Dr Scott Zarcinas
by Dr. Scott Zarcinas
When I was shifting careers from medicine to writing in the early months of 2000, I had a dream in which I was being chased by evil criminals.
Normally I dream in colour, but this dream was in black and white, like the old movies. The criminals were shooting at me with pistols and I was running down the city streets in terror, wondering why they wanted me dead.
Then I noticed that I was carrying something in my arms—a baby wrapped in blankets.
Why do they want the baby? I wondered, fleeing in terror.
In a flash the answer came to me why the baby was so important, and why the criminals were willing to do everything they could to get their hands on her.
I sprang out of bed at 4 am, grabbed a wad of printing paper and a pen, and rushed to the kitchen table, writing frenetically as the story of Ananda downloaded into my head.
By 10 am that same morning, I had written the complete outline of the book, which I first wrote as a screenplay for a movie and then fleshed out over the next year into a manuscript for a novel.
As this was my first attempt at writing a medical thriller, I wrote everything I could about the story, going to extraordinary lengths to describe the medical procedures that were essential for the context of the story and going into far too much detail about the locations and actions and dialogues of the main characters.
When I finally typed, ‘The End’, the total word count of the manuscript exceeded 200,000 words, which was about 100,000 words too many.
“You like to tell the reader everything, don’t you?” my editor scrawled in the margins of the manuscript.
With no mercy whatsoever, she then proceeded to slash my sentences and kill off my characters like the grim reaper of fictional editing.
When she was finished, the final word count had shrivelled to just over 90,000 words, but it was a tighter, faster, and much better read. I held my breath and took the blows to my ego. It was a hard lesson in writing and editing—sometimes less is more.
Once the shock of losing half my manuscript had passed and I accepted the hard love of my editor, I realised that although my ideas were strong and my writing was solid, the story had been burdened and stifled by my own self-doubts, insecurities, and intellectual bias.
Once the manuscript had landed on her desk, her job as the editor was to sweep my fallibilities away and expose the real and more powerful story hidden beneath.
Similarly, her job as an editor is not too unlike that of a sculptor’s, whereby the deliberate and purposeful chip, chip, chipping away at the marble finally reveals the magnificent image inside.
The great Renaissance artist and sculptor, Michelangelo, embraced this ‘revelatory’ process in his most famous work, the sculpture of David.
To him, every block of stone had a statue inside it, and it was his job as the sculptor to reveal it. As he famously said,
“I saw the angel in the marble and I carved until I set him free.”
When Michelangelo looked at the massive block of marble, he didn’t just see a slab of stone: he saw David already inside.
He then set about chipping away the marble until ‘the angel’ emerged from it. In his mind, Michelangelo saw what was already there. He could visualise the end result, and then went to work on manifesting that vision and making it real.
The crucial point is that Michelangelo didn’t add anything to the marble—he simply removed that which wasn’t David.
This is a great analogy for parenting. As parents, we must help our children to see the beauty and perfection that is already inside them.
Then we must help our children to chip, chip, chip away at what is not them to reveal the angel inside them.
Our job as parents is to help our children reveal the truth of who they are by removing that which is not them.
The beauty of who our children are already exists within them. There is nothing to ‘add’ to their beauty, only reveal it.
We just need to help them see the angel in the marble and carve until they set themselves free.
About DoctorZed
Dr. Scott Zarcinas (aka DoctorZed) is a doctor, author, and transformologist. He helps aspirational people to be happier, more confident, decisive, and effective so they can reach their potential and become the person they are capable of being. He specialises in helping work-at-home fathers build their self-esteem and self-belief so they have the confidence and the courage to live a life that is true to themself. DoctorZed gives regular workshops, seminars, presentations, and courses to support those who want to make a positive difference through positive action. Connect with him at:
F: www.facebook.com/YNSOB.by.Dr.Scott.Zarcinas/
T: www.twitter.com/DrScottZarcinas
L: www.linkedin.com/in/dr-scott-zarcinas-6572399/
