Beth Kephart's Blog, page 350

To San Francisco

My father is making it possible for my two boys and me to travel to one of my very favorite cities in a few weeks—the city of hills, San Francisco. I never stop walking when I'm there. I never stop going up and down and in and out, looking over and past and through. I am happy in San Francisco. I find gifts there for people I love—the sorts of things that don't exist where I live. I find happiness just in moving through, in standing on street corners, in watching tango dancers in the square

Fiction or Not: The Juarez Novel

My friend Nancy stopped by yesterday—unexpected, unannounced. The glads in the vase were past their prime, I was overdue for a date with Windex, a spider had been busy whitewalling the post rails outside, and the geraniums were sadly ill-attended (I'm not going to talk about the dust). The house looked neglected, and frankly, this past week, it has been. I have been in another world. I have been writing. The boys have eaten. The bills have been paid. The clients are happy. But the house?

Wiser than I: My Boy to the Rescue

For six months, maybe more, I've been at work on a book that has been in my head for a very long time. It's that novel for adults from which I sometimes post excerpts, this strange collision of place, purpose, mood that I selfishly sit with when friends should be called, when grander responsibilities beckon, when I should be cracking the spine on the recipe book to spice up the meals around here. But I can't let it go.

Yesterday I printed the novel's first 150 pages and sat down to read on the

The Kindness of Readers

These two things happened yesterday: First, Elizabeth Mosier, a writer and friend, called. That in itself was lovely enough, but a few minutes into the conversation I understood that she had called to talk with me about Nothing but Ghosts—that she'd read the book, turned down the corner on pages, followed the symbols, understood what had been in my heart, celebrated that finch. It's not unlike Libby to do something like this, but what does it say about her, really, that she had taken that tim

Scene from a novel-in-progress

The flames exposed the high cliff of a brick facade, but only for seconds at a time, and only incompletely. It was like a film plotting through its final sprockets, running out of light, and then the flames would leap again and Sophie could see the unsprung curl of a spiraling stair, or the steel curvature of a balcony wall, or the imploded wicker of a roof, the tentacled bones of old ivy. The bonfire had been set high up, in the building itself, and like a wild, unkempt song it kept changing

Family Life and Engagement Joy

Earlier tonight I was here, at the dance studio. There was rain outside, wet in my perpetually untamed hair, and the lights on the dance floor were dim. There was a mood—a containment, a stillness, no conversation, a quiet conversation, an insistence, a deferral, and then, through the door, came Susan.

I hadn't seen her for months. I'd thought of her often. She's a dark-haired beauty with a megawatt presence. We had sat once, months ago, and talked about weddings. The right way to do them.

What Matters: Dancing to Life

It was not a good day; it was not. It was a day in which I was reminded of just how difficult this writing journey can be—of how hoped-for support from a publisher does, indeed, fail to materialize, even if that support is as simple as putting a book forward for an award. Even if it is as simple as simple faith and advocacy.

But there was, in this day, a foxtrot-waltz with Jim. There was my son reading from his newest work, and oh, my son is a writer, a real one—funny (he's always been), plot

The Why YA Question in the What a Girl Wants Series

Do teen girls need YA books? Is there something innate in the genre that shapes growing up like nothing else can? Colleen Mondor at Chasing Ray is asking that question today, and some really smart people are offering their perspectives. Here, for example, is Zetta Elliott:

The more YA lit I read, the more I'm struck by the split: novels that are about teens versus novels that are marketed to teens. The latter are often marked by "lite" writing and silly gimmicks that aim to make the novel seem e

Room to Dwell: A Matter of Writerly Craft

I have been making my way through the tower of books on my chair—the staggeringly tall, strangely diverse (even for me) pile of poems, nonfiction, popular fiction, literary fiction, historical fiction, and such classics as Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Each day another book, and in this book-rubbed-against-book way I learn again what I seek as a reader, and what makes me impatient. I learn (or I affirm) some essential something about writerly process and craft.

Yesterday, while readi

Home Life and The Language of Things

I like the premise, the title, and the look of Deyan Sudjic's The Language of Things: Understanding the World of Desirable Objects, and so began to read:

Never have more of us had more possessions than we do now, even as we make less and less use of them. The homes in which we spend too little time are filled with things. We have a plasma screen in every room, displacing state-of-the-art cathode-ray-tube-based television sets just five years old. We have cupboards full of sheets; we have recen