Beth Kephart's Blog, page 216

That is my heart

Sunday, 8 PM.  A day of writing behind me, which is to say, a day of reworking what had already been worked.  In the coming week, You Are My Only will launch.  On Tuesday I will name the winners of the You Are My Only Treasure Hunt.  On Wednesday, I will return to my friends at Rutgers-Camden (thank you, Lisa Zeidner, hello, Daniel Wallace) to teach, to lecture, to critique, to read.  On Thursday evening, at Radnor Memorial Library, thanks to the good graces of Pam Sedor, I will gather with my dear friends and reflect—those festivities made even brighter by the goodness of Elizabeth Mosier.



One waits a long time for a book to find itself, and a long time (too) for a book to find its way into the world.  One hopes for things, and by my blogger friends, my reader friends, my writer friends—my friends—I have been blessed.



I found this single fuscia leave today on my long walk.



That, my many loved ones, is my heart.

walking through trees

(or between them)

I wrote today.  I walked.  The one impossible without the other now.  The story making itself best known when I am away from machines.

where I have been, where I am going

[image error] I am not sure I got the rhythm of this past week right, but I tried.  There was a lot of just plain work to do—finishing magazine projects for one client while settling in on a commemorative book for another.  That book project memorializes a place and time.  It means something to the people who have asked me to create it, and so it means an enormous amount to me.  If I have, then, in some ways, gone missing as a writer this week, I have been listening to the stories of others, of men, mostly, who may not think of themselves as poets at all, but who have earned my deep respect for the genuine nature of their talk, their reverence for machines.



And so today, I continued work on that commemorative book project and then switched gears—reading the manuscripts that I'll be workshopping at Rutgers-Camden this coming Wednesday.  The three stories that were sent to me could not be more different from each other, but they are remarkable, each in their own way.  I'm building a workshop around the critique pieces.  I have an idea and, after I teach that class, I plan to share it here.



Clients and workshops.  Lectures and readings.  The fragments of this life all here, on this glass-topped desk, waiting for me.  In between, my son calls with stories, my friends send notes (and post kind Facebook things), my father stops by, I eat a crisp, locally grown Stayman apple, I slip a quiche into the oven.



This is a simple life that I lead.  I would trade it for no other.

Small Damages, Ruta Sepetys, and a birthday surprise

This morning I did one of those things I try not to do—traveled over to the Amazon page to see if the cover for Small Damages, my summer 2012 novel, has been posted.  It has not, but a separate piece of news was there, something I had not known.  Small Damages, the book that took nearly a decade of my life, was inspired by my travels to Seville, and will be published by one of the most extraordinary houses anywhere, Philomel, is set to come out on my son's birthday.  (For more on the incredible Philomel, go here.)  That is no mere coincidence.  That is perfection.  My son has been with me through every one of the dozens of drafts and, indeed, the book is dedicated to him.



And so I wait to share the remarkable cover with you.  Believe me, it is worth waiting for.  Tamra Tuller, my editor, and her team worked for literally months to produce something that is just so infinitely right that it staggers me.  In classic Tamra style, she also took the time to share the book with her authors Kathryn Erskine (Mockingbird, The Absolute Value of Mike) and Ruta Sepetys (Between Shades of Gray).  I had shared Kathryn's words on this blog earlier, along with the treasured words of Rita Williams-Garcia (One Crazy Summer).  



This morning I share Ruta's:

Stunning.  Kephart's lyrical prose lingers with you long after the final page.  I simply didn't want it to end.

What poetry knows

My friend Nazie. 



Well, I could leave it at that.  Just:  My friend Nazie.



But I have more to say.  My friend Nazie and I have known each other nearly the whole of our adult lives.  Architecture brought us together.  A magazine.  Her love of beautiful things, her ability to find them, share them, her commitment to living a complete life.  The conversation between us sometimes slow and sometimes quick, but never ending, always reviving.



Today Nazie sends me this link to Marie Howe's interview with Terry Gross.  Maybe you will have the time to listen, and if you do not, this fragment:

Poetry holds the knowledge that we are alive and that we know we're going to die.  The most mysterious aspect of being alive might be that — and poetry knows that.

I took the photograph above while at a client site, waiting for an interview to begin.  That is my Schuylkill River.  That is the sun on her back.

Family Circle Momster Recommends YAMO as Teen Read Week Read

[image error] Today on Momster, which is powered by Family Circle, You Are My Only joins Liesl & Po (Lauren Oliver), The Apothecary (Maile Meloy and Ian Schoenherr), Wimpy Kid # 6 and the 39 Clues series as a recommended teen week tween read.  and makes me very, very happy here.



I am pretty over the moon about this.  









Darcy Jacobs, I need to hug you.

Fashion Disaster at Wissahickon High

Yesterday, thanks to the kindness of Gary Kramer, I was included in WissLit, a Wissahickon High School television program dedicated to the literary arts.  Every single time I step into a school I think how lucky I am that my life has led me to a place where, every now and then, I can look over the shoulders of others toward the future.



Wissahickon High School is very large and very beautiful.  I needed an escort to get out.  A young man was called, and soon he appeared—in lime green leotards, bright red shoes, a Thing One wig (in black), gangly neck wear, and other necessary apparel.  I tried to be polite.  He tendered an explanation.  "It's Fashion Disaster Day," he said.  "I try to show a little school spirit."  Then he offered to carry my bag and proceeded to hold open every door and walked me straight up to the front office, even though (at one point in our mile-long sojourn) I could find that for myself.



Manners, these days.



Thank you for the hospitality, Wissahickon High (and Jessi and the crew of WissLit).

This Happened

[image error] The weather (for it is raining here) will not beat me on this day. 



This happened.



I went to the dance studio after a day of crazy pressures.  I went with my hair weather fizzy, my pants gutter splashed, my toe nails unpainted, my T-shirt too short (thank you, aggressive dryer cycle).  I just went, and I was me, and you are getting the picture.



I have danced for four years now, something like that.  I have worked hard, and I have yearned, but every lesson is a reminder of how much I do not know, how great is the list of things I cannot perfectly do.



Today, in the middle of a lesson, sweaty by now with the humidity of the place, listening to the music, dancing rumba, Jan said, "Beth.  You have become a good dancer."



All right. That's it.  It happened.  I put it here.  It may not happen again for a very long time.  

What is beautiful writing? A lesson from James Wood

I am in the midst of reading a book which many readers before me have termed "beautiful."  In places, I would agree—there is a lush knowing, a seductive tumble forward of palpable scenes and words.  In other passages, however, the book gets uncomfortably stuck; the characters don't read as real; the dialogue, especially, trembles with information as opposed to charm or persuasion; the teens (and this is an adult novel with a teen hook) are, in my opinion, false constructions—their conversation heavy handed with genericized slang.  I read on, but I stop and think.  Analyze what works and what doesn't, and (most importantly) why.



I took a break from reading that book to read an October 17 New Yorker piece titled "Sons and Lovers" by James Wood. The essay is ostensibly a review of Alan Hollinghurst's novel, The Stranger's Child.  But because this is James Wood, we're also treated to a lively linguistic lesson by the man who wrote a little book that I hope you writers all have at hand, How Fiction Works.  Love that book.  Need it.



In any case, back to the subject at hand, which is the word "beautiful" as it is applied to prose, and what James Wood has to say—with infinite brilliance—about that.  Here he is, at the essay's start.  Please read the whole.  It's worth it.

Most of the prose writers acclaimed for "writing beautifully" do no such thing; such praise is issued comprehensively, like the rain on the just and the unjust.  Mostly, what's admired as beautiful is ordinary; or sometimes it's too obviously beautiful, feebly fine—what Nabokov once called "weak blond prose."  The English novelist Alan Hollinghurst is one of the few contemporary writers who deserve the adverb.  His prose has the power of re-description, whereby we are made to notice something hitherto neglected.  Yet, unlike a good deal of modern writing, this re-description is not achieved only by inventing brilliant metaphors, or by flourishing some sparkling detail, or by laying down a line of clever commentary.  Instead, Hollinghurst works quietly, like a poet, goading all the words in his sentences—nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs—into a stealthy equality.

An eternity beneath the rush of song

[image error] When I go to Valley Forge Park, I park by the Washington Memorial Chapel and wind around, toward the cemetery and stand in my mother's company for a spell.  Sometimes the carillon bells ring, and when they do, I am stopped in my tracks, grateful that my mother has such a peaceful resting place, an eternity beneath the rush of song.



The bells were ringing Sunday.