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.
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.
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