While we were filtering in and out of the doctor’s office last week, I was thinking of how complicated it must be to be a doctor. For many reasons. But the one that leapt out at me was just how adept they are at navigating nuance, between “reading” the patient (and his or her parents, in the case of pediatricians), analyzing the symptoms and their severity in order to diagnose, and applying hard-earned field knowledge to the situation at hand. For example, when Hill came down with strep, the doctor suggested I bring Emory in the day following (even though she was symptom-free) because often it can take a day or two for strep to spread between siblings, if it does spread at all, and she’d had multiple situations where a sibling had tested negative at the time patient zero tested positive, and then 24 hours later, had come back with a full-blown case of strep. Her thought on the pacing of the testing was so fascinating to me, and proved true, too — we brought Emory in 24 hours after Hill had gone on antibiotics, and she was still feeling right as rain, and — bam. Positive strep test. There is so much fluidity and complexity to these scenarios! It made me wonder if doctors feel that their roles are misunderstood — i.e., they are not monoliths, robotically analyzing data and test results to spit out a prescription or course treatment, but rather good listeners, running thoughtful forensics.
This in turn made me wonder: what’s something you wish people understood about the work you do? I’m using “work” loosely — it could be anything from a hobby to a career. I’m mainly interested in something that people consistently “miss” about something you’re good at doing. This could be something as technical as “it takes a really long time to produce a well-edited 10 seconds of video footage” (yes ma’am) or as philosophical as “a doctor’s primary job is not to heal; it’s to listen.” (That last one I pulled out of thin air so just using as a loose example.)
Please share yours! I’m curious to hear the insider intel about what most people misunderstand about your job in finance, real estate, medicine, education, sales, etc!
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For my part, having talked to a lot of budding writers as well as people who do not identify as writers, I think the main things people misunderstand about writing are:
a) Writing is not only what shows up on the page — it is pre-writing (in my experience, roughly half the process of writing is pre-writing), it is line-editing, it is revision at the draft level, it is paragraph (or page, or section, or chapter) design, it is titling (its own debilitating beast). I’m probably missing some steps, too. In some ways, I feel I’m always writing because I am tinkering with phrasing, picking up new ideas, chewing on word choice, even when I’m not at the desk.
b) Writing is hard. I think there is a myth that once you become a good or established writer, it becomes easier. If it feels easy, it’s probably not good — no offense. The exception here is the rare and elusive state of writing flow that I achieve maybe a handful of times a year, in which everything clicks and words fly. But back when I was teaching writing to undergraduates at Georgetown, this was something I routinely told my students: “Writing is hard.” Normalizing its difficulty often had the result of empowering my students. (As William Zinsser put it: “Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident.”)
c) There is no one way to do it. I remember an interview with Ann Patchett in which she said that a pompous reporter had expressed outrage that she didn’t have a descriptionary (a book where you can look up the technical terms for animals, architecture, medicine, etc). He insisted this was a requisite for authorship. Can you imagine telling Ann Patchett how to write? I’ve had writers I respect insist that I need to have a chapter plan before I can start writing a novel; this vaguely reminded me of grade school and early high school English, in which I had to submit outlines before writing essays, even though I have never once drawn up an outline for something I’ve written as an adult. Not even in grad school! But I felt a strange sensation of embarrassment for a minute. As in — oh God, I’ve been found out! I’m not a writer after all! But I thought about this for awhile and realized I’m just not that kind of writer. I write at the sentence level. Some writers have the entire map pinned to the wall, and some of us pick our way through the pebbles, step by step. Glenn Greenwald recently described himself as “a sentence mystic,” and I nodded emphatically. My flock! A fellow pebble stepper! He added: “I am someone who writes sentence by sentence. I discover things about my narrator in sentences. I remember one of the things that really excited me when I first started working in prose: I would have a sense, writing a sentence, that suddenly the floor gave way and I would be deep in the narrator’s past. Something in the sentence had triggered that.”
OK, your turn! Share your hidden truths!
Post-Scripts.
+Advice for disillusioned writers.
+You can start anything today, and with no one’s permission.
Shopping Break.
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+LOVE these $148 mules.
+This white blouse is giving Veronica Beard vibes (for $60!)
+My favorite spring-season VB pieces: these eyelet pants, Valentina sneakers, cuffed jeans, this tweed jacket, and this denim vest.
+Intrigued by this “wrinkle pen”: “instantly softens wrinkles and prevents long-term etching.”
+Has anyone ordered anything from Loup before? I love their emphasis on inclusive and flexible sizing. They specifically said these pants are great for petites. Can’t wait to try! You know I love a utility pant.
+Chic classic polo sweater. This is part of a collab between SoldOutNYC and one of my favorite fashionable people, Emese Gormley!
+Speaking of, Emese turned me on to a foundation trick that I am obsessed with — been doing this daily for about two months: you moisturize your face and then apply a little squiggle of RMS Primer (I use the aura color) to each cheek and to your forehead. Then swipe on a little bit of foundation (I use this foundation stick in color 0) and blend the two together in place on your forehead/cheeks/all over your face (I use this brush). It gives the most incredible result!
+My current go-to gift for little 7 and 8 year old girls: a journal and this pen/marker set.
+Love the color of these On Cloudnovas.
+Sweet spring crocs for a little love!
+My favorite luxe way to unwind at the end of every day: apply this makeup melting balm to my face and wipe off with a hot towel. At the time of writing this, you can get a set of travel essentials for free with any full-price purchase (use code FROSTY). If that doesn’t work (or maybe in addition to that!), use code JEN20 for 20% off! After the balm, I cleanse with the Outset cleanser.
+Going skiing and need some new gear! I’m eyeing these ski gloves, these goggles, and these bibs.