Creative Careers In Medicine Podcast

In this episode of the CCIM podcast, host Dr Elise Putt sits down with Dr Michelle Johnston, an emergency physician at Royal Perth Hospital and a published novelist. Dr Johnston discusses the challenging balance between her clinical role and her passion for writing, emphasising the highly controlled environment of emergency medicine and the struggle to find time to write.Sharing her writing journey, Dr Johnston recounts early failures and rejections, learning from feedback, and progressively improving her craft. She describes the long journey of her first serious work, "Dustfall," detailing the timeline and process of eventual publication in 2018 after numerous rejections.Emphasising the slow, incremental nature of writing progress, Dr Johnston speaks about the significance of patience and focusing on the quality of work over the outcome. She identified herself as a "pantser" who does not outline her plots or characters beforehand, underscores the essential role of feedback and learning in developing writing