Scott D. McLean, MD

In January last year, now 16 months ago, I decided to retire from medicine and start another adventure – a full commitment to writing. Such excessive confidence, despite the many warning signs! I’d be better off with a dusting of ADHD, anything to distract mee from doggedly pushing forward to my doom.

Now I am registered and tucked in to an MFA in fiction at Fairfield University, my first residency to begin in mid-July. My first writing assignment is due in a week. It’s not ready, and I am rediscovering my stunning capacity for procrastination. This short story, whose qualities seem to be deteriorating with every revision, languishes in my journal. The pages are folded lengthwise, the character of the pages is nearly canine, considering the dog ears. Well, it will serve as a fine benchmark, perhaps. I can only speculate that in two years my kind interlocutors will comment about how much my writing has improved.

New vocabulary:

coppice – a noun, an area of woodland in which trees or shrubs are periodically cut back to ground level to stimulate growth. This can also be called a copse. That’s a word I thought I knew, but didn’t. The living stumps are called stools. If cut above a man’s height, these would b called pollards.

dryad, bosky, supernal … It’s hard to go wrong by larning nw words, vn th ons you’r making up frsh bcaus th on your kyborad has givn up all hop. And yt, w still hop.