Would it be ok if it was just stories? Not stories linked together with trenchant analysis of what this means for Our Times, but just: this sad thing happened, or this happy thing happened, or lots of things occur and I have no other point than to show you that lives are hard but punctuated by great joy and great sorrow and here are some of those times that otherwise would be obscured from your view.
Is that a reasonable kind of book? Or does it need to be somehow More? (I have always thought it would need to be More. More makes me tired, so I just never get very far).
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Here's a possible title: "Every Little Thing Gonna Happen".
Because once I took care of a pregnant patient who had cardiac issues and renal failure and was in general very sick. Every time I took care of her in the office, I would talk about all the things we worried about, and she would say, very gently: "Hey, Dr. C. Hey. Ain't nothing gonna happen." When she got admitted to the hospital, I would tell her what we could, and couldn't do for her and her baby if things go worse, and she would say, very gently: "Hey, Dr. C. Ain't nothing gonna happen.".
And I would go tromping over to the nursing station to sit and write my note, and I would grumble: "That's her motto. We should make a t-shirt with that on it for our whole team. We could have hats, and wristbands: 'Ain't Nothing Gonna Happen'. "
"And I wish she was right, but I think I've been doing this for a while now, and you know what? Every little thing gonna happen. It just does, and it will. Every little thing."
That, to me is pregnancy, and L&D, and high risk and women's health and parentood. Eventually, around here, every little thing is going to happen: bad, good, in between. It's a whole world, over here.
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Anyway, is that a book? I thought so last night. Now I can't tell.
It's probably not, right? Probably not.
I think that I would find a book like that interesting.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like a good book to me. I'd rather read a book without an overarching theme than read one with an overarching theme forced onto it, if that makes sense.
ReplyDeleteI would read that book! But I have no idea if you can get it published by a mainstream publisher. They seem to be tacking more and more towards "safe" and "just like something else that made a lot of money." And I'm sitting here debating whether or not to mention this, but... I run a small (tiny) indie publisher now, and if that's the book you want to write and you can't get the big guys to take a look, I'd publish it in a heartbeat. I'm sure some other (possible less tiny) indie publishers would, too. So maybe the question is: what kind of book do you want to write, and what are your goals for it? You are a great writer, so I think you can get any type of book you want to write published in some way (even without self-publishing), but if your goal is to see your book in your local Barnes and Noble, then that might change the type of book you need to write.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much! I do think I want a book that gets published by a big publisher and is in bookstores. I'm so far away from any of that (agent? book proposal? etc) and I know so little of what I'm doing, but I will hold this comment in my pocket, when I get closer to whatever it is that I'm doing.
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