Ramblings

There are two or three things I've come to know about life.

1. My dogs will bark at the most inopportune moments and shatter my ear drums when all I want is silence.

2. No matter how hard I try to be happy with things, there will always be something that makes me wish for a little more.

3. I know nothing about life.

See also Sgt. Schultz

It's number 2 that really gets my goat. For the most part, I'm a happy person. I have a husband that I love and who loves me. I have a job that usually fills me with a sense of purpose. I have friends and family that care about me. I've written a book, been on TV, participated in the running of large organizations...and yet I found this morning as I cleaned my house in preparation of Christmas decorating that I am not a happy camper today, and I couldn't really discern a good reason why, because life is going pretty well right now.

Without getting to into too many details, I've made some decisions (with the husband) that I think are putting us on a better financial path, so that's a good thing. I've decided it's time to hand over some of the duties to my second-in-command at work that I've been doing since her predecessor left a couple months ago, which will lessen my work load.  I did dishes last night so my kitchen isn't a total disaster, something that is always nice. My blood sugar was low most of the morning...

This eureka! moment brought to you by the man who really invented electricity as we know it.

I'm not saying that my moods are completely controlled by my blood sugars, but if I'm in a bad mood for no reason a lot of times it is because my blood sugar is on the downward spiral. My husband can usually tell when this is the case. When I'm being particularly bitchy he tells me to go check my blood sugar before he takes cover and more often than not it's low or quickly approaching low levels, which I'd figure out myself if, you know, my blood sugar wasn't low.

I hate how a woman's emotional state is so often attributed to "that time of the month." Sometimes a woman just gets down on herself and needs someone to tell her she's got value, and it's got nothing to do with her reproductive system. And while I admit I am often more liable to strike out in anger in the days preceding the start of my monthly cycle, I am also more likely to bite your head off for something totally unreasonable if my blood sugar is in the 50's. Just knowing this ticks me off, because it's a thing that I don't have 100% control over, which means I don't have 100% control over myself. Think about that for a second....it's scary, isn't it?

November is...

November is National Diabetes Month.

I don't know how I feel about this, honestly. I mean, yay- we have a month in which we are probably going to get more air time and more coverage, but we're really not. I did some research for another blog I am doing this month (over at The YALSA Hub, and it's not up yet or I'd link to it), and I learned that there isn't a large number of teen books with diabetic characters in it. This wasn't a complete surprise to me, since there weren't many when I was a teenager. What was surprising to me was that since I was a teenager there haven't been any NEW ones. More people get diabetes now than ever before and the literary world seems to have dropped it like a bad habit. Millions of people have diabetes and there aren't diabetics in our literature? 250,000 people get leukemia a year and there are at least four books that have come out in the last two years for teens that have characters with leukemia in them. The numbers seem skewed, though I admit that my interest has been limited to the young adult novel and for all I know there's a series written by Danielle Steel all about a woman who is a diabetic...not that I'd know, because I don't read Danielle Steel.

But this got me thinking...November is also National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo for short). Maybe I should just write a young adult novel about a teen with diabetes myself. How hard can that be? I've been a diabetic for *mumble mumble* years now. I'm pretty sure if it came down to it, I'd be able to accurately write about how it is to live with it, as a teenager even. Hell, that's what I'm doing here isn't it?

Get it?

 

Alas, if only it were that easy. If I were just writing about diabetes it would be. If I were just writing about living with diabetes it would be, too. But writing a young adult novel that talks about diabetes, and is entertaining, has some plot, and doesn't sound preachy? Some of the worst YA lit I've read has come across as preachy. And some of the worst YA lit I've read has been about a disease. In fact, there's one author in particular that has built a career on writing about teens with cancer or some other fatal ailment, and got two books about diabetes in there, too....and all of it is schmaltzy, predictable....

It's not Nicholas Sparks, but this also applies to him, too, I guess.



 

Honestly even  if it were easy, I'm not that motivated to write it, either. Writing a book is hard, and writing a good book is improbable, and writing a good book for teens is a total shot in the dark (kind of like booking a trip on Expedia- sometimes you get a great deal, some times you don't.) The big thing in literary circles, especially ones dealing with those under 18, is that you need to be able to see yourself in the literature you read. Kids who live in the suburbs tend to lean toward books that take place there, just as kids who are of a certain culture/religion need to see kids of their culture/religion in the books they read. It's a reaffirming thing- "Hey, this person is just like me!" even though we're all supposed to be ourselves and not be like other people, which I sometimes take to the extreme.

For instance, I'd wear this...in public.

 





But the idea has planted itself into my head, and I can't seem to let go of it. In fact, I jotted down some notes and ideas the other day that I think could really work. Now I just need to find the time to sit down and do it, and then get a publisher, and hopefully write it well enough that I can squeeze a few sequels out of it....