{"id":18879,"date":"2019-06-17T07:15:44","date_gmt":"2019-06-17T12:15:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/feminem.org\/?p=18879"},"modified":"2020-06-06T09:06:24","modified_gmt":"2020-06-06T14:06:24","slug":"writing-whilst-alive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/feminem.org\/2019\/06\/17\/writing-whilst-alive\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing Whilst Alive"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Emergency Medicine is a tough sport. Whether it\u2019s the torrential numbers of patients we see, or the mismatch between societal expectations and possibility, or simply having to slash through the jungle of bureaucracy, the demands of the profession never let up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve been a foot-soldier in the gritty,\namazing world of emergency medicine for decades. It doesn\u2019t get all that less\ndifficult over the years, but the challenges, and the ways we deal with them, evolve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which is how we have landed here; me,\ntalking to you, about why I write.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In its most simple terms, writing is an\nact of knowing. Without crafting thoughts into the written word, rarely can I\ntruly understand things. Without writing I skim. I drift. I find myself, as we\nall do during certain epochs in our lives, in survival mode, bumping along in a\nhalf-asleep state of existing<\/em>, far\nfrom the warm, lusty grip of living. And this is when I am at my most\ndissatisfied, my most unhappy. To write, which is little more than thinking\nwith a bit of poetry thrown in, I have to crack that somnambulism. I must get\ndown amongst it all \u2013 feel things, see things anew, question all of it and find\nmy own understanding of what it means to be here<\/em>,\nnext to a dying body, or teaching a junior about the magnificence of a triple\ngas disorder, or tending to the wound of somebody scared, or questioning my own\nabilities, but mostly, to be present, as a deeply flawed human full of wonder.\nPerhaps it\u2019s simply that writing allows me to outfox reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To write means paying attention. To people.\nTheir words. The way they act. The way I act around them. The way the world\nfeels on my skin, or how it smells, or when it is unexpected and amusing.\nAttention means being all in. I am frequently reminded, as I\u2019m sure you are working\nin the land of freakish accidents and life lottery, how fragile and fleeting\nour time on this planet is. We get one shot, one blink, bookended by vast\nmanuscripts of nothing, and paying deep, fascinated attention to both the good\nand the bad, and certainly the colourful, is one way to have as much of it as\npossible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Novels are only a small, and perhaps anachronistic, aspect of the written word. I have found myself writing novels because it was the reading of novels that let me soar as I grew up, and it is hard to fall out of love with the thing that gave you wings. Long form fiction allows you to explore depths of the human condition you can\u2019t do in any other way. And issues! I wrote my first (not autobiographical, oh no, not at all) novel about medical error and its consequences, which permitted me to say things I couldn\u2019t in a different guise. But writing essays, blogposts, tweets for goodness\u2019 sake, is joyful if you pay even the barest of homage to the English language and its possibilities. A novel takes many years to write. Dustfall<\/a><\/span> took me six. But a post can be written in days and can be just as satisfying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is an urgency to making art. Art,\nliterature, music, poetry, these things are more necessary than ever. We live\nin different times now. The online world which, sure, has its benefits, also\nhas a dark, corrosive element; animalistic and violent. It is full of savage\nuntruth. It delights in mis<\/em>information,\nin mob attacks, in ego, in oppression. Often, we humans, when in group-mode, are\nnot necessarily wise and kind, however engaging with art strips away some of\nthose layers. Removing the knee-jerk outrage, questioning what\u2019s underneath, coming\nto grips with your own sophistication of thought and then going on to craft\nthose thoughts into considered sentences, is a mighty weapon in the war on\nsense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Writing well is more than just having a\nbarrel full of fancy words. It is the way words are arranged into sentences,\nsyntax, music and prosody that makes them, as Maya Angelou says, slide straight\nthrough the brain and into the heart. But this skill needs to be learnt. When a\nquiet and resolute voice came to me without warning or fanfare, saying, \u2018I\nshall write a novel,\u2019 I had no idea how much I had to learn (and this voice has\ntaken some forgiving). But I am nothing special \u2013 all it took was years of\nbeing prepared to fail, a passion for great sentences, and some hard love from\nfriends and mentors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, write. See things anew, think of things anew, and say things in new and wonderful ways. Write. That\u2019s all there is to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Want more from Michelle? Listen to Resa E. Lewiss talk with Michelle on the FemInEM podcast here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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