Lai Tan's Blog
January 9, 2023
All that I am.
So, I finally did it. I finally published a book. I have been writing stories since junior high and had completed a manuscript by age sixteen. It was to medical school afterwards.
The courses you were encouraged to study in those days by most Nigerian parents (apologies about the stereotyping!) were medicine, law, engineering (any type) and accounting.
Medical school was intense, but I found time to write and beta readers among my peers.
Friends wondered for years why I did not publish my stories. I wrote for the love of it and as escapism from everything else that was too serious around me. It made me happy and made it easier to cope with reality.
The reality was partly seeing sickness and death, hunger, and poverty. Love was counterbalanced by heartbreak. Great friendships were lost to time, distance, and death.
It was not all gory. A lot of good things happened too. I met the love of my life during the compulsory Nigerian national youth service corps year, and motherhood came soon after.
I headed to the United Kingdom for a full-time residency in internal medicine and added a few more letters after my name. To say it was herculean, with two more kids down the line, somewhat puts it mildly. But those letters were added! But I did put the pen down for a while.
I have picked it up again to balance my creative and scientific sides. To embrace all of me, the weird and wonderful daydreamer and the part of me that breathed logic.
By this, I hope that when I leave this planet, I will have given back all I was given when I arrived some decades ago.
I first wrote “A Woman Apart” nearly twenty years ago. I rewrote it and had it professionally edited, but the original plotline has only a few changes. It is a well-written tale.
Since I published this love story, new friends have tagged me as a physician-turned-writer. But I say, no, I am a writer who became a doctor. I love both worlds. One keeps me grounded. The other provides much-needed escapism!
A Woman Apart
The courses you were encouraged to study in those days by most Nigerian parents (apologies about the stereotyping!) were medicine, law, engineering (any type) and accounting.
Medical school was intense, but I found time to write and beta readers among my peers.
Friends wondered for years why I did not publish my stories. I wrote for the love of it and as escapism from everything else that was too serious around me. It made me happy and made it easier to cope with reality.
The reality was partly seeing sickness and death, hunger, and poverty. Love was counterbalanced by heartbreak. Great friendships were lost to time, distance, and death.
It was not all gory. A lot of good things happened too. I met the love of my life during the compulsory Nigerian national youth service corps year, and motherhood came soon after.
I headed to the United Kingdom for a full-time residency in internal medicine and added a few more letters after my name. To say it was herculean, with two more kids down the line, somewhat puts it mildly. But those letters were added! But I did put the pen down for a while.
I have picked it up again to balance my creative and scientific sides. To embrace all of me, the weird and wonderful daydreamer and the part of me that breathed logic.
By this, I hope that when I leave this planet, I will have given back all I was given when I arrived some decades ago.
I first wrote “A Woman Apart” nearly twenty years ago. I rewrote it and had it professionally edited, but the original plotline has only a few changes. It is a well-written tale.
Since I published this love story, new friends have tagged me as a physician-turned-writer. But I say, no, I am a writer who became a doctor. I love both worlds. One keeps me grounded. The other provides much-needed escapism!
A Woman Apart
