Ask A Librarian: Answers You Won't Get From Google: Part 3

In this third installment, I begin to tackle the more personal questions that students asked. Nothing inappropriate, as will be clear in the following. But first, a couple of especially deep questions.

Louis asks, "Can you purposely make yourself dream by sleeping high?"

I am going to assume that Louis means sleeping at high altitude, rather than under the influence of any narcotic. In my experience, sleeping at high altitude, as when, for example, I had the top bunk and my younger brother had the lower bunk, produced far better dreams than when I slept on the bottom bunk.

But that might just be because he disturbed my sleep when his own bad dreams resulted in him falling out of the bed in the middle of the night and waking me up.

Jocelyn came up with what may have been the most puzzling question: "Why is life?"

If I were still a smart alec English teacher, I would ask Jocelyn to clarify her question, as in, "Why is life what, Jocelyn?" But now that I am a smart alec librarian, I am a little bit kinder, so I won't give Jocelyn any grief. After all, she recently fell out of a tree and mentioned something about being in a cardboard boat, on a pond, in the wind.

Seventh grade is hard enough as it is.

But to answer the question: Life is, Jocelyn, because the alternative would be darkness and chaos, and no one really wants that.

Addy wondered, "Do insects feel pain?" 

Yes. Next question.

Jake Boaz had the shortest question, although he felt the need to clarify it: "Why?" The clarification: "That is my question."

The answer, which needs no clarification: Because.

Payton asked, "What is the purpose of kittens?"

This is a question that requires a bit of historical context. Once upon a time, the purpose of kittens was to amuse humans by chasing string, tumbling over each other, and biting us with their tiny teeth.

More recently, the purpose of kittens is to keep America's Funniest Home Videos on the air, not to mention being the subject of roughly 1,243,678 videos on YouTube. Oh, and memes and gifs and social media profile photos and on and on.

For the final entry in this post, Catherine H. asks, "How do the words come to you while writing? Most days when I write I get writers block."

I don't actually know how the words come to me, but I have found that I can get past writer's block by just writing, as quickly as possible, without stopping. That free writing shuts up the hyper-critical editor who wants to nitpick about spelling, grammar, word choice, and so on. After a few minutes, I can usually find some kind of flow. Learn to trust that, and the words will come. 

One great thing about modern technology is that we can easily revise, discard, or completely start over without having to roll a new sheet of paper into a typewriter.

Of course, sometimes the words refuse to come. In such times, there is a temptation to pay the idea fairy for a few paragraphs to get me started or, in more desperate times, make a deal with the devil. But idea fairies are notoriously unreliable and deals with the devil never go well for humans.