Why Doctors Should Write

Sharpening a quill.

I am a physician who writes and I think that more of my colleagues should do so. Not because we are such skilled wordsmiths or understand plot and character development. We don’t. But, we confront the human condition every day. We see pain and struggle and fear and rebirth. We have much to share.

Beyond medicine, I think everyone should write, because everyone has something important to say and to share.

To paraphrase an old Pete Seeger song, where has all the writing gone? Long time passing. I long for longhand. I plead for paper. I pine for a pen.

Sadly, there has been steady erosion in the craft of writing, which I attribute to the ’new & improved’ forms of communication that have supplanted the written word. In addition, folks don’t simply regard writing as a worthy pursuit. Writing today means tweeting, emailing, texting, Instagraming, tik toking and various other keyboard or voice activated techniques. Artificial intelligence may push all of this aside.  This 'progress', like many other technological advances, has exacted a cost that may be difficult to measure and impossible to reverse. Today’s communications are either robotic directives, such as ‘board meeting cancelled’, or ‘you’re fired’, or are coded messages that require cryptographers to decipher, such as TTYL and TLTR!

Writing is real.  It offers unrivaled intimacy. It can anger and soothes and deliver every emotion in between.

I am so struck when I read letters written by ordinary folks in the 18th and 19th centuries, many without any formal education, yet who write with such grace and poignancy. Yes, they were somewhat flowery, but they conveyed warmth and feelings that can never be transmitted on X, formerly known as Twitter. That they were written in longhand only adds to their authenticity and intimacy.  As an example, Abigail Adams's typical salutation when writing to her husband John was, My dearest friend.  Can you match that today?

Today, on those rare occasions when I receive a signed note in longhand, it is a singular experience. I picture the writer at his desk, pen in hand, composing a personal message just for me. The writer might be delighting in imagining the scene that will follow, when I am holding the envelope and contemplating its contents. After I open the letter, I hold it in my hands and absorb its words. Afterwards, I can stash it in a drawer to join with other companions that I have received in the past. Unlike the ethereal iCloud, the desk drawer is a real, live treasure chest that I can see and touch.

Master writers from the past created their opuses in long hand and in ink. How did they do it and get it right? Today, this would be an unfathomable task. Today, students and the rest of us write and research in a very different way, cutting and pasting our way to the final draft. I recall as a high school student learning that Hemingway would admonish his wife that when he was staring out the window, he was working.

I love words and respect those who use them well. When I am writing, I often wrestle to find the precise word. Is the right word stubborn or tenacious? Bossy or assertive? Timid or reserved?

While we physicians confront an enormous dose of life experiences every day, every one of us has something worth writing about. I’m sure that on any given day, we could send someone a note of love, a letter of apology, a prayer for healing or a description of an experience that moved us.

Is there a good reason why we are not doing this regularly?