Happy Friday friends! My current wordcount is 30,928. Yep, behind.
Today I'm posting the last of my extended metaphor series, and ending with my job as a metaphor for my hobby. Does that sound a little weird to you? Me too. Yes, I know there's another week in November, but I'll be with my family next week, so I'm choosing them over you. No post next week. I think you'll live.
You never know what you'll have until you get there.
It's not always stupid calls, Sometimes we get called out for things that sound stupid and we realize that it's hit the fan when we get there. Or that we were called out for chest pain and it's really an anxiety attack or back pain or muscle spasm because of dehydration. The point being, we have to be ready for the most serious and most un-serious at all times.
I've kind of already alluded to this this month, but it bears bending for the sake of repeating. All kinds of unexpected things can happen in the throes of writing. Some examples from my NaNo-ing this month: two characters randomly started dancing; my MC told the (mostly) truth to the agency about her past work history and ended up instead giving the interviewer the impression that she had an indiscreet history, there's an albino girl that has decided to keep showing up, the stable hand is autistic. All magical details that spring more from the page than my mind.
We speak our own language.
My husband likes to tell me that the medical professions just make up words to sound smart. No, we don't, but if we make you feel dumb when we use our big words, please ask for a translation. Particularly when we're talking about the health of you or someone you love.
Writers have their own jargon as well. It helps us not have to say "That bit in the middle, but not the one bit with the good guy, the bit with the bad guy, but it actually isn't in the middle, it happened before the story started ..." Yeah. Terms are helpful things.
Public perception is not reality.
If you know someone in EMS, please, for the love of God, do not ever call them an ambulance driver within their earshot. Or, you know, at all. Call them an EMT or a Paramedic, depending on their certification. If you don't know, ask. That gives us a chance to discuss our work, and you a chance to learn about it.
Funny joke, Mr. Gosling. It would be great if we could just play pretend and have it be something that everyone would think is awesome. But it's much more just writing a lot of crap or just OK passages with a few points of light shining through, then re-writing the crap and OK, then sanding and buffing and polishing, then having other people sand and buff and polish, then comparing what you have to your original idea and seeing if it in any way resembles your original idea.
At the end of the day, we're here to make life better for everyone.
EMS and the rest of the first responder community aren't here for the pay or the kicks. We're here because we love helping people.
We write because we read first, and when we read, we fell in love. We loved the stories we found, and we knew that we had stories to tell. The best thing you can tell an author is that their book spoke to you.
Comments
Post a Comment