THE FOREST FOR THE TREES is about writing, publishing and what makes writers tick. This blog is dedicated to the self loathing that afflicts most writers. A community of like-minded malcontents gather here. I post less frequently now, but hopefully with as much vitriol. Please join in! Gluttons for punishment can scroll through the archives.
If I’ve learned one thing about writers, it’s this: we really are all alone. Thanks for reading. Love, Betsy
I’m in deep in the revision process and I apologize for not checking in. I’ve gone through the book again, this time printed out and marking it up with my blue pencil. Seeing mistakes, redundancies, too much exposition. Incredible how the screen lies. I thought I was very close to being done, but reading the book on paper has made me aware of continuity issues I missed, superfluous scenes, the need to turn exposition into scenes, calibrating characters and their motivations, finding active verbs, but not too active. Making a simile better, a metaphor more apt. Reeling it in and going more wild. Finding the hard nut and the tender center. And the gleeful, merciless killing of darlings.
So DCL Agency has officially moved offices. Every book I packed and unpacked told a separate story. How I met and wooed the author, or how they pursued me, how we edited the pages that became the proposal, how we sold the project (or didn’t), all the million details up to publication and then after. Every book is it own narrative of working together, all the underground behind the scenes between the lines. The highlights and blows, the shocking world of getting published and how it ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. How you have to make your fun. Memory lane littered with so many great moments of big and tiny successes. Shutes and ladders. Gratitude to all the authors who taught me so much about writing and life.
Just flew in from the coast. Always wanted to say that as if I had breakfast at the Four Seasons and midnight show at Whiskey-a -Go-Go. Actually, I did have breakfast at the Four Seasons. $24 yogurt and berries. Smoke and mirrors, Tesla Ubers. Pinkberry. The boulevard of broken dreams. I will die trying to make it in this town. I decided that I get to pick the windmills I tilt at. I got booted out of film school at NYU and my dream is to accept my Academy Award and say, thank you NYU for giving me the boot in 1978. Thanks publishing for 35 years of work with writers and books. Thank you Marc Lapadula and my small group at Yale. Thank you to my parents (look up to heaven). Thank you to my beautiful husband and daughter. My family and friends, Charles Manson. Brad Pitt and Plan B. The cast and crew. HBO thank you for believing in us and giving us total creative control.
Betsy Lerner 