Monday, October 30, 2023

Writing is a Deep Conversation

Originally published in the 10/29/2021 issue of the Transformational Times


Writing is a Deep Conversation

As an early-career physician and clinical educator, I felt none of the traditional “publish or perish” academic pressures because, for most of my working life, I had no particular desire to be promoted. So, you may ask, why do I spend so much of my time writing now? The answer to this has evolved. I write to work things out and begin dialogues, much as Joan Didion hinted when she said, “I write entirely to find out what I am thinking.” Once a concept or project has been committed to the page, I am better equipped to engage in conversations about the things that matter to me. 

 

 

I didn’t always love to write

 

As medical education scholar, Lorelei Lingard, asserts in her stupendous new book Story, Not Study: 30 Brief Lessons to Inspire Health Researchers as Writers (Springer International, 2021): 

 Medical education moves forward because we share insights, question methods, argue the relevance of emerging ideas and build on one another’s efforts. All of this is possible in large part because of writing, and it explains why writing is such a highly valued currency ….


Dr. Lingard has taught me through her “writing about writing” to think of the process as a way of entering critical conversations to clarify our thinking. We converse with those who came before us by reading the relevant literature, we converse with those with whom we work by writing together (not easy by any stretch of the imagination, more on that later), we converse or spar with editors and peer reviewers and, finally if we are lucky, we get to converse with our readers. It is a cacophony of conversations. 


Learning the value of writing with others rather than alone

 

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