I’d like to share an open secret about my day job. Patients lie to their docs. Patients lie about how often they exercise, how much they smoke and drink, and whether they’re taking their medicine. And, as a respiratory therapist, I hear people grossly underestimate the severity of their symptoms. The other day, I saw a man hunched over, gasping at a rate of thirty, yet declaring his breathing was fine. I humored him, but I wrote up the true findings on his chart. And, when I’ve had bad bronchitis, I sat in the doctors hunched over, and telling my doc my breathing was fine.
Howcumzit? Breathing is a basic function, and when that goes sour, everything in your life feels wrong. When you get sick, your job security and insurance coverage are on the table. People fear the doctor might judge them, so they try to appear at their best. And so the fibs start coming, and sometimes with serious consequences. Example: a diabetic binges on sweets, comes to doctor with a grossly high sugar level, and lies about his transgression. The doctor beefs up the insulin and sends the patient into low blood sugar and insulin shock.
You may wonder how all this can relate to writing. It bears chatting about my day job because most of the medical background in my books came from that job. Including the lies patients tell their doctors.
In my book Dark Side of the Moon, protag Becky told the Employee Health doctor a whopper when she got her physical for to work at Betsy Ross Hospital. She knew she had blood irregularities, and so did her family doctor. But no self-respecting Employee Health doctor will clear someone for work with undiagnosed blood cell abnormalities. So Becky got her family doctor to fudge the lab report. I would bet all the balloons in my home, and fatten my collection by betting, that she didn’t say squat about telekinesis to the employee doc. Dr. Hoffman figured out the score when she got pregnant, and alas, he acted like a jerk.
Lying to doctors can be a useful tool in your fiction, and may help you explain how people who are “not right” end up in responsible jobs. Imagine this: You work as a nurse on a floor of 50 people, and your boss hires someone who is incompetent. Perhaps she skips treatments and starts blowing up at people. The character has a history of psychosis, and lied about it on her application. Perhaps she knows something incriminating about the head boss. The stage is set for later, if she does get canned, for the woman to show up on the premises with a shotgun.
So have fun with the lying tool, and let your characters lie to their hearts’ content. But in real life, if you’ve been naughty, ‘fess up to your doctor. Your health (and your writing, as a consequence) will be much better for it.
What the Workshop Conference Leaders Don’t Tell You.
May 18, 2009 at 10:12 pm (Writing)
What the Conference Workshop Leaders Don’t Tell you
I’ve been editing NTD magazine for some years and recently branched into publishing novels. Most of the truisms apply: show, don’t tell, be scarce with adverbs and passive voice, go for the action verbs, and ditch anything that doesn’t belong to the story. With submissions I get, I run into a lot of little things that workshops leaders don’t discuss. And so, buckaroos, I’m adding my two cents to the pot.
“Saidisms” are the sorts of thing that make me want to close down my computer and run to the nearest balloon store. He “commented, rejoinder, exclaimed, opined, observed, gasped, etc.” What happened to “He said?” Okay, “said,” can get mighty monotonous, so go with the dialog tags.
Examples:
Mary gasped. “Helen, what are you doing?”
Harvey yanked Rich by the collar. “C’mon!”
Anne smiled and pointed to the Mylar butterfly. “Oh, look at the
balloon.”
I find I have a tendency to use “to be” verbs, which deflate the punch from the manuscript. Better:action verbs, the kind of words that catch the eye.
Exercise: go through your draft, and see how many “to be” verbs you can find. Then substitute with an active verb and appreciate the difference. On that note, I think I shall go through mine, eliminate all the “to be’s,” and then head for the adverbs for good measure.
Coming in October, 2009
Blood Moons and a Word with Word
May 16, 2009 at 10:40 pm (Writing)
Current mood: 
content
Category:
Writing and Poetry
Blood Moons and a word with Word…
The last two weeks were a roller coaster ride, buckaroos, when I was formatting two novels on Word software. Author Tom Johnson, and I decided to put together a short story collection called Blood Moons and Nightscapes. Most of these are tales previously published in different magazines, stories that had enjoyed good reviews.
It was deceptively easy formatting, because I learned that with Word, if something has been formatted several times, it can ball up your whole document. A lot of those stories have been laundered through two different magazines, different formats, then back through the authors’ respective files. The result? Gaping white spaces between paragraphs and skipped pages, by gum. The file went back and forth between me, Tom, and Ginger, trying to figure out what to do about Word. I had visions of the project not making it to print, for the excess of the few white spaces. The file had been redone twice, and I learned some painful lessons. Do not over format. With Word, a little bit of formatting goes a long way.
When the project was finished, and the proof ordered, I rewarded myself with a balloon. I just finished another project for Night to Dawn books, Disco Evil: Dead Man’s Stand by Rod Marsden, which should be coming out soon. Ditto balloon reward.
Blood Moon and Nightscapes made the work worth it. When I got through formatting it, I was afraid to go into my closet. The frights made my fight with Word worth it. So I am walking away from this battle smiling, with hard learned lessons and nightmares under my belt. Not a bad way to end the day.
I’d like to hear about your experiences with Word and formatting. I have Windows XP, but it is my understanding that if you convert to Vista, Vista version’s of Word is not compatible with XP’s version. Most of my friends who have Vista hate it. I would like to hear your experiences.
Barbara
Hello world!
May 15, 2009 at 9:40 pm (Writing)
Hello, friends and readers!
This is my initial post to tell you a little about myself. I work full time as a respiratory therapist, and at night, publish and edit Night to Dawn Magazine & Books. I also had some work of my own published. Recent credits include:
Dark Side of the Moon (Aspen Mountain Pres – ebook format)
Twilight Healer (Filament Books – ebook format).
Blood Moons and Nightscapes, coauthored with Tom John, available in print form through the NTD imprint.
I belong to several author forums, my favorite being The Writer’s Coffeehouse. I keep in touch with my friends through Facebook and Myspace. For hobbies, I collect Mylar balloons – have about 60 of them. I live in Hatboro with my husband Mike.
At this time, I am transferring some of my old blogs from Myspace, and will be doing future blogging through this site.
To find out more about my word, check out the following sites.
www.bloodredshadows.com
www.myspace.com/barbaracuster
www.darksideofmoon.com.
Don’t let the shadows get you!
Barbara
