Heather Furnas struggles to survive a hostile, macho surgical culture to become a surgeon and mother.
2.In 200 words or less, sketch the antagonist or antagonistic force in your story. Keep in mind their goals, their background, and the ways they react to the world about them.
At the age of 15, Heather Furnas dreams of becoming a surgeon after watching her father operate as a Flying Doctor in East Africa. During medical school she questions her dream after being introduced to the sexual harassment and verbal cruelty woven into the U.S. surgical culture. Just five percent of surgeons are women, but when Furnas sees one of them operate for the first time, she reaffirms her goal.
As an intern working 120-hour weeks, she feels the loss of her old life, but she is proud of her growing skills. Working under a professor hostile to women, she slips into a depression. She is close to quitting when the surgical resident she later marries resuscitates her spirit.
After residency, Furnas is pregnant when a doctor asks her to operate on his AIDS patient. Through a accidental needle stick infecting her, she can infect her unborn child.
The year is 1993, and no one survives AIDS. The law prevents doctors from refusing to care for AIDS patients, never considering that a surgeon might be pregnant.
Years later, when her children are grown, Furnas works within surgical leadership to improve conditions for women.
3.Create a breakout title (list several options, not more than three, and revisit to edit as needed.
“African Prayer: A Surgeon’s Memoir”
“Adventures with a Knife: A Surgeon’s Journey from East Africa to Stanford”
“Blood and Milk: A Surgeon’s Memoir”
4.Develop two smart comparables for your novel. This is a good opportunity to immerse yourself in your chosen genre. Who compares to you? And why?
1.Letter to a Young Female Physician: Notes from a Medical Life, by Suzanne Koven. 2021. W. W. Norton & Company, New York. Koven writes a deeply personal, vulnerable story about her career as an internist. She experiences challenges unique to women, such as complications of her first pregnancy, just as I did, likely related to her long work hours. Like me, she is overwhelmed with work and balancing the demands of her children. She receives help from a therapist, and I find relief by extricating myself from unfunded, sleep-robbing emergency call.
Dr. Koven’s story occurs in the Northeast, in contrast to mine, which draws from my itinerate life. I am often an outsider looking into different cultures, observing parallels between East African tribal rituals and U.S. surgical traditions. Also, because I am the victim in an attempted murder, the near victim in a helicopter crach, and the expert witness in a murder trial, my book contains more personal drama.
2. Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed, by Lori Gottlieb. 2019. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, New York. Gottlieb weaves stories of treating her patients as a psychotherapist with her own experience as a psychotherapy patient. She explains concepts and historical facts about her specialty, as I do about surgery, to deepen the reader’s understanding of what she does. Her book takes the reader into the therapy sessions with patients, and mine takes the reader through surgical cases in the operating room.
Our books differ in that the field of psychotherapy is welcoming to women, and surgery is not. Gottlieb focuses on her professional life and her experience in psychotherapy after a breakup, revealing no professional challenges to being a woman. In contrast, my story shows how surgery’s male-oriented traditions have impacted me both as a woman and as a mother.
5.Write your own hook line (logline) with conflict and core wound following the format above. Though you may not have one now, keep in mind this is a great developmental tool. In other words, you best begin focusing on this if you're serious about commercial publication.
In the world of surgery, where men make the rules, Heather Furnas fights to survive in a culture that belittles femininity and stigmatizes pregnancy.
6.Sketch out the conditions for the inner conflict your protagonist will have. Why will they feel in turmoil? Conflicted? Anxious? Sketch out one hypothetical scenario in the story wherein this would be the case--consider the trigger and the reaction.
An AIDS patient’s doctor asks me to evaluate an open wound for surgical coverage. The patient’s exposed femoral vessels pulsate, threatening a fatal bleed. In 1993, before effective treatment, no one survived AIDS. Through an accidental needle stick, my risk of contracting the disease would be double that of having anal sex with an HIV-positive partner.
Any doctor who refused to care for a contagious patient could be charged with professional misconduct. My professors had driven the rule so deep into my ethical fiber that I never considered backing out—even though I was five months pregnant, and if I contracted the disease, I could infect my unborn child.
The rule made sense under normal circumstances. Throughout history, physicians had put their health at risk to care for others. Doctors who refused to do so magnified the danger for the rest. But the rule-making pundits made no allowance for pregnancy.
That night, my mind filled with images of needles burrowing into my flesh and scalpel blades slicing my fingers. I was on the verge of hyperventilating, and I hugged my belly, trying to calm myself. Sleep deprivation would make a needle stick more likely.
For years, I had studied and trained, and I had only just achieved my childhood dream, changing lives with a scalpel. Now I was trapped in a nightmare, playing Russian roulette with the life of my unborn child.
Next, likewise sketch a hypothetical scenario for the "secondary conflict" involving the social environment. Will this involve family? Friends? Associates? What is the nature of it?
I was a medical student on my first clinical rotation when my intern, Dan, warned me that our new resident, Alex, didn’t like women. I would make myself bullet-proof, I thought, reading about my patients’ diseases, knowing every clinical detail, and working hard.
Two days in, my plan seemed to be working. All was calm.
On Alex’s third day, he interrogated me about a patient’s medical condition. He concluded with “Do you know anything about your patient’s disease?” and succeeded in shattering my confidence.
Two days later, as he reviewed my chart notes, he exploded when he saw “meq,” an abbreviation correctly written as “mEq.” After his outburst, I speed-walked to the bathroom and burst into tears.
The next day, I met with the department chair to request permission to change teams. He said he was aware Alex verbally abused women, but the department rule forbade team changes. Frustrated that the chair failed to confront Alex and refused to give me relief, I burst into tears. I was furious with myself for being a stereotypical emotional female, but I got me my wish.
7.Sketch out your setting in detail. What makes it interesting enough, scene by scene, to allow for uniqueness and cinema in your narrative and story? Please don't simply repeat what you already have which may well be too quiet. You can change it. That's why you're here! Start now. Imagination is your best friend, and be aggressive with it.
[Prologue: In a hospital]
The wound looked like a large, tri-tip steak left in the hot sun for days. Traversing the raw flesh, the inguinal ligament shone like a satin ribbon. Just beneath, the exposed femoral vessels pulsated, threatening a fatal bleed.
I approached the patient’s bedside, cradling his hospital chart in my arms. Dried saliva clung to his lips, and his pale skin hung from his jutting cheek bones. If I hadn’t known his diagnosis, I would have thought he was sixty years old.
[Scene change]
Stepping into the hallway, I zipped around a patient taking a stroll with his I.V. pole. I could feel my heart race as I thought about my patient’s surgery, and I wanted to flee the hospital, but I still had to write my consultation note. As I headed to the nurses’ station, an overhead speaker paged a doctor STAT to the I.C.U., and a woman in a white coat speed-walked in that direction. I dropped into a chair, opened the chart, and wrote Plastic Surgery Consultation Note. A wave of nausea washed over me.
[Chapter 1: Scene change]
I soared toward the Land Rover’s ceiling and then slammed into the seat, my long hair swirling in the East African wind. Yanking my seatbelt tighter, I anchored my summer dress with one hand, clutched the dashboard with the other, and pressed my feet into the floorboard, bracing myself for the next jolt. To my right, Dr. Silvio Prandoni wrestled the steering wheel to force the tires into the paired muddy ruts snaking between walls of six-foot grass. The tires jerked to the right as he released his grip, and he pushed his black-framed glasses up his sunburnt nose. An instant later, he pulled the tires into submission, the engine bellowing in protest.
It felt good to be back in Kenya’s Northern Frontier District. The year was 1979, and I was taking time off from college to work with Dr. Prandoni for two months.
[Scene change]
We lurched to a stop. Looming fifteen feet ahead was an enormous bull elephant charging straight at us trumpeting full blast, his long curved tusks tilting upward, his ears flapping like flags. I picked up my backpack and clutched it to my chest like a shield.
Dr. Prandoni thrust the gear shift into reverse and pressed the gas pedal to the floor. The vehicle vibrated, rocking forward and backward, but the tires spun nowhere. The elephant was now six feet away, and my heart was pumping like a piston.
Suddenly, the tires grabbed the earth, and we inched backwards, throwing clumps of dirt, until we gained solid traction. As we retreated, the elephant lumbered off into the grass, his trunk swinging like a pendulum. I inhaled, feeling the rush of air fill my lungs, and I set my backpack down on the floor.
[Scene change]
We rode in silence, and I stared out the window, admiring the beauty of the savanna. A herd of thin-striped Grevy’s zebras ran at the sound of our purring Land Rover. I craned my neck, watching them until they slipped out of sight. Twenty minutes later, an African boy herding goats waved as we drove by.
“There’s Matthew’s Range,” Dr. Prandoni said, pointing to a series of jagged peaks ahead. “We’re almost there.”
Soon we approached a small sketch of a village surrounded by flat-topped thorn trees and dry, red earth. The main road was the only road, and its surface bore more footprints than tire tracks. We turned into a compound of white stucco buildings—Wamba Mission.
[Scene change]
A dusty path led to the church, its gray façade sweeping upward like a bridge span topped with a cross. In front, a dozen boys in well-worn blue-and-white school uniforms ran about, laughing and yelling, their dark skin and black eyelashes coated in chalky dust. The girls’ secondary school stood next to the church, and on the way to the hospital, we passed the nursing school.
“We make our own plaster for casts,” Dr. Prandoni said, pointing to a patio covered with white strips. “Sister Annunciata dips the pieces of cloth into plaster of Paris and dries them in the sun.”
[There are multiple scenes in the book in Kenya, Boston, California, El Salvador—in my home, outdoors, in the African bush, in hospital operating rooms and emergency department, in a courtroom, and in a conference room.]
New York Pitch Conference - September 2021
in New York Write to Pitch 2023 and 2024
Posted
New York Pitch Conference:
Seven Short Assignments:
1. Write your story statement:
Heather Furnas struggles to survive a hostile, macho surgical culture to become a surgeon and mother.
2. In 200 words or less, sketch the antagonist or antagonistic force in your story. Keep in mind their goals, their background, and the ways they react to the world about them.
At the age of 15, Heather Furnas dreams of becoming a surgeon after watching her father operate as a Flying Doctor in East Africa. During medical school she questions her dream after being introduced to the sexual harassment and verbal cruelty woven into the U.S. surgical culture. Just five percent of surgeons are women, but when Furnas sees one of them operate for the first time, she reaffirms her goal.
As an intern working 120-hour weeks, she feels the loss of her old life, but she is proud of her growing skills. Working under a professor hostile to women, she slips into a depression. She is close to quitting when the surgical resident she later marries resuscitates her spirit.
After residency, Furnas is pregnant when a doctor asks her to operate on his AIDS patient. Through a accidental needle stick infecting her, she can infect her unborn child.
The year is 1993, and no one survives AIDS. The law prevents doctors from refusing to care for AIDS patients, never considering that a surgeon might be pregnant.
Years later, when her children are grown, Furnas works within surgical leadership to improve conditions for women.
3. Create a breakout title (list several options, not more than three, and revisit to edit as needed.
“African Prayer: A Surgeon’s Memoir”
“Adventures with a Knife: A Surgeon’s Journey from East Africa to Stanford”
“Blood and Milk: A Surgeon’s Memoir”
4. Develop two smart comparables for your novel. This is a good opportunity to immerse yourself in your chosen genre. Who compares to you? And why?
1. Letter to a Young Female Physician: Notes from a Medical Life, by Suzanne Koven. 2021. W. W. Norton & Company, New York. Koven writes a deeply personal, vulnerable story about her career as an internist. She experiences challenges unique to women, such as complications of her first pregnancy, just as I did, likely related to her long work hours. Like me, she is overwhelmed with work and balancing the demands of her children. She receives help from a therapist, and I find relief by extricating myself from unfunded, sleep-robbing emergency call.
Dr. Koven’s story occurs in the Northeast, in contrast to mine, which draws from my itinerate life. I am often an outsider looking into different cultures, observing parallels between East African tribal rituals and U.S. surgical traditions. Also, because I am the victim in an attempted murder, the near victim in a helicopter crach, and the expert witness in a murder trial, my book contains more personal drama.
2. Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed, by Lori Gottlieb. 2019. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, New York. Gottlieb weaves stories of treating her patients as a psychotherapist with her own experience as a psychotherapy patient. She explains concepts and historical facts about her specialty, as I do about surgery, to deepen the reader’s understanding of what she does. Her book takes the reader into the therapy sessions with patients, and mine takes the reader through surgical cases in the operating room.
Our books differ in that the field of psychotherapy is welcoming to women, and surgery is not. Gottlieb focuses on her professional life and her experience in psychotherapy after a breakup, revealing no professional challenges to being a woman. In contrast, my story shows how surgery’s male-oriented traditions have impacted me both as a woman and as a mother.
5. Write your own hook line (logline) with conflict and core wound following the format above. Though you may not have one now, keep in mind this is a great developmental tool. In other words, you best begin focusing on this if you're serious about commercial publication.
In the world of surgery, where men make the rules, Heather Furnas fights to survive in a culture that belittles femininity and stigmatizes pregnancy.
6. Sketch out the conditions for the inner conflict your protagonist will have. Why will they feel in turmoil? Conflicted? Anxious? Sketch out one hypothetical scenario in the story wherein this would be the case--consider the trigger and the reaction.
An AIDS patient’s doctor asks me to evaluate an open wound for surgical coverage. The patient’s exposed femoral vessels pulsate, threatening a fatal bleed. In 1993, before effective treatment, no one survived AIDS. Through an accidental needle stick, my risk of contracting the disease would be double that of having anal sex with an HIV-positive partner.
Any doctor who refused to care for a contagious patient could be charged with professional misconduct. My professors had driven the rule so deep into my ethical fiber that I never considered backing out—even though I was five months pregnant, and if I contracted the disease, I could infect my unborn child.
The rule made sense under normal circumstances. Throughout history, physicians had put their health at risk to care for others. Doctors who refused to do so magnified the danger for the rest. But the rule-making pundits made no allowance for pregnancy.
That night, my mind filled with images of needles burrowing into my flesh and scalpel blades slicing my fingers. I was on the verge of hyperventilating, and I hugged my belly, trying to calm myself. Sleep deprivation would make a needle stick more likely.
For years, I had studied and trained, and I had only just achieved my childhood dream, changing lives with a scalpel. Now I was trapped in a nightmare, playing Russian roulette with the life of my unborn child.
Next, likewise sketch a hypothetical scenario for the "secondary conflict" involving the social environment. Will this involve family? Friends? Associates? What is the nature of it?
I was a medical student on my first clinical rotation when my intern, Dan, warned me that our new resident, Alex, didn’t like women. I would make myself bullet-proof, I thought, reading about my patients’ diseases, knowing every clinical detail, and working hard.
Two days in, my plan seemed to be working. All was calm.
On Alex’s third day, he interrogated me about a patient’s medical condition. He concluded with “Do you know anything about your patient’s disease?” and succeeded in shattering my confidence.
Two days later, as he reviewed my chart notes, he exploded when he saw “meq,” an abbreviation correctly written as “mEq.” After his outburst, I speed-walked to the bathroom and burst into tears.
The next day, I met with the department chair to request permission to change teams. He said he was aware Alex verbally abused women, but the department rule forbade team changes. Frustrated that the chair failed to confront Alex and refused to give me relief, I burst into tears. I was furious with myself for being a stereotypical emotional female, but I got me my wish.
7. Sketch out your setting in detail. What makes it interesting enough, scene by scene, to allow for uniqueness and cinema in your narrative and story? Please don't simply repeat what you already have which may well be too quiet. You can change it. That's why you're here! Start now. Imagination is your best friend, and be aggressive with it.
[Prologue: In a hospital]
The wound looked like a large, tri-tip steak left in the hot sun for days. Traversing the raw flesh, the inguinal ligament shone like a satin ribbon. Just beneath, the exposed femoral vessels pulsated, threatening a fatal bleed.
I approached the patient’s bedside, cradling his hospital chart in my arms. Dried saliva clung to his lips, and his pale skin hung from his jutting cheek bones. If I hadn’t known his diagnosis, I would have thought he was sixty years old.
[Scene change]
Stepping into the hallway, I zipped around a patient taking a stroll with his I.V. pole. I could feel my heart race as I thought about my patient’s surgery, and I wanted to flee the hospital, but I still had to write my consultation note. As I headed to the nurses’ station, an overhead speaker paged a doctor STAT to the I.C.U., and a woman in a white coat speed-walked in that direction. I dropped into a chair, opened the chart, and wrote Plastic Surgery Consultation Note. A wave of nausea washed over me.
[Chapter 1: Scene change]
I soared toward the Land Rover’s ceiling and then slammed into the seat, my long hair swirling in the East African wind. Yanking my seatbelt tighter, I anchored my summer dress with one hand, clutched the dashboard with the other, and pressed my feet into the floorboard, bracing myself for the next jolt. To my right, Dr. Silvio Prandoni wrestled the steering wheel to force the tires into the paired muddy ruts snaking between walls of six-foot grass. The tires jerked to the right as he released his grip, and he pushed his black-framed glasses up his sunburnt nose. An instant later, he pulled the tires into submission, the engine bellowing in protest.
It felt good to be back in Kenya’s Northern Frontier District. The year was 1979, and I was taking time off from college to work with Dr. Prandoni for two months.
[Scene change]
We lurched to a stop. Looming fifteen feet ahead was an enormous bull elephant charging straight at us trumpeting full blast, his long curved tusks tilting upward, his ears flapping like flags. I picked up my backpack and clutched it to my chest like a shield.
Dr. Prandoni thrust the gear shift into reverse and pressed the gas pedal to the floor. The vehicle vibrated, rocking forward and backward, but the tires spun nowhere. The elephant was now six feet away, and my heart was pumping like a piston.
Suddenly, the tires grabbed the earth, and we inched backwards, throwing clumps of dirt, until we gained solid traction. As we retreated, the elephant lumbered off into the grass, his trunk swinging like a pendulum. I inhaled, feeling the rush of air fill my lungs, and I set my backpack down on the floor.
[Scene change]
We rode in silence, and I stared out the window, admiring the beauty of the savanna. A herd of thin-striped Grevy’s zebras ran at the sound of our purring Land Rover. I craned my neck, watching them until they slipped out of sight. Twenty minutes later, an African boy herding goats waved as we drove by.
“There’s Matthew’s Range,” Dr. Prandoni said, pointing to a series of jagged peaks ahead. “We’re almost there.”
Soon we approached a small sketch of a village surrounded by flat-topped thorn trees and dry, red earth. The main road was the only road, and its surface bore more footprints than tire tracks. We turned into a compound of white stucco buildings—Wamba Mission.
[Scene change]
A dusty path led to the church, its gray façade sweeping upward like a bridge span topped with a cross. In front, a dozen boys in well-worn blue-and-white school uniforms ran about, laughing and yelling, their dark skin and black eyelashes coated in chalky dust. The girls’ secondary school stood next to the church, and on the way to the hospital, we passed the nursing school.
“We make our own plaster for casts,” Dr. Prandoni said, pointing to a patio covered with white strips. “Sister Annunciata dips the pieces of cloth into plaster of Paris and dries them in the sun.”
[There are multiple scenes in the book in Kenya, Boston, California, El Salvador—in my home, outdoors, in the African bush, in hospital operating rooms and emergency department, in a courtroom, and in a conference room.]