As a young student I excelled in languages, art, music and English. I started college with an open mind and  considered music, specifically piano, as a career. Knowing in my heart I was not a concert pianist, I feared my lot as a musician would be as an accompanist for performers or working from my home or studio, alone with young students, which seemed too solitary a career.

My music theory professor and choir director both encouraged me to pursue music as a profession. The theory class taught me about music’s mathematical foundations. Perhaps this is why I always received “As” in math? Yet I craved the human interaction not afforded by hours and hours of solitary practice in the University’s practice studios. When my beloved piano professor passed away suddenly of a brain aneurysm at the age of 30, I switched to the people path and pursued nursing as a career.

Nursing provided me opportunities to meet people from many different walks of life and cultures, and to hear their stories as they faced health and life challenges. It was an honor and privilege to share poignant times in their lives and to meet their families.

In trauma/surgical intensive care nursing I found that I could master medical technologies and the skills to use them. However, most of the patients I cared for were unconscious and unable to communicate. I decided to move into another area of nursing, public health, and this became my true love.

Public health nursing taught me the importance of being flexible, accepting people on their own terms of home and culture, and learning to translate complex medical and health information into language that everyday people could understand apply in their own lives.

I remember teaching a transient man how to apply a dressing in the cleanest manner possible once he got back on the train. I remember caring for an elderly former midwife from the South who said she couldn’t believe “a white nurse is ‘waitin’ on me.’” I remember counseling an elderly Filipino bachelor how to adapt his daily meal eating out in Seattle’s International District to his prescribed low sodium diet. “Never,” he said, “has anyone talked to me about how I should eat healthy in my own way.” Public health nursing was indeed a creative field, an art in understanding people and their needs, and translating information from medicine and science so that people could live healthier lives.

Mid-career I switched from nursing into healthcare communications. In this hectic arena I tried to put relationships first and foremost for my employing organizations, whether in nonprofit, university or industry settings. Clients, students, legislators, alumnae, and customers came first in my order of priorities. In meeting the demands of all these employers I often found myself sitting alone in an office or cubicle at my computer, pounding out the prose—often late into the night at home.

It seems my career has come full circle, from an 18-year-old at the piano keyboard for four-hour stretches in the practice studios to a healthcare/science communicator writing with my PC at home, and in libraries and coffee houses with my laptop

It seems that walking the tightrope between art and science is a way of life for me.

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I recently learned that a former colleague, “C,” had metastatic lung cancer. I hadn’t seen or talked with her for years after our time working together at the University of Washington. I decided to email her and set up a visit if she was up for it, and I’m so glad I did.

Before my visit C told me she had her head shaved, so I was a little nervous to see her. She greeted me at the door in her wheelchair, looking very perky and wearing a tasteful turban. She said it was so nice to see me and said, “Can I pour you anything?” As she fixed my drink, a juicy “ade” that her grandchildren like, I offered to help, but she was very independent. As we talked, I thought, “C is dying of cancer and she is cheering me up!”

“Madame Editor” is the nickname I gave her. She had to approve all newsletter content I wrote for the UW School of Nursing, along with the Dean. I gave C the name Madame Editor because I respected her keen intellect and wit. Her edits always made sense and she respected the writer’s tone and voice, as well as the School’s brand. When she made edits she always provided an explanation, which then led to a conversation about healthcare, philosophy, words and life. I often lingered in her office just to have glimpses into her insights. She always spoke very fondly of her son and his wife.

During my visit Madame Editor told me that she was happy to have had two years of retirement before she became sick. She could “get up with the light” rather than having to make the dark, often damp, commute to work. She had recently completed a project dyeing Easter eggs naturally, using juices, red wine and various plants. “I don’t know why, but I saw this project in a magazine and I just had to do it,” she said.

Madame Editor’s passing saddens me, and yet I am so blessed by her intelligence and kindness. She reminded me that she once called me to ask advice when her father was dying. She recalled, “You said that even though someone is failing, they are often capable of making decisions for themselves. Ask your dad what he wants.”

In tears, she said it worked for their family.

Madame Editor, a group of your compadres in UW communications recently met at Ivar’s Salmon House to celebrate your wonderful life and all the gifts you gave us. You are truly missed.

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You know how wonderful it is when you discover writing that draws you in from the first paragraph and transports you to another time, place and culture? Nancy Rawles’s novel Crawfish Dreams is such a book for me. Set in post-riots Watts in the 1980s, the story weaves together the characters’ experiences living black and Catholic in the U.S., their Creole/Haitian language and traditions, and the wonders of creole cuisine.

Rawles spoke at a recent daylong workshop for writers co-sponsored by The Seattle Times and The Poynter Institute. Her melodious, powerful voice transfixed the audience of several hundred people packed into the Microsoft Auditorium of the Seattle Public Library. Each word had its own power as it rolled off her tongue. Even the overhead buzz of a rheostat light did not diminish the eloquence of her presentation.

Throughout the day we heard from Rawles and numerous other prolific, award-winning authors and journalists as they shared wisdom about their craft. One thing became clear. No matter what one’s passion for writing, without discipline, it is nothing. Speakers emphasized the importance of setting and sticking to writing goals.

A novelist and journalist told how he motivates himself to get out of bed to write every morning before the household awakens, knowing one of his wife’s humongous, homemade chocolate cookies is waiting for him on his keyboard. Another underscored the importance of setting daily goals and sticking to them, whether it is to write a page a day or an hour a day. A Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter spoke of his obsession with filing. If he observes something that could make a good story while immersed in work on another, he journals what he witnessed and carefully files it away for the future.

Those of us who “write for a living” may argue that our juice runs dry after a full workweek cranking out copy for somebody else. Our responsibilities to family and community must come first, we say. To the writing experts’ point, however, these excuses are just that. Our own lack of discipline is our worst enemy.

So dust off the short story you finished years ago and arm yourself with The Writer’s Market to send out queries. Decide if the neophyte novel, pages dusty and worn and still under the bed, is something to continue or to hold onto as a penance for your own lack of discipline. I speak these words to myself. Only you know what your self admonishments must be.

But for her discipline, I would not have the joy of reading Rawles’s Crawfish Dreams, which is only one of several books in her portfolio. Not only is she a prolific writer and speaker, but also a public school teacher who “works for a living.”

Rawles is a true testament to writing and the art of discipline.

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