Ten years ago this month, I turned in my blue pencil and became an agent. I never thought I could be closer to writers than in my capacity as an editor, but I have found that the agent relationship can be even closer. You are there at the inception of a career, or you are stepping in mid-stream and trying to rebuild a career. You spend your time as an interpreter, negotiator, editor, shrink, friend, mother, principal, ping-pong partner and bank. You witness the passing of parents and the birth of babies. You know when the writing flows and when it falters. You know your writers’ strengths and limitations, when they’ve had a breakthrough and when they’ve hit a wall. You track a mood swing from self-aggrandizement to self-flagellation and back again many times over the course of one conversation. At a reading, you feel as if you are watching your child’s first recital. You wildy applaud as he picks up his first literary prize. You are celebrating a great review. You are going to a memorial service, an emergency room, a motel in Texas. Just when you think your tank is empty, a pile of pages arrives that takes your breath away.
I’m curious how you feel about your agents, but please don’t mention names or call anyone a douche. And if any of my clients feel compelled to write in, lay it on thick.
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Snowy DC 
A client accused me of being a tease today. It was warranted. I dropped a hint about some positive feedback for his project during my trip to LA. I think I might have said that they were creaming for it in my usual tasteful and delicate way. The last thing this writer needs, as he is polishing his manuscript for submission to publishers, is for me to dangle diamond studded carrots before his eyes.
I would like to talk about something that very few people talk about: skimming. Do you skim when you read? And if so, when? When you’re bored, when the section doesn’t interest you, when you just want to know what happened? And for how long? Just a few sentences, paragraphs, whole chapters? And do ever get anxious that you missed the one important detail that will explain everything in the end? Do you skim fiction and not non-fiction, or the other way around? Does everyone do it but no one admits it? Or are there purists out there? I remember when I found out my best friend in the third grade read the last paragraph of each book she read before she started it; I was shocked. Aren’t there laws against such things?
Home. Very happy to be home. It’s no secret that I always wanted to work in Hollywood, and that I’m still chewing on a screenplay (#4), etc. But the real secret is that I could kiss the tarmac at JFK and everyone I’ve ever met in publishing because when you find an editor who loves a manuscript and offers you an advance, a contract comes, and in a year or so a manuscript is completed and put into production, and eight or nine months later, an author holds a book in his hands that is the culmination of his creative dream. And people have a chance to read it.
Betsy Lerner 