Ten things I have learned from Grinder

1. Sleep in the sunshine whenever possible.

2. Drink lots of fresh water.

3. Go on at least one adventure every day – three or more is better.

4. Have lots of friends, but be your own self too.

5. Accept love, and give love, but don’t let anyone hold on to you too tightly.

6. Do a few things you know are “against the rules” every day.

7. Pay attention to wildlife.

8. Eat when you’re hungry, sleep when you’re tired.

9. If you want something, be patient and stay after it. If you feel frustrated or it gets away, move on to something else. You can always come back to it.

10. Every once in a while it’s natural to forget what you were doing. Who cares? That just means it’s time for another nap.

I am still alive, but actually, I have been in a hole. A Harry Potter hole. I somehow didn’t get HP #5 on CD, so I read that one. Then I listened to all of #6 except the climax because for some reason, I was missing those chapters on my iPod! It was all good though. One fortuitous thing about listening to them is that I could listen when I had a headache. I can’t read much when I do, so this was a highly entertaining way of getting through the headache. I sat on the porch and watched wildlife while I listened. Did you know squirrels take naps? Me neither! But one just stretched out on a branch and lay there for thirty minutes. Then he was up and away, completely refreshed. They either don’t have eyelids or it’s not safe to close their eyes though because the whole time I could see his, like brown M&Ms.

Anyway, I digress. I just picked up my first non-HP book in a while. It’s called MILLIONS. I have only read about four pages and I am so in love with this book I can hardly stand it. You might remember me raving about Frank Cottrell Boyce’s other book, FRAMED not long ago. I wish I could write like this guy.

Reading anything good this summer? I’ve got a huge pile to get through.

I love to write. No, I mean it. I really, really love to write. Last fall, I thought, “Gosh…I’m soooo tired all the time. My brain is kind of fuzzy too.” After contemplating it, I figured out what was wrong. I hadn’t had a day off four months. Seriously. None. I had traveled for two weeks and I didn’t write then, but traveling is not vacation, no matter what anyone tells you! Vacation is a quick trip to the beach where you sit there and don’t move for two weeks. Traveling is flying, shopping, eating out, cooking for the people who are nice enough to put you up, viewing the sights. Anyway, this isn’t about traveling. This is about writing and days off. And I hadn’t had one in a long, long time.

As it turned out, I had gotten so deep into writing that I couldn’t stop. I actually had to give my husband my computer one day per week. While I’m better at taking days off now, I’m still not very good at it. For example, I’ve worked for the last eight days, even though last Monday should’ve been my day off. And I only took Monday off last week and the week before…I had a headache and a house guest this weekend and I still wrote. I had a good excuse (I always do)! I was finishing my new YA. And I did it! It needs a pass through and then it will go to my critique group. However, my goal to give it to them is the end of the month, so today I am taking the day off. And maybe even tomorrow. I printed it out though, so I’m going to have to give it to my husband to hide until tomorrow…I’m very good at rationalization.

I’m actually better at taking weeks or even months off at a time. I am about to enter one of those times. After I hand off this manuscript, I am going to take 4 weeks off. Or I’m gonna try anyway! Wish me luck!

What are your writing habits like?

P.S. I finally updated Need To Read.

My parents did things differently. My dad had worked from the time he could deliver papers and my mother tells of picking beans as a kid. For that reason, they let me be a total slacker every summer while I was still in school (and actually even the summer after I graduated!). They even gave me my school lunch money ($20 a week) as an allowance. Their idea was that I had the rest of my life to work. My idea was to live it up! None of my friends worked either. Just to be clear though, none of us had any money or cars or anything extravagant. We were pleasantly middle class.

It seems like today, most teens are working, if not all through the school year, then definitely in the summer. Unfortunately, many teens are working in dangerous jobs. I’m talking about fast food. After reading the book, Fast Food Nation I stopped eating at fast food places almost entirely. I am a vegetarian, so I didn’t really frequent them anyway, but on road trips, I’d been known to stop in for French fries or onion rings. My main reason for skipping fast food now is teen safety.

Studying data from a national sample of hospitals over a two-year period, NIOSH estimated that approximately 44,800 occupational injuries to teen restaurant industry workers (age 14 to 17) were treated in hospital emergency departments across the U.S. during that time. Of these injuries, an estimated 28,000 or 63 percent occurred in hamburger, pizza, and other fast food establishments.

What sort of job did you have as a teen? Or if you’re a teen, what are you doing this summer?

As always, free books here.

Please excuse Joelle Anthony from her usually scheduled Author Interview/Profile as she has a headache and wants to use her limited computer time for writing. Check in next week for more fun and games including a Friday interview with writer, Kathy Erskine.

  I know Miss Sophie is taking over my Animal Humor Column, but she’s just so darn cute. And funny. And generous with her catches. The other night she was shuffling around under the bed (we sleep on the porch) and then we heard crunch, munch, slurp. That’s all you need to know. I think this happy ending story is more appropriate for my blog.

We just had a fun episode of Chipmunk Herding, with help from Miss Sophie! I knew that chipmunk was still in the house (it’s been a week!) because I heard him a couple of times yesterday. Today Miss Sophie found him. We had the doors open for him and every fifteen minutes or so, she’d come in and find him and chase him around.

After a while, we thought it wasn’t very nice or productive to let her do the herding, so we took up the hunt too. While the chipmunk was probably scared out of his wits, I have to say for us…it was kind of fun. I get where Miss Sophie’s coming from now. The chipmunk ran and leapt and dove and hid (we did feel sorry for him, but it was still pretty funny). At one point he was on one arm of our big blue chair and Miss Sophie was on the other and they were having a stare-down. He gave in first and made a leap for the bookcase where she couldn’t quite get him.

I know chipmunks have tiny brains, but he was so close to being free so many times I started to wonder if he was an acorn short of a bushel. He got close to the door twice, but once he almost ran right into Mr. Fatboy who just looked at him like, “Hey.” and the other time, Miss Sophie was right behind him so he dove for cover right before he got outside. We would’ve grabbed her, but he didn’t know that.

Finally he ran in the bathroom and Victor ran in after him and slammed the door. I could hear Victor in there scuffle, scuffle, laugh, scuffle, yell, laugh, %$%^&, scuffle, “I got him!” He had him in a five gallon bucket we use to fill the humidifier. Victor comes walking out with the bucket, very proud of himself.

I start yelling, “He’s going to jump!”

Victor says, “Ahh he can’t get out.” but the chipmunk was flying out of the bucket as he spoke.

Luckily we were right in front of the door and out he went. But he raced across the porch and almost ran in the kitchen door which we also had open! Luckily, he was not distracted by the promise of more free cat food and kept going. I had to run after him to make sure our other cat, Grinder, wasn’t anywhere around. He finally got away. Poor thing. But it was pretty funny!

We are thinking of ordering tiny t-shirts that say, “I survived Chez Gatos” and giving them out as souvenirs to the many chipmunks who spend their holidays in our house.

*Chez Gatos is the nickname of our homestead.

  My agent has two completed manuscripts that she’s going to sell. I have two more that are almost done. Even if a miracle occurred and she sold all four of them today, it’s not likely that the last one would even come out until 2011 or 2012. So I ask you…how do I write believably for five or six years in the future?

I am not writing a book of text messages, but there are a few texts in my book because that’s what people do now. However, five years ago no one was texting much. So…if I include text messaging in my books now, how old and obsolete will my writing be when the book finally comes out?

I guess I’m just going to keep writing on the assumption that there will be opportunities to edit stuff like that closer to the publication date. What else can I do? I mean, I’ve been reading about Divination in the Harry Potter books, but so far my future predicting skills are about as good as Professor Trelawney’s.

Do you consider things like this when you write?

Last week I included the statistic that 58% of the US adult population never read another book after high school. This caused quite a stir. The writer, Eileen Cook, and I have been tossing ideas back and forth all week to combat this by developing our own Reading Revolution. So far we know that we are going to offer up ten challenges to choose from, asking people who visit our sites to do one, two or even all ten. It will be fun. It will be exciting. It will add spice to your summer. And there will be prizes! Stay tuned for more information as we develop the Reading Revolution Challenge. Feel free to add ideas of your own here. We’d be glad to steal…er…use them.

As always, free books here.

Today I have the pleasure of interviewing Arthur Slade. I’m lucky to get this interview because Art is one of those people who actually spends a lot of time writing, not goofing off. Right, Art? Plus he does many, many school visits. If you’re a writer aspiring to do the school visit thing, you should be reading Bloggity Blog Blog. Arthur Slade was born in Moose Jaw, raised on a ranch in Southwest Saskatchewan, and writes from his home in the mythical city of Saskatoon. He is the author of such fabulous books as Megiddo’s Shadow, Monsterology, Tribes, and the Governor General’s Award winning book, Dust. He also has a newly released book called Invasion of the IQ Snatchers.

Here are the Friday Five I asked Art.
Do you eat right, get plenty of exercise, and sleep eight hours, or do you sit in front of your computer writing all the time? I write about five hours a day. Sometimes I exercise. Sometimes I eat properly. Sometimes not.
What’s the riskiest thing you ever did and how did it work out for you? Quit my job writing radio advertising and attempted to write as a living. It seems to be working out now. I’ll update you in another ten years, maybe I’ll know for sure by then.
Where do you see yourself in ten years? Ah, the magic question. I hope that I’m still writing and have a few more series and one-offs under my belt. I would like to be on a tropical island, but it’d probably be too hot to write then. Nah, I don’t need the island. I do hope I have a new writing chair by then.
I gave you ten questions and asked you to answer five. Were you tempted to answer all ten? No. I’m on Facebook. I have no free time anymore.
Do you use an outline when writing, or just let it flow and write as fast as you can? I have a little bit of an outline in my head. Sometimes I’ll jot down a few things, but mostly I just let the story unfold as I write it. Though sometimes this can lead to some massive rewrites!

Thanks, Art for stopping by! And everyone else? Let’s do our best to help Art achieve his goals and get a new chair in the next ten year. Buy one of his books. You won’t be sorry.

Personal disclaimer: Dust is SCARY.

Oh! And don’t forget to enter to win a free book…not one of Art’s unless he’s throwing one into the hat. I can’t part with my first edition signed copy of Dust, but there are others to win. Scroll down to Monday’s entry to find out what’s on offer and how to get your free book. Cheers, Joelle

Don’t let the photo of our kitty, Miss Sophie, fool you. She is one tricky cat and she likes to amuse herself at our expense. Miss Sophie suffers from seizures (not the funny part of this story) and so earlier this year, the vet put her on phenobarbital, which is a sort of kitty-downer. We were a bit afraid she’d end up all doped up and unresponsive, but actually she’s much the same except not so skittish and she sleeps more deeply. She’s still very active (there’s a chipmunk racing up and down the hallway while I write this, thanks to her).

You’re probably all familiar with that essay, How to Give a Cat a Pill. Well, we thought we were above anything like that happening to us. We’re good parents and she’s a good cat, right? After a couple of days of docile acceptance of her fate, she began to get really good at spitting the pill across the room. That’s when we changed to plan B: dissolve the pill in water and shoot it into her mouth via a syringe (or shoot it all over her while we try to pry her mouth open). We’ve been doing this for about three months now. Miss Sophie has mixed feelings about this. On one hand, she’s a total druggie and she needs her fix. On the other, she knows it’s against the Laws of Cat to just take medicine willingly. She’s solved this dilemma by making us chase her.

The other day I tried to sneak up on her having her morning nap in the sunshine but she heard me coming and jumped just out of reach. Sometimes I’m patient and just sit there and pet Mr. Fatboy until she can’t stand being ignored and comes within reach, but that day I was in a hurry, so I took the bait. I ran after her. My husband was standing on the porch, doubled up with laughter as she and I raced across the yard. Back and forth, she’d slow down, wait, and just as I’d lunge for her, tear off again! When she got tired of making me run after her, she headed for the dirt pile. She then lay down in it and rolled and rolled until she was almost completely brown. And then she gave herself up. I was totally covered with dirt, but she got her meds.

I have to admit, I didn’t really get how funny I must’ve looked until I watched my husband do it today. She was jumping, hopping, flying, racing, but always just out of his reach. He was running after her across the lawn, arms pumping like he was trying to win the race, and you could just see her laughing on the inside! When he got winded, with tears streaming down my face, I took over the chase. She headed for the dirt pile again, but this time I got her before she could roll. Okay, who am I kidding? She “let” me get her before she could roll. I held her over my head like a trophy, shouting, “I got her! I got her!”

My victory will be short lived though. Did I mention she gets her meds twice a day?

On Tuesday I wrote 13 new pages. Now if you’re a reader and not a writer, you might think, “Yeah, so what?” but if you write, you know that that’s a phenomenal writing day for most writers. Yesterday, I wrote nothing. What happened? Did I use up my muse all in one day? Actually, no…my muse was working overtime to keep me from plugging on.

I did manage to make myself have a look at what I’d written. The first chapter (8 pages), was pretty darn good. In fact, my reader told me it was the best chapter in the book so far (which worries me a little since it’s pages 120-127!). However, the next section just wasn’t working. I tweaked for a while and then finally said, “Yeah…that works. I’m good. Tomorrow I’ll move on.” Only this morning I woke up and knew why I had run into a roadblock yesterday. Those last 5 pages were crap. So today, I throw them out and write the chapter that needs to go there.

While 13 pages sounds impressive, it almost always turns out this way when I do so much in one day. What stops the flow for you? What do you do?

58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school.

I stole this statistic from Eileen Cook’s website. Appalling, isn’t it? Not the stealing, the statistic. It gets worse! Drop by and see her post on the Reading Revolution she’s proposing.

I think the very best thing we can do is share books with other people. I was thinking of a book exchange website where you could post books you’ve read that you’re willing to send to someone in trade for one of theirs, no money exchanged. If I took the time to create that though, I’d never have time to write. Maybe something like that already exists. Anyone know? If so, post the link here!

Do me a favor today…read something.

Here’s what’s on offer:

BETSY AND TACY GO OVER THE BIG HILL – by Maud Hart Lovelace

THE MIDWIFE’S APPRENTICE – by Karen Cushman (MG)

JACOB HAVE I LOVED – by Katherine Patterson (it’s an old beat-up copy, but what the heck? It’s great and it’s free!)

SO SUPER STARRY – British chick lit by Rose Wilkins (better than most) (YA)

THE PRINCESS DIARIES Give Me Five – the fifth book in series, by Meg Cabot (new, YA)

CHILDREN OF THE RIVER – by Linda Crew (YA)

Commenting here gets you entered to win OR you can comment on any of the books I write about this week in Need To Read OR you can send me your info through the contact page. Next weekend, I’ll draw a name out of the Cubbies hat and post the winner on Monday along with the new book.

Because this website is geared towards teen readers, I have a few rules, mostly regarding internet safety.

MORE WAYS TO WIN!!!!

Nothing much to write as I’ve just been reading HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS and listening to HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN on CD while I work out and clean and sit on the porch gazing a the lake.

Read anything good?