Kids! Great news! We made the top ten list of worst jobs according to Health Magazine. Writers place fourth on most likely to get depressed list. Finally, they’re taking us seriously. Here are my top ten things I hate about writing:
1) Bed sores
2) The mind games
3) Can never keep enough Imodium on hand
4) The guilt
5) Having people tell you they have a story in them, too
6) The New Yorker
7) Hearing what people think
8. Night terrors
9) I’ll fuck you up, Colbert.
10) Other writers
What do you hate most about being a writer? Don’t hold back.
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The bats are out tonight. I don’t know why, or I’m just not saying. I keep going back to a scene in which a young man breaks down over a crib. I keep going back to a scene where a girl locks herself inside a gas station rest room. There’s a woman at St. Dunkin’s named Shilpa, and every morning when I go to NYC she gives me a huge smile and remembers how I like my coffee. Would you be surprised to know I sit in the same car in the same seat? I am mourning the loss of letters. I am mourning the loss of lettuce. Stones on top of graves. The cards my father dealt. Let’s split it three-ways. Promise me you’ll never never stick a needle into your face. Sometimes when I drive I think I am a middle aged mother running errands, or a man who makes toasters for the traveling show. I feel hopeful and hopeless. I am Louis XIV. I am his heir. I am the guillotine. The humble shovel. I thought the Elgin marbles were marbles. I am not really writing. Don’t ask me about poems. I was sixteen. Words exploded on a page. Has Betsy always been creative? Oh, yes, my mother says. I am cutting paper. I am adorable. Intent. I keep going to a scene I can’t remember.
Here’s the 
525 Comments as of close of day Friday. It was like a freakin’ avalanche. This must be how Bransford feels all the time. I wasn’t sure anyone would even leave a title. So thanks to everyone who participated. To choose “the best,” it was impossible to do anything but sift through the titles as if through a pile of query letters. And I’ve selected those with exactly the same criteria as I do the letters that cross my desk: does the title (and some combination of elements in the letter) make me want to read more?
The problem with watching too much In Treatment is that you begin to take on Gabriel Byrne’s characteristics, his brooding mien, his Irish accent, his eye twitches that signal he gets it. You start telling people to get a good look at themselves, to find the connections among various life events, to pick up the almighty pattern. And then you try to offer a little hope, just a wee bit of salvation or redemption or revelation. You know: insight.
Betsy Lerner 