How serendipitous is this? I wrote this post back on April 15, 2012 about how I hesitated to include into my memoir, Stories from the Tenth-Floor Clinic: A Nurse Practitioner Remembers, a story of three men who had cancer and lived near each other.
Their stories didn’t make the cut, after all, because I had narrowed down the scope of the book to include just the time I spent at the clinic. I put their stories on the shelf and, now, I want to write about them in my new book, which is going to be about making home visits.
Truth be told, I have been successfully avoiding writing the manuscript. I’m not sure why.
I plan to meet with my mentor and good friend after the holidays to help me explore what I’m afraid of.
I didn’t attend the 2011 Fall Conference in Asheville sponsored by the North Carolina Writers Network but I kept this description of one of the master classes: “If You’re Afraid to Write About It, You Probably Should Write About It”
Often a writer’s breakthrough comes when he finally faces up to material he’s been avoiding. Maybe it’s too personal or too painful or maybe he assumes it just wouldn’t interest anyone else. Whatever the reason, we writers often overlook our own obvious strengths, dismissing the very things that are central to us. Consequently, we write around the edges of our lives or our characters’ lives, so that our stories are pale imitations of what they could be. They may be well-written, they may even be entertaining, but they lack heart. As a writing teacher, I spend a good bit of time helping students recognize and appreciate their own writerly…
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Nursing Stories: Memories of an Older Nurse 