Convalescing need never be dull, unless you make it so.
from The Magic Key to Charm by Eileen Ascroft
Rx for Readers
Are your humours out of balance? You could be cupped, or bled, or purged. You could consider emetics, or even dally with leeches. Or perhaps you could just read a book instead.
Myself, I always go for the book.
I don’t know when I realized that I self-medicate with books. Possibly when I wrote this post, or possibly this one.
Or possibly when I read one of the new editions of P.G. Wodehouse and noted that his works were described as “cheaper than Prozac, and 100 per cent more effective.”
Here are a few of my favourite prescriptions.
Feeling blue? In a brown study? Life just drab and grey? Take a course of P.G. Wodehouse. Read anything he wrote: a novel, a preface, even the account of his experiences being interned by the Nazis. Uniformly hilarious.
Overdoses can cause symptoms similar to intoxication; possible side effects include aching stomach muscles and snorted drinks.
Are you jaded by the harried complexities of urban life, the rush, the pollution, the noise? Try the old classic Heidi, by Johanna Spyri. Warning: may cause uncontrollable urge to move to Switzerland.
Plenty of housework to do, but don’t fancy drudging it? Monica Dickens’ autobiographical caper One Pair of Hands should get you in the mood – or, for a more fictional twist, try the exploits of Lucy Eyelesbarrow in Agatha Christie’s 4:50 from Paddington.
Most of Agatha Christie’s works are ideal for when you are in need of something warm and comforting to curl up in. They’re not mindless junk, but neither are there nasty surprises. (Not unless you read Endless Night.) Plenty of unexpected twists, though – I’ve read them over and over again and I still sometimes miss whodunnit.
Also excellent for the early stages of recuperation are Patricia Wentworth’s Miss Silver novels. There is no-one I would rather have in my sick-room than this quietly knitting, Tennyson-quoting gentlewoman detective, ahem, private enquiry agent.
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Are you oppressed? By life, by work, by circumstance? If, like the man trapped by the date tree which grew under him as he slept, you are unable to alter circumstances to your will; adapt your will to circumstances instead: try being heroically or nobly oppressed, for variety.
Nicholas Nickleby (by Monica’s great-granddaddy Charles) would be delighted to be of assistance; or Part One of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women may serve the turn instead.
Like Hamlet, do you find life “weary, stale, flat and unprofitable”? Try Terry Pratchett for some “interesting times.”
Does time weigh heavily on your hands? Do the days bore you by their prosaic banality? The ideal solution is J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic, The Lord of the Rings – the ultimate reason to “not speak slightingly of the three-volume novel,” as Miss Prism warns her charge.
What home remedies do you have on your bookshelf? I’d love to hear!
A Crisis and its Consequences
After Saturday, I didn’t think I had anywhere to go but up.
I wrote a grand total of 729 words on my WIP last week. I sat down on Saturday, gritted my teeth, and wrote. I managed 37 words before I realised what the problem was.
It wasn’t so much that I had no ideas – I had a few, and enough to be going on with. The problem was that I was bored with the story.
Because the story was boring. It had got to the point where it didn’t even seem worth the effort of writing the next word, so I stopped in the middle of a sentence and did some serious thinking.
It didn’t take long to realise where the problem lay, at its deepest root – I’d long suspected, but hoped it would go away of its own accord. (It didn’t. They never do.)
The main character was flat and boring. Yes, she was supposed to be naïve, and completely uneducated in practical matters, but she had become the literary equivalent of blancmange: pale, flavourless and trembling.
Well, no more! I’ve kept the bit of the naïvety, and her knowledge of the world is still largely theoretical, but she’s no fool, and she knows her own mind (particularly in the matter of taking forbidden lessons in the nature and properties of explosive materials). Think of a cross between Scarlett O’Hara and a young Queen Victoria, with a side of pyrotechnical ability.
But then, of course, everything and everyone else had to change too. I had to kill off half the characters and perform radical surgery on the rest, but the result is much stronger and much more interesting.
I was surprised by how little pain it cost to kill my darlings. I had a twinge for the invisible minstrel, but he may yet return, if he can earn his keep.
Unfortunately, I’ve also had to come to terms with pretty much starting all over again: most of the 27,387 words I have written so far will have to be ditched, because they just don’t fit any more. Even the (few) good bits.
Of their adventures in the Forest of Roxburghe, this chronicler shall say but little. Tsifira wandering away from the stream and getting lost shall be barely mentioned; Riordan and Berengaria going to find her shall be touched upon but lightly; and how they subsequently were lost all together and had to wait for sunrise to get their bearings will not even be spoken of.
The fraught incident involving Berengaria and an incidental bear, which was only resolved by the quick and judicious application of half an onion, shall, however, be divulged in full. (But not in this book.)
Ooh, the irony.