Hubris and Humility

My wife is a seasoned pediatrician. Through a decade of private practice and parenting, she has honed a skill set in primary care that is as impressive as it is nuanced. In many ways, she is a cartographer of kids, able to read the topography of toddlers and the fault lines of adolescents with equal skill. But like any professional ten years into a dedicated career, the visible skills spring from nurtured talent. Many providers-in-training, though, cannot appreciate the terrain at the beginning of their journey. Last week, a student approached her about a shadowing opportunity. This young professional, still lacking a year of formal education, wanted to invest one hundred and twenty hours in my wife’s office learning to practice pediatrics. Fifteen days of a dedicated rotation to the clinical care of kids, learning to track their progress and map the road ahead. When my wife asked about the student’s expectations, the trainee’s confident response exposed either a lack of self awareness or an under-appreciation of the complexities of the field. “I think I’ll shadow you for the first few days. You know, to learn the ropes,” responded the student. “After that, I’ll just see patients independently. I’m really good with kids.” Clowns are good with kids, too. To be fair, a decade pursuing any endeavor tends to level the peaks of unearned confidence and the valleys of insecurity. In 2003, I began to write my first novel after reading a book that I interpreted to be a hardbound copy of inelegant writing describing two-dimensional characters suffocating under a limp plot. I can write better than this, I thought. I really like books. My path seemed simple enough: I would re-read a favorite novel to see how good writing is done. I got this, I thought, so I embarked on a ninety-day first draft. With minimal preparation, I pecked out a hundred-thousand words of under-researched prose, uninteresting characters, and an unimaginative plot. What’s worse, at the end of my three-month sprint, I thought I had created a book for the ages. I mailed out thirty-seven queries to agents and editors. A universal chorus of literary rejection sang an unambiguous tune to me that year. Whatever writing talent I may have had was not enough. Whatever enjoyment I may have had reading books could not supplant the need for practice. So I read more. I wrote more. And my...
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Remembering Kennedy, Considering Character

Young clinicians are taught that most of what is needed to make an accurate diagnosis is obtained in the history. That assumes, of course, that the novice scribe knows not only what to ask but also what to do with that information. With so much historical significance packed into this past week, I took the opportunity to expand my own history taking skills, asking a question at the end of each office visit: do you remember where you were when you found out that President Kennedy was shot? For those old enough to remember, the question elicited a pause, then a story: One man, at his office in Chicago. learned about JFK’s death from Walter Cronkite’s television announcement His wife heard the news on the radio while waiting in the carpool line to pick up their kindergartener A young Navy officer on night watch in peace-time Guam also received the news on the radio, hearing it in the early morning hours of the Pacific. He soon found himself waking his fellow sailors to tell them the news. A fifth grade boy in rural Georgia heard about the shooting from his teacher. His class spent the rest of the day crowded around the school’s only television set All of my patients-turned-historical-sources recalled the palpable sense of loss in Kennedy’s death. Not one had trouble remembering what they felt and where they were when the news came through. Neither did they have trouble reeling me in to emotions of fifty years ago. Their stories were natural. Unforced. And they flowed easily, as all good stories do. Why, then, is it so hard to replicate natural emotions in fictional characters? After completing my first book-length manuscript in 2004, I solicited representation from any number of literary agents. While all of them ultimately passed on the work, some took the time to provide feedback. One agent’s written assessment simply stated the book “does have a surface readability and some tension too, but I just didn’t get involved with the characters.” At the time, no amount of manuscript massage could revive the work, which led me to shelve that book and begin again. Fast forward nine years. This past summer, I spent two months re-editing and re-polishing the manuscript for Blood Money. My publisher, an early champion of the Mackie McKay series, continued to press me with typed comments about my main character’s soul....
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Three Months and Counting

The re-release of the Twinkie this summer probably saved my first novel, Blood Money. Okay, perhaps not the entire novel, but certainly it saved a few key scenes. With only three months to go before Blood Money is published, I’m reflecting on the small breaks that have had big consequences in this publishing journey. One of the writing challenges I have faced is balancing fact in fiction. When I submitted my first novel-length manuscript to a publishing house in 2005, I received a personal critique from an editor who suggested my writing needed to be more “slick and believable.” For the last 8 years, as I have tried to decode that advice, I began to push my stories to rise up from real world situations, trying hard to be accurate in telling a falsehood. Sometimes, when I review what I’ve written, I realize that I have snuck in contrivances for convenience. And then the re-writing begins. Which brings me to the resurrected Twinkie. Dr. Cooper “Mackie” McKay is a surgeon in a fix, caught between bad love and bad luck when the body of his ex-wife is found unceremoniously crammed into the trunk of his car. Naturally, part of the investigation focuses on him. In an early scene, he and his lawyer discuss the case over a plate of deep-fried Twinkies. The only trouble is, the company that made Twinkies went bankrupt in 2012, effectively pulling them from the market. And there in lies the rub. Should I deep-six the Twinkie in favor of another trans-fat treat or bull ahead with the full knowledge of the lie? Honestly, a Little Debbie dipped in a deep fryer doesn’t have the same effect (or so I’ve heard). As of July 2013, though, I can drop my concerns. The Twinkie is back, distributed by a new company. That small decision allowed me to turn my attention to the more mundane topics of plot and pacing. Write...
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