let's talk about book courage

It should have gotten easier. In fact, it has not.

Because I always forget. I always forget when I am writing my books—happily writing my books, lost in my books, compelled and impelled by the making of books—that at some point along the way the book that is privately mine will no longer be private or, even, mine. It will be an object to be dismissed or discussed, dissed or shared. It will have very little to do with me, except that it is all of me, a part of me, an emanation of my heart, a hope.

Time and again, I have told myself that I can quit, that there are other ways, that the book biz is too cruel a biz (too tilted, unfair, overly made; too much about the in-crowd and the out-crowd; too forced a spectacle). And then: There I go, back to the couch with some paper and a pen because I cannot help myself, because I am most at peace while writing, because the stories demand to be told, because I somehow forget how being published feels, because books themselves aren't the problem here; it's the selling of books, which is different. I'm not a brand. I'm not a platform. I'm not a trend. I don't know how to be those things. I don't really have any business doing what I'm doing, except: writing is who I am.

Reviews are subjective. Of course. Every reader is a market of one. Absolutely. I religiously do not Google myself, search for reviews, seek Big Attention. I am, every single time, stunned when generous words find their way to me.

And—yes—unspooled when the less generous comes knocking, too.

I have been trying hard not to think (in a real way) about the upcoming launch of This Is the Story of You. I have no readings planned, no book-specific appearances, no celebration party, no whirlwind. Still, I realized this snowy weekend, that the angst of the book's release lives loud in me. That I care more than I should about how it will be received. That—especially because Story is so much about the world we live in now, this world of storms and environmental shifts and (still) love and need—I want it to succeed. I want it to find the right readers. I want them to love my Mira Banul and her brother, Jasper Lee, and her friends, and that beach. I want them to think about our world, the sand, the wind, the rising seas.

I write all of this because early this morning, 4 AM, when I woke to work on the first flight of student assignments, I was alerted a flurry of tweets about Story.

A very early reader speaks.

I am embarrassed by how much this means to me. But it means so much to me.

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Joining Twitter

On this day of enforced rest (doctor's orders following an unpretty breakdown of all still-working parts), I am spending idle time doing fun things like finishing Mary Karr's The Liar's Club and, yes, joining Twitter.

Come be part of my Tweet world.  Help me understand howit works.  Make me smarter when people say "hashtag." I need to be smarter when people say "hashtag."  And also "trending."

Here I am (I think this is right).  I have a grand total of three tweets and a handful of very fine friends.  Leave it to Melissa Sarno to find me first!

@BethKephart

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Bring it on: musings of a slow adopter

I am what the savvy might term a slow adopter. I tend to like things as they are.  My movies on the big screen.  My books between their covers.  My conversations in person, face to face.

That is not this world.

And if I am less than knowledgeable about Facebook (I am, perhaps, one of its least organized and aware members), have failed to take on Twitter, am not inclined toward Google +, only just yesterday did justice to my LinkedIn profile (how shabby my former presence was), and make more mistakes in typing Blackberry texts than any living writer, I am coming around to the way the world works.

I have an iPad 2 and I use it to read the New York Times (except the Times magazine, which I still prefer to hold), to catch up with the Inquirer, to read the occasional Kindle or iBook.  (The New Yorker and Food and Wine and Vanity Fair still come, old style, to my house.)  My email friends are legion.  I'm an old-time blogger (holding my ground here, refusing to vanish).  And lately I've been thinking about (not dreading, but embracing) the new ways in which the publishing industry works.  Why not an Amazon single, for example, if the audience is already primed for it?  And why not a book with multi-media illustrations—something web friendly, something e-alive?

It's the middle of August.  The days have been long.  I prefer autumn to summer.  I look toward the new season with hope for my October 25 release, You Are My Only, with eagerness to connect with some of you at a variety of talks, and with the high suspicion that I'm about to change the way I go about making of (some) books.  

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