Beth Kephart's Blog

• Words in Motion

  February 2, 2008

  • Perhaps because I was one of those perpetually active kids—ice skating during winter days, playing kickball through the summer, racing my brother around the block, forever honing my tennis—I grew attached to the idea, rather early on, that writing and motion are true blood sisters: one cannot exist without the other. I can’t find new ideas or next scenes sitting down; it just doesn’t ...
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• HOUSE OF DANCE

  February 2, 2008

  • Moments ago, I finished my final read through of HOUSE OF DANCE, the novel due out in June. It's an emotional thing, frankly, to see a book in this stage, to reflect back on all the people who helped you make this book what it is. Amy Rennert, my agent, who read the first ten pages within a day of me sending them on, and said, Keep going. Laura Geringer, the editor, who called one day in December ...
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• Patry Francis Day

  January 29, 2008

  • Today I'm participating in the very beautiful movement to support a loved writer named Patry Francis. She's someone I don't know but feel I do know, and today is her day. I'm happy to contribute to the blog carnival supporting the paperback release of her book, The Liar's Diary. This posting appeared on her good friend's site, and we authors have been encouraged to post it on our own. ...
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• On Revising

  January 14, 2008

  • I spent today revising a novel I'd first-draft finished writing six months ago—moving through and identifying missing scenes, making notes about raw transitions, straightening the map of an imaginary landscape, imagining back stories, supposing forward. I had expected to be unnerved by the work, frustrated with myself. I discovered peace instead, the power of homecoming. I remembered just ...
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• Are We There Yet?

  January 9, 2008

  • The question might be asked (at least I ask it of myself), how we measure our progress as writers. How we know if we are getting any better at this work that we do. My son, for example, has been writing now for years, and with every script, every story, every poem, the progress is measurable and thrilling. Stories with more alluring shape, dialogue with smarter tags, back stories painlessly ...
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• Infused? Suffused?

  January 4, 2008

  • I'm at work on an historical novel, deep inside old ads and guidebooks, old photo books and fashion books, memoirs from a certain place and time. It thrills me, this work—this half knowing, this half imagining, this closing of eyes and wondering. It forces me to give ruthless examination to every page of what I write so that the details of the past serve the story, always, and never stand out ...
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• On the Brink

  January 1, 2008

  • My confession: I've been experimenting with form. Five memoirs into my career as a writer, I had despaired of digging deeper, I felt trapped by my own smallness, I felt ungraced by me. I wanted to write something new, something that I'd need new words for, need another kind of courage for, and so I began to write about a river, began to write the river as me. This was liberating. This was ...
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