However personal they might be on the surface, whenever they're shared from the heart, whenever they're shared from our deepest inner core, they are always universal.

And so Stories & Reflections will be a mix of stories.

Some will be mine, real, or maybe even imagined.

Some could be yours.

And as for my reflections, they'll be whatever they're going to be, they will be as open-ended as my stories, as open-ended as this episode…touching on creativity, touching on life, touching on just about anything. Because just about everything, as I said, is a story.

But whatever I share, whether it's a story or reflection, it's always going to be about me and about you and about what it feels like to be us, what it feels like to be human, in a world that is complicated.

In a world that is increasingly complicated.

In a world that's increasingly challenging.

In a world that's sometimes increasingly scary.

My stories may not always begin with those magical words “once upon a time,” those words that are so evocative and conjure up all the stories we've ever heard.

But they will be no less magical.

Because stories are always magical.

My stories and your stories.

The only solid plan I have is to be here every week, to tell the stories that want to be told…the stories that want to be heard. By me, certainly. But again, if they want to be heard by me, there's a really good chance.they also want to be heard by you.

And I'm also here to remind you to tell your stories, to remind you that it's never been more important to tell your stories.

And that it's just as important now to tell our stories as it was to those cave dweller ancestors I mentioned a while back and to our infant selves.

And maybe, given the upheaval of these times, maybe it's even more important to tell our stories.

Because stories matter.

And that means that not only my stories matter. Your stories matter.

So I hope you'll join me every week as we step into the magic of story, the magic of storytelling, together.

Thanks for joining me for Stories & Reflectionstoday. I hope you found moments in my stories that touch something in yours. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe so you don't miss future episodes, and for more of my stories, and help telling yours. Check out my books at markdavidgerson.com or from online booksellers worldwide.

Until next time, don't forget that you're a storyteller, too, and keep telling your stories.

The intro and outro music for today's episode is heartwarming by Kevin MacLeod, from incompetech.com, licensed under Creative Commons. 

© 2025 Mark David Gerson