Yes, Sister—A Great Read

I just finished reading Yes, Sister: Memoir of a Young Nurse and I enjoyed it thoroughly. It's a well-written memoir that reads like a novel. The author, Donna Yates-Adelman recounts her three-year intensive training as a nurse, and the memoir focuses on this portion of her life.

My interest was caught from the very beginning of the book, especially since Yates-Adelman was head nurse in surgical intensive care at Montreal's Jewish General Hospital, a local hospital where my husband has been working for the last 18 years and I myself experienced the loving care of its nurses after I gave birth to my two children.

The story begins well and the pace is steady, keeping the reader's interest throughout as we get to know the girls with whom Yates-Adelman trained. The author's candid and vivid descriptions had me laughing out loud one minute and crying the next as she dealt with mishaps, and came to grips with the deaths of her young patients, the realities of disease and illness and some of the choices that lead to these.

Set in the late 50's and early 60's, the story transported me back to this era and I lived along with Yates-Adelman as she faced the challenges of resident and hospital life. Needless to say, a new-found respect for the profession of nursing emerged. This coming-of-age memoir is insightful, humorous and thought-provoking.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves a good story but especially to those contemplating the nursing profession and to those brave enough to be following it.

Laura Fabiani

A site writers will love

Writers do a lot of research. Scouring the Internet I discovered a useful site called GoogleGuide. The creator has painstakingly taken the time to explain everything that Google--one of the best Internet tools--can do. Most users only exploit about 3% of Google's capacity. And this mega company offers tons of tools to simplify and enhance our sometimes fraught, so much-to-do, how-to-get-it-all-done lives.

If you spend much time on your computer (which writer doesn't) you will appreciate learning more. With a few well-chosen typed words and the click of a button you can zero in on exactly what you're looking for. Even this simple procedure comes with tips for a better and faster research.

For example, did you know that by using special characters and operators, such as +, –, ~, .., *, OR, and quotation marks, you can fine-tune your search query and increase the accuracy of its results? You can learn all this and much much more on this site. In addition to searching the web, you can use Google to find specific information that is available offline or on specialized sites.

Some of the tools that come in very handy and are accessible from any computer are: Gmail, Docs, Blogger and Picasa to name a few. For a writer, this is heavenly. You can create documents, check your email, your photos and post on your blog from anywhere.

Research and computer organization need not be a chore. With the right tools it can be highly effective and interesting. I recommend you browse through GoogleGuide and see what you're missing.

Eponyms—Names That Became Words

Browsing through the reference section of a used bookstore, I came across The Dictionary of Eponyms by Robert Hendrickson. It quickly caught my attention. I had not heard of the word eponym before, and as a lover of languages, I quickly scooped up the book and began reading.

The word eponym comes from the Greek word eponymous, given as a name, surname; epi, upon, and onyma, a name. The Webster’s Dictionary defines eponym as a real or mythical person from whose name the name of a nation, institution, thing, etc., is derived or is said to have been derived. So we can say that eponyms are name-words.

I have selected a few I found interesting and listed them below.

Bloomers: Named after feminist Amelia Bloomer, not because she invented them but because she defended them so adamantly. She scandalized 1850 society when she wore the long loose trousers (gathered closely about the ankles and worn under a short skirt) instead of the fashionable hoopskirts she said were cumbersome and unsanitary because they picked up dust and mud from the unpaved streets.

Einstein: Today saying someone is an Einstein is synonymous to saying he is a genius. Albert Einstein is considered without question one of the greatest thinkers of all time, a Nobel Prize winner, well known for his revolutionary theory of relativity.

Goliath, David and Goliath: In 1 Samuel 49-51, the Bible tells us of the giant, almost 10-feet tall, Goliath that was slain by the stripling David, defeating the Philistines. A Goliath has since meant a giant or someone of great strength, while a David and Goliath contest is one between a great and a small man.

Just a few interesting tidbits about the history of our language.

Freewriting—Part II of the Writer's Block Series

When a patient complains of pain, the doctor needs to know what kind of pain it is, where it is located, and most importantly, what is its cause. Similarly, to simply complain of writer’s block is as vague as stating that you have a fever or some pain.


In most writing guides you can find a plethora of advice on ways to beat writer’s block. Many involve some sort of brainstorming exercise and time away from your writing to clear your mind and get new focus. They usually outline their remedies in a bulleted list with a short explanation of each technique, as if every case of writer’s block could be solved by any of those suggestions. Would you experiment with every pill in your pharmacy until you chance upon the right one that works for you? Likewise, understanding that writer’s block can occur at different points in the writing process and for different reasons will help you to home in on the right cure.

Today I will be focusing on one specific remedy—freewriting.

Freewriting is especially useful for the type of writer’s block that stems from fear and self-criticism. It can also help unblock creativity when a writer is having difficulty generating new ideas. However, this kind of writer’s block can be helped by other techniques and would merit its own separate consideration. Rather, my goal is to explain how freewriting can help open up the flow of writing, when ideas are already present but inhibitions are holding you back.

One of the most obvious symptoms of this problem is that getting started always seems to be the greatest hurdle; whether you are starting at the beginning or at any other point in your writing. Every time you sit down to write after a long pause it can feel like you are starting over again, the way a swimmer has to face the icy chill of the water after he has taken a break and the sun has dried him off.

The best way to deal with fear is just to face it head on

You need to take decisive immediate action. Stop procrastinating, stop worrying, stop censoring yourself, stop researching ad-nauseam—just write. Hmm…but how exactly? Sit down and start writing. But wait—let me explain what I mean by writing. Writing is translating a thought into an external representation. It’s about taking ideas, images and words out of your head and recording them.

It is too easy to confuse writing with editing. Editing comes after writing. That is when you prune your composition so that ideas appear to flow smoothly. That is when you correct your writing so that the rules of grammar, punctuation and spelling are adhered to. Chances are you will have to edit many times before you have a final polished result. If you begin the writing process with an editor’s mindset you’re bound to get distracted by details and lose focus on your train of thought, or worse yet, become so discouraged, that you risk freezing up entirely. Expecting to instantly have a “good” piece of work is setting an unrealistic standard for yourself that will make you more vulnerable to writer’s block. It goes without saying that the key is to change your expectations. Easier said than done. So how do you force that on your psyche?

License to fail

Give yourself license to fail by purposely making the conditions for writing so ridiculously impossible for you to write well that you have no choice but to expect it to be bad. Freewriting is an exercise where you write non-stop whatever comes to your mind, without censoring yourself, for a specified amount of time or a certain number of pages. The rules are that you must continue writing even if nothing comes to mind. You can write about how nothing comes to mind—but you cannot stop writing. Also, you are not allowed to go back and erase or correct your words. The objective is to write so rapidly you have no time for editing.

Freewriting works because it gives you permission to make mistakes. For those who are especially self-critical, one writing reference book suggests invisible writing for “compulsive revisers” who can’t get passed the errors they see on the screen. You can either turn off your screen or change the color of your font to match the background, just remember to turn off spell-check. Others recommend dimming the computer screen just enough for letters and words to appear fuzzy, so that you can recognize if something goes wrong, say you pressed the wrong key and were about to erase the whole document.

An old-fashioned method is blind-writing. You can try writing blindfolded on paper, but this can be cumbersome. Instead, I would suggest writing on a pad of paper placed out of view (under or behind an obstruction like a drawer or a box).

This reminds me of blind contour drawing exercises from Fine Arts courses I attended in University. Under the pressure of a timer, we drew our models with strict orders to never look at our sketch pad. We were not even allowed to lift our charcoal off the page, lest we peek when placing it back on the right spot to continue our outline. Page after page, I churned out the ugliest three armed, cross-eyed silhouettes I’d ever seen. Surprisingly though, I also drew some very accurate details that I might have missed had I been more concerned with my drawing than what I was supposed to be observing.

Surmounting the crisis of confidence

When you write you want your focus to be on capturing the flow of your ideas and not the errors on the page. Freewriting is a way of silencing the judgmental voices that reject your thoughts before they have a chance to prove their worth. Accept whatever enters your mind and write it down. Even if you have a selected topic to develop, you can still give yourself the freedom to write whatever comes to your mind about it. You may find yourself catapulted into the thick of your writing, unwilling to stop when the timer is up. When you finally read what you have written, you might be surprised to find that there is a lot of material you can work with—you can then edit to your heart’s content.

If any of our readers have tried this, or another technique to beat writer’s block, I would love to hear about it. Write me about your success stories, as well as your not-so-successful attempts and what you learned from them.

Stay tuned for upcoming articles on this topic.

Article by Hannah Gilead

Great Writers Are Great Readers

Writers must be readers—although this statement is not true the other way around. Readers are not always writers. As a writer, on the other hand, if you want to improve your craft it's important you take the time to read books you love.

Bestselling author Brad Thor stated in the December 2008 issue of Writer's Digest, "It's impossible to be a great writer without being a great reader. I read everything. If someone is doing well anywhere near my genre, I want to read it and I want to know why."

The trap is that sometimes we end up only reading and not writing, thinking I can't write as well as the author of this book! This can happen for several reasons. Procrastination, procrastination, procrastination. It's easier to read than to write. Or, (and this is the purpose of my article) we write but don't do enough reading because our time is limited. Neither of these scenarios is good. Balance is required.

The latter happened to me after I began writing my first book. My time was so consumed with writing, researching, mothering, and volunteering that I simply did not have enough time to read for leisure. It was okay at the time because my concentrated efforts produced a fine book at the end. However, I thereafter gave in to my thirst for reading by selecting novels into which I have been wanting to bury my head. I read to escape, to learn, and to scrutinize how other authors got their readers so hooked.

There are a few reasons why reading is essential:

1. It keeps you current with what is successful in the market.
Why is an author selling his or her books like hotcakes? What makes that particular author's writing unique? Why did Oprah choose their book? The answers can only be uncovered by reading their works.

2. It will teach you the successful techniques in the genre you write or would like to write. Writing a thriller is very different from writing a romance novel. There are specific techniques employed by the author (known or unknown) that propel the story forward in a way that the reader expects to be entertained when choosing that particular genre. What you thoroughly enjoy as a reader, you should study as a writer.

3. It will help you develop your own style.
I do not limit myself to one genre. I enjoy reading several different types of genres. I write contemporary fiction, but I like my stories to be suspenseful. So I choose to read books that master each technique I admire as a reader and would like to perfect as a writer.

4. You need a break.
All work and no play? Reading can transport us, move us deeply and have us rolling on the floor with laughter. I am presently reading a memoir by a local author that is succeeding in doing all of the above.

So how do we avoid falling into the trap of being too busy to read?

1. Select specific books to read based on the reasons you want to read them. If your time is limited, you need to be very selective. Book review blogs are great in helping us choose. Try Library of Clean Reads, Bookpage, and Bookbound. There are many many more.

2. Set aside time to read, even if it's 15 minutes a day. Or, spend a Sunday afternoon (if you have it free) lounging with a good cup of your favorite brew and read for a few good hours.

3. You can even succeed in reading a few books at the same time, such as a fiction and non-fiction by leaving the books in view where you usually stop for a break. On the kitchen table (I've read while helping the kids with homework), by your desk (10 minute breaks from writing), by the night table, and in your purse or car. (It's thrilling to have a book to read while waiting in line, at the doctor's or riding on the bus or subway.)

Dedicate the time this month to read both for leisure and to study the works of other authors. Don't forget, lesser known authors are producing excellent books. Rather than always reaching for the same well known authors, scrounge the Internet, book reviews, your local paper, and the library for some unique writing that gets overlooked. Bestsellers are not always best picks.

Happy reading!