I’ve been a productive writer recently, even if I haven’t been able to keep up the pace for NaNoWriMo. After five months of working with my book coach, the structure of my memoir is beginning to take shape. In my naivete, I’d hoped to have the first draft done at the end of the six months.
For a couple of weeks, I was depressed when I saw that wasn’t going to happen. I have lots of words on paper, but most of them will probably not make it into the book. My time, words, and energy have not been wasted, though. I am learning new things, and despite the emotional difficulty of writing about my own life, I am really enjoying this process.
I am far away from decisions about publishing and marketing, but I’m in a virtual support group of writers who are at those stages, who have been through those processes before. I can see that beyond this hard stage of learning to write a book, there is another stage and yet another one beyond that.
One of the reasons I went into medicine was that I wanted to be a lifelong learner. I knew that as a physician, I would constantly be required to learn new things. Just this week, I learned more about what physicians can do to prevent overdoses from opioid medications. In two weeks, I will go to a full-day conference where I will hear about how close we are to eradicating HIV in this country.
Today, the lesson is that lifelong learning is also part of being a writer. If I’m honest with myself, there is always something new to learn about craft, about revision, about editing. My love of learning keeps pulling me forward into fascinating new places.