Marc Wagner, Emergent Identity
I told myself that if I wanted to write a book, then I should at least be able to write one measly 5-700 word blog entry each week… if I couldn’t at least do that, then I had no business even dreaming about being a “real” author someday. And when I put it that way, it sort of pissed me off. - Marc Wagner
Marc describes himself as “a local writer, musician, and physician who loves words and music, windsurfing, and going on adventures with Janine and the kids.” He blogs regularly for his church at ConnXions and has written for reviews for Spectrum: Adventist Forum.
I met Marc and his wife Janine on one of our first visits to Bend Oregon because he happened to go to Medical School with my step-brother who set us up on a lunch date. Years later when we finally made it to Bend Marc was one of the first real friends I made and I’ve appreciated his passion for life ever since.
I wanted to interview Marc because he is in transition almost constantly. This is a trend I see in web professionals all the time, myself included, and I wanted to explore that in a completely different context to help understand the transitions in my own life a little better.
Marc is a doctor, who writes. In any creative field there is a tension between how one decides to pay the bills and what someone does to release creative energy. The second part is often seen as a hobby and not taken seriously, especially by others. As we grow older there is constant tension that forces transitions in both aspects of our identities.
So when I found out that Marc had completed a goal of his by self-publishing There and Back Again: Finding Your Spiritual Home, Right Where You Left It, I knew I had to find out more about that.
Marc, congrats on getting your first book published! Its been inspiring to watch the process. Would you describe yourself as a writer who also happens to be a doctor or a doctor turned writer or something else?
I was a writer long before I became a doctor. I remember when I was 12 years old I embarked on my own version of Lord of the Rings, without reading the books. Somehow the artwork from the Return of the King cartoon really got me going. I got about 30 pages into my version of the story and then stopped because it was such a shameless knock off. Or at least I supposed it was. In my file cabinet, I still have those crumpled pages, smudged with fingerprints and my #2 pencil scrawl.
Since those early days I have never really gone very long without journaling. I was fortunate enough to travel extensively in my teens and twenties and it fueled my imagination, almost forced me to write, just to keep up: The Tower of London, the Berlin Wall, Arc de Triomphe, Roman Aqueducts, the Baths of Caracalla, the Alps, Hong Kong, Thailand, Taiwan, trekking the Anapurnas of Nepal, my brother’s wedding on the Black Sea… You’ve just got to write that stuff down. I remember tramping through Nepal, writing volumes on a tiny keyboard attached to my Palm Pilot (not that I still use a Palm Pilot, you understand, but it worked great because it ran on two AAA batteries for days on end—the best high mountain substitute for a laptop I’ve found yet.)
I know that considering yourself a writer has been a challenge at times. How did you finally come around to being comfortable with the idea that you are a writer?
Writers write; that’s what they do. So if you’re writing regularly, you’re a writer, by definition. You don’t have to be a published author. Every author was first a writer.
Having said that, there is an emotional identity that lags behind the mechanical recognition that you are a writer. It’s an emergent identity. Not a choice. It comes by doing, like hunger sometimes comes with eating. You sort of bite into it and then get into it, and the feedback tastes good, and at some point, you say, “I think I have a book in me.”
What was the biggest obstacle in getting the book written and how did you overcome it?
The biggest obstacle in writing “There and Back Again” was writing when I didn’t feel like it, when I didn’t have anything to say. This is where setting small goals was helpful. I told myself that if I wanted to write a book, then I should at least be able to write one measly 5-700 word blog entry each week, which translates into about 100 pages of standard book text a year. Now, of course, a one-hundred page book is a very short book. And I figured if I couldn’t at least do that, then I had no business even dreaming about being a “real” author someday. And when I put it that way, it sort of pissed me off. So I wrote, whether I felt like it or not, just to spite the naysayer in me.
What part of the book are you most proud of?
I’m most proud of the memoir-essay, “Finding Father”, which begins the book, because it’s the closest I’ve come to good story telling. “There and Back Again” was really a personal essay project, and while I’m good at the essay form, what I really want to be when I grow up is a conduit for good stories, well told.
What’s your next writing project?
My next project? A book of short stories, definitely. It will probably contain elements of essay, but I really want to get my story game on. This is a much more daunting project because I feel there is just so much I have to learn: dialog, plot, setting, action, exposition, each an art form in and of itself. It’s overwhelming. In fact, I’m sitting here thinking that maybe what I should do is take one story that features one skill, say dialog, and really get that right, then do one story that features a sense of place and get that right, then a story that feature narrative action, and so on. I don’t know if that
will work since every good story contains multiple elements. But it’s a thought.
I’m encouraged as I look over my old journals, though. There are already some short stories in them. I’ll probably start there. Editing an old idea is easier than coming up with a new one. And my journals are full of autobiographical snapshots that will probably serve as the mainstay of material for the next book anyway. As the adage goes, write what you know.
