About 18 months ago, I wrote a piece for bookworming (my other, occasionally updated, blog) after I attended a reading by Lauren Groff. During that reading, Groff asked the crowd if anyone was a writer, and I noticed that the majority of the people in the audience had raised their hands, although I had not. That got me started on what it would take for me to feel as if I could raise my hand in response to that question, and you can find some of my thoughts, if you’re interested, in the original post.
If you choose not to read it (and that’s fine by me) here’s the summary: I did not feel like a writer, but I was sure that I wanted to become one. I thought of myself in some limbo of becoming, but I was optimistic about that, planning to commit some time to the process, and reading Stephen’s King’s On Writing to help me get started.
I’m not all that ashamed to say that I didn’t find as much time as I had hoped. The pressures of medical school can be overwhelming, and Andrew moved here. I did write a couple of pieces last year, but I didn’t commit to it the way that I had intended to when I was writing that blog entry. Such is life. There’s nothing to do but move forward.
This past weekend, I did a whole bunch of moving forward. At the AMSA Writer’s Institute, I had that fire lit under my ass again. It’s a much more powerful flame this time because it came stoked by a community of other talented and inspired people who, like me, want to find a way to fit writing into a medical career. I was ready, once again, to commit to figuring it out, to think about becoming a writer. I wrote the beginnings of a couple pieces that I think might come to something. I had great conversations with a couple of physician writers about how they have made it work in their lives and how to develop my craft. I met some amazing colleagues whose writing I’m sure we’ll all be reading for years into the future. By the third full day, I was totally sold. I was inspired and excited and motivated as I have never been before. This was it, I thought, I am really going to become a writer.
Then there was a moment when Dr. Sayantani DasGupta challenged that idea of becoming. She stood in front of the room, beautiful and passionate, and told us all that we were already writers. I’m paraphrasing here, but she assured us that we were not baby writers, nor apprentice writers, not people that wanted to become writers at some point in the future, but writers. Certainly we could and should develop in the craft, but that development was the development of a writer, not the development into a writer. She told us that we had to claim the title, all the better to be able to use it.
It took me right back to that blog entry from so long ago, and it blew all those ideas about the process of becoming right out of my mind. And for the best I think, because now I have no more excuses. I have, as one of the other participants wrote in his blog on MedScape this week, crossed from “should” to “will.” There is no more, “If I want to be a writer I should find more time to work.” That sentence doesn’t make sense anymore. There is a new imperative.
I am a writer. There is nothing left to do but write.
And damn, doesn’t that feel good?
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
On Blogging Anew
Well, here it goes.
I was thinking about it before this weekend, which was spent in DC at the AMSA Writer's Institute, and now there is nothing to do but jump in, I am actually going to be updating this blog.
In the spirit of keeping myself honest... I'll tell you all right now, I'm committing to writing three posts every two weeks. You should expect something new every five days or so. You should not expect me to blog the week of the wedding, because I am trying to be ambitious, but I am not dilusional. It would make me excited to have followers, so feel free to link up.
It's going to be about medicine, and research, medical school and writing, and who knows what else. I'll try to make everything readable to a general audience. I'll probably double post some book review type things here and in bookworming. I am always open to questions, comments, and ideas for things that you think I should be writing about or responding to. The email link works if you don't want to post it for the world to see. Let's make this interactive. Sweet.
I've taken down just about everything that I had posted here before when this was a more personal and experimental space, except for the post below on "The Neverending Reading Train" because, while we're being honest, I just plain like that one.
And with that, we're off.
I was thinking about it before this weekend, which was spent in DC at the AMSA Writer's Institute, and now there is nothing to do but jump in, I am actually going to be updating this blog.
In the spirit of keeping myself honest... I'll tell you all right now, I'm committing to writing three posts every two weeks. You should expect something new every five days or so. You should not expect me to blog the week of the wedding, because I am trying to be ambitious, but I am not dilusional. It would make me excited to have followers, so feel free to link up.
It's going to be about medicine, and research, medical school and writing, and who knows what else. I'll try to make everything readable to a general audience. I'll probably double post some book review type things here and in bookworming. I am always open to questions, comments, and ideas for things that you think I should be writing about or responding to. The email link works if you don't want to post it for the world to see. Let's make this interactive. Sweet.
I've taken down just about everything that I had posted here before when this was a more personal and experimental space, except for the post below on "The Neverending Reading Train" because, while we're being honest, I just plain like that one.
And with that, we're off.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
The Never Ending Reading Train
The AMSA Book Discussion group is scheduled to read The House of Hope and Fear: Life in a Big City Hospital for discussion on July 24. This is mostly amusing because the book is not scheduled to be released until August 1. I admit, those of us that read in medical school are an efficient bunch, but even we can't read things before we get them. If I was determined to have Dr. Young, the author as one of the speakers in this series, I might have suggested waiting until the book actually came out, or using her earlier book, What Patient's Taught Me: A Medical Student's Journey but who am I to judge. (In all fairness, that book could be awful, I haven't read it yet, but it's coming to me with love from the Cincinnati Public Library, so I'll let you know.)
Instead, it seems like the discussion is going to focus on writing in general (apparently including a writing exercise) and a JAMA article she wrote a couple of years ago "The Hospitalist's Story" JAMA, Nov 1, 2006, vol 296, pp 2067-68. That article, thankfully, is available now (at least to those of us who have easy access to JAMA).
I can't actually attend this webinar, because when it takes place I will be in Colorado for the MD/PhD conference. I'm a little bummed about this, because I feel like the discussion that involves a writing exercise might be the one that I would most enjoy, but I don't think that there's anything that I can do about it except hope that I can access it online after the fact. Such is the life of a busy person.
I did download the article though, it's interesting enough, about working with patients with chronic illness who seem to use the emergency room and the hospital as their primary (and in many cases, only) healthcare, and the frustrations that come with treating indigent patients, and with people dying from things that should be treatable or preventable with good primary care that they seem unwilling or unable to access. Nothing revolutionary, but generally interesting.
What I really want to talk about though is not the article. Instead I would like to take you inside my head for a moment and talk about a little problem that I like to call "The Never-Ending Reading Train."
My interaction with this article provides an excellent example of this particular issue that I have with life. Here's how it happens:
1.) I get the email about this book discussion webinar, glance at it, realize that I can't attend, but because I am thinking about taking the reins on getting groups together to talk about medical humanities at school, I decide to see if I can get the book from the library.
2.) I run a search for the book on the library webpage, don't find it, but do find another by the same author, which I place on hold before I go back to the email to see how recently the actual discussion book came out. I notice that it's not out yet, and that instead they'll be discussing the article.
3.) I go to PubMed find the article, download it and take a look. The pdfs of articles from JAMA have an extra title page, and this one has a feature which I have never noticed, under the topics listing, there is a link which reads "Contact Me when new articles are published on this topic" which in this case happens to be "Humanities."
4.) I click on this link, thinking that it will be glorious if JAMA emails me when they are going to print interesting things. I am taken to a page where I am able to select from a LONG list all the topics that I would like automatic emails about. Reading down the list, I choose all the topics that seem particularly likely to produce blog or discussion/debate worthy articles (ethics, policy, humanities), as well as my particular areas of medical interest, psychiatry and neurology. The resulting list is not a short one. Subscrbe.
5.) I go back to the article, read it, and then realize that it is a part of a recurring series "A Piece of My Mind" which seems to be short essay type articles about a number of issues in medicine, just the sort of thing that I like.
6.)I run a PubMed Search for the article series, and begin looking through the past options to see if any are particularly interesting.
7.)I read the first paragraphs of six or seven, all the way through 5 others, and download three that I think I might want to come back to in blogging or reflection.
So what's happened here? I got an email, and that email has led me to two books, five or six articles read, four actually downloaded articles, three blog entry ideas and a subscription to email lists that will inevitably lead to hundreds more articles and emails just like the one that started all this.
This is not an isolated incident. I think that if I stopped what I was doing right now, and committed to reading, full time, for the next five years, I still wouldn't get through my current, "To Read" pile. Maybe not ten years, maybe not for the rest of my life. And for someone that wants to write, I find the writing portion of the deal sometimes doesn't happen, gets lost in my idea that I need to read EVERYTHING on a topic before I can write ANYTHING. I don't think that it's a good way to go, but it has it's advantages. I found wonderful books and very interesting articles on the third or fourth cars of one of these trains of thought. And I would be lying if I claimed not to enjoy the process… but where's the limit? Or where should it be?
Or course, if I knew the answer to that question, my browser window might not be complicated by two New York Times articles in tabs kept open for possible future blogging. My list of library books might be much shorter, but I also might be missing things that have really spoken to me.
I'm not sure how to balance it, because there's not enough time in the world, and this really is the prime example of how my particular road to my particular hell (the ring of always, always feeling like I am behind) is paved with the very best of intentions.
I am reminded of Italo Calvino's If On a Winter's Night a Traveler (one of my favorite books of all time) and a quotation that I will have to hunt down later that pretty much sums it up.
Which reminds me, I'd like to read the rest of Calvino...
Instead, it seems like the discussion is going to focus on writing in general (apparently including a writing exercise) and a JAMA article she wrote a couple of years ago "The Hospitalist's Story" JAMA, Nov 1, 2006, vol 296, pp 2067-68. That article, thankfully, is available now (at least to those of us who have easy access to JAMA).
I can't actually attend this webinar, because when it takes place I will be in Colorado for the MD/PhD conference. I'm a little bummed about this, because I feel like the discussion that involves a writing exercise might be the one that I would most enjoy, but I don't think that there's anything that I can do about it except hope that I can access it online after the fact. Such is the life of a busy person.
I did download the article though, it's interesting enough, about working with patients with chronic illness who seem to use the emergency room and the hospital as their primary (and in many cases, only) healthcare, and the frustrations that come with treating indigent patients, and with people dying from things that should be treatable or preventable with good primary care that they seem unwilling or unable to access. Nothing revolutionary, but generally interesting.
What I really want to talk about though is not the article. Instead I would like to take you inside my head for a moment and talk about a little problem that I like to call "The Never-Ending Reading Train."
My interaction with this article provides an excellent example of this particular issue that I have with life. Here's how it happens:
1.) I get the email about this book discussion webinar, glance at it, realize that I can't attend, but because I am thinking about taking the reins on getting groups together to talk about medical humanities at school, I decide to see if I can get the book from the library.
2.) I run a search for the book on the library webpage, don't find it, but do find another by the same author, which I place on hold before I go back to the email to see how recently the actual discussion book came out. I notice that it's not out yet, and that instead they'll be discussing the article.
3.) I go to PubMed find the article, download it and take a look. The pdfs of articles from JAMA have an extra title page, and this one has a feature which I have never noticed, under the topics listing, there is a link which reads "Contact Me when new articles are published on this topic" which in this case happens to be "Humanities."
4.) I click on this link, thinking that it will be glorious if JAMA emails me when they are going to print interesting things. I am taken to a page where I am able to select from a LONG list all the topics that I would like automatic emails about. Reading down the list, I choose all the topics that seem particularly likely to produce blog or discussion/debate worthy articles (ethics, policy, humanities), as well as my particular areas of medical interest, psychiatry and neurology. The resulting list is not a short one. Subscrbe.
5.) I go back to the article, read it, and then realize that it is a part of a recurring series "A Piece of My Mind" which seems to be short essay type articles about a number of issues in medicine, just the sort of thing that I like.
6.)I run a PubMed Search for the article series, and begin looking through the past options to see if any are particularly interesting.
7.)I read the first paragraphs of six or seven, all the way through 5 others, and download three that I think I might want to come back to in blogging or reflection.
So what's happened here? I got an email, and that email has led me to two books, five or six articles read, four actually downloaded articles, three blog entry ideas and a subscription to email lists that will inevitably lead to hundreds more articles and emails just like the one that started all this.
This is not an isolated incident. I think that if I stopped what I was doing right now, and committed to reading, full time, for the next five years, I still wouldn't get through my current, "To Read" pile. Maybe not ten years, maybe not for the rest of my life. And for someone that wants to write, I find the writing portion of the deal sometimes doesn't happen, gets lost in my idea that I need to read EVERYTHING on a topic before I can write ANYTHING. I don't think that it's a good way to go, but it has it's advantages. I found wonderful books and very interesting articles on the third or fourth cars of one of these trains of thought. And I would be lying if I claimed not to enjoy the process… but where's the limit? Or where should it be?
Or course, if I knew the answer to that question, my browser window might not be complicated by two New York Times articles in tabs kept open for possible future blogging. My list of library books might be much shorter, but I also might be missing things that have really spoken to me.
I'm not sure how to balance it, because there's not enough time in the world, and this really is the prime example of how my particular road to my particular hell (the ring of always, always feeling like I am behind) is paved with the very best of intentions.
I am reminded of Italo Calvino's If On a Winter's Night a Traveler (one of my favorite books of all time) and a quotation that I will have to hunt down later that pretty much sums it up.
Which reminds me, I'd like to read the rest of Calvino...
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