betsylerner

Guest Post Written By Betsy’s Best Friendz! : A Middle School Maniffesto

Posted on July 1, 2009 by betsylerner

When Betsy asked us to write this post we were very estatic to have this wonderful and amazing opportunity. All though we had to cancel a bundle of important events that we had our personal secretaries arrange, we cancelled due to the noteworthiness of this cause. While we were pondering what to write about, we took a stroll down memory lane. We remembered all of the dull novels that were mandatory for us to scrutinize. As middle schoolers, we sensed the library selection was less then acceptable and barely up to par, not to mention the appalling obligatory books. We undoubtably value reading classics, it’s great to read books that have the finger prints our family’s past engraved into the surface of the pages. Reading modern books is appreciable too, but why would we want to read random books that only some ignorant librarian would want to waste their time on. NO YOU DIDN’T. Oh yes we did. With all of the school work we encounter, we need utilize the precious time we have to dive into a well written book that is enthralling as well. Luckily we will be deparating from the from the uninspiring, colorless orbit of nothing… as you can see it might be relatively hard to fathom the dislike that we behold for this selection of literature. But hard to decipher or not, it’s the truth. We believe that people should not underestimate the juvenile community and value their opinions on written works. We have high expectations and they must be met by all of you middle school librarians and teachers out there. So please, value our opinion because we our the future of all literary greatness.

Luv,
Your Best Friendz
M&R (age 12)

M&R

Filed under: Uncategorized | 12 Comments »

You Say You Want a Revolution

Posted on June 30, 2009 by betsylerner

I am writing from my childhood bedroom. Some of the books that still line the shelves: The Yearling, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, On the Road, The Tempest, Rabbit Run, Deliverance, The Tales of Edgar Allan Poe, The Ox-Bow Incident, Franny and Zooey, Final Harvest: Emily Dickinson’s Poems, and Hooray for Yiddish.

When cars come down Northrop Road, their headlights ricochet through the room’s corner windows. Tucked into my bed, at ten years old, I often imagined I was Anne Frank as the high-beams circled the room, soon to be followed by angry Nazi boots on the stair. Only we lived in a ranch. Later, I imagined a Helter Skelter scenario in our suburban neighborhood; when I learned that Sharon Tate was murdered on MY BIRTHDAY, I nearly plotzed*. But my most terrifying fantasy of all was imagining that we were the Clutter family, waiting to be murdered in our sleep by some two-bit criminals immortalized in one of my favorite books of all time.

I know, it explains a lot.

*Plotz: plats (standard) Yinglish, with juice. Rhymes with “dots.” German: platzen: to burst.

Bust, burst, explode (“I laughed so hard I thought I would plotz!”)
To be aggravated, frustrated, or infuriated to an extremity. (“He was so furious he almost plotzed!”)

–from Hooray for Yiddish, Leo Rosten

Filed under: Books, The End of the World as We Know It | 3 Comments »

STAR

Posted on June 29, 2009 by betsylerner

Nation, tonight on The Colbert Report, please check out Neil de Grasse Tyson. Yes, he’s the guy on Nova, the director of the Rose Center and Hayden Planetarium, author of Merlin’s Tour of the Universe, Death by Black Hole, and the Pluto Files among others. He’s the guy who downgraded Pluto’s cold ass from beloved planet to icy comet, and thereby became Public Enemy #1 to fifth graders everywhere. Most important, People named him sexiest astrophysicist of the year.

Filed under: Client, Media | Leave a comment »

Another Thing I Really Hate

Posted on June 28, 2009 by betsylerner

I know, with the cinematic magic out there like The Hangover, The Proposal, and Year One, it’s no one’s fault but my own that I went to see My Sister’s Keeper.

So, I go up to the candy counter and order two small popcorns. The well meaning girl with a jagged part and tilted visor says brightly, “For twenty five cents more you could have a medium.” No thanks.

Then, I order a water and a small iced tea. “For fifty cents more,” she says, still upbeat, “You could have a large.”

What’s up with that? Why can’t I be trusted to know what size beverage or popcorn I want? How many people actually “upgrade” upon hearing of these tremendous savings?

Then, she asks me what movie I’m seeing. Why? For a quarter more could I run the fucking studio? For fifty cents more sit on Robert DeNiro’s lap? For seventy-five cents more tell Hugh Grant that it’s really okay if he doesn’t want to star in my screenplay. I’m over it, really.

Filed under: Film, The End of the World as We Know It | 3 Comments »

FAQ: How Do I Know If My Agent Is a Douche?

Posted on June 24, 2009 by betsylerner

Amy L. from Los Angeles asks: How do I know if my agent is doing a good job? What can I expect?

God did not create all agents equally, and likewise no two clients need exactly the same thing from their agent. So having a good working relationship is as much about the right fit as anything else. If you can communicate easily with your agent and you feel he or she is responsive, then you’re ninety percent of the way there.

I would think the basic services include:

Editorial feedback on the proposal or novel, readying it for submission.
Keeping you apprised of the submission process, including which editors are considering, how many, the game plan, handling rejections, parlaying interest into an auction.
Removing sharp objects from your medicine chest if the book doesn’t sell.
If it does, negotiating your contract.
At least one good lunch.
Exploit ancillary rights such as audio, film, translation, etc.
Read the manuscript when it’s done, or in stages as you write.
Run interference if there is a breakdown in communication between you and your editor/publisher.
Generate ideas , where possible, to promote/support the publication.
Attend the book party and/or reading. (I’ve been in the doghouse for failing to make a few parties. C’mon, I live in New Haven!)
Again, remove sharp objects if the book sinks without a trace.
Brainstorm new ideas for your next book.

Guess which agent went on to become a star of stage and screen, or more precisely an author, an hilarious fixture on the Jon Stewart Show, and a shill for Apple?

Filed under: Agent, Client | 1 Comment »

If I Thought Dreams Could Be Seen, They’d Surely Put My Head In a Guillotine

Posted on June 24, 2009 by betsylerner

Just came from my thrice yearly dinner with my oldest publishing friends. Did I say dinner? I meant bloodletting. I’m talking about the kind of gossip that soothes the soul. We also talked about a few books: Man Gone Down, Olive Kittredge, Eat Pray Love (her ex-husband just sold his memoir — Starve Sin Hate), Eden’s Outcasts, Words In Air, The Looming Tower.

Lest you think we’re just a bunch of publishing bitches up to no good.

Filed under: Publishing, The End of the World as We Know It | 1 Comment »

Jesus Died For Somebody’s Sins But Not Mine

Posted on June 23, 2009 by betsylerner

A writer, we’ll call her Joan, thinks she should wait until her parents are dead to write her memoir. What do I think about that? Well, Joan, you haven’t told me what’s at stake. For instance, an Astor-sized inheritance might be worth putting the prose on hold. I don’t know. It’s a tough question.

I do believe that writers are the designated hitters in their families. The whistle blowers. Or as I refer to them in my (ahem) book, The Wicked Children. Not all writers are damaged by or isolated from their families, I just don’t know any. Most great art, whether created with a knife or a scalpel, an electric or acoustic guitar, is a savage act. And most great artists are savages. I think this is what I most admire in them.

When I was nineteen, I met a ninety year old woman called Ninette T. Loos Blanc. There is much to say about Ninette, but for now I’ll just say that she was a hero, and the words she lived by: Loyalty to the family is tyranny to the self.

Filed under: Writing | 4 Comments »

Cal

Posted on June 20, 2009 by betsylerner

Last night, when I was packing up all the poetry, a little piece of paper fluttered out of Anne Sexton’s Live or Die, a book I lived and died by at sixteen. It was a poem cut out of The New Yorker. It was “For Sheridan” by Robert Lowell. I had no idea who he was at the time, and I didn’t really understand the poem. But I felt the poem understood me. That is when I started buying up collections of Lowell’s poems. And now, thirty years later, the love affair continues as I finish reading the exquisite collection of letters between him and Elizabeth Bishop.

I tend not to worry too much about the end of the book and the digital revolution. But I did have the thought that one of things that might be missed if books go the way of screens is the loss of a poem, clipped by a sad teenager, fluttering out of a book many years later to land at the feet of a sad woman.

Filed under: Poetry | 4 Comments »

Sublime, Meet Ridiculous

Posted on June 19, 2009 by betsylerner

Had the great pleasure of seeing Conor Lovett of the Gare St. Lazare Players perform Beckett’s First Love. I usually nap for the first twenty minutes of any play, but I was riveted by the performance, the language (omg), and the great themes: love, abandonment, loss, death. Heaven, I was in.

Then, as if that weren’t enough, Paul Muldoon on the Colbert Report. Poets, tempting as it may be, do not go on the Report. You are not helping the cause. You will only look shaggy and twee. Unless you’re Mark Strand.

Genius talk show host: 1 Esteemed poet: 0

Filed under: Poetry, The End of the World as We Know It | 2 Comments »

No You Didn’t

Posted on June 18, 2009 by betsylerner

Yesterday, I had lunch with one of the smartest editors in the business. She allowed how she keeps a file for letters from authors that express their gratitude — and that these letters buoy her on particulary rough days.

I allowed how I keep an “asshole” file. I started it when I first became an agent, and I didn’t quite know how to handle the sting of rejection. After all, as an editor, I had been on the rejecting side for so long.

I didn’t put just any letter in there. No, the rejection had to strike a particular note of condescension, arrogance, falsehood — you see where I’m going with this.

Eventually, some client letters made it into the file, especially the three page single-spaced letter dipped in acid from the gnome who fired me –who will go unnamed. You know who you are, and that was a fuckin’ brilliant letter, completely raising the bar. I salute you.

The best letter so far, however, is from a distinguised editor who wrote that if the book I was submitting was my idea of art, I should look into a career in real estate. That’s a keeper!

Filed under: Agent, Editor, Rejection | 5 Comments »

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