Beth Kephart's Blog, page 282

Storm coming in (a how I write post)

It's all different now — the way I write, the way I think about writing.  I had had goals, once — four pages a day, say, on writing days.  Now it works like this:  I spend a few hours each new scene day simply dreaming.  The next day I scribble thoughts and lists.  The next day I type some bad sentences into the computer, knowing that the next day, the fourth day, I'll write the scene in a way that will allow me to move on toward dreaming the next scene (though when I print the entire book, I...

What is it

about old photographs—the way, more and more, they stop me in my tracks.  Here, on the pages, of a book my grandfather wrote, is a portrait of him and my grandmother young.  "We met a Shin Pound," the caption reads.  "The weapon was a borrowed prop."



Maybe I got my tomboy heart from her.  The tie and vest, so fashion forward, and so in sync with him.

Must writers be likable? Does it help if they are? And who the heck am I?

Ask anyone who knows me well:  I have my flaws.  Here I am, for example, with my impatient face on, waiting for a berry to ripen.  Not any old berry, mind you, but the berry I want, which is taking its time in the sun.  (I may indeed be insulting the berry for its stubbornness, quietly, beneath my snappish tongue.)



Would my handful of very kind readers read me less (to continue) if they knew that:

I combine the impossible traits of seeking perfection, impatiently?
I write long books that...

My mother's talents

I honestly don't think anyone ever had better home-made meals than us kids, growing up in my mother's house.  Her soups were healing, her meals were tender, her desserts (cheesecake, carrot cake, birthday cakes, sand tarts, checkerboard cookies, and oh! those Christmas cookies) were the kind you couldn't find anywhere else (no bakery, no restaurant)—not nearly as good, not nearly as well made.  She often worked just from an idea, not from recipes.  She seemed to take what she could do for gra...

In Memory

Perhaps the best thing about the corporate work I do is the people it allows me to meet—the visionaries who take risks and build companies, the researchers who discover new cures, the developers who have ideas about the renaissance of West Philadelphia, the leaders of not-for-profit organizations who seek out ways to change the lives of the kids of North Philly.



For the past nearly twenty years, I've had the privilege of knowing Mike Cola, now the president of a pharmaceutical company, but m...

Dangerous Neighbors: A Booklist Hot Teen Title

According to that wonderful Egmont USA team, Dangerous Neighbors will appear on the Hot Teen Titles list in the September issue of Booklist, accompanied by this gracious review.  I am grateful, to say the least.

Even though the twins' father warns them to take care of each other with the admonition that "dangerous neighbors" live nearby, the girls are convinced that together they are invincible. Yet Anna is no longer here, and Katherine, tormented by grief and guilt, is determined to join...

My Husband's Art

Some of you know that my husband suffered a rather unfortunate injury to his left hand this summer, a tendon/ligament-slicing series of cuts that necessitated surgery, patience, and healing calm.  Somehow or other, though, with elbows standing in for fingers, and a clunky cast weighing down the Option key (this, at least, is how I imagine things), he's been back in his studio, telling whole stories with a single frame of digital art.  I'm rarely privy to Bill's process or his results, and th...

Note to self

Write the story you haven't written with the words you've not used yet.



Dream every page alive.

Words to self

Write the story you haven't written with the words you've not used yet.



Dream every page alive.

I worked on a book most of this day

and I didn't write a narrative word.  I made lists (what would be in that box?).  I took walks.  I found this front-yard sculpture in the back streets of St. Davids and wondered how it would feel to be so blue, so upside down, so on display.