Mark Evanier is a writer, one I've been vaguely aware of for a very long time, but couldn't have told you what the heck he wrote. I assumed he did a year of Marvel's Fantastic Four, or maybe one of those horrible early-90s X-books where everyone had too many cargo pockets on their spandex suits. It turns out he actually was a TV guy as well as a comics guy; he story-edited "Welcome Back Kotter," scripted a bunch of Sid and Marty Krofft shows, and his biggest and most famous comic writing is for Groo the Wanderer, a book I have never ever read.
Anyhow, dude's got a blog, and he explains here how he approaches writers' block. It's a good read. It resonates with me because I am right the hell THERE with Dorothy Parker, who famously said she loved "having written," but wasn't keen on the actual work of, y'know, writing.
Evanier is not especially sympathetic to that point of view, but that's cool. He's right. Totally right. And he has made a perfectly cool career doing something he loves and is good at, for 41 years and counting.
On the other hand, while I have written a fair amount of crap, most of it stayed in the drawer, and nobody will associate me with the MacLean Stevenson Show or Pink Lady and Jeff. I feel pretty okay saying that the small amount of creative output I've released into the wild is better than some - just some, mind you - of the stuff Evanier got paid pretty decent money to do.
What I can't decide is how to feel about that.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Thursday, July 01, 2010
Fear not
Posts about "I'm really sorry I haven't posted" are lame. Someday, looking back, it will be a blip for you, too, thinking about the first half of 2010.
But I do intend to get around to some medical stuff in the near future. Maybe when the baby's napping, I can make a point to come by and tell some stories.
For the few who actually follow this thing, please know that I appreciate you, and still think I have a story here worth jotting down, for whomever winds up following a similar Viking-ish path later on.
But I do intend to get around to some medical stuff in the near future. Maybe when the baby's napping, I can make a point to come by and tell some stories.
For the few who actually follow this thing, please know that I appreciate you, and still think I have a story here worth jotting down, for whomever winds up following a similar Viking-ish path later on.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Hi, everyone, what's up?
This comment came in earlier:
Feb needs to get to blogging...November 2 was a long time ago. I thought there was some resolution to keep this thing more updated???
Hey, that was a 2009 resolution, as I remember. (Or maybe a 2008.) Anyway, I have a good excuse:
I need to come up with a good Web nickname for this little peanut. She arrived on Christmas Day. (Yes, it's true the blog was already getting moldy at that point, but give a sleep-deprived new dad a break, eh?)
Work continues to be a nice hike up the learning curve. All that stuff I thought to myself, whoa, that's complicated. I can memorize some bullet points, but I'm going to need to work with this concept a few times before it really makes sense to me... well, I'm working with it. And much of it is sinking in pretty well.
The one thing I can say for sure about hospital medicine: we treat sick people. Back in the ER, the big challenge is one of volume: you have all these folks in the waiting room, and you need to find and treat the sick ones, while being nice enough to the not-sick ones that things run smoothly. It's a challenge to send somebody home, not knowing for sure, really, that nothing too terribly bad is going to happen. And it's a different kind of challenge to see a parade of people who honestly are not in dire need of medical attention after all - partly because that experience can confuse the issue and get in the way of helping those who really are in dire need.
On the other hand, it's been very interesting for me, picking things up at the step AFTER I'd become sort of accustomed to handing off the patient. "Hey, this guy's actually sick. We should admit him." Okay, well, much as I realized after EMT training that "somebody should call 911" had become "holy crap, now I am 911, kind of," now I'm one of those people to whom the ED admits patients. And in fact that's the bulk of my job -- admitting new patients.
I can talk more about the nuts and bolts of that later, if people care to hear it. Meantime, I just wrapped up Uncharted 2 with the baby asleep in my arms for the last couple of hours of the game. She's fitting into the household well so far.
Feb needs to get to blogging...November 2 was a long time ago. I thought there was some resolution to keep this thing more updated???
Hey, that was a 2009 resolution, as I remember. (Or maybe a 2008.) Anyway, I have a good excuse:
I need to come up with a good Web nickname for this little peanut. She arrived on Christmas Day. (Yes, it's true the blog was already getting moldy at that point, but give a sleep-deprived new dad a break, eh?)Work continues to be a nice hike up the learning curve. All that stuff I thought to myself, whoa, that's complicated. I can memorize some bullet points, but I'm going to need to work with this concept a few times before it really makes sense to me... well, I'm working with it. And much of it is sinking in pretty well.
The one thing I can say for sure about hospital medicine: we treat sick people. Back in the ER, the big challenge is one of volume: you have all these folks in the waiting room, and you need to find and treat the sick ones, while being nice enough to the not-sick ones that things run smoothly. It's a challenge to send somebody home, not knowing for sure, really, that nothing too terribly bad is going to happen. And it's a different kind of challenge to see a parade of people who honestly are not in dire need of medical attention after all - partly because that experience can confuse the issue and get in the way of helping those who really are in dire need.
On the other hand, it's been very interesting for me, picking things up at the step AFTER I'd become sort of accustomed to handing off the patient. "Hey, this guy's actually sick. We should admit him." Okay, well, much as I realized after EMT training that "somebody should call 911" had become "holy crap, now I am 911, kind of," now I'm one of those people to whom the ED admits patients. And in fact that's the bulk of my job -- admitting new patients.
I can talk more about the nuts and bolts of that later, if people care to hear it. Meantime, I just wrapped up Uncharted 2 with the baby asleep in my arms for the last couple of hours of the game. She's fitting into the household well so far.
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