Wit, Words, and Joie de Vivre

One of my favorite things about Teachers Write is that it gives me the opportunity to introduce some of my favorite people (teachers & librarians!) to some of my other favorite people (children’s and YA authors!).

When you join Teachers Write, you’re signing up to be part of a writing community, and all summer long on this blog, you’ll have the chance to talk with people like me (I’m Kate, by the way, in case you were stumbling around and found yourself here. I write books for kids and host this online summer camp), Gae Polisner of Friday Feedback fame, and Monday Morning Warm-Up guru Jo Knowles, as well as a whole bunch of kind, smart, funny guest authors.  We’re all volunteers, so please check out our websites and support our books by asking for them at your local bookstores and libraries, reading them, and sharing the ones you like. Here’s our author list for Summer 2013!

Kate Messner

Gae Polisner

Jo Knowles

Laurel Snyder

Joanne Levy

Lisa Schroeder

Jeannine Atkins

Jenny Meyerhoff

Lynda Mullaly Hunt

Donna Gephart

Amy Ludwig VanDerwater

Cynthia Lord

David Lubar

Megan Miranda

Linda Urban

Nancy Castaldo

Phil Bildner

Erin Dionne

Diane Zahler

Anne Marie Pace

Shutta Crum

Sarah Albee

Danette Haworth

Margo Sorenson

Erin Dealey

Some of these folks will be sharing mini-lessons on Mondays, others will be offering quite-write prompts on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and some will be answering your questions for Q and A Wednesdays. While these are the “official” guest authors, I have to admit that I also have some surprises planned for various Fridays, and many other authors drop by to chat and answer questions even if they haven’t committed to visit on a particular day.

If you’re a teacher or librarian and you’d like to join us, you can sign up here! We’ll be starting with our first Mini-Lesson Monday on June 24th!

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Edit by mod: For some reason both versions of this anon's post were marked as suspicious comments, so I didn't see them right away. Edited to reflect the additional question from the later post.

Setting: YuGiOh (Duel Monsters/Second Series canon, somewhat altered to suit my own ends.)

Location: Temporarily stuck in a low-tech medieval-fantasy type world.

Time: Approximately five years after the Duel Monsters series ends, so modern (2008-ish?).

Searched: "type 1 diabetes", "hypoglycemia", "hypoglycemia diet", "treating diabetes without insulin", "long-term diabetes complications", "diabetic ketoacidosis", gone through most of diabetes.org, and checked the responses to any diabetes- or hypoglycemia-related articles I could find on this blog's "medicine: illnesses (misc)" tag. A lot on symptoms and either immediate or long-term management, but my timetable complicates things.

So I'm setting up for a tabletop YuGiOh rpg that I plan to run for some friends in September. The PCs are original, but I do intend for them to run across the canon characters in later scenarios.

One of the scenarios that I have set up involves Yugi, Mokuba, and a small portion of Domino City getting stuck in the Monster World, and after a week the PCs are able to come after them. The PCs find Mokuba and Yugi separated from everything else, up in a cave on a mountainside where they're being guarded by a group of Blue Eyes and some Dark Magicians. Yugi spends most of his time meditating in order to maintain energy constructs to protect the Domino civilians. Meanwhile, there's a spring somewhere back in the cave for water, and the Blue Eyes bring fresh meat that Mokuba is able to prepare and cook, so they're getting by.

Later, I discovered the trivia that Yugi may be canonically diabetic. I decided that this was an interesting dimension to the character and decided to run with it, and so started researching Type 1 Diabetes.

Yugi is a reasonably healthy man in his early twenties. He travels a lot and is often in stressful situations. While he gets plenty of exercise, he's hardly athletic. He's gotten good at keeping prepared for sudden drop-everything emergencies. For the most part he's responsible enough with his medication and diet that problems won't crop up during a scene with the PCs. However, the above scenario kicks off during a parade which Yugi was a part of, and I think it would be a stretch to have him prepared for any more than half a day away from his supplies, and neither he nor Mokuba have foraging skills.

Or, in short: Type 1 diabetic suddenly finds himself stranded without supplies or medical care. Water, heat, and meat are plentiful. After some amount of time, a bunch of Kuriboh become available to bring them various Monster World fruits, and I can fudge the details on those as needed.

Question 1: What kind of time frame am I looking at, here? About how long before Yugi starts developing complications? How long would I realistically be able to stall for dramatic tension before fruit stops being enough to bring him back around? While I don't want to kill Yugi, I don't want to make things convenient, either.

Question 2: I was already planning to have Yugi be exhausted when the PCs showed up, since he's spent almost a week near-constantly expelling energy in order to protect civilians. He isn't sleeping, and only 'wakes up' long enough to eat. The Dark Magicians are lending him their energy, but there's a lot of people to protect. I assume that adding a lack of insulin on top of that is not going to do him any favors. What kind of condition is he likely to be in when the PCs find them? Is it completely unrealistic to have him in bad shape, but conscious and mostly-coherent? Or should he have gone into seizures and/or coma by this point? Am I going to have to reduce my time frame if I want him to be able to talk to the PCs?

Question 3: What kind of long-term effects could come out of this? If all goes well in the scenario, the PCs should get everyone back into the Human World soon, at which point Yugi will be hospitalized right away. Is this incident likely to cause any lingering damage that I should keep in mind and do further research on?

4) Is it possible for the meditative state to have any effect on his condition? Maybe that's a silly question but I'm curious.

Hello, I'm writing a fantasy story. The setting is roughly equivalent of 13th/14th century Europe. One of the main characters is training to become a doctor at the beginning of the story. I need information on how the physicians at the time treated numerous types of wounds and diseases.

Searched Terms: Medieval Medicine, Western Medicine, 14th Century Medicine, Historical Medicine, 14th Century Doctor, Middle Ages Burn Treatment, History of Burn Treatments.

I've googled the above, most of the results were decent for general knowledge, but none have gone into the detail that I am looking for. I've also ran a few of the above searches through some research databases that my University has allowed me access to. I've also tried finding translations of "The Canon of Medicine", whoever I couldn't understand the wording, as most of the translations I found were either incomplete, poorly worded, or too expensive for me to currently afford.

I've been trying to find detailed information on what tools an educated doctor/barber of the time would use and how he would treat sword wounds, broken bones (From both Abbrazare/grappling and blunt weapons), burns of varying severity, arrows, frostbite, poison and so on.

I'd also like to know how they treated common diseases, dehydration and starvation at the time and so on.

Here's an example of what I'm looking for, although I'm not sure how accurate this example is: I have read that if someone was burned they would rinse the burned area and then pour raw honey over it. After that they would wrap sage leaves around the honey-covered burn. Apparently the honey acted as a shield against infection and the sage was believed to have healing/soothing properties for wounds. I would provide a link to the source but I can't seem to find the link in my notes.

I realize this is somewhat of a messy post but any help at all would be greatly appreciated.

On how I have survived low these long years as a writer, and what my definition of success has become:

http://simner.com/blog/?p=4553

It is not often that I read a book that I truly wish I had written, not only because it is so perfect, but because it says everything that I wish that I could say about being human, living with family, finding yourself, dealing with your obligations with the past, and making friends when you yourself are a damaged person. The last book that was like this was Holly Black’s Doll Bones. The book before that was The Boy In The Suitcase. And now this one.

So let me make this simple: You want to read this book. Go and buy it right now. Stop reading this review. If you are smart and you think a lot about how humans are humans and how animals are animals, this is a book you will have to talk about.

I can’t actually tell you what the plot of this book is, because I would ruin it. I am normally not aware of spoilers, but in this book, it’s really important not to talk about anything remotely related to the actual plot of the book. It starts and seems to be a book about a college student who has a quirky, difficult family that is mostly estranged, and who has a father who is a psychologist. I keep wanting to say more than that, and keep deleting it. I suspect that if you enjoy good writing, you will keep turning pages even if there are those little niggling hints that there is something wrong going on that the narrator is not telling you.

Karen Joy Fowler is brilliant. I knew that already, from other fiction I have read of hers. She is pretty much an automatic buy. And this book will only make me sadder because I don’t have anything else of hers left to buy. I will have to start getting more copies to pass around to friends and insist they read. Yup, this is one of those books that everyone will talk about while you are trying to listen in, but they will stop as soon as they realize you are there. And you will never be able to join in the conversation until you read this.

Again, go buy this book. Set out a lot of time so you can read it all in one big gulp. And then buy a second copy for friends. On second thought, just buy two copies at once.

Starting a week from today, this blog will be hosting Teachers Write, an online summer writing camp for teachers and librarians from all over the world. I’m too excited about this to sit still, so I thought we’d have a quick preview post today – think of itas the official Teacehrs Write warm-up!

If you’re a teacher or librarian and you’d like to learn more (and maybe join us this summer!) you can click here to learn more.  And the sign-up page is here.

Today, to get us ready for next week, I’d like to address two big questions that have come up from teachers who have heard about the program but feel a little hesitant about diving in.

Question 1:  How do you find the time to write? I’d love to do this, but I’m busy, even in the summer months.

Answer: I’ve always found the idea of “finding time” to be kind of misleading, as if you can poke around in the garden and come up with an extra couple of hours a day if you look hard enough. The truth is, you don’t find time to write; you have to make it. And you make it by choosing to spend a little time each day – maybe just 15 minutes – writing, instead of doing something else. That something else that you give up might be one television show, or fifteen minutes of sleep, or (gasp!) time on Facebook or Twitter. You have to choose to make that writing time. It’s worth doing if writing is something you really want to do. I posted about this last year on Teachers Write, and you can read more of my thoughts here. Writer John Scalzi also wrote on this topic – in a blog post that is the rougher-language, tougher-love version of mine. Not really suitable to share with kids, but great if you really want a kick in the pants – it’s here.

Question 2: I’d like to do this writing thing, but I’m kind of afraid.

Answer: Yeah…me, too.  Still. Every time I start a new book. I don’t have a magic answer for this one, other than to tell you that you’re not alone. Writing can be scary, but in the best possible way. Here’s a 2012 Teachers Write post about Writing Scared, and I also recommend this book – ART AND FEAR. But mostly, I recommend that if you want to write, you write. We’re all in this together, and we’ll be cheering you on if you do.

Now…what other questions do you have?  Fire away in comments – or just take the plunge, sign up for Teachers Write, and join us next Monday.

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• Mon, 06:42: http://t.co/aGAN58vM4X A new blog post on the NOTHING FANCY ABOUT A BOOK TOUR with some bombshells and Milton on our Alabama Odyssey :)

Win one of ten hardcover copies of DEFY THE DARK for your library (school libraries included!) What do you have to do? Just fill out this here form:

Winners will be contacted by e-mail, so PLEASE MAKE SURE you put in an e-mail address where I can reach you! Winners will be contacted next Tuesday, June 25th!

Originally published at MSUFaL. You can comment here or there.

Today in yoga class we were focusing on balance poses. One of the wonderful and challenging things about balance poses is that, when you’re focused on keeping your balance, you’re forced into the moment–forced to be fully present in the pose and in your life.

While in one of those poses, our yoga teacher said something very simple yet very useful: “Look up.”

I hadn’t realized I was looking down, but I very much was, instinctively following the bending of my body as I folded forward on one foot to get into the pose.

Both the pose and staying in the pose got easier, when I did that one thing: looked up.

I remember how when my very first short story sold, I discovered there were two ways I could respond, when someone asked, “what do you write?” The first involved looking down and saying, in a sort of mumble/apology, “Oh, it’s just one story, and it’s only in a shared world anthology anyway …”

Those conversations were pretty awkward. Both I and the person I was speaking to would try to get out of them as quickly as possible. And I realized there was another way I could answer.

I could look up. Meet the other person’s eyes. Speak without apology–and with honest pride–as I said, “I’m a new writer, and my first story just appeared in an anthology.” If I had the book with me I’d hold it up. With or without the book, I would definitely smile. And the other person would generally smile too, and congratulate me, and there’d be nothing awkward about it at all.

When we look down, my yoga teacher said today, we draw our energy down with us, which can make some poses harder.

I’ve learned and relearned this throughout my writing life, and throughout the rest of my life too. It’s remarkably easy to forget. Even when you remember, sometimes it’s harder than it sounds.

But things go better if you just look up.

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

http://www.bookslut.com/blog/archives/2013_06.php#020145

Ann Tyler wrote about my first collection of stories. Ann Tyler, that much loved American writer, who writes about things that would kill me just to think of, never mind to write a book about them. Of the stories in that first book of mine, she said they were—and I suppose I should be flattered that she even took notice—almost “insultingly obscure.” And I wanted to write a review of her books saying “and I think your books are almost insultingly clear.” [Laughs.] I’ve gotten this reception from the beginning, and I never stopped. I’ve never let the criticism deter me.

Jamaica Kincaid is still giving the best interviews in the literary world.