Chapter One: The Abbaration

Chapter One: The Aberration

I like books. That goes without saying for a lot of people who know me, but it is still something that should be said. I like chapters in books. I like accomplishing small things, and getting to the end of a chapter is one of those small things. Though I read so quickly and so ferociously that really chapters just give me a point to stop and blink before continuing on.

This is not my first chapter. Nor is it my second, third, or even fourth. But it's also not my second book quite yet. This is an aberration. A novella, to be slipped neatly between the Scotland chapters and the Rest Of My Life.

I recently left Scotland. Left a gorgeous flat, brilliant friends, and what could very well be a bright future in Psychology, to return home and try my hand at medicine. I'm an optimist at heart and it shows, especially in a move such as that. Without a plan or idea really of what I was going to do I came home. Maybe I was going to train to be a paramedic. Maybe I was going to work for the American Red Cross, using once more the skills I learned working for their British counter-part. Or maybe I was just going to lie around and bemoan the fact that I didn't know what to do with myself. Thankfully I have friends who are more realistic than I.

I work now at a free medical clinic in Washington, DC. I'm technically the Medical Assistant, but I do a lot of things that aren't checking people's blood pressures and doing filing.

In my first one of these town-crier type blogs it was all about me. The second was about words and university and me. The third was about me and my writing. And the fourth is this. Yes, maybe I have an addiction, but working in a clinic could give me worse addictions. Coffee, for one.

So here chapter one of my novella, The Aberration. I don't know when the climax will be, or what literary themes will emerge, or even who the cast of characters will be. All I know is that I've already started out wrong. You should never write in the first person.