From Nurse to Novelist: How One Occupation Feeds the Other

I was in my 20s and working as an ICU nurse in Boston when I began my MFA in creative writing. Fairleigh Dickinson University was the only program to which I’d had the courage to apply, as they based their admission solely on the writing sample—not requiring letters of recommendation like many other graduate schools. Though nursing was a career I loved and one I’d freely chosen, I had also always harbored a love of writing, often penning stories in my free time. Increasingly, with each passing year, I felt creatively stymied by medicine and grew more doubtful of my writing capabilities.

(What Is an MFA Program?)

FDU’s program was a low-residency one, so for two consecutive Januarys, I temporarily set aside my scrubs and jammed wool sweaters, hats, and books into my suitcase. The 10-day session took place at Wroxton, FDU’s campus in England. It was a beautiful, sprawling manor otherwise empty for winter break. We spent our days immersed in the study of literature, creative thoughts firing off in our heads; at night, we gathered at the smoke-filled pub at the end of the road to discuss writing and life over room-temperature beers. The pace was slow, indulgent, and absolutely exhilarating. It was a far cry from the frenetic and regimented hospital rhythm to which I’d grown accustomed—inured, even.

The 10-day period came to a close, and I returned to my nursing life. On my days off, I chipped away at the remote classwork, scribbling down stories that continued to consume me. When I wrote a last sentence, edited a story a final time, I felt proud, like I was finally growing into my writer identity, one distinct from nursing. My stories were works of fiction, so vastly different from my current line of work—or so I thought.

Then, to my surprise, a writing professor pointed out the medical theme woven throughout nearly all my short stories. There were characters I’d written with underlying ailments, a woman who fantastically transforms into a fish much to the doctors’ bewilderment, a pregnancy driving the plot. Nursing had subconsciously followed me onto the page.

In retrospect, I shouldn’t have been surprised. There’s a humanity that exists in the work of a nurse, and writing—to me—is an attempt to capture what it means to be human. As a nurse you are compelled to care for people during their most vulnerable moments; as a writer, you are compelled to give vulnerable moments language. Over the course of my nursing career, I’ve encountered many medical professionals whom I’ve come to think of as “closet creatives”—people engaging in creative outlets to grapple with and process the emotional weight of their work. They might play the violin, crochet, start a community group, sing, paint. I, too, was a “closet creative” before I understood I’d made that choice.

It’s been years since my MFA program, but now I freely lean into the intersection between medicine and writing. In my latest novel, The Society, I take it a step further: I created a protagonist who, much like I did, moves to Boston in her 20s to work as a nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital. Taylor Adams is a bit lost—and I was able to tap into my own feelings of having been an outsider, and the strange reality of caring for acutely ill patients while trying to have fun as a young person in a new city. This juxtaposition between life ending and life beginning was brought forth as I have Taylor become fixated on a beautiful, elegant patient, Vivian Lawrence, who rolls into the ER one night with a traumatic brain injury. Who was she before? Taylor wonders. How does one get to be a “Vivian” in life?

As a nurse, these questions would remain largely one-sided. But as a writer, I’m allowed creative liberties. So, Vivian becomes the second protagonist in my novel: a 44-year-old antique store owner hospitalized after a mysterious fall tied to a secret society. We follow her POV as well as Taylor’s to discover how they both become entangled in the Knox secret society.

It has been illuminating to allow myself the freedom to write with my medical knowledge bleeding through. Nursing and writing need not be separate, as I once thought. In nursing, we are taught to take a holistic view of the patient; it follows that a nurse should be given the grace to be viewed through the same lens.

One gets to be a Vivian—and Taylor—in life by living life, and I’d like to think I’ve done them justice.   

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