Germy

This is my first rough draft of the second chapter. Struggles remain with this story and in some ways I feel compelled to just get stuff onto "paper" so I can clean it up and reorganize while knowing full well that I may not even like what I have. The idea of writing about historical events in fiction is so very intriguing to me and in that sense, I really want to make this work. However, my thoughts of how to do so are divided and it is showing in the writing -- the action is happening too fast -- huge momentous action scenes, such as an earthquake causing a mountainside to fall into a river, creating a huge wave that sets a canoe on the opposite shore's cliffside is a crazy, Hollywood-esque scene. I start and finish it with a few paragraphs. In chapter two, I have a man tumble down a huge set of rapids, nearly drowning and then saved within a few paragraphs. Perhaps I'm writing short story yet and I just haven't come to terms with it yet! And that is okay -- I...

Earlier this year I felt great relief when I matched into a graduate medical education program that would allow me to train for three years and at the end, allow me to take a test in which I could earn a board certification in internal medicine. During these three years a great transformation takes place -- a doctor in practice replaces a doctor in name only. After those three years I would spend two years learning how to be an intensive care doctor -- an intensivist. A good portion of my life's efforts for the past ten years had been in the name of this process. I've taken on over $400,000 worth of debt in this process. "Why do you want to be a doctor?" This is a question that any pre-medical student hears frequently. I came up with many clever and thoughtful answers (not mutually exclusive) during that time, and over the years since my numerous medical school interviews. At the heart of it all was a desire to have a job where at least an element of "nob...

A complete rewrite of the first chapter. I read the other chapter, with some editing, at a writing workshop last week and it fell flat. I received many solid critiques, namely that I was overreaching with my flashback scenes in the rough draft and that my mixing of modern "white-man" terms with Native American terms was confusing, and a little patronizing. I also took the outright references to the landmarks, rivers and mountains out and described them without the names. Simple things, like describing the canoe as being the length of 5 men laid end to end, versus a canoe 30 feet long. It has to be kept simple, though, and describing long distances, such as the width of the river is more difficult. We'll see how it shakes out. It will be an ongoing challenge to balance this particular facet of the story telling. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't looking forward to the modern stories.  Chapter 1 (first major rewrite) The biggest were the size of my hand. Th...