Beth Kephart's Blog, page 312

Editing Thyself

Last night, toward the close of my talk at Rosemont College (what a fine group of people), a question came up from the very back row: Can you tell us about how you go about editing?

I answered thusly: The work begins with paper and pen, scribbled at some strange hour in handwriting I can barely interpret a day or so later. I then rewrite my scribbles, still with pen, making numerous changes as I go. Next I'm on the computer, typing things in, and here again, every sentence is weighed, and ...

Wanting/Beth Kephart Poem

Wanting only the short break
in the long pause
of a poem,
the scattering of senses.

Wanting the moon to rise upside
right in the sky,
and the dawn to ink pink,
and the earth to stop breaking
into its pieces.

Wanting the loudest thing
in the morning light
to be the heart,
still beating.

Metamorphosis at the Dance Studio

I'm going to tell you something: I did not look pretty today. My hair is two weeks past the cut I'd promised it (I'm getting to it, I tell it). My clothes are the ones that aren't in the laundry room (sorry, but that means they are not my favorites). My mascara is tending toward globby.

I did not look pretty today, and yet I went dancing. Oh, poor Jean, I thought, as I went up those stairs. The things that man has to put up with. My chin too low on some rumba moves, my feet not yet alway...

The Heart is Not a Size: An Educator's Day and a Launch Party

The news from Juarez grows ever-harder to bear. This week, three U.S. Consulate Workers were murdered. Two were Americans, a couple shot down while returning from a child's birthday party. Their brutal murder left their own child orphaned in the back of their car.

Why?

I am eager to talk about this place, Juarez. Eager for The Heart is Not a Size to be released on March 30th. Eager to raise more awareness about what is happening, south of the El Paso border, where every life means somethin...

Researching Creative Nonfiction: A passage from an upcoming talk

I'll be speaking at Rosemont College this coming Thursday evening on a topic I've often thought about but never spoken on—the art of researching creative nonfiction. I'll be talking about three books—Flow, Still Love in Strange Places, and Ghosts in the Garden. I'll be inspired, in part, by this photograph, found for me by my friend Adam Levine in the city archives. This from the talk, just written:

Whether I'm writing memoir or novels, fables or poems, young adult novels...

Plant TV

So there I was, waiting for a client call, when I again picked up the latest New Yorker to breeze through "The Talk of the Town."

Oh, I thought, here's Adam Gopnik in a piece called "Bright Ideas/Plant TV."

It begins like this:

"Jonathon Keats—a San Francisco-based experimental philosopher who has, over the years, sold real estate in the extra dimensions of space-time proposed by string theory (he sold a hundred and seventy-two extra-dimensional lots in the Bay Area in a single day); made an att...

I Changed my Header Photo

(I just couldn't deal with the snow anymore.)

Supernatural Fantasy

It was Maya Ganesan who asked me once (during a readergirlz chat) if I would ever consider writing fantasy—something within the supernatural vein.

I said, I don't know how.

It was hipwritermama who said, I bet you could.

I'd said that before—I don't know how. I'd said it about memoir, about young adult fiction, about poetry. I'd said it about corporate fable and novels for adults. I'd said it about being a mother. I But questions open doors. Would you ever consider...?

Lately, I have.

Inspir...

Whole-dom

Those of you reading between the lines of this blog know that the past many weeks (actually, past many months) have been a tad interesting. We are emerging from a difficult economy differently, I'm beginning to understand. Pressures, which have always been keen, are unlike any I've ever seen. I am used to the eighty-hour work week. I'm less used to some of the new industry dynamics.

This morning, absolutely none of that matters. All of the weight that I've been carrying dissipates. My so...

He's Coming Home