The holidays are really good for writers. They bring out our sense of alienation, isolation, aloneness. They bring up ancient family wounds, sibling envy, parental neglect, abuse and suffocation. Social obligations and anxiety sky rocket. Melancholy sets in, or worse. Yes, this is our season!

Happy holidays. I love you guys. See you in the New Year. xo, Betsy

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So it looks like The Bridge Ladies haven’t made any TOP TEN lists. Godfuckingdamnit. Please don’t tell me it’s all subjective. Please don’t tell me it doesn’t matter. Please don’t say that these lists are all complete and total crap. I love lists. I love rankings. When I was a third grader in Hebrew school, the teacher put little gold, silver, and blue stars next to our names for accomplishing certain tasks. The were glue-y on the back and I coveted them. One day, I was in the local stationery store and found a box of the same stars. I forewent my Archie’s and bought the box. The following Sunday, before anyone arrived, I pasted five or six gold stars next to my name.

What are your top ten books of 2016?

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I’ve always wondered what people really mean by character development. As far as I’m concerned, a character must be whole from the first sentence. What am I not getting? I don’t really want to see anyone “grow.” I’m not interested in any “reveals.” I could give a shit if a character changes. Editor are obsessed with this notion. I want characters who wear hats, or fuck bunnies, or write letters, or throw curveballs, or hand over the money from the till. I want nothing. I want fear. I love chipped teeth and belt buckles in the shape of buckles. Serving tea, a windsor knot, a college rejection, the back seat of Monte Carlo. I don’t want my characters to learn any lessons, let alone that life is worth it or filled with joy.

What is character development anyway?

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 I should go back into therapy. Did I take my meds?  What’s that car doing? My charger! No, I don’t give the dog too many treats. A couple making love in the pool. My mother drinking milk from a carton. Howard Greenberg’s blonde hair. When people go in for a handshake and you shame them into a hug. Time not flying by. Time going backwards. Tire pressure. Eye doctor. Why do I resent the people who love me? Does anyone love me? Do I love anyone? Have to get off FB. Need a haircut. Hair! No more bread, pasta, sugar, life. I am my father. I miss my father. I miss Dante. I miss myself. Alex Baldwin. What am I going to get my best friend for her birthday? I have no time to read! The gym! When I snubbed Susie Nankin in the second grade. When I punched Spider in the stomach playing Hearts. When I spun around so fast on a stool, age 8, that the force threw me off and my hot little body crashed into a wall and I collapsed on the sticky floor at the Farm Shop in front of a line of people waiting to pay.

What keeps you up at night?

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I went to a performance tonight of my daughter’s sketch comedy troupe. Sixteen or so college students doing hilarious sketches: outrageous, provocative, and politically incorrect in the extreme. The audience was filled with friends, screaming with laughter, calling out their friends’ names. It was a tremendous amount of fun, but as I drove home I fell into a familiar funk. I I didn’t join a single group in college, unless sitting in Washington Square Park and smoking cigarettes on a bench with other people smoking and walking by is considered a club. I wrote a lot those days. My diaries were inky and filled with self-doubt. I worked on the fourth floor of the library, the smoking floor, and also because a guy I had a crush on worked there, though I never said hi.

Are you a loner or a joiner?

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Let’s talk about dialogue. He said, she said. One of the biggest mistakes I see is using full sentences for dialogue. People don’t speak in full sentences. Full stop. Next is using dialogue as stage directions: “We took the highway to get to the mall, ” she said. Next is trying to use convincing dialect, “Y’all like slush puppies?” And last the old saw: dialogue shouldn’t advance the plot, only enhance it. I think it’s a good rule of thumb.

“How do you use dialogue?” she asked.

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Some people in publishing specialize in certain genres: science, history, sci-fi, fantasy. I’m what’s known as a generalist, which is a fancy way of saying dumbass. Or enthusiast. Or gourmand. Or freshman. Or what not. For quite a while I worked on memoirs and was known as the pain and suffering editor. If the straightjacket fits…I always tell my assistants when they are learning how to evaluate proposals and manuscripts: Prize winners and page turners. That’s what I’m looking for. Great writing will get me interested in everything from a love supreme to rats’ asses. Is it pretentious to say that all I care about is the writing. I’ll also break for an amazing person, or a crazy good idea, or pancakes. I have to admit I really feel that I am getting older, which is mostly a beautiful thing. But there’s also this sense of self preservation I’ve never had before.

What is this post about?

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No one wanted my screenplays. I can take off my bib and diaper and write another or I can whine about Hollywood. But I will never whine about HOllywood because I would like to wrap that tinsel cliche around me and my Tesla and burn through the Hollywood Hills with Jim Morrison flooding the night. I would like to enjoy a cobb at the Beverly Hills Hotel where they chop it so fine it’s almost pre-chewed. Did I tell you I saw Diane Keaton there and she was wearing her signature hat. I can write another and another and another. As powerless as it sometimes often always feels to be a writer, you have this thing that no one can take away.

What have you got?

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I’ve been getting a lot of fucked up query letters lately. People who clearly haven’t taken six seconds to look at our website and see what I’m interested in. People who come from inside an alien whale pod that hovers strangely above planet earth. One person wrote a six-page single-spaced query letter. Some proposals sell on less. The theory of relativity took fewer pages. I’ve received queries from people who seem to happily admit they have no credentials whatsoever. Pot heads, pill heads, prison guards. Journey, journey, journey. Is everything a fucking journey? Can’t anyone sit still?  One letter was in esperanto. Cuneiform. Formaldehyde. One asked me to explain how to write a query letter that he could send to other agents. Maybe it’s me.

I know it’s hard to write a good query letter, but we are talking about writers. Thoughts? Feelings?

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When I was a young editor and it was my  mandate to take agents out to lunch, I found the whole thing really daunting. It was worse than a blind date, though somehow like a blind date. But the worst was when a famous agent asked me to come see her near her office in the upper east side. It was a huge trek. When I finally got there, the agent was already in a booth. I sat down and she handed me a menu. I could tell I was meant to decide on something quickly, only just then I looked at her because I thought she was crying. She put her head in her hands and said, “If I have to eat another cobb salad, I’m going to kill myself.”

What do you say to that?

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