Character Selection

When I sit down to write, I have to decide what subject to write about and which characters I should choose from. Hundreds and maybe thousands have passed through my life as a child and an adult. While in school, working at Walworth in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, college at several campuses at Penn State University, and while I worked as a nurse at Frick Hospital in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania. Some were relatives, some were friends, and some were just ships passing in the night.

Some of the people were those that I worked with for years and years, some were patients, some were physicians, and then there were the many patients that I met. Some patients I met only once and for brief instances, like those who came to the emergency department while I worked there for five years. Others, I took care of them night after night as I worked the eleven to seven shift. The turnover of patients came faster and usually it was of shorter in duration as I was a nursing supervisor. That position lasted for twenty-six years. I can’t understand how I handled the stresses involved for so long.

I’ve shared many of their stories before in my posts and I hope to share many more. I have joyful tales with happy ending and ones that ones that still sting and hurt when they come to mind. I do have some memoirs written and I hope to pull them all together, edit them, and publish them in a book. It is a daunting task, not only writing them, but the actual placing them in some kind of order. Once the order of the stories have been established, then comes the reading and rereading to look for misspellings, misplaced punctuation, and correct wording.

With my other books, I had to read each short story at least seven or eight times, then when the order was settled, I read my books a minimal of two times before my editor would allow them to go to be printed. I may go to my archives and release a few more tales of the hospital or my years in the Navy.