Page 7 - Mecklenburg_Medicine_March-2020

Save the Date! Member News

MCMS Tips for Submitting Articles to
Mecklenburg Medicine Magazine
Membership Meeting
By Mark Ethridge, Author and MCMS Consultant
Featuring Speaker
Last month, we solicited your articles for publication in Mecklenburg
Robyn Stacy-Humphries, MD Medicine — stories about your hobbies, your travels, your profession, your
charity and community work.
Thursday, May 7 n 6 p.m.
Whitehead Manor Conference Center This month, we bring you seven tips on how to get from merely having a story
topic — let’s say your metallurgy hobby — to an actual story.
Upcoming Meetings 1. Start by deciding your thesis, your point. Is it that metallurgy presents
& Events
challenges similar to practicing medicine? That metallurgy is the perfect
MARCH escape? That it has taught you life lessons? That it is a dying art? Identify the
insight the reader will gain from the story.
n Tuesday, March 3 n Thursday, March 19
Charlotte Pediatric Society CAMGMA social You’ve just achieved the most difficult part. Deciding the point of the story
Membership meeting Legion Brewing is where most story-writing efforts stop. People speak of having writer’s block.
Legion Brewing SouthPark 4 p.m. There is no such thing; writer’s block simply is a failure to think through what
6 p.m. you want to say. Keep thinking. If you’re stuck, imagine that you’re sitting
n Monday, March 23 down to tell your story to a friend.
n Friday, March 6 May magazine deadline. 2. How do you begin? The beginning of the story can be as straightforward as,
Charlotte Dental Society “I have found my hobby of metallurgy mimics life.” Or it can be indirect, as
conference n Monday, March 23 “Shadows from the glow of my welding torch danced on the walls of the dark
Harris Conference Center MCMS Board meeting room, as fleeting and shifting as life itself. The shadows reminded me of all
7:30 a.m.-4 p.m. 1112 Harding Place, Ste. 200 I’d learned from metallurgy, insights into life itself.”
5:15 p.m. – dinner 3. Once the beginning is decided, the rest can be a simple linear narrative or a
n Tuesday, March 10 5:45 p.m. – meeting point-by-point defense of the story’s thesis, generally with the most important
MedLink meeting points first. In journalism, that’s known as the inverted-pyramid style.
4828 Airport Center Parkway n Friday, March 27 4. Keep sentences to 30 words or less and paragraphs to no more than three
Bldg. E, Conference Room 7 Child Health Committee sentences. The reasons have nothing to do with traditional grammar but the
8:30 a.m. meeting need for the reading eye to have white space relieving solid blocks of print.
MCMS office 5. Adverbs are not your friend. Describe with a word picture, don’t tell. “I
n Tuesday, March 17 7:30 a.m. hopped like a monkey when the hot torch scorched my foot,” not “The
Charlotte Dental Society torch burned me painfully.”
Membership meeting n Tuesday, March 31 6. Invoke the senses to draw the reader in and build credibility: see, touch,
Myers Park Country Club Women Physicians Section hear, taste smell. The goal is to make the reader experience those senses
6 p.m. Meet & Greet through your words.
Red Rocks SouthPark 7. Make every word count. Most of our writing is filled with unnecessary words.
n Thursday, March 19 6-8 p.m. We plan for the future as if it were possible to plan for the past. We stand up, as
Welton Society Spring if there were some other way to stand. We shrug our shoulders as if there were
Luncheon some other body part to shrug. Every word must have a reason for existing.
Charlotte Country Club Writing is powerful when it contains no fluff, when all words carry meaning.
11:30 a.m. 8. Now, tell us your stories.

Welton Society Spring Luncheon

“CBD Oil Truth or Consequences”

Speakers: Farrukh L. Sair, MD, and Nicole Burnette

Thursday, March 19 n 11:30 a.m.
Charlotte Country Club

RSVP to jotto@meckmed.org

Mecklenburg Medicine • March 2020 | 7