Turning Points

This fall, I'm escaping to the desert to do some serious writing

Jul 01, 2024

In 2016, after almost a year of missed connections, I met

for the first time at a sweet little writing event on Stanford campus. We bonded almost instantaneously, culminating in her giving me a ride back to our office across campus. She was already a best-selling author and was working on her memoir. It should have been intimidating, but the flash of new friendship combined with Laurel’s unassuming way of interacting washed any sense of inferiority away.

She asked about the things that interested me, and I rambled off something about the medical language used to describe disability and how messed up some of it is. Suddenly she was pitching me on how I needed to write a book.

What the hell was she talking about? Write a book? I needed to get better at writing academic papers.

Now that I know Laurel way better, I understand that this is the thing that makes her a wonderful friend and an inspiration - if you talk to her for more than 10 minutes, she will convince you that you have a book in you, waiting to be set free. And then you will believe it too.

The need to write that ghost of a book can taunt you for years while you are doing your regular job of working as a doctor and ethicist.

Despite that, I have been making slow progress. Last year when I was laid out with COVID for several weeks, I outlined what could be, possibly - maybe, a whole dang book. I’ve got all these notes that probably won’t make sense when I go back to them.

Laurel keeps encouraging me to sign up for writing residencies, but often they don’t work with a working doctor’s schedule. But when I applied for my first sabbatical (where I get to take an extended break from the hospital), and I knew I wanted to jump-start my time away with a creativity jolt. I figured I could get enough time off before my sabbatical to do a short writing retreat or workshop.

So a few months ago, when Laurel sent me the link to

Courtney Maum

’s invite-only writing retreat, Turning Points, I clicked on it immediately. The retreat looked like it was tailor-made for me. Having spent the summers in college working on a ranch in Northern New Mexico, I promptly began daydreaming about returning to the desert, where cell phone and internet service are as sparse as the landscape. I dreamed of learning about writing and publishing from an expert like Courtney, author of

Before and After the Book Deal

. The combined magic of the desert air and a professional’s expertise and attention had to be good.

Just as quickly, I convinced myself I would never get in. But, in the constantly evolving tradition of telling my inner critic to screw right off, I applied anyway.

I’m thrilled to tell you all that this fall, I’ll be joining Courtney and eight other writers for a week in the desert to do some deep work on our writing projects. I’m working on a book about how disability bias hurts patients and how it’s baked into the practice of medicine.