Atul Gawande, "The Unlikely Writer"

I am reading a profile of Atul Gawande in the Harvard Magazine (random, I know) and found that he had some interesting things to say about writing. I know Gawande is a little bit off topic of a writer as far as our blog here is concerned, but I love the type of medical writing that he does. It is very...humanistic, touching, and a little like an investigative story every time.

Gawande saves his writing for the hours between 7 and 11 a.m. and 4 and 7 p.m. to "capitalize on the body’s circadian rhythms." I have a day job that kind of prevents me from doing this, but I would love to know what this "circadian rhythms" business has to do with my writing. Anybody?

The next thing that stood out to me was what Gawande has to say about writing:

Once a college sophomore with little interest in literature, Gawande now says he thinks in stories and feels a compulsion to write. In fact, he recommends that everyone do a bit of writing. “It makes no difference whether you write a paper for a medical journal, five paragraphs for a website, or a collection of poetry,” he said during a 2005 HMS commencement speech:

"…by putting your writing out to an audience, even a small one, you connect yourself to something larger than yourself….An audience is a community. The published word is a declaration of membership in that community, and also of concern to contribute something meaningful to it. "

I like the idea of this community, especially when so many writers see their craft as a lonely sport.