I will save them, with what I know now, for another sacred day.
4 Comments on The story unfolds, last added: 9/9/2010
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By: Beth Kephart ,
on 9/6/2010
Blog: Beth Kephart Books (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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but it only unfolds after you have lived with it for a long time, bargained pieces of it away in exchange for new space, new possibilities. A story I have now written four times has, at last, lost its tenuous webbing and false bridges. It has come unto its own. I traded a 40 year old woman for a 14 year old girl. I took retrospect and made it present time. I took two elderly women and gave them a boy to raise. I took darkness and pierced it with light. I have thirty pages yet to write.
I will save them, with what I know now, for another sacred day.
By: Beth Kephart ,
on 11/2/2009
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By: Beth Kephart ,
on 7/24/2009
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By: Beth Kephart ,
on 3/22/2009
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JacketFlap tags: the writer's life, novel in progress, Count Leopoldo Sainz de la Maza, Add a tag
By: Beth Kephart ,
on 3/20/2009
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JacketFlap tags: New Jersey shore, outlines, HOUSE OF DANCE, Shelf Elf, novel in progress, Add a tag
By: Beth Kephart ,
on 3/19/2009
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JacketFlap tags: La Jolla, pelicans, the writer's life, novel in progress, dream life, Add a tag
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By: Beth Kephart ,
on 9/6/2010
Blog: Beth Kephart Books (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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I will save them, with what I know now, for another sacred day.
By: Beth Kephart ,
on 11/2/2009
Blog: Beth Kephart Books (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: novel in progress, Add a tag
She runs the tip of her tongue over the ridge of her mouth. She blinks, and a tear falls down through the pebble land of her freckles. From far away I hear the high gauze of a church song—bells. Sunday, I think, and somewhere there are everyday people in everyday cars going somewhere. There are the mothers, and there are the babies, and they are together.
5 Comments on Novel in Progress/An Excerpt (5), last added: 11/3/2009
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By: Beth Kephart ,
on 7/24/2009
Blog: Beth Kephart Books (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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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 tune and direction.
10 Comments on Scene from a novel-in-progress, last added: 7/25/2009
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By: Beth Kephart ,
on 3/22/2009
Blog: Beth Kephart Books (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: the writer's life, novel in progress, Count Leopoldo Sainz de la Maza, Add a tag
Because I do not write with outlines, I never know—I am eternally anxious—whether or not the book I am currently writing will come whole. I don't trust myself until I'm three or four scenes shy of first-draft done, and unless those scenes are fully (in my mind) throbbing. Not written yet, but seen and smelled.
I am this morning three or four scenes shy of finishing a book that has been with me for ten years, more. That was born in the wake of many travels to Seville and of one particular expedition to the cortijo of Count Leopoldo Sainz de la Maza, one of Spain's greatest bull breeders. He was one of the most courtly men I ever met—tall and blue-eyed and gracious—and I have imagined him and his 7,500-acre landscape into this story of mine. I have rearranged his house (which in real life was hung with the photographs of him together with all the most famous people of the day, and which was called Arenales). I have peopled it with a young woman, an old cook, the ghosts of the Spanish Civil War, and a band of gypsies.
Yesterday afternoon I tasted wedding cake with a dear soon-to-be-married friend, then came home and could not touch this book. I was afraid and stalled and doomed, I was sure. I could not imagine it forward. This morning I woke feeling heartbroken—not with fear, but with the knowing that I can indeed finish this book, and that I will. That soon this story won't be needing me anymore. It will come into its own.
I have real work to do (for my corporate clients). I have a garden to stir to life. I have a friend getting married and another healing from long sickness and many more who wish I'd quit closing myself in here, at my desk.
I have blogs to write that aren't about me.
I have a Sony digital aching for a walk.
I have been obsessed with this novel, as I am obsessed with all novels. Sometimes it's the only way to see a big dream through. After this, there will be the memory of writing. There will be me living forward, in present time.
11 Comments on Almost Present Time, last added: 4/6/2009
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By: Beth Kephart ,
on 3/20/2009
Blog: Beth Kephart Books (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: New Jersey shore, outlines, HOUSE OF DANCE, Shelf Elf, novel in progress, Add a tag
We've been talking about outlining, not outlining. Below is a scene from a novel-in-progress that emerged from nowhere, then set a tone.
Before I get to that, though, may I extend enormous gratitude to The Shelf Elf, for her truly dear and generous words about House of Dance. I've been working through the deepest dark of this night (rain outside, a drumming in my head). I found her post by almost accident. I am so grateful.
The agent left us there, outside the locked-door of our graduation house. “To the sea,” Tim said, taking the lead for once, spinning an imaginary umbrella in the spitting-with-winter air. We drew our plastic hoods over our heads and when we got to the beach, we took off our shoes and ran. Ellie got to the water before the rest of us could. She stomped down a wave, and then I joined her, and Robb did, and the waves were freezing—oh God, the whole beach was. When I turned I saw Tim and Kevin in the distance, walking the rusted pipe that stretched parallel to the shore. “All the way to Cape May,” Tim directed, and now we were running toward Tim and Kevin, our shoes in our hands, clambering up the pipe, catching our balance, marching south.
The wind blew the salt into our skin. Robb’s hair rose and fell like it might fly. We walked single file, the rust beneath our feet, until the skies grew dusky and Kevin jumped from the pipe and reached his arms toward me. I leapt high and up and down, and I knew he’d catch me. I knew that he’d hold me, and he did, and then we both turned and saw Ellie still high on the rusted pipe, Ellie alone, and Kevin put me down and reached for her, and now Tim was taking Robb into his arms. Then we all stood just inches from the first froth of waves and tossed clamshells until real darkness fell.
11 Comments on Eruptive Scenes from a Novel in Progress, and a thank you to The Shelf Elf, last added: 4/6/2009
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By: Beth Kephart ,
on 3/19/2009
Blog: Beth Kephart Books (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: La Jolla, pelicans, the writer's life, novel in progress, dream life, Add a tag
I woke from a dream so vivid, so intense, that for an hour or so after I'd awakened I couldn't decide if I was still alive. My dreams are like this. It is why, perhaps, I rarely sleep, for when I do I am crushed by color or chase, by diving bells, as was the case last night, and deeply distorted perceptions.
It was 1:30 in the morning. I had to decide whether to trust the night again with sleep or to work, in the dark, on a novel.
Novels are like dreams. They crush you differently. You're sure of where you are going—you left that tag for yourself just yesterday. But when you come downstairs to your glass office, something new stirs. A scene you didn't see coming. A sign that the book has turned. You don't have much to go, and still you don't know precisely where you're going.
Do you write against an outline? I've been asked.
No. Never.
Do you know how your books will end?
If I did I'd have no interest in surviving the crush that is the crush inside which all my books are written.
9 Comments on Dream Life, Novel Pursuits, last added: 3/22/2009
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Cool! How wonderful.
Amazing to know of some of the story's evolutions. What work you've done, B. Congrats!
Boy, does this sound like a good one!
I love reading this as some of my stories have taken just such routes. I believe that sacred stories thrive through insurmountable odds. They are the kind that heal.