Pen on Fire: A Busy Woman's Guide to Igniting the Writer Within/Barbara DeMarco-Barrett

Here, on this day, I stop to celebrate Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, who is the voice behind "Writers on Writing," one of the best radio shows on and about writing in this country; who is so beautiful outside that she once floated down runways; and who is even more beautiful within. I've had the privilege of spending time with Barbara as she has asked the penetrating questions. I've read some of her essays, taken note of her work as a teacher, had private email conversations that made my writerly days.

And this morning I sat here and read for the first time, cover to cover, Pen on Fire: A Busy Woman's Guide to Igniting the Writer Within. This book has gone into printing after printing since it was first released, and I understand why. It's chock-full of wisdom. It offers one helpful prompt or exercise or guiding thought after another. It's has a most companionable voice. And it is full of the insights of the writers Barbara has gotten to know through the years. Really fine insights, all beautifully tapestried together. Some of the voices belong to my friends—Susan Straight, for example, and Dani Shapiro. Some are my heroes/heroines: Alice McDermott, Gerald Stern, Aimee Bender, Ron Carlson. And some of them—or, one of them—is me.

Oh my gosh, I thought, when I stumbled upon something I must have said years ago. Oh my gosh, you sweet surprising gift of a woman, Barbara D-M.

Some of what I think about in Handling the Truth—form, voice, tension, research—is thought about newly and wonderfully here. But this book goes into so many other territories, too—like, to begin with, how we find the time to do the work we do. I read those pages hungrily, thinking about this odd life of mine and the five minutes and the fifteen minutes and the half hour I struggle to find. And I thought about all of you.

I wish I'd read this book sooner. You can read a copy today. (I downloaded mine, quick and easy.)

To listen to Barbara and I talk about memoir on "Writers on Writing" show, check out this link.

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Handling the Truth: The Shelf Awareness Review (oh!)

Last night, as I sat waiting for the curtains to rise on the 50th season of Pennsylvania Ballet—as I sat waiting, especially, for the gorgeous (inside and out) Julie Diana and her wonderful husband, Zachary Hench, to dance "Diamonds," a piece I had watched them rehearse a week or so before—I thought, Stop, Beth. Live this moment. Don't let it rush by.

I sat on the edge of my seat. I sat watching through streaming tears. This ballerina and her husband and that corps. The exhilarating precision and grace and humanity of it all. When art finds you, let yourself be found. Stop hurrying. Be.

Oh, how they danced. How exquisite Julie is. How other-worldly talented is her Zak. How right they are together.

This morning, too, I am stopping. I am putting aside the hurry of corporate work for just this hour and allowing myself to feel grateful for the journey I have lately been on. So many of you have been so kind to me, and have I thanked you enough? I have met such interesting people along the Handling the Truth way. Just this week I talked to the great Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, and now I look ahead to weekend conversations with Liz Rosenberg (at Big Blue Marble Bookstore, in Mount Airy) and fellow memoir summitters (at Rosemont College). I look ahead to a fantastic, multi-tiered event at Bank Street in New York City, created by the Ambassador of Children's Books (my title for her), Jennifer M. Brown, and to a conversation with Dani Shapiro as part of the First Person Arts Festival. I look toward a conversation at Kelly Writers House (and a radio recording) and a conversation on behalf of Kelly Writers House (off Rittenhouse Square), and to more workshops, and to my upcoming road trip with the fabulous A.S. King, as we join the Pennsylvania Library Association (and others of our writing friends) in western Pennsylvania.

In any life, this would be a lot. In my life, it is huge. And again: Have I thanked all of you enough?

My gratitude is here. My gratitude is huge. And I am giving this particular hour over to my gratitude (not a big enough word) to Jennifer M. Brown, who has just now posted this beautiful review of Handling the Truth in today's Shelf Awareness. Jenny and I, we just love books. We can't help ourselves. And I adore Jenny. That's just how it is and will be.

My cup runneth over.

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my conversation with Barbara DeMarco-Barrett is live and available here.

And I'm proud as a peacock to know this superstar writer/interviewer and to sometimes have the thrill of talking with her. Barbara is ridiculously smart about books (she writes her own) and authors (she knows them all) and our conversation ranged from memoir to rivers to El Salvador, voice to personhood to the wonders of multiple drafts, to the books I did not include in my appendix.

I goofed on one memoir's title.

I had fun despite the goof.

I hereby apologize to .....  well, let's see if anyone notices.

The conversation is here.

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Talking with the great Barbara DeMarco-Barrett on KUCI

Barbara glows even more than the cover of Handling the Truth. Thank you, Barbara, for another great conversation on KUCI.

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To Live a Poem...

I have blogged here in this modest space since October 2007—not always certain what I had to say, not always happy with the photos I had to say it with, and never sure who might visit or why.

Today I introduce one of the very first people who stopped by this blog. Her name is Grete. She lives an ocean away. She found me by listening to a Barbara DeMarco interview. Some of you have likely read her comments here. I've had the privilege of coming to know her off the blog, through her photos, musings, and poems.

A few days ago, Grete launched her own blog, titled "To Live a Poem." Her goal is to bring the lyric lines to life, and she is doing that in a wholly original way. I encourage you to visit her.

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Beth Kephart Interview (with Barbara DeMarco-Barrett)

I've mentioned a podcast recording of a one-hour dialogue I had earlier this week with that gem interviewer, Barbara DeMarco-Barrett. Our topics ranged from the crafting of authenticity in prose to the genesis of my involvement with young adult novels to the making of Nothing but Ghosts and Undercover (I read excerpts of both). We talked about what makes for good books overall. We spoke of how past awards, past seeming successes are, in fact, always in the past, and that every single day of writing feels brand new, raw, and uncertain.

If you can forgive the popped Ps of a long-distance phone conversation (I hope you can and will), I invite you to listen in here.

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What Makes A Book Great?

Talking with Barbara DeMarco-Barrett is one of a writer's guiltiest pleasures. She wants to know what you do and why. She lets you talk process. She actually reads the books you've arrived (via phone, in my case) to discuss and sends you back into the mindspace of creation. I like being there, in that mindspace.

Yesterday's one-hour conversation will soon be available through podcast, and when that's the case, I'll let you know. For today, however, I thought I'd share with you an answer to one of Barbara's questions about the criteria by which I evaluate books. I returned, with her, to the year I chaired the National Book Awards Young People's Literature jury (2001) and to these words that I delivered when presenting the five nominees—An Na, Marilyn Nelson, Kate DiCamillo, Phillip Hoose, and Virginia Euwer Woolf (the winner):

We concerned ourselves with matters of framing, form, and voice; with credibility and characterization; with the execution of plot or storyline. We studied the language—was it rigorous? Tantalizing? Fresh? We explored dynamics pertaining to originality and mood, meaning and soul. We thought out loud about each book’s innate capacity to alert, embolden, and inspire. Enduring books are the ones that enter the blood streams of their readers—that stir and shape and finally transform. They are the ones that get passed on, parent to child, friend to friend, the ones that jolt us toward insight, compassion, idea, hope, politics, or love. Toward the answers to the questions we must keep asking.

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San Miguel de Allende, and the beginning of story

I found her in a marketplace at the edge of San Miguel and she has haunted me ever since—the way she dared me with her eyes (Go on, take my picture), the way the haphazard quality of those many cloths massed together as a somehow virgin art.

Yesterday, while trolling through one of my new favorite blogs, Aerial Armadillo, I found what I imagine is this character's younger self in a painting that is so classically Tessa's—bold, brilliantly hued, shapely, seductive.

So that now the younger and the older versions of this singular woman have begun caroming about in my head. A dialogue that could only lead to story.

NOTE FOR TODAY: For any of you who might live in sunny Orange County, I'll be on the beloved Barbara DeMarco-Barrett show, Writers on Writing (88.9, KUCI-FM,) at 9 AM California time today. I'll be talking about books read, books written, books loved. I'll share podcast information once I have it.

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