If you attended the inaugural UnCon in Salem, this post is an attempt to recreate a bit of its inherent magic. If you couldn’t attend, this is one explanation of why you’ll read reviews like this paraphrased quote: “What have you people done to me? I’m forever changed and so is my writing.”
Several decades ago, an excessively young, naïve, and nervous version of myself began working as a first year medical resident in the Cardiac Care Unit (CCU) of a major city hospital. It promised to be a grueling month, in part because there were only two of us to share the call schedule. I’d be working for 24 hours on as the sole resident attached to the Unit, then I’d remain long enough to transfer my patients to the other resident. In the roughly 22 hours of free time remaining, I would commute, shower, eat, sleep, study up on whatever had arisen in the previous night, whereupon I’d return to the hospital and begin the cycle anew.
My duties meant I’d be the first one called to handle admissions through the emergency room. I’d be the first on-scene “doctor” if a patient crashed in the Unit, and if a Code Blue was called anywhere in the hospital, it would be my sorry ass expected to run the resuscitation protocol. (Doesn’t that make you feel safe?) To be sure, the experienced nurses would help and if the staff cardiologists happened to be around they’d back me up, but the primary responsibility would be mine.
How did I handle this, you ask? I neither was nor am a religious person but during my first shift on the CCU, I located the hospital chapel and began to memorize the Psalms.
Your Voice in the Workplace
We have a voice in any vocation we pursue and, as with writing, it’s a critical component of our success or failure. Consider, for instance, two social studies teachers’ approach to a standardized curriculum. Were you to scramble their students – have them attend the alternate classroom for a few sessions – do you believe they could mistake one instructor for the other?
The same principle applies to doctors. Each time you meet a physician you absorb their professional voice – their way of being in the world – from minute details such as whether they invite you to address them by their first name, whether they wear a lab coat, their office’s decor. In their presence will you be permitted to laugh at your own cancer? Will you feel foolish if you cry at the birth of a baby?
At the CCU stage of my life, if you had pressed me to describe the story of my medical career, I would have said it was about the struggle to survive information overwhelm, sleep deficits, and responsibility, not to develop an independent physician-voice.
That changed the morning I met “Jim.”
A Paradigm Change
He’d arrived overnight, been admitted by my colleague for a heart attack, and in the transfer meeting was said to be recovering uneventfully. But as I began rounds on the CCU, Jim developed a known complication – intermittent heart block, meaning that he went through periods when the top and bottom parts of his hearts were not communicating. He hadn’t passed out yet, but his EKG was deteriorating.
This is not the kind of problem which can be fixed with medication. Should Jim progress to complete heart block, depriving his brain and vital organs of oxygen, his life could only be saved by the emergency placement of a pacemaker.
Now I’d never inserted a central line before, never mind a pacemaker, so it was fortunate that a new-to-me cardiologist was on the unit at the time. As we collectively wheeled Jim into the attached OR and as we donned our sterile gowns and gloves, I became Dr. H’s assistant, more bystander than participant. I watched him prep the patient’s skin, make an incision, and prepare to thread the pacemaker through a vein into Jim’s heart.
That’s when things got interesting.
If you’d been told that your life hung in the balance while a team attempted to float a delicate mechanism into your chest, do you suppose you would remain motionless when specifically asked? While I’d personally be doing my best Hans Solo impression, Jim, who was a great shaggy beast of a man, wasn’t cooperating. No sooner would we get close to stabilizing his heart than he’d shift his body and we’d have to begin anew.
It took us a while to twig to the nature of the problem, but eventually someone plowed through his chart and confirmed a vital piece of information which had been lost during the staff changeover: Jim was mentally handicapped, with an intellectual age of four. He was incapable of understanding the seriousness of his condition, couldn’t provide informed consent, and there was a strong possibility he’d die before we could locate his absentee guardian or caregiver.
In such situations, Canadian law allows physicians to perform life-saving activities first and sort out the legalities later. While the options we had were limited, we could:
- Sedate him, though this could easily precipitate the danger we were trying to avoid.
- Have him physically restrained, although there was no way to fit six security guards into the OR suite, and Jim’s size meant he’d require nothing less than a full contingent. Also, this would place a huge strain on his heart.
- Wait until he was too ill to resist, which would almost certainly result in his death.
- Win Jim’s cooperation by speaking to him in terms he could understand.
That fourth option is a no-brainer, yes? For reasons I’ll explain, on a personal level it felt the riskiest of all.
In the era under discussion, the city’s hospital-based specialties were unabashedly patriarchal. Most clinical preceptors were male and the rules of belonging were clear. Thus, surgeons could scream and throw instruments at the then all-female nursing staff without fear of being censured. One obstetrician — easily the best technician in the city — was known for delivering this line to attending fathers. “A daughter?” he would say when announcing the baby’s sex. “Maybe the next one will count.”
I could go on, but you get the idea.
When you become a medical student, you don’t just ditch 100,000 years of evolution.
Human beings are hard-wired to seek the safety of a community, even if the price is assimilation. In the culture of healthcare, I’d already come to understand I was bottom of the heap. I was young (23 or 24) and planned to be a family doctor (seen by many specialists as the refuge of the unintelligent, incapable and unambitious).
The price of being discounted was steep, ranging far beyond hurt feelings or a sense of unfairness. If you had a chance to get a few hours sleep during a 36-hour shift, nurses would think nothing of disturbing you for laxative orders that could have waited until the morning. Senior residents would cut you out of critical learning opportunities, meaning your entire future practice would suffer. Most distressing of all, if you knew you were in over your head and asked for help, your back-up crew would be just a little slower to respond.
So there I was, Jim’s health deteriorating and me in a known bastion of conventional, masculine thinking. The CCU nurses had a reputation for cliquishness. Dr. H was an unknown quantity and this would be his first impression of me. No one — not one single person among the intelligent, experienced, senior professionals — mentioned the obvious fourth choice to comfort Jim.
Was that because they didn’t see it, because it was unacceptable for a reason I didn’t grasp, or was it a cultural taboo? If I became the consummate symbol of femaleness by turning into Jim’s comforter and surrogate caregiver, would I be forever written off by the team?
I don’t know how long I vacillated before a particular feeling of knowing washed over me, but inexplicably my choices narrowed to one option. I moved to the head of the stretcher and started to talk to Jim like I might a younger brother. You know: nothing brilliant, nothing insightful. Just basic explanations of what the medical staff were doing and why he had to stay still. We talked about pets, favorite animals, favorite foods.
From time to time I would look up to see how this was going over with my colleagues. I’d catch them staring at me but in the half-hour that followed — which ultimately resulted in the successful placement of the pacemaker, thank goodness — their surgical caps and masks made it impossible to determine if they were disgusted, relieved or both. No one said anything to me. No one flashed me a thumbs-up sign. It felt like we inhabited two different realities — me and Jim on the dark side of the planet formerly known as Pluto, the rest of them on Earth, close to the Mediterranean.
Because I can give you closure on this anecdote, unlike the last time, here are the results of this incident:
- As Jim recovered from his heart attack, his heart block disappeared so that he didn’t have to have a permanent pacemaker. He would return to his group home and undergo successful cardiac rehabilitation.
- Far from being disgusted with me, Dr. H asked me to switch my specialty to cardiology before reluctantly agreeing that my skillset would be a better match for family medicine. During the remainder of my time in practice, we would maintain a cherished mentor-mentee relationship.
- The medical culture began to shift slowly, one sign of that being Dr. H’s ascendancy. His brand of clinical acumen and humanity would be recognized when the hospital named its future cardiac wing after him.
- Through similar, repeat incidences, I would come to understand the reason for the staff’s silence: shame in the face of powerlessness. They wanted nothing more than to have someone — anyone — reveal the path to a place of healing.
- As for me, the incident with Jim wasn’t the last time I’d be forced to pick a side in the battle between the desire for prestige and the desire to be a good clinician.
- And that somatic sensation I described above? Physiologically, it’s almost certainly a sign of neurotransmitter activity in certain regions of my brain. In practical terms, I came to trust it as a sign of deep wisdom that superseded my medical, textbook-based education. I’m certain that it helped me save a baby’s life and was responsible for some of the best moments in my career.
The UnCon’s Legacy: Why I’m Ready to be Naked
If you believed that these dramatic and powerful learnings would help me in my writing, you would be wrong. I am as yet unpublished, and in good part this is because I am a serial non-finisher and chronic self-doubter. I have allowed myself to be sidetracked. I ask myself questions such as these: Who am I to write? What could I possibly have to say that others haven’t said before me and in more poetic terms?
In the UnConference however, I got “it.” I got the answers to these questions and as in the paraphrased quote waaay above, I hope to be forever changed.
Why there? Why in Salem?
I believe it was the consistency of the message delivered by a multitude of people. For example:
1. In Meg Rosoff’s classes, she spoke of the state of Throughness — a sort of effortless writing which comes from what she believes to be the subconscious mind. When she writes from this deep place, whatever fiction she produces will tend to resonate with readers and be quoted by reviewers. In her description of Throughness, I recognized the state of knowing I tapped into with Jim, and which I’ve felt occasionally in my writing, yet shut down all-too-often when things became weird.
In the future, I’ll stop shutting things down.
2. In his teaching, Donald Maass makes use of the Socratic Method in which we are taught to mine our own emotional life as a means to build worlds, characters and stories with authenticity and texture. If there was one overarching message I took from his classes, it would be that the medium of writing is oneself.
Happily, I have a self with which to work, which happens to be no more nor less than any other writer.
3. John Vorhaus talked of the need to see the writer as educator in service of a bigger truth.
I can use this. The truest moments of my life have come when I bury my ego and do the right thing by other people.
4. Finally, and perhaps biggest of all, there was the cumulative realness of being among ninety kindred spirits for five days in a row. For when you are in a group in which bravery and exposure is the norm, it no longer seems frightening to be vulnerable, naked.
And so, Unboxeders, I finally feel integrated – and full of integrity – around the obsessions and concerns and wisdoms which preoccupied my medical career, and which pervade my fiction. Thanks to the sessions on craft, I feel more empowered to tackle them.
If I can distill one message of the UnConference for you it would be this: Take off your gloves. Strip off your surgical mask. Creep up next to your reader’s ear. Begin by murmuring, if you must, but begin. And in that nascent voice, trust yourself to bear a critical message. Though it may seem weird and freakish and unwelcome to the bulk of the world, you offer a nourishing and necessary kind of medicine. And chances are, in the doing, you’ll have the Writer Unboxed community at your back. Because we know you. We see you. You are our kind of people.
And you don’t need to have come to Salem to know this, though it definitely helps.
Unboxeders, have you learned lessons about Voice in your non-writing capacities? What are they? If you attended the UnCon, how has it changed you? Please share.
About Jan O'Hara
A former family physician and academic, Jan O'Hara (she/her) left the world of medicine behind to follow her dreams of becoming a writer. She writes love stories that zoom from wackadoodle to heartfelt in six seconds flat: (Opposite of Frozen; Cold and Hottie; Desperate Times, Desperate Pleasures). She also contributed to Author in Progress, a Writer's Digest Book edited by Therese Walsh.
A powerful story fraught with powerful lessons. Thanks for the sharing, the ‘nakedness’. Nice connection to the Salem experience.
Cheers, Alex. Wish you could have been with us.
Jan, I love this essay, how it meandered away from what I thought it would be about, and circled back in such a poignant way. Thank you for sharing your wisdom gleaned from operating rooms and (writing) conference rooms. Your patients and readers are lucky to have you!
-Dana
I rather like thinking of myself as a poignant meanderer, Dana. Thank you. :)
As for the luckiness, I know it’s been repeated so often that people find it trite, but I benefited enormously from my patients’ wisdom and tolerance. (As have my family, my friends, etc.)
As a fellow meander-er, and not always a poignant one, I hope you know I meant that in the most positive and genuine of ways! Can’t wait to read your fiction one day soon.
-Dana
And that’s how I took it, Dana. Hard to see it in any other light given your last sentence. Thank you so much!
Jan,
I’ll always remember the Voice workshop at the UnCon and your turning point story. What I learned through the whole UnCon, although I kind of knew and was just trying not to, is that the interesting stuff has to come from a deep, messy place. All the structure and plot games in the world won’t make up for a lack of voice. Oh, and I realized how amazing it is to be surrounded by people who are being authentic and unguarded.
Shizuka
It was wonderful to meet you, Shizuka. Your animated conversation will forever be part of the UnCon’s soundtrack for me.
You said “…the interesting stuff has to come from a deep, messy place. All the structure and plot games in the world won’t make up for a lack of voice.” Yes! In medicine, the name of the game is to avoid chaos at all costs, and I can easily get pulled into that too-small, too-cautious sensibility in my writing life. I feel like the UnCon established the story engine and it feels accessible and hopeful in a way I haven’t felt since I first started writing.
Thank you for this wonderful post. Being vulnerable on the page (and in real life) is what it’s all about, no? The connections we make with people, no matter how brief, are so much deeper when we’re willing to let them enter our hearts. I will not forget your Jim, nor the price you thought you might’ve had to pay to do what’s best for him.
I’m really hoping for a similar experience with the StoryMasters workshop next year. Focus on learning (which probably will inclue unlearning some bad habits) to write more truly as we craft our stories.
Have you read Brene Brown? I suspect you’d love her. Here’s one applicable quote. “Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they’re never weakness.”
I’m positive you’ll learn a ton at StoryMasters, though I have no direct experience to comment on the sense of community. Would love to hear your thoughts on it after, though. Please drop me a line.
Love Brene Brown!
Thanks for the rec. and I will report back on StoryMasters.
Jan, thanks for sharing your experience with us. Meg Rosoff’s workshop on voice was an epiphany for me. Too often we skim the surface of our feelings in our writing. Meg emphasized the importance of going deeper–by tapping into the dark places of our minds where our greatest fears reside. The greatest fear is the fear of death, but often we are afraid to confront it in our work. By plumbing our deepest emotions and getting that onto the page, our writing will have more power and depth. I, too, found the experience of the Writer Unboxed UnConference enriching and the sense of community among those in attendance was so strong and powerfuil. Thanks for a thoughtful post.
You were a vital part of that community, Chris. Was so wonderful you made the time to go on the morning walks with us, even after your run.
Meg’s workshop sessions were inspiring and necessary for me for just the reasons you’ve enumerated.
Jan-
We are thinking of moving to Canada so that you can be our family GP. Okay with you?
Doctor Jan, if you ever doubt your skill with micro-tension, stop. You’ve got it. What riveting stories. The rest of us, please note that Jan’s story today is not brief. She really takes her time to detail the medical issues, the patient, the hospital culture, her own naivete, and as a result the tension is tremendous. I’ll grant you that ER stories are dramatic by nature, but not every doctor would make the incident such an effective narrative.
The storyteller’s art, then, is to transpose that detailing, tension and raw honesty into fiction. It’s one thing to tell one’s own story; it’s another to tell the story of someone who doesn’t really exist.
Or–?
Yeah, you got it. That made up person does exist, in you. Your message is critical. As Jan says, it’s the medicine.
As to what I’ve learned from the rest of life and how it’s empowered me as a writer…I’m lucky to have been on three sides of the desk: editor, agent, writer. The first two must pitch and explain, which means quickly getting down to what matters in a story and leaving out what doesn’t.
The writer has learned to speak with assurance. Getting down to what matters means cutting words, strong nouns, active verbs, parallel constructions, specific details, vivid metaphors, warmth in the world, compassion for characters and most of all medicine, that murmuring in the ear that states the plain truth of things and thereby calms, reassures and sends a central line to our ailing hearts so that we can become whole.
Yeah, doc, you got it. You found yourself in the ER and you’ve found yourself on the page. I’d say that the Un-Conference merely confirmed it for you by being in the company of 90 others who get it too.
Great post, many thanks.
Are you okay with an out-of-date practictioner, Don? But don’t let my retirement stop an otherwise brilliant decision. I still know good people. I’d set you up right.
As for the rest of your comment, thank you so much. It’s a little overwhelming but muchly appreciated (and in no small part attributable to your teaching).
Donald,
Would you permit me to correct your image of three sides of the desk? You have overlooked ‘teacher’ which you do in all your roles, most recently standing as you did for hours on the last day of the conference in Salem. It was a masterful presentation drawing on all your experience–your inner work including your family life, your distillation of story through examining what has been written in published books and manuscripts, and, not least, your complimenting those who ask your advice in real time. Thank you for not holding back with your passion.
Amen, Tom. Thank you for saying what so many of us are thinking.
“Finally, and perhaps biggest of all, there was the cumulative realness of being among ninety kindred spirits for five days in a row. For when you are in a group in which bravery and exposure is the norm, it no longer seems frightening to be vulnerable, naked.”
Truth in a nutshell!
Being at the UnCon was very much like walking around naked, or at the very least with your flaws written on your forehead. It wasn’t at all scary, though, because everyone else was (figuratively) naked, too. What an amazing experience to shed the mask and decide that, for all your scars, you’re more beautiful without it.
YOU are beautiful, Jan, and what you did for Jim was nothing short of heroic. It’s an honor to know you.
Sending a great big virtual hug.
Oh, Kim, as I’ve said elsewhere, I’ll trust you to know that you’re reading the cherry-picked, flattering highlights of my career.
But as for the hug and the beauty-talk, right back at you, lady. Next time we need to spend more than two minutes together.
Yay, Jan! For the wisdom that came to you in the OR, and that you followed through on it. And for the reminder that each of us has a particular bit of wisdom to share with someone who needs to hear it.
Thank you so much, Carmel. :)
You are such a beautiful person and a beautiful writer. I lapped up your post this morning (as I always do) and am, quite simply, glad that you were born and so glad I know you.
UnCon sounds just perfect. So sorry I couldn’t be there. Maybe next year it could be in Seattle? ;)
Poor Therese. I like how we’re all assuming there will be another, and that it should happen next year. That’s what happens when you pull off a stunner.
Dearest Sarah, your absence was keenly felt. Please reserve the fall of 2016 because the community requires your presence and yes, that community includes me.
Jan,
I second everything Sarah says. And what Donald wrote, too. (And it was good to meet you.)
Thank you so much, Tom! We will have more conversation next time, yes?
Every time you write about your medical career, it gives me chills. And this line here — “I finally feel integrated – and full of integrity – around the obsessions and concerns and wisdoms which preoccupied my medical career, and which pervade my fiction.” — is what we all hope for. The connection between integrated and full of integrity is deep and good. I’m so glad I got to meet you (and your character!) at the UnCon.
That was such a fun session, wasn’t it? (For those who might be reading this, Natalie and I were seated across from Brunonia Barry, who was inhabiting the body of a middle-aged police chief. We were two teenagers who wouldn’t dream of engaging such an authority figure. It made for an interesting meal, not to mention great insights into our characters.)
As for your comment, Natalie, I’m glad you’re still finding novelty in my stories. Thank you for letting me know.
I love how you are seamlessly integrating the lessons you learned as a doctor with your new career, Jan. The importance of listening to that internal voice no matter what you do is such a great prescription for living an authentic, whole life. Thanks for sharing.
I love how you can sum up my 2300-word column in less than 4 lines, Liz. Truly. It’s a gift.
Great, y’all keep talking about walking around the UnCon naked. Now I’m going to have bad dreams!
Kidding aside, this is wonderful. You’ve done a remarkable job of explaining that intangible feeling of “knowing” and what it’s like to trust your gut.
About voice, last night I was reworking a passage I hadn’t seen for six months. I realized my MC, who is loosely based on me, has split off from me to become her own personality. She’s now bigger and more exciting so the writing is easier. But I also became aware that being at UnCon has brought me out of my shell to be more like her.
I didn’t see that coming.
That is VERY cool, Valerie. Writing is a people-growing machine, and at the UnCon I think we all got a much-needed dose of fertilizer.
Oh, Jan, this brought tears to my eyes. Powerful story, powerfully told. Thank you.
I wish we could have spent more time together at the UnCon, but (and here’s MY truth) I was intimidated. I was afraid. You were one of the principle contributors to WU. I was afraid I would be pestering you, or getting in the way of relationships you already had with the rest of the WU folks.
That fear of being the ‘odd man out’ has held me back from too many things in my life. And it needs to end. Your post was just what I needed to hear.
Thank you.
I won’t hold back next time. :)
Now see, I’m delighted you put that out there because I had no clue that anyone would perceive me that way. *I* don’t perceive me that way.
When we met I saw a smart, funny, enviably articulate woman that I wanted to get to know. That it didn’t happen was only due to chance, because we weren’t in many sessions together and then the time-clock ran out. Sadly, this was true for me with a good many people. So yes, next UnCon you’re on, lady. And don’t think I’ll forget. ;)
Jan, thank you for this moving story of the challenge JIm’s situation brought forward and for the way you rose to meet it. The reminder to shut out the temptations to take the easy way instead of the path your gut tells you to is just what I need this morning as I work on revising my WIP.
Onwards with the gut-listening, Judy. Good luck!
Jan, I have a friend who writes lovely stories…but never finishes them. She gets requests from agents and editors…but doesn’t follow through out of fear that she’ll fail. I’ve been watching this process for 20 years. It breaks my heart.
You have the voice, the skill and the material to create important work. Someone–many someones–need to hear what you have to say. Please think of them and use your gifts to finish and to submit. I believe–everyone at WU believes–you will succeed.
I can only hope that whatever measurements are used to assess the UnCon reflect it as a terrific success, because there needs to be another one so I can go.
I hope your friend gets pleasure from the writing itself, Cheryl. It’s hard to see someone we care for when they hold themselves back, isn’t it?
The one thing about me is that I’m incredibly stubborn and I haven’t quit. (And I won’t.) Thank you muchly for the encouragement!
THIS!
Wonderful post, Jan! I’m so glad you came away from the Un-Con remembering the critical value of your singular perspective. That we too can benefit from your learnings makes this a win-win.
Write on.
It’s like an ouroboros, Therese, in only the best sense.
Thank you for creating the UnCon experience to begin with!
Just saw this quote and had to come back:
“It’s not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It’s because we dare not venture that they are difficult.” Seneca
Nice!
Love this post. In teaching drawing I tell students that sometimes they need to look not at the thing that feels wholly wrong or right to figure out the solution, but instead to look just beyond it. And you’ve done that here in such a beautiful way.
So when can we sign up for next year’s Unconference? And will it still be held in Salem?
A great metaphor.
As for your question, my understanding is that nothing is set in stone, but you can be optimistic about the fall of 2016. :)
See, Boss? Everyone loves when you draw on your past-life as a doc. How could we not? You’re revealing your truth when you do so, which is always a beautiful thing. This was riveting!
Isn’t it funny? Before UnCon, and after all the years we’ve known each other, you warned me to expect a “quieter version” of your online self. Afterward, one of the -ahem- ‘younger’ attendees referred to me as “the quiet one” of the WU team. Me! The community-rah-rah guy. Go figure. I didn’t feel quiet, but I apparently was when viewed in juxtaposition to my outgoing colleagues and perhaps the rather louder version of me online. And you didn’t seem quiet at all. You exude warmth, and that’s no surprise.
I so agree about learning to tap into the resource of oneself at UnCon. What a great take you’ve supplied here. And I think I’ve been doing well tapping into me since. After reading this, I was thinking that my days as the part-owner and operations manager of a large lumber facility could never be as powerful a part of my voice as your very cool doctor examples. But I had to press pause on that thought, and take a closer look. Hmmm, a young scion to chieftainship who feels unworthy of the leadership he is expected to grasp and wield effortlessly? A warrior-woman guardian as his biggest but secret supporter, who routinely saves him from his own blundering, helping to eventually shape him into an actual leader?
I was 32 years old when I was introduced to a crew of around 40 men as their new boss. Big, powerful guys, most older than me. Most had been doing their jobs for many years. They were experts at their jobs, their equipment, and the ins and outs of our workplace. I wasn’t. Expectations for the new management’s performance were high—from the bank, to the board, to the employees, to the vendors and customers. We were brought in to make good things happen. My guys tested me. It was difficult to win their respect while asking more of them. They had to trust in my vision of a long-term payoff, had to participate in a cultural shift. It could only happen if we worked together, as a team. To say there was inertia and ongoing resistance would be an understatement. There were many days when I felt hopelessly lacking—not up to the task.
My secret weapon? A fellow owner and manager of sales and marketing. This person was my confidant and biggest – and often secret – supporter. Her cleverness, systematic ease, patience, and optimistic outlook kept us moving forward, ever nearer to our goals. So many times, often from behind the scenes, she made me shine, showed me the path to success—in addition to finding her way to success in her own portion of the company’s duties and objectives.
Most who know me know I’m talking about my wife. She’s still providing that vision for my success—often from behind the scenes. If I find my way to my writing goals, it will in no small part be due to the literal and figurative support of my warrior-woman guardian.
Here’s to mining the medium of ourselves and to sharing our life lessons through our unique voices. As difficult as this gig has been to grasp, thanks to great mentors, a supportive community, and events like UnCon, I feel like I’m finally, finally finding a handle on it. Great job illustrating the lessons of UnCon, Jan!
At some point in the first day I forgot to be self-conscious about the collision between my online self and real self. Maybe a bit of UnCon magic.
I didn’t find you quiet so much as thoughtful and measured and fair. (The warmth goes without saying.) But that’s consistent with who you are online; I think people forget those virtues don’t emerge in nano-seconds.
I LOVE the parallel between your epic fantasy and your lumber-magnet past. How cool. And consider this, V. You’re spinning a magnificent, worthwhile life into an epic fantasy whereas, if anything, my scale is getting smaller. :)
I’m with Donald Maass–I’m willing to move to Canada so you can be my GP. Because you get it. Healing with words or with medicine comes from basic humanity, and that means you have to turn off all the other distracting voices that whisper about prestige, fame, worth, and doubt. Thanks for this,
Canada would welcome you any time. We could have like a tiny WU community.
Thanks, Jeanne. Why am I not surprised you get it?
“I don’t know how long I vacillated before a particular feeling of knowing washed over me, but inexplicably my choices narrowed to one option.”
Beautifully written post, Jan. I could see both you and Jim so clearly. I can also see myself standing in the rain on an empty street in Salem, by a graveyard filled with people who had been dead centuries before I ever existed. A moment defined so beautifully by what you said in the quotes above. The heart feels what the gut knows instinctively. I think Salem has taught me to to trust that.
Go, B! Can’t wait to see what comes out of that knowing for you.
Jan, the medical power dynamics you described are so disheartening. Lucky that your brain/heart compelled you to override. What a well-expressed piece, that carries both intellectual and emotional wisdom.
This is good medicine, for soul and story.
The good news is that the medical culture is changing. It’s imperfect, but it’s on an arc of improvement. These days if you threw a scalpel, you’d be formally reprimanded, possibly lose access to the OR. And that obstetrician? He’d have an online rating system which would make his bias known and likely impact his ability to teach. My daughter just graduated from nursing, so my optimism isn’t wishful thinking.
But thank you, Tom. You’re more than kind.
Jan, I relate to this because I believe my self-consciousness holds me back. Now, most people don’t think I am shy or an introvert, but I think I am. And I know that my self consciousness and it’s best friend, lack of assertiveness, go hand in hand. And this dynamic has gotten me into trouble and down roads I know I didn’t want or need to travel. Having spent time doing things I don’t want to do has caused me set backs. Don’t get me wrong, I have been very successful in many areas, but my unpublishment has caused me emotional pain and more self-consciousness. So, in reading your story I noticed that you needed – you wanted – some validation that what you were doing for that patient at that time, was what you were supposed to be doing. And no one gave that to you until well after the fact. The instinct to nurture a response rather than violently restrain your patient was on the mark. But even when it was over, you really weren’t sure. Until the doctor said you did a good job. I think this waiting for others to tell me it’s good enough keeps me in shabby clothes. Anyhoo, I think I’m writing in circles now so I hope you get what I feel. Good story, doc.
Ah, Thea, my friend, I hear you on so many levels. What odd creatures we are that we can wall off these areas of competence and certainty, so that success in one arena remains independent of another. (And by success, I mean the self-respect and joy which comes from performing a meaningful task to the best of our abilities, not what others might say about us.)
This may sound weird, but when I get the feeling which pushed me with Jim, I always know the right course of action to take. Also, in the larger world, if it will benefit another person, I almost always obey the imperative. (Why John Vorhaus’s author-as-educator model is so powerful for me.) But that doesn’t mean I don’t care about the consequences and hope that I’ll make it through without paying a stiff price.
So how does a person get out of that self-consciousness with writing? I’d have better answers for you about my blogging than my fiction, but give me a few months and I might have more to share.
This I know: your voice matters. You’re a damn funny woman and your tossed-off comments on FB tell me you’d be a fine writer. Please come to the next UnCon and see if you don’t end up feeling differently.
Jan, you example of speaking to Jim, one on one, while forgetting what your coworkers thought of you…such a vivid illustration of the work of a writer. Thanks for sharing Meg Rosoff’s wisdom too about tapping into the story subconscious. Making the comparison to your story about Jim really drove the point home for me. This month while I’m sitting with my story I’m going to be extra mindful of this most important aspect of storytelling, the need to get one-on-one with the reader, to tell them the true story and nothing but the true story. Once again, you’ve given me great inspiration. Thank you so much!
Funny, but I hadn’t thought of the singular-audience aspect, John. Thank YOU for pointing that out.
Your tale of how you reached out to Jim and comparison to storytelling made me think of the fire-side narrator. Rather than fiction that is nuts-and-bolts contraption of clever prose, you’ve refocused on something fundamental about the roots of story itself. Before there were computer, typewriters or pads of paper to write on, there were late nights where the clan or the family gathered around the listened word-for-word, shivering, waiting, anticipating. We as storytellers have the potential to change lives – just as you, as a compassionate doctor saved Jim’s life – so instead of focusing outward on mechanics and gimmicks, why not focus inward instead, on the heart and soul of story which lies within us and connects us all. A good aspiration to ponder.
I’d be a terrible fireside narrator. People would be off and moving before the kindling took. :) But I understand the point and I agree. Thanks again, John, for making me think.
Hi Jan,
Such a joy to meet you in person at the UnCon.
1) Also a thrill to have my pic at the top of a WriterUnBoxed post!
2) So glad I wasn’t naked!
But I was stretching myself way outside my comfort zone in Bru’s method writing session pictured here, scared that I would fail at it—and to huge rewards. I learned several key things about my character. Things she was keeping protected even from me, her creator. Wow.
I think my first “be naked” moment was when I was in my mid 20s and a sibling pointed out that I always qualified every observation and perception with the word “apparently.” My background was in science, just like yours, so you probably get that I would have been unable to offer proof!
I started to own my perceptions by editing that word out of my usage. I harnessed more powerful nouns and verbs, as Don said. The “negative” of me developed into a colorful positive. I owned my thoughts and opinions.
Am I always right? Nooooo, although through confident language it might sound like I think I am. But through that one simple instance of verbal editing I began a path of owning my presence in the world and on the page.
Apparently, that was a huge turning point. ;)
Hahaha. Well done, non-naked Kathryn. You allegedly make me laugh. ;)
That was a fascinating session, wasn’t it? I love experiential learning. It’s so hard to ignore.
PS: Forgive me; I hit “enter” too soon. It was wonderful to meet you, too. I feel like I got to know you a bit from the walks. Though I was bringing up the rear, in true writerly fashion, I eavesdropped when it wasn’t too personal.
Jan,
Loved your post. You definitely have a knack for storytelling. You should finish your book(s) ASAP. You had me on the edge as I read the story. (Good thing my son’s school started late due to 1/4″ snowfall in West Texas (ha!) so I could finish reading the story or I would have wondered about it all morning).
Thank you for sharing your takeaways from the conference. I wish I could have made it. Maybe next year.
Priya, there is a good-sized Texas contingent in the WU community. If you come, y’all can share horror stories about the ice storm of ’14. ;)
Seriously, thank you kindly. And yes I need to finish. I will finish.
Awesome post, Jan. We are all on the same journey of believing in ourselves as writers and revealing our inner selves.
So true. Was privileged to take a few steps alongside you in Salem, Neroli. Thanks for taking the time to comment.
Beautifully written, Jan. A compelling story and a great metaphor! Thank you for putting the week into words. What I noticed first and happily at the WU Un-conference was the lack of competition between writers. This was true community, something you don’t find often. Its far easier to let our vulnerability show with people who cheer and laugh at bad reviews and rejection letters, are willing to “embody” their characters over lunch, and tell great bedtime stories. My only regret was that I wasn’t able to spend every moment with all of you because the Salem Lit Fest planning took many of my days. Next time, I’ll be prepared for 24/7.
Well I know I speak for many in that we would have loved to have you in our midst 24/7, Brunonia. We’ll settle for 2016.
I knew it felt special to me–heck, the intimacy of your workshop alone was fabulous–but when I started to hear you seasoned presenters comment on the collegial atmosphere, it could no longer be denied.
As for the rest of it, thank you kindly!!
I’d finished breakfast at a coffee shop a few months ago and was about to leave when the fellow at the next table asked me to call 911. His elderly mother had gone into medical distress, possibly a heart attack. When the EMT’s were loading her into the ambulance it felt very important to tell him everything would be okay. His stress level visibly lowered. Later he came back and asked the coffee shop to tell me that his mother was fine. People need a bit of humanity. It’s good to see the medical profession is offering it.
It’s good to see that people don’t rely upon the “professionals” to offer said humanity, Phyllis. You did the right thing. You made a difference. Thank you.
Jan, while reading your post I couldn’t help but envision you in front of me, chatting, sharing your life’s moments so openly, freely. What a wonderful gift. Thank you.
Loved this: “Take off your gloves. Strip off your surgical mask. Creep up next to your reader’s ear. Begin by murmuring, if you must, but begin.”
YES!
Denise Willson
Author of A Keeper’s Truth and GOT
Denise, that openness was possible because it was uniform. Thanks for being part of my UnCon experience.