Kate Warren

Just a short note this week as I'm not feeling well.  Coming down with a cold.  One of my ways to cope with writing while sick is to give one of my characters the malady from which I suffer.  While it may not be necessary to make your characters fall ill, if you're going to do so there is no better time to write those scenes than when you are suffering yourself.  Not that I would ever recommend making oneself sick for the purpose of one's art, but if you have it you might as well use it.

No one can as accurately describe the agonies of illness than those who are victims, and unless medicine has made you fuzzy-headed you could get some very good work out of being under the weather. 

I'm am convinced that great writers throughout history have done this very thing.  I always think of a line from Jane Austen's Emma when I have a cold: "There is nothing worse than a sore throat."  It would not surprise me at all to find that when she wrote those words she was suffering from that very condition herself.* 

Think for a moment of every time someone in a book you've read has been ill.  Flu. Cold.  Headache.  All minor maladies could potentially have sprung from authorly under-the-weather-ness.  Unless the health problem advances the plot, it may very well have been the authors projecting onto the characters.  Maybe I'm reaching here but I find it an interesting, if unimportant, thought.

I must go and lie down and hope that my own illness is of short duration.

Kate

*There is a slight chance that this line is not in the book, but comes from a movie version of Emma.  Should that be the case I must plead antihistamines as the cause of my mistake and promise to read Emma again soon so that I may avoid such embarrasing misquoting in the future.**

**I reserve the right to accidentally misquote other books,particularly when under the influence of cold medicines.

Sadly, I'm not talking about steamy scenes in novels, though I do enjoy those when tastefully written.  No, I'm talking about the weather.  Someone (for the life of me I can't remember who) once said there was a direct correlation between the rise of air conditioning and the decline of Southern literature.  The reasoning was something along the lines of high temperatures inflaming passions, which has a base in history as well as in literature.

In the U.S. the worst city riots, be they New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, or some other metropolis tend to take place during the dog days of summer.  Also Romeo and Juliet takes place during the summer: hot-headed rich kids with nothing better to do with their time than get into fights, oh yeah, and a love story too. ;)

I'm put in mind of all of this mainly because I lack that blessing known as central air.  Unfortunately unlike the great Southern writers (Williams, Faulkner, and Hellman to name a few) being uncomfortable does not improve or inspire my craft.  So I am actually going to give you some tips to beat the heat.  These are actually tips that I use so I can heartily recommend them.  If, like my family, you lack centralized means of cooling, read on:

1.  Drink plenty of fluids.  Seems like a no-brainer, right?  Well it's not as easy as it sounds.  On hot days when you don't feel like eating much, you don't feel like drinking much either.  Something about the mercury rising makes one's stomach feel full sooner than it would in cooler temps.  Water is the obvious choice, health-wise; taste-wise, not so much.  I don't like water and I know I'm not alone on this.  But I try anyway.  Usually keeping it ice cold helps.  I also  drink fruit juices and add water to them in about a 2:1 juice to water ratio.  Limit caffeine intake as caffeine is a diuretic, which means it actually makes you lose water from your system (not the medical explanation but that's a rough translation).

2.  Stay indoors.  Unless you like being roasted, then by all means venture out into the oppressive furnace I call the sunny summer day.

3.  If you do go outside, wear sunblock.  Aside from preventing skin cancer, this will help keep you hydrated because a sunburn takes moisture out of your skin, which you then need to replace. 

4.  Light-weight yet concealing clothes.  I know it seems to run counter to stay-cool knowledge to wear long sleeves, skirts and pants, but it will help protect you from the sun.  Just be sure to wear natural fabrics.  Synthetics don't "breathe" the way natural fibers do.

5.  If you have window AC units or fans, use them.  Just keeping the air moving makes it feel cooler.  My great-grandmother swore by opening windows every night after sundown and closing them by 10 AM every morning.  She must have lived in a less humid climate than mine, and nowhere near train tracks.  But if the humidity and noise aren't issues where you live, this is an great energy saving way to cool your abode.

6.  Last one, I promise.  Avoid cooking as much as possible.  Use the microwave instead of the oven.  Eat chilled fruit, ice cream, cold cereal, etc.  In addition to cooling your system, you save on energy usage.

Those are the basis of my stay-cool policies.  What are some things you do to keep from burning up in the summer heat?

Kate