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Book Review: Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen, by Christopher McDougall

I love to run...er, I would love it, except that I always seem to get injured when I do it. Which is why I read this book. Because I'd had plantar fasciitis for six months and done absolutely everything doctors and everybody else recommended, including never going barefoot and buying orthotics and special shoes with extra arch support, and my heel pain kept getting worse. And then I heard something about a book called Born to Run and how some tribe in Mexico runs like 80 miles a day for fun with barely any shoes on at all. So I bought the book, but my daughter snatched it, and then she lost it. Meanwhile, a guy at the shoe store was telling me that going barefoot might actually make a person's arches stronger, and my brother was telling me how he and my nephew had been running barefoot and how much more fun it is to run without shoes. So I walked my dog to the park one day on my miserable, screaming heels, took off my running shoes, and ran two miles barefoot in the grass.

Deck Your Shelves...More Christmas Book Suggestions

It's book-buying time of year (we hope!) and at least a couple of other bloggers have great Christmas book suggestions: check out Shannon Hale's (Goose Girl) recommendations and writer Matthew Kirby's . And then, more book suggestions by me: How could I have left Calvin and Hobbes off my list of boy books ? The collected volumes of the comic strips by Bill Watterson ( Something Under the Bed is Drooling , Sunday Pages 1985-1995 , etc.) have been my ten-year-old's (and almost every one of his friends') standby for the last two years. Great vocabulary builder. You'll find kids will start asking you about things like Cubist art and sex-discrimination, so be prepared. Reluctant readers will happily wade through difficult words because they want to understand the joke, even if it seems too sophistacated for a kid that age. My 10 and 12-year-old quote from Calvin as much as from movies. For the grown-ups (or serious teen-readers), how about a classic? Books

Let me take care of your Christmas shopping...

It's easy: buy books--for everyone. Nothing better than curling up with a great new book during down-time on Christmas Day. Besides, books are cheap. They go well with chocolate. And cozy Christmas fires in the fireplace. They don't even rot your brain. If you're stumped about which book to buy for the kids in your life, let me take care of that problem for you right now. Here's my list of this-year's book recommendations after twenty years of reading aloud and talking about books to kids, as well as watching how kids respond to the read-aloud experience of individual books. All the books on my list have passed the story-under-fire test: they've grabbed and kept real-life kids' attention, whether the kids are reading-addicts, or not so easy to please. Besides, they're all great, high-quality books I've read and happen to love myself, or I wouldn't put them on my list:) Eat-the-book phase (babies): *   Pat the Bunny , by Dorothy Kunhard

What's in a name, Romeo? More than you thought, maybe...

I've noticed  a trend in my writing: I think I might be slightly obsessed with names. For instance, my princess story has a main character who loses her name--and has to find another; my witch story centers around a girl who's stuck with probably the worst name on earth; and my current work-in-progress has a main character who's a slave boy with no real name at all. One of the things my princess, slave boy, and witch each discover, I think, is that a name is often not some floating thing you toss or take up like a bit of seaweed, even if you manage to change it (which I'd do in a heartbeat if my last name were Bloodvessel, for instance, like a particularly-nasty character in one of Joan Aiken's books); it's often attached to something else--to family and origin, history and genetic traits, even culture, place, and heritage; it defines, at least a little bit, our sense of who we are. Unfortunately, in Romeo's case. And Juliet's. "A rose by an

Just in time for the holidays...

Hubby put the Christmas lights up and I mailed off Hepzibah to my agent at last. I expect to do some more revisions before we send her out into the publishing world, but I feel a little bit like I've just sent my baby to her first day of Kindergarten. Except I couldn't cry. I did laugh aloud. There's a little story behind all this. It begins Once upon a time, H was my first novel ever, and I worked on it non-stop for about a year, all the while attending conferences and reading like a mad-woman, but I never found a beginning I liked, so, after about 35 *&%$#! beginnings, I got sick of it and set it aside for a couple of years. Meanwhile, I wrote a second novel--the novel which got me an agent--and began three others. I learned a lot in those three years of writing and reading every day and studying novel-writing. When I picked H up again, I realized she needed a complete overhaul, poor girl. I kept getting her out and tinkering, and then I'd get dis

We (Writers) Are Transmitters

I cringe whenever I hear an author say, "I don't write for an audience; I write for myself." Well, of course she writes for herself. So does probably every other writer, including me. Writing keeps us sane.  But I have three teenage girls, and when they pick up a book, that story isn't just the author's anymore, it belongs to my daughter; it's in her head and how she responds to it could change a lot about the way she thinks. If you're published, you're writing for an audience. If other people read your stuff, you're writing for an audience. Anyone who takes their manuscript out of its drawer and hands it off to someone else has written for an audience. And there's a certain amount of responsibility that comes with that, like it or not. Words have power to change lives, and that's something you've got to take into account when your work goes out into the world. As John Gardner points out in The Art of Fiction , somebody who re

Excuses, excuses

I know I've been pretty silent on the blog lately. I have excuses. I do. I've been...busy. Well, I've been writing. That's my job, after all. It's also November, which means *Birthdays: three within 10 days of each other in my family. Fun, but exhausting. And expensive. Who decided that all the birthdays should be the month before Christmas? Was that my fault? Somebody needs to do some explaining. Sidenote: I got a camera for my birthday. When I figure out how to work it, maybe I'll start posting photos once in awhile. *A race: my first trialthon. Yes, I lived through it. Didn't quite freeze to death (the weather decided to be unseasonably beautiful). Didn't win. Ha, ha. Ha. Ha. I even had fun. My sister-in-law actually did win. Congrats, Sara! (She wins so often it's not even exciting for her anymore. I, on the other hand, was excited just to finish). I might even do another. I have yet to attempt an open-water swim, which gives me panic attack

Slacking, But Not

Slacking on the blog means lots of novel-writing, so I'm sorry, but not. Updates: Holy cow--I'm on page 64 of my teen poetry novel . It's taken me up and run away with my brain. I wasn't going to work on this yet. And I thought I only liked fantasy, but I find I'm dealing with stuff like depression and rejection and physical abuse and it feels like a perfectly natural seque from fantasy-writing. Who knew? The worst part: sending this one out will be like walking onto a swimming pool deck in nothing but my flip-flops. We'll see if I can do it. Hepzibah revisions --up to page 157. Going quickly, but I keep getting distracted by the novel in verse. Luckily, I'm not sure where I'm going next with that, so I'm back into revisions full time again.

Secret Hot Fudge Recipe Revealed

I'm on a fiction-writing roll--haven't left my house for three days--but I haven't posted for two weeks, so today you get...my own awesome recipe for hot fudge sauce, invented by me. Perfect on Breyers vanilla icecream. Chocolate makes everything better. Makes you write better. Makes you well when you're sick. Maybe. That's not a scientifically-proven statement. But I stand by it anyway. Homemade Hot Fudge Sauce 1/2 C. real butter (no margarine) 1/2 C. slavery-free fair-trade cocoa powder (Dean's Beans is my favorite--you can buy online at http://globalexchange.org/ ) 1/2 C. milk 1 1/2 C. sugar Melt butter in covered glass bowl in microwave. Whisk in cocoa until combined. Then whisk in milk thoroughly. Then whisk in sugar. (Don't try to dump them all in at once or it won't work). Microwave on high 2 minutes. Take out and stir. Mike another minute; stir. One more minute, then stir again. Continue until mixture is thick and begins to foam up.

The Art of Reading Slowly, Or, Read Like You Eat

America believes in fast: fast cars, fast food, fast writing. Look at Stephanie Meyer. She wrote Twilight in, what, two months? Wow, that blows my mind. We love speed. I know a lot of people who read fast. I've heard rumors that JFK read some ridiculous number of words a minute--7,000, or something, though I have no legitimate source on that. I took a speed-reading course in college, even taught speed-reading mini-classes as part of my job at the reading/writing center where I worked. I know HOW to read fast. But I don't do it. Not that I didn't understand all that speed-reading stuff. I just didn't like it. I never could make myself practice. I like reading slowly. Not that there's anything wrong with reading fast. I admire those people who can read 2 or 3,000 words a minute. Or even 700. How nice to be so efficient. It has to be good for school. But I read slowly. I mean, really slowly, as in read-aloud-slow, like Charlie Brown's Snoopy from the old P

Banned Books Week

In honor of intellectual freedom and ALA Banned Books Week (Sept. 26-Oct 3), I'm making a plug for reading a banned book this week. You'd be astounded at some of the books on the ALA's banned list: Where the Wild Things Are , Speak , Harry Potter , Golden Compass , To Kill a Mockingbird , Bridge to Terabithia , Farenheit 451 , Lord of the Flies , A Separate Peace , and the Gutenberg Bible, to name a few. Some of my favorite books have landed their authors in jail, including the wonderful Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka. Call of the Wild was burned in Nazi bonfires. I'm admittedly conservative about the books I'd personally hand to a young child; I believe, like Corrie Ten Boom's father (the Hiding Place), that some subjects are too heavy to ask young children to carry, just as a large suitcase might be. But that's a decision for individual caretakers to make for their own children, not for other people's. And I get angry when others try to make that

Happy Thoughts and Updates

I collect happy thoughts in a file folder. Really. I stick things in there like the Mothers' Day card my daughter once made with a picture of an oversized version of me in my glasses and ugliest green sweats with a creepy grin on my face, and I'm standing on a mini version of earth like some sort of balancing super-sweat woman; the caption underneath my huge self says, "to Mom, the best person in the WORLD." Wow. And you guys thought YOU were hot stuff. Think again--I'm better. The best. Arguably, according to this picture, the largest, as well. Though she's the daughter who liked to balance my ego by shouting when she was mad at me that I was the WORST person in the whole world. But I digress from happy. Anything that makes me smile goes into that file in the drawer. And I like to take out my happy thoughts and read them sometimes. So here are just a few of mine this week, and not from the drawer: *the Wasatch Mountains in the fall *yellow ch

Book Review: Going Out Green: One Man's Adventure Planning His Own Burial, by Bob Butz

Ever since I was six I knew I hated open-casket funerals. My friend, Chrissy, died of leukemia that year, and though I was not really disturbed by the idea of her death (I knew she'd been terribly sick and she wouldn't be anymore; besides, she was going to live with Heavenly Father and be happy forever--why was everyone crying?), I was pretty creeped out by the sight of her waxy-faced body. I didn't think it looked like a person in there, let alone the living, breathing girl who'd come to my last birthday party. The viewing didn't bring me any sense of closure; it just brought a sense of mild horror. It felt like voyeurism. Except that I was six, and didn't know what voyeurism meant. The same sense of vague creepiness always comes back whenever I see another embalmed version of the shell of someone I once knew, pumped all full of formaldehyde and smeared with a ridiculous amount of make-up, especially when I think about the outragous cost of creeping people

Loving the Semi

I think it’s time to come out of the closet and admit I’m in love—with punctuation. I keep hearing people say punctuation is dying. And who cares? Who needs it, anyway? Super-casual writing like texting and chatting is here to stay. Using punctuation at all in a text-message is a pain in the rear-end. A semi-colon in a text? Forget it. The trouble is, ideas have to be pretty simple to get away with killing off all your punctuation. That’s ok for a quick chat—if you don’t care if anybody really understands you—but what about books and essays, which require more complicated thinking than lol and jk? My favorite punctuation mark, the poor semi-colon, has suffered the worst punctuation slaughter; nobody seems to know how to use it at all. I’ve seen at least one girl stare at it like it’s a spider crawling across the page. Girl, pointing to a semi-colon: “What the (bleep) is that?” Me: “It’s a semi-colon.” Girl: “Unh. What’s it do? I don’t like it. Get it away!” “It’s intimidating,” a frie

Back in the Saddle Again

It's Friday and I should be posting again, but I'm actually not. I'm writing. REAL writing. The kind I never got around to at SCBWI. Not blog posts. Except for this short excuse. I didn't even shower today. How's that for dedication? And I realized that I've been postponing novel-writing all summer because rewriting an old draft hurts. Ouch. You've got to wrench out all the beautiful sentences that you really loved and stick them in a file to maybe use later, even though you know you won't, to make place for less beautiful ones that work better for the story. It's sad. And I don't like to do it. But it's necessary. And I've been doing it all week. I feel like I'm bleeding, you know? But at least I have the right to call myself a writer today.

SCBWI Episode, part B

If you're a math person (which I'm OBVIOUSLY not), you may have noticed that the math on that last post didn't quite add up: 7 people x 20 minutes for credit-card processing plus 40 minutes for the girl's fight with the driver, plus time to get lost over and over and get from point A (LAX) to point B (Central City), doesn't exactly = 2 hours. Ok. I admit I exaggerated. For the sake of the story. Or maybe I didn't stretch things all that much. Because I wasn't the seventh passenger, I was the sixth, and I paid in cash (it took no more than 30 seconds, tops) which means it was only 5x20. Which adds up pretty well. Except for getting lost and driving time. And the swearing. That might have sped things up. The driver was pretty mad and driving REALLY fast by then. Then, if the wind speed was 30 mph and the driver was heading into the wind 40% of the time, how long did it take? You'll be tested on this later. But not by me. By my brother, who thinks mat

An SCBWI Episode (part A)

Yeah. Another one. What? Don't you have ANYTHING else to write a blog post about? No. You got a problem with that? Nothing happens in my life. Ever. I sit in front of my computer all day and type. I take care of my sweet and nearly-perfect children (Shut up and quit fighting, you guys! I'm trying to write!) who are old enough to pretty much take care of themselves. And I haven't been alone once all summer long. Being alone recharges me mentally. Too much socializing shuts down my brain. I NEED alone time. So when I go somewhere (alone!) I get really excited. Kind of like when you have a new baby and you finally make it Outside! The Door! To the...Grocery Store! And you really want to tell someone, only NO ONE cares. And neither should you. Because what's so exciting about getting in the car and driving to and from the store? So SCBWI is the kind of thing only writers get excited about, and for me it was kind of an alone marathon. With a thousand other people

More on SCBWI

For more details on SCBWI in L.A., visit writer Matt Kirby's blog. It's a great sum-up, except I didn't meet as many famous people as he did, and of course I forgot to bring a camera. You'll have to look at his pictures to see any photos of me in L.A. Let's see if this link will work this time: http://matthewkirby.com/kirbside/?p=614 Technology doesn't like me.

Walk out the door and don't get shot

My kid thinks I'm going to get shot. Whenever I get in the car to go anywhere, he says, "Bye, Mom, don't get shot!" It's a little disturbing. I don't know where he gets this. It's not like we watch lot of violent TV. Actually, we don't really watch TV at all. Last week I flew to Los Angeles for a national Society for Children's Book Writers and Illustrators conference. Saying good-bye was traumatic: "Bye, Mom," my son said mournfully, "Don't get shot in L.A." I wasn't much worried about getting shot. My room and the conference were in the same Century City hotel, which I hardly had a chance to leave, so a gunman would've had to have been pretty determined to get me if he'd wanted me. I was more worried about getting lost. Or missing my plane. Given my track record, neither of those things were unlikely at all. I have phobias about going places by myself, probably because the last time I traveled entirely

Unraveling (or raveling up) Dramatica

I've been meaning to write this post for a month, now, and finally, today, I have no trip to pack for, nothing to plan, nowhere to rush, so here it is at last. I mentioned Dramatica in an earlier post, and I need to explain what the heck that is. Dramatica is both a theory and a software program that walks you through the theory using your own novel-in-progress. I'm just using a free version of the software, which I find frustrating, since I can't save anything, so I can't say whether the software is worth the money. Here's my little sum-up of the theory, as I understand it. Or, if you're interested in the details, check out the Dramatica website at www.dramatica.com, or click on one of the links in the website the Hickmans created for our conference workshop in June: www.storymind.net (sorry, my links refuse to work today for some odd reason. Maybe because I have no clue how to use them). Dramatica uses the human mind and its problem-solving process as

Someday I'll have time to write again...

This month has been crazy, beginning with a family vacation to Bear Lake, which turned into a family reunion there, then a week of girls' camp, and now the family's off to Yellowstone for a few days. In a couple of weeks I'll be flying to L.A. for a national SCBWI conference. I'm itching to write; it's driving me crazy. Got to finish up my rewrite of Hepzibah and then think about sending her out into the publishing world, but when do I squeeze it in?

In a poetry mood...

Hadn't seen the sun in awhile. When it turned up today, poetry happened. Mountain Glory-Song For two weeks I thought the sun Was playing hide-and-find And tag-and-dash And blind-man-bluff— A fortnight of teasing games Of almost and not quite, And maybe tomorrow— But today the sun came up and stayed, And I realized— Sun never left, clouds just tricked My view—my eyes were the Trouble, my vision Too weak to poke Through to outer-space. Today the sun breaks out— The mountain sings its glory And I stand witness To the whole, great organ Of mountainous joy— The birds begin it— An ecstasy of towhee pipe song And warbler trills And camp-robber scree! scree! scrah! And the thrushes, of course— Running melodies over The rocks like streams of Snow-melt—nobody ever could beat a Thrush for song And then the crickets take it up With the grass-fiddlers. And the mountain opens up its stops— Every one— And lets loose sforzando Dragonflies dance with swall

Urgh...

It's midnight and I'm writing a blog post. Does that tell you something about how much writing time I have when my kids are home in the summer? I miss 6-hour writing blocks. And not waiting up late on weekdays for teenagers to come home. Built-in writing time--too bad I'm too tired to appreciate it.

Plugging in

I always believed I was one of those people whose emotional/mental energy recharges in solitude. It's true: quiet time alone with mountains and nature will always leave me feeling better, more ready to face whatever hard thing life decides to dump on me today. Anne Morrow Lindburgh said once that being around other people is draining because there's nothing more exhausting than being insincere. Yeah. Most of the time social settings require at least some insincerity, especially for someone like me, lest I alarm anyone with the real Elena. I've changed my mind, just a little, about that, though. After spending a delightful week with hundreds of other writers at the BYU Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers (WIFYR) Conference, and my mornings with a small and talented group of fantasy writers in my workshop there, I've decided that being around other people isn't what's draining; it's being around people who don't "get" you. It's about c

Out for a bit...

I'm taking a break from blogging for a bit while I madly write and prepare for the BYU Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers Conference (WIFYR) which starts next week. I'm excited to be doing morning fantasy-writing workshops with Tracy and Laura Hickman, who have a ridiculous number of books in print and are fabulous teachers. I loved the one-day conference I attended with them last July and I've already learned a lot just working through the pre-conference reading. I'll be back after the conference is over, unless I get too busy with rewrites.

Cars and Bikes and a Weird Day

Here's my weird Saturday: My sister borrowed my bike for a triathalon this weekend. Before she picked it up we had this conversation: Sis: So, I'm not used to bikes with skinny tires. How likely do you think I am to get a flat? Me: I hardly ever get a flat. Sis: I'll buy a spare anyway. Me: You won't get a flat. Sis: I'll buy one anyway. After spending the morning watching Sis swim, bike, run, I'm driving my son to a birthday party, when I feel my power steering is gone. I think my car has stalled, which isn't good, since I'm on a busy street, coming up on an even busier intersection, with nowhere to pull over, but when I check my dashboard, everything looks normal. After a minute I smell something I could swear is rotten fish. Me: "Do you smell that fishy smell?" E: "Yeah. Gross. Are we there yet?" The battery light goes on. The car starts dinging at me: bing! bing! bing! I turn the corner, which takes both arms

Bree's New Site

Check out my friend Bree's new website www.breedespain.com and find out more about her upcoming Young Adult book, The Dark Divine. It's a great read for teens, and I feel like it belongs just a little bit to me, too, since Bree's one of my fabulous writing group sisters and we've all watched each other's novels evolve. Don't miss it next spring 2010. Also, she's having another blog contest with free stuff, so go to her blog at http://www.readbree.blogspot.com/ for more info, follow the instructions, and don't forget to mention that you saw this promotion here. Go, Bree! Okay, stupid. Bree's blog contest was over before I posted this. I forgot to check the deadline. Go see her website anyway, because it's cool.

Why "Storyfires" ?

Because ... I like the Native American tradition of telling stories around a story-fire. And because ... It's in one of my novels. In that little world, every full moon is a Telling Night, where villagers sit beside seven fires and listen to the village storymaker weave their world into sense. Hopefully. Unless that storymaker happens to be the village outcast. Who happens to be a witch in self-denial. Then maybe the villagers just chuck rocks at her head. And also because ... Storytelling in the blogosphere feels oh so public sometimes, and the fire sets a friendly mood. Even if it's a fake fire. Imaginary can be good. We can pretend we're all sitting around a massive fire on a bunch of logs. Unless you plan on chucking rocks at my head.  And last, most of all, because ... Story is its own kind of fire. The best stories light up something inside a person, burn away the old, make room for something new, and the whole world suddenly looks like a different place

Fantasy and Faith

Here's a real-life story for a Friday afternoon. Once upon an actual Sunday morning, not too many months ago, a couple of lovely, polite, and very earnest people knocked on my door, Bible in hand. Earnest Woman: "We're worried about the disturbing trend of children's books about witches and wizards and magic." Me: (blink) Earnest Woman: "I see you have children, I'm sure you're concerned about their well-being?" Me: "Mmmm." Earnest Man: "We'd like to read you a verse from the Bible about the dangers of witchcraft, if you don't mind." Me: "Mmmm." Whereupon they proceeded to read a verse where Paul warns against seeking out witches and wizards who "peep and mutter." These people were so earnest, and really nice, I didn't have the heart to tell them that I, myself, had written two books about witches and magic. I didn't want to horrify them. I also didn't have time--I wo

Ten-second Vision

Mountain and morning collided again today, The usual explosion Of sun over cliffs-- Never common, though quotidian-- That eruption of airy light-magma Flowing down the face of ragged rock, Of warped and stunted scrub oak And sorry straggles of spring growth; Burning, bursting The dry and the dead, Dredging out the dark corners Of the world, and of my head With fire and light Too hot in the soul for ordinary Bland plain or dull feeling. Another moment of light-fire And I might be transformed altogether But no, the collision is only Instantaneous Gone before I have time to take More than a few awed, desperate breaths And I'm crawling again, Back in dimmer air, With scraped hands and knees, Trying to remember, to resurrect Out of the droppings and dustpiles of my mind That one flash of fire burning Away the darkness-- Just a few small seconds of relief.