Category: Writing the Book

My Book Comes to Life

This past weekend I traveled to Chicago to attend the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the clinic where I worked 30 years ago. The clinic sets the stage for my memoir: Playing Sheriff: A Nurse Practitioner’s Story. The formal function on Friday had 500 in attendance but it was to the intimate and informal…… Continue reading My Book Comes to Life

Keeping “To-Do” Balls in the Air.

Have you ever been caught in the rain without an umbrella, raincoat or a nearby shelter? Since I’m a city girl and don’t hike, camp, bike over mountain trails, I rarely get caught unprepared. There is a lot going on in my life right now. I am in the process of publishing my first book,…… Continue reading Keeping “To-Do” Balls in the Air.

WHY DO WE WRITE?

Originally posted on Nursing Stories & Other Tales:
I attended the book signing this past August. Farther Along, written by my friend and mentor, Carol Henderson, which told the stories of thirteen mothers (she is one of them), a bakers dozen as Carol points out, who had lost children at various ages. I was prepared…

The Compliment

  Two weeks ago I flew to Sioux Falls to visit my good friend, Lois, in her new home. She and her husband left a Chicago condo off Michigan Avenue facing the lake to settle in a small town with less excitement than a big city. That weekend we attended the South Dakota Annual Festival…… Continue reading The Compliment

Nurses’ Books Need More Media Attention

In my last post, I told you about a couple of books I discovered—short story collections written by nurses. Lynn Rosack wrote a comment on my last post reminding me that Echo Heron, whose book I covered, Emergency 24/7: Nurses of the Emergency Room (2015) had written other nursing books. One of them, Intensive Care:…… Continue reading Nurses’ Books Need More Media Attention

Nursing Stories by the Hundreds!

Now that my book has been reworked and has a new title—Playing Sheriff: A Nurse Practitioner’s Story—I am ready to get it in print. In order to do this, I’ve been looking for books about nursing, and preferably written by a nurse. to see how these reached publication. First of all, I found out was…… Continue reading Nursing Stories by the Hundreds!

Luther

I received my memoir manuscript from my editor this past week. Thankfully, she hadn’t any issues with structure. (I’m not counting the many grammatical errors she found that I thought I had addressed but still missed). Since the last version of my book, I have changed the title, dropped five chapters, deepened some others, and…… Continue reading Luther

Make My Mother Proud

I’ve mentioned that I’m rewriting the manuscript that I thought I had completed. Besides adding more about gerontology, I am digging deeper into the dichotomy between my bent for caring for older persons and my difficulty getting along with my own aging mother. Living with Mom had never been easy. Being an only child of…… Continue reading Make My Mother Proud

Rewriting the Book

I’m doing what I said I would never do. Rewrite my book. I completed my manuscript late last year, sent it out to 20 small presses and one agent. While I have been waiting for the results to trickle in—those returned so far have been rejections—I’ve been troubled by a lingering discomfort that I have…… Continue reading Rewriting the Book