{"id":339,"date":"2012-11-26T14:05:19","date_gmt":"2012-11-26T19:05:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/wintle\/?p=339"},"modified":"2012-11-26T14:07:35","modified_gmt":"2012-11-26T19:07:35","slug":"the-febrile-muse-musing-an-interview-with-cindy-doran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/wintle\/2012\/11\/26\/the-febrile-muse-musing-an-interview-with-cindy-doran\/","title":{"rendered":"The Febrile Muse, Musing – an interview with Cindy Doran"},"content":{"rendered":"

This interview originally appeared in slightly different form at Scientific American Books\/FSG<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Shameless<\/a>
\nThe book in question.<\/em><\/p>\n

Among the ever-lengthening series of interviews of authors of pieces in this year’s edition of the OpenLab series, The Best Science Writing Online 2012<\/em><\/a>, is this contribution, my interview with pharmacist and author Cindy M. Doran. Cindy’s guest post at the Scientific American<\/em> blogs, entitled Tinea<\/em> Speaks Up \u2013 A Fairy Tale<\/a>,\u00a0 is unique among the fifty-one pieces in the book, in being set as a fairy tale – an approach that is charming, clever, and engaging. I wanted to find out more about her inspiration for the story, and how she went about making characters out of a diverse set of fungi.<\/p>\n

Richard Wintle: <\/strong>You have a background in clinical pharmacy and infectious diseases \u2013 and clearly quite a knowledge of the \u201ctiny fungus\u201d featured in your piece, as well as a lot of other species that you feature. Did you have to do a lot of background research when writing it?<\/p>\n

Cindy Doran:<\/strong> There is always more to learn, but being a clinical pharmacist (Pharm. D) with infectious disease fellowship training and experience teaching infectious diseases to pharmacy students certainly helped support the infectious disease material of the story. I\u00a0did read and check over the science, such as the characterization of the large and tiny fungi in this piece, to make sure I wasn’t about to pass on bogus information. For me, however, the true challenge in this piece was learning how to find and reference specific fairy tales.<\/p>\n

I knew of some tales I wanted to use, ones I found in Italo Calvino\u2019s\u00a0Italian Folktales.<\/em>\u00a0But Jack\u00a0Zipes (author of\u00a0The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales<\/em>)\u00a0pointed me (after I had asked) to\u00a0Uther’s\u00a0The Types of International Folktales.<\/em>\u00a0In addition, the proofreaders\/copy editors and other editorial staff at Scientific\u00a0American<\/em>\/Farrar, Straus and Giroux\u00a0were amazing.\u00a0I learned a great detail about\u00a0the origins of various fairy tales\u00a0from them too.<\/p>\n

Richard: <\/strong>I hadn\u2019t realized the extent to which you had to research fairy tales to make this piece work. Did you find out anything particularly unusual in the origins?<\/p>\n

Cindy: <\/strong>Fairy tales have types ascribed to them, and within these types, various topics are\u00a0cataloged. Uther\u2019s reference I mentioned earlier led me to specific stories. Within these stories are numerous variations; ascertaining who was the true author of each variation was a little tricky, as each time they are told, they change a bit. I learned that a particular retelling of a fairy tale may be ascribed to a particular author, but not be\u00a0particularly\u00a0true to the original wording\u00a0of that tale by that author.<\/p>\n

We think of science as being exact, but the humanities are as ever bit rigorous in citations. I loved discovering this.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Richard: <\/strong>Anything that surprised you, or that screamed out \u201cI must include this!\u201d ?<\/p>\n

Cindy: <\/strong>It was probably when I read the notes on Italo Calvino\u2019s \u201cThe Ship with Three Decks.\u201d I don\u2019t have his notes handy right now, but in one of his notations to his three stories that I included in the piece, he gives a brief history of scald head in folktales. I was sitting on the beach at the time I read it and bolted forward in my seat thinking I need to use this somehow<\/em>. It literally was plopped in front of me, something to run with. Then I had to figure out how.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Richard: <\/strong>You chose to write your piece as a fairy tale, which is a different approach from your other posts at\u00a0The Febrile Muse.<\/em>\u00a0How did that choice come about, and was this something you\u2019ve been wanting to do for a while?
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cindy: <\/strong>Once upon a time my parents read me fairy tales, in different voices. Now, as a parent, I read them aloud to our kids. I love them. It is true that much of the material on\u00a0The Febrile Muse<\/em>\u00a0is more\u00a0straight\u00a0nonfiction,\u00a0discussion of\u00a0how infectious diseases are portrayed in literature and the arts. And when I started the website, I had never thought of writing a story like this one. But when it got started, it felt natural. The joy I had in writing it was like the joy I feel while reading folktale picture books and fairy tale collections (dramatically, of course).<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s call the path to this story serendipity… and curiosity. In the summer before last, Italo Calvino’s stories led me to\u00a0scalp disease, scald head and the mange (the idea of using in a story, not the disease itself, on my head). I came home from vacation and Googled \u201cfungi and fairy tales\u201d and found\u00a0Frank Dugan\u2019s\u00a0Fungi, Folkways and Fairy Tales: Mushrooms and Mildews in Stories, Remedies, and Rituals, from Oberon to the Internet<\/em>. I had no idea that fungi played such a huge role in storytelling, and the thought excited me. \u00a0I couldn’t help but pitch my fairy tale to Bora, the blog editor at Scientific American<\/em>. I have other story ideas, some fairy tales, but I plan on continuing with\u00a0Inflammatory Language<\/em>\u00a0and other nonfiction pieces too.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Richard: <\/strong>I could envision a whole book of \u201cscientific fairy tales\u201d \u2013 any chance you will write enough of them to fill a book? What about other styles? OpenLab has traditionally included a poem in each edition, for example.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cindy: <\/strong>The thought of a book makes me giddy\u2014and terrifies me. But the desire to tell stories is very strong. I\u2019m not sure, however, that I am the best judge of my own work. Would anyone want to read them? I have a couple stories in editors\u2019 hands at the moment, and I have over 30 ideas for stories (not all are fairy tales). Perhaps these stories will continue to add to my rejection pile, but I am lucky that this particular piece has escaped it.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if I could write poetry. I enjoy reading it, and it inspires me, but I think I would get too caught up in form. But music lyrics? Hmm. I\u2019ve tried to figure out how I could set a story of TB to the Raindrop Prelude<\/em> (Chopin). [laughs] Sometimes a crazy idea turns into something.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Richard: <\/strong>In your mind, is there any tension between the more whimsical writings like your OpenLab\/TBSWO<\/em> piece, and the more serious nonfiction writing you do? Do you ever feel like you should be doing more of one than the other, or fall into the mindset of \u201cneeding to write serious stuff\u201d? This is something, I think, that plagues many authors. What\u2019s your view, and what has your experience been?
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cindy: <\/strong>No, I don\u2019t feel any tension. Perhaps this is because I am no longer in a tenured type of position. I like writing both styles, but stories are a bit more natural \u2013 to find a voice, that is. I like to mix it up \u2013whimsy with straight science\u2013like in a recent post<\/a> I did that mixes monocyte outer membrane structure with fashion. I like to find ways to teach inflammation and infectious disease science that are different from academic writing. Journals don\u2019t usually accept research papers with dialogue or colorful descriptions within the methods section.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Richard: <\/strong>Well, I can think of one example that used O\u2019Darby\u2019s Irish Cream Liqueur as part of a reagent cocktail in a molecular biology experiment. That might actually have been serious, although I prefer to think it was a joke that got past the editors.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cindy: <\/strong>The writing has to be fun and not overly pedantic. Although I can write strict academia style, I don\u2019t have the same passion for doing it that I did with writing Tinea<\/em>. One of the great things about having a website is writing whatever I want, but I try to have a mix of straight nonfiction and fun story pieces. It\u2019s a work in progress.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Richard: <\/strong>\u201cNot overly pedantic.\u201d That\u2019s something good for me to remember. Thanks. Your bio<\/a> says that you review books for the\u00a0New York Journal of Books<\/em>. Has reviewing books helped you with your own writing, for example in determining what makes a good story, and what doesn\u2019t? Care to share any you\u2019ve reviewed that really inspired you?
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cindy: <\/strong>I wouldn\u2019t say that being a reviewer has made me a better writer or storyteller, but I read things a bit differently now. I\u2019m also more critical, which is not always good for a writer \u2013 for the first draft anyway.\u00a0I think what helps me determine best what makes a good story is reading \u2013 a lot. No one type of story works. Just thumb through the anthology. The different paths that the authors, such as yourself, take through science amazes me as to all the possibilities for writers.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution<\/em>\u00a0by Holly Tucker was my first review for NYJB<\/em>, and I learned a lot from reading the book and from writing the review. I’m very glad I had an editor. She helped me identify the points I wished to make about this fantastic story of early blood transfusion science.\u00a0The Picture of Health: Medical Ethics and the Movies<\/em>\u00a0edited by Colt, Quadrelli, and Lester is a book I reviewed that I continuously go back to. It is a collection of essays depicting how different films can be used to teach medical ethics. As you can imagine, there are a lot of genetics references in it. But this book helped reignite for me that art\/science\/teaching excitement that had led me to start\u00a0The Febrile Muse<\/em>\u00a0in the first place.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Richard:<\/strong> Last question: what\u2019s next? Any big projects underway that you\u2019d care to share? Is writing going to become an increasing part of your career?<\/p>\n

Cindy: <\/strong>My collection of stories, of course! [arms up, laughing]<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll have to play it all by ear… see where it all goes. Really, my family is the biggest thing going right now \u2013 my husband and I have five kids spread over nine years. I\u2019ll continue to write away, amongst family life (school, sports, and Drivers Education), reading, and my clinical pharmacy work with fantastic people at a rural hospital in Wisconsin.<\/p>\n

Richard: <\/strong>Well, that sounds like plenty to keep you busy. Thanks for speaking with me, and good luck with your future writing, work and, of course, your very busy-sounding family.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

If you’d like to read the other half, Cindy’s interview of me, why not head on over to her blog, The Febrile Muse<\/em><\/a>?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An interview of Cindy Doran, infectious disease expert, author, and OpenLab 2012 \/ The Best Science Writing Online co-conspirator. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,95],"tags":[97,120,121,122,98,96,119,123],"class_list":["post-339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science","category-writing","tag-97","tag-c-m-doran","tag-cindy-doran","tag-interview","tag-openlab","tag-tbswo","tag-the-best-science-writing-online-2012","tag-the-febrile-muse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/wintle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/wintle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/wintle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/wintle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/wintle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/wintle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/wintle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/wintle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/wintle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}