I HAVE AUTHORITIS.
WHAT ABOUT YOU?
Years ago when I was a young nurse, I was admitting a
patient. When I asked him why he was here, he said I have authoritis. I knew he
met arthritis but the word stuck with me
for years. One day when sick with pneumonia and trapped by winter and a third
floor attic apartment, my sister-in-law sent me a shopping bag full of books –
all nurse romances. She liked them and thought since I was a nurse, so would I.
There were perhaps two I really liked, maybe three that were all right, but
most of them were not to my taste. The writers knew nothing about nurses,
hospital and nursing care. They saw no difference between an aide, a LPN or a
registered nurse. That day I decided to embrace the authoritis that had been
floating in my unconscious mind for years.
I sat down and
began to write. I’ve always enjoyed playing with words and have been known to
add scenes to my supposed dry case studies. I put conversations with the
patients in these. My instructors never marked me down but they did note that
these weren’t stories I was telling. But they were.
An itis is a kind
of disease. Think of dermatitis. It’s like an itch and so is authoritis.
There’s an itch to write down words, turning them into sentences, paragraphs,
scenes and chapters. This itch must be scratched regularly. And I do. Sometimes
the scenes work and sometimes they need to be reworked.
The cover for
Murder and Mint Tea is one of the first I wrote back then. So was Past
Betrayals, Past Loves but that book languished for years as a yellow carbon
copy until I decided to rework it.
Now the
spellchecker is telling me this isn’t a word but I know it is. So does anyone
who has that itch to write. I have
authoritis. How about you? Are you afflicted, too?
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