Member Spotlight: Fazlur Rahman

Why is writing important to you and why do you think it’s an important medium for the world? To share my experience and knowledge, and my observations and thoughts on my medical life from practicing cancer medicine for thirty-five years as well as life in general from living nearly eighty years. Writing has saved the civilization and culture, and despite abuses and setbacks on its path, it has united humanity and still has potential to do so in our troubled world. It forces us to look at ourselves who we are, even though it can be distasteful at times.

What are your tried and tested remedies to cure writer’s block? Do something else to give the fatigued and hesitant brain a rest, then come back later and write whatever comes to mind, perhaps a “shitty” draft of sentences and paragraphs until I return to my regular form. It may or may not take time to come to this.

What is your favorite time to write? Whenever I can make time, but mostly prefer morning hours.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received and would like to impart to other writers? Discipline and persistence are more important than talent alone.

What excites you most about being a writer in today’s age? To say something original and if not, then at least formulate the original in an understandable way either to impart knowledge or to induce enjoyment or both. The challenge is to reach the audience through all the clutter in the media or in life we have in this age. But you try the best you can and not lose heart.

Fazlur Rahman’s Our Connected Lives: Caring for Cancer Patients in Rural Texas is out now with Texas Tech University Press.