Chapter 1 and a bit: Footnotes

I told myself I was going to update on Saturdays. That when I had something good to write that I would keep it until the following Saturday, or that if I had nothing I would force myself to write at least a few lines on empty minds and emptier waiting rooms. But on a Saturday.

So, what am I doing writing on a Tuesday? Unlike the famous line of it being five o'clock somewhere, and that shadow on your face being right on time, nowhere is it Saturday right now. But never fear, I am not really here. These are just footnotes and explanations that it occurs to me I should have written before.

First: the fact that I am referring to this as a novella. Why? I don't really know. It's hardly an auto biography, given my penchant for long-winded tales and not-quite truths. But it's not quite fiction, either. I'm just presenting what's happening in the light of my mind. And I like the word novella. Novel sounds so drab, a Sisyphus rock to be conquered both in writing and in reading, and novelette sounds as though it wears frilly pinafores. Novella is charmingly adolescent, light on the dance floor, and caught perfectly between the baby books and the ancient tomes. So her name is Novella.

Second: What the hell am I doing? Who cares if I write this or not? Well, first of all, my mother, you lackluster, lackadaisical, lumbering whatever you are. Mum wants to know what I’m doing. And, theoretically, so do my scores of aunts and cousins and other obligated family members. So this is for them.

But it’s also for me. I get the feeling that I’m on the edge of something grand and that if I don’t do this I’ll look back and wonder why, and what that fantastic thing said was, and how I felt when I saw my first patient independently of my boss. That and I really need to get my ass in gear and keep writing.

Not that many footnotes this time, dear readers, so I will end it there.