How and Why to Write About Chinese Medicine to the Public
I‟ve been writing to the general public about Chinese medicine (CM) since 1999. I‟ve reached more than 200,000 readers all over the world. My Website, The Pulse of Oriental Medicine (www.PulseMed.org) gets 30,000 new visitors per month, and I‟ve written more than 200 articles for these readers. I don‟t claim to have the right way. Writing is too personal to be fully rule-bound. My efforts are a work in progress. But I have learned a few things, and thought a great deal on this topic. I want to share my experience and ideas so far.
First, Why Write About Chinese Medicine to the Public?
Before we go into how to write about Chinese Medicine (CM) for the public, we have to ask: why anyone would want to? In other words: what will you, the professional acupuncturist, get out of it? 1. Build Your Practice. You could start a patient newsletter (postal or emailed), or write a column for a local newspaper or magazine. Public visibility and positioning yourself as the local expert will increase your new patient visits. Patients are more likely to see the acupuncturist who demonstrates written expertise than another random name in the phone book or on a website. It‟s an endorsement from the editor that you are an expert. And, it reassures patients that you‟ll be able to communicate with them in the office. 2. Save Time and Get More Referrals. Improve your message. What do you want patients to know about CM and your services? If you can‟t write it then you don‟t know it. How many times have you been asked what qi is, or how acupuncture works? Is your answer comprehensive and accurate? Do your patients get it? Could you say it better or in less time? Writing organizes and clarifies your thoughts. This will improve the efficiency of your practice and increase the likelihood of referrals. 3. Continue Your Education. You will have to do research and learn new things if you write to the public regularly. I‟ve become quite familiar with MEDLINE (the National Library of Medicine‟s online database of published research), and have learned a lot of biomedicine and basic self-care tips for different diseases that I might never have known otherwise. It‟s good to know 4 or 5 times more information than what goes into your final written piece. What they read is just the tip of the iceberg. You hint at the depth of knowledge below. 4. Learn Before You See Patients & Attract New Kinds of Patients. Many acupuncturists first learn about a disease right after a new patient query, with the concurrent anxiety that, “I don‟t know anything about (fill in the disease)!” That‟s unavoidable. But you can be proactive, look into a disease of interest, write an article about it, and that may attract the patients who have it to your practice. 5. Foster Public Understanding of Chinese Medicine. There is a vast sea of ignorance amongst English-speakers about CM. They don‟t know basic basic things like: herbs are
better in formulas, CM is as much a medicine as western or chiropractic medicine, and acupuncture treats more than pain. Some of them think acupuncture is more like massage than medicine! Remedying this ignorance will increase the credibility of all CM practitioners.
How Best to Write About Chinese Medicine to the Public
Now to the how-to. Here is a list of observations I‟ve made and things I„ve learned about writing in general and specifically about writing CM to the public. These are guidelines I try to follow when writing for PulseMed.org. I‟ll cover three major topics: public vs. peer writing, writing is work, and where to write. Writing for the Public is Different from Writing to your Peers. The General Public Doesn’t Know the Basics. I know there are patients that want to learn Chinese Medicine, but most of them have no idea how big an endeavor that is. It took us licensed professionals 4 years to learn the basics… 15 minutes of office visit talk a week is too slow- at that rate, it would require about 240 years to get a Masters in CM (I calculated it). And consider how many pages you read about CM in those 4 years. Let‟s say about 4000 pages- so after your patient reads 2000 of your articles, then they‟ll be up to speed. My point is that your patient is not going to learn everything you know about CM. Don‟t expect your everyday reader to learn that much. But if they don‟t know the basics, how can you talk about it? There‟s no common language, and a minimal understanding of yin and yang. How do you answer: What‟s the difference between xue and western blood? Why are herbs in formulas? What is a pattern? You can teach some of this, but doesn‟t it take time? True: the word doctor means “to teach.” And we should teach patients and lay readers what CM is, and how they can better balance their lives with it. But never forget that they don‟t know the basics, and teaching them all of it is unrealistic. It‟s better to guide them toward an office visit. That‟s a major reason for the success of western medicine. They don‟t try to make an evaluation or explain anything outside of the office. Jargon is a mistake. Your major goal is to get the reader to understand your point, and to take the actions you advocate. In order to achieve these goals, you must keep them with you throughout the article. Jargon (terms specific to a culture or profession) is one of the surest ways to turn off, frustrate, and alienate your reader. As soon as they read a word they don‟t understand, they are disturbed, and they lose confidence in themselves and you. You have less of their attention, and you may lose them. Jargon is a major problem with writing about CM to the English-speaking public, because there are many terms you need to know to understand CM. I use several strategies to overcome the jargon juggernaut: 1. Use English approximations of words or paraphrase the ideas: Examples are qi = energy, xue = blood. Problems with this are that you get all kinds of grief from translators and other academics who prefer other words, and that you may be inaccurate. However, I think here we must accept progress not perfection. If we get our readers closer to understanding CM, great! We can clear up the fine points later. I often describe Spleen qi as “digestive energy,” even
though that doesn‟t include the Spleen qi‟s mental and vascular activities… If I talk about its mental activities, I say, “The brain digests things too – ideas, experiences – and this mental digestion is related to physical digestion in CM.” Always include this approximation or paraphrase with the Chinese word – don‟t assume they‟ve learned it yet. 2. Use Analogies. In my first article on yang, qi, yin, and xue (http://www.pulsemed.org/whatisqi.htm), I used an automotive analogy. Everyone has been in a car and knows that gas makes it go. Oil keeps the engine from seizing. So I compared gas to qi (the explosions being yang), and described oil as a yin substance that balances out the yang activity of the engine. The analogy I use for a scientific explanation of how acupuncture works (inspired by the work of Zang-Hee Cho at UC Irvine) is that the brain is a computer, and the acupoints are keys – we enter instructions by needling the right points, and the brain (CPU) makes changes throughout the body via the immune and nervous systems. 3. Find a way around it. The point you‟re making may not require you to risk turning the reader off. For example, instead of discussing specific patterns, you can just say, “Everyone is different, and CM groups people into specific categories based on common symptoms, emotions, and tendencies. You can find out yours one on one with a CM practitioner.” This is a general way to address personalization without confusing the reader. Personal Versus Academic Style. You may get big points using technical words and dense phrasing when writing to your peers, but you won‟t reach the lay audience. When I went to Toast Masters to learn public speaking, I found out that academic people tend to lean too heavily on their knowledge. In both speaking and writing, be clear, enthusiastic, inspiring, simple, and fun. Obviously, any of these can be taken too far. But if you look at your writing and one of them is missing completely, it‟s time to re-think, and re-write. One way to overcome the academic habit is to make lists – they‟re simple and easy to read. Make them practical. As David Letterman has proven, people love top ten lists. I did an article called, “My Top Ten Favorite Things About Oriental Medicine” (http://www.pulsemed.org/toptenfaves.htm). It includes real examples and experiences (not just ideas), benefits (see #7 in that article), it‟s personal, fun, and imaginative. Its only fault is that it might be a bit long. For another great example of using personal style to reach a lay audience, read Juliette Aiyana‟s “Our Food Relationships” (http://www.pulsemed.org/jkfoodrel.htm). News You Can Use. It took me a while to learn, but what readers care most about is “what will I get out of this?” and “what can I do that‟s easy?” If you give them simple tips and tell them how they‟ll benefit, you‟ll go far. Also, you can anticipate the obstacles they‟ll encounter in trying to follow your advice, and give them tips about how to overcome them. Writing is Work. Not just anyone can write well. Good writing requires a number of different efforts:
Read a lot. If you‟d never heard anyone talk, your speech would sound pretty weird. It‟s the same with writing. And if English is your second language, you‟ll need to read and talk and listen to a LOT of English. One solution that has worked for others in this regard is Toast Masters (www.toastmasters.org/). Read good writers. Check out the different styles of the greats- the literary works of Hemmingway and Fitzgerald, the motivational work of Norman Vincent Peale and Napoleon Hill, popular medical writers Andrew Weil and Deepak Chopra, and the inspirational Chicken Soup for the Souls series. These books aren‟t well known just because they were well-promoted, but also because their style reached their audiences. Read about writing. Two indispensable texts are Strunk & White‟s The Elements of Style and William Zinsser‟s On Writing Well. The former is short and pithy. The latter is brilliant, entertaining, and contains lots of examples of good writing. Write a lot. Writers write. As soon as you get an idea, write it down – don‟t expect to remember it. The Chinese have a saying, “The weakest ink is stronger than the strongest memory.” Use that ink, or get a tape recorder for memos on the go. MOST IMPORTANT: Rewrite Rewrite REWRITE. Writing is rewriting. The fact is, somebody has to do the work - either the author or the reader. If you skimp and leave the work for your readers, you‟ll lose them. William Strunk rewrote everything 9 times before publishing. I find that even 4 or 5 rewrites make a huge difference. I‟m not talking about grammar and spelling here - that goes without saying. I‟m talking about eliminating unnecessary words, rephrasing, clarifying, adding missing assumptions, possibly even restructuring the whole piece. Read the books by Strunk & White and Zinsser to learn the basics of rewriting. The more rewriting you do, the better your first drafts will get. Edit both on-screen, and on printouts of rough drafts, and you‟ll find more of what needs rewriting. An Example of Rewriting: After writing the first draft of this article, I „tracked changes‟ in Word. If you want to see how much I rewrote it, you can download the edited version from: http://www.pulsemed.org/rewrite.htm. In Word, under the Tools menu, choose „Track Changes‟ and select „Highlighted on the Screen.‟ Get Feedback. You have to see how and where people misunderstand you to prevent it from happening. You‟ll be amazed how often they do. You‟ll learn how to be more clear. For a while, acupuncturist Laurie Burton edited some of my work for the Pulse. She has a strong literary background. If you don‟t, get help from those that do. Be Patient. Writing has great benefits, but it requires work and time. You can sit down and bang out some unrefined thoughts, but real writing starts after that. If you get the books by Strunk & White and Zinsser, you‟ll understand. If writing is for you, you‟ll do the work, but you must also persist in that work if you want to be successful.
I‟ve written more than 200 articles for the Pulse since 1999, and about 6 for Acupuncture Today. I have made very little money from this directly. But this work is probably the main reason why a young guy like me secured a literary agent and why I now have 5 publishers interested in my first book. You don‟t have to write a book. If you write articles to get patients, what you are really doing is called branding, and brand marketing requires many public exposures over time to create momentum. Marketing your services requires a different approach from marketing
products. For more about that, read Harry Beckwith‟s Selling the Invisible. Where to Write to the Public Local Newspapers. Write a regular column. Target not just the city ones, but the smaller ones in outlying areas. The latter may be easier to convince Magazines. Get an online subscription to Writer‟s Market (www.writersmarket.com). You can search for magazines by topic. They give you all the info: how many people they reach, how to get their writer‟s guidelines, how to query a magazine about an article, and more. You‟ll find that some magazines may not be open to CM ideas - they may conflict with their medical ideas (e.g. western medicine orthodoxy, or the single herb mindset), or their advertisers (who market the misuse of ma huang or zhi shi). But many of them will be interested if you find the right topic and write a good query. The Pulse of Oriental Medicine. I had to say it. That‟s all we do at PulseMed.org - write to the public. You can get more info about writing for the Pulse at: http://www.pulsemed.org/pulsewriters.htm. If you write for us, you‟ll also get a free listing on our acupuncturist pages, where patients will find you, because our search engine ranking is so high.
Just Do It
This may all sound overwhelming, but you can do it. Just get started. Feel free to email me for help- you can reach me from this feedback form: http://pulsemed.org/feedbackform.htm