As a publisher, The Center Press is proud of its tradition of publishing unique and creative material. As always, The Center Press invites you to look on AMAZON.COM for any of the books listed on our products' page. Or, you can go directly to www.thecenterpress.com and buy from us online. 

One of our favorite authors, Michael B. Druxman, is coming out with his most recent book "Shadow Watcher", a novel of suspense.  This is Michael's second novel.  The Center Press has published three other books by Mr. Druxman including his best selling book on writing, "How To Write A Story...Any Story: The Art of Storytelling".  Michael is a noted film historian and screen writer. 

Here is an excerpt from one of our Author's, Susan D. Artof and her thoughts on writing.

FROM

RUNNING ON EMPTY WALKING ON FIRE by SUSAN D. ARTOF

Chapter 25

Fear of Blank Pages revisited

9/11/2005 – 10/3/2006

     I believe that one of life’s great joys is finding life tucked inside pages of an old journal or group of letters that have been hidden away for years.  As I gaze upon my bookshelf filled with curled old writing books filled with these forgotten thoughts, I am filled with a mixture of curiosity and anxiety.  I wonder what I left behind or thought at a particular point my life timeline. Do the current memories of my past resonate with what really happened? Did the pain I think I suffered really happen?  Do I want to be reminded of things I have long ago put aside?  I am conflicted with the impulse to turn away from reminding myself of the past while at the same time, compelled to remind myself about it.  It is like shaking a pulled muscle to see if it still hurts or has healed.  If you twist too early you might just reignite the original injury, yet if you don’t test it, you will not know if it is time to resume your exercise program. 

     “Time is like the music of a song with the notes changing and the words remaining the same. I am again in a writers block mode having exhausted all of my ideas even before they have leapt from my unconscious mind.  I always write in an altered state and I have distanced myself from that state so that I can’t seem to find the groove I must exist in to creatively express thoughts into some combined whole.”

     I wrote these words one year ago today, the first day after Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement.  Clearly I was musing on the effect that the passage of time has on me.  Life experiences change but somehow there is constancy to what life is all about.  Yet, with time, like any song, life comes to an end.  How do we document the moments we are given to record for the future?

      Before video cameras and cheap digital photography,  journals and written logs were designed to record moments in the life’s continuum.  I have journals for difficult subjects as well as travel journals for fun.  Some of these are complete and many lie almost empty and forgotten.  I like clean pages to start, but when they become cluttered, I move on to another book.  This is like creating a new song, but the words might still remain the same.  Then there is the most frightening thing of all.  What if I loose one of these magical records of my personal history?  What if I leave it somewhere or forget where I stored it.  Then I would have truly lost a little piece of my memory. The same might be the outcome of a computer failure that wipes out our photographic hard drive of pictures. The history of the moment is gone and without adequate backup, cannot be reproduced except by one’s personal recounting of oral history.

      What happens when a culture looses its history to another time?  Doesn’t this happen when a competing culture arrives at the victory stage of another culture and destroys what it discovers in the museums?  When the victor rewrites history to reflect its military victory, it changes the truth to the words it understands and the loser will no longer have a voice in its past.  Did the Romans leave any real written history of the Jews in Jerusalem? Did the Christians rewrite their conquest of the Muslims to reflect their music?  Did the White man rework the truth to glaze over what they did to the Indian?  Are the Iranians nullifying the Holocaust?  Then what happens to those words in the music?  They are changed forever and the original song is forgotten.

     What happens to one’s life story when the mind closes down and no longer remembers what it has lived through? My 91 year old aunt eventually forgot her most recent love affairs, couldn’t remember why she was living where she was, and eventually didn’t know who here closest loved ones were.  If there are no records of a timeline then a life story is lost except for those who think they remember what that life was about.  But like the conquerors of old, a person’s life in another person’s word is changed to reflect the historian and is not longer accurate.  In that case, the song changes and so will the words. 

     The blank white page must be filled, even if it is filled with small thoughts. The experiences of a visit to the ocean, or the taste of a cold apple on a hot day, or the enjoyment of a touch, or the softness of a kiss are all essential to explore on paper.  These passions of life must be recorded if not for you then for the next generation who will read the words.  A photograph can capture the vision and even the music, but the essence of life’s passion must be recorded with words.