Just Do It

A few months ago, I attended a talk given by the famous surgeon and author Atul Gawande (if you don’t know who he is please immediately educate yourself). After he spoke, some of us stuck around for a book signing. I stood in line for thirty minutes, laughing and joking with friends, but secretly trying to keep my nervousness in check. Because as he was signing the three books of his that I owned and had read cover-to-cover, I was going to ask Atul Gawande how I could do what he had done. How could I, as a medical student with very little writing experience, become someone who writes about medicine as part of my job?

I actually chickened out of asking him as he signed my books. The organizers were making a big deal of getting people through the line as quickly as possible, and asked us please not to take up too much of Mr. Gawande’s time, especially if we had multiple books for him to sign. So I stood there and just told him my name and waited awkwardly for him to finish signing, each second becoming more and more convinced that I had missed my chance. But as I stepped away from the table, I thought to myself, “No. No, I drove all the way over here like an ADULT. And I am going to ask him this question like an ADULT. And then I will get an answer and follow through like an ADULT. Yeah. ADULT.”

I allowed the adrenaline rush of temporarily feeling like a grown-up to steer me back into line at the very end. I stepped back up to the table. I asked him my question. And I received both a wonderfully simple and infuriatingly broad answer: start blogging. “Really, that’s how I got started,” he told me. “Everyone calls it a ‘column’, but really back in 1996? It was a blog.”

This sort of advice is on par with other vague writing-related advice I have received.  Just write a little bit every day. Write what you know.  But somehow hearing it from Atul Gawande made it seem more legit. Like I actually had to DO it this time, and I didn’t have the excuse that it seemed too vague. It's scary, putting yourself out there on the internet for everyone to judge you. Or for no one to judge you, since most of the blogs on the internet don't get read. There’s no secret that accomplished writers or bloggers or YouTube personalities know about how to “make it big”. They just did it. And for them, it worked out.

So this is where I’ll be blogging and learning to be a better writer. This is where I’ll be writing about what I know. I’ll write about some of my experiences as a medical student. I’ll write about common questions that my patients ask me. I’ll write about how I feel regarding current topics in health or medicine. And I’ll write about what you guys want me to write about.