I’ve spent thirty years as an editor and now agent talking writers off the ledge. That’s what we do. And it’s never more intense than in the two months before publication when anything and nothing can happen. When all your hopes and dreams could fill a dirigible floating over the city. Your fears and anxieties florid and deranged.
HOw do I talk people off the ledge. First, I remind them their book is awesome, how much work it took, their dedication, their craft, how worthwhile it is even before a single copy is sold. Then I tell them stories the way you tell children stories to keep the bogey man away or stories to make them feel hopeful, about little trains that could. Or little books that grew up into mighty oaks. I get them thinking about their next book, about their inner life as a writer, about the long distance race. If all this fails, I suggest, they go shopping, to the movies, mani/pedi, hit the gym, start tutoring kids. If you’re in therapy: stay. If you’re not: start.
When I try to talk myself off the ledge, I realize something very scary. I am the ledge. Any advice?
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Someone recently asked me if I felt anxious about the book coming out because it is so personal. Get to know me. I’m anxious because it might not sell. I’m anxious because the New York Times might say mean things, or worse say nothing at all. I’m anxious because if I fail it’s not only in front of my friends and family, but the publishing profession where I work. I’m anxious because I’m not in therapy and I probably should be. I’m anxious because I don’t feel like myself, meaning I feel a little hopeful and that is just not part of the package. I’m anxious because it’s all out of my hands now with the exception of boosting Facebook pages and going up and down Fifth avenue in the sandwich boards I’ve made with the Queen of Hearts on both sides.
When writers tell me that they are writing for an audience, I always want ask: who? Like really, when you are physically writing or for that matter when you are writing in your head, are you thinking of readers? Is it general: people browsing at Barnes & Noble they way you cruise a buffet table. Or specific: For Aunt Sue, Uncle Wiggly? The people in church or on line at the Genius Bar? What about the people in the second to last car of the Amtrak train traveling from Virginia to Maine? And what of writing for yourself? The immature man in the mirror. The ingrown toe nail. All the strands of hair you violently pulled from your brush the morning of your wedding day. Are you the small man running in brown leather shoes down a path softened by dead leaves? Or squeezing an apricot not quite ripe that you still slice open and greedily eat?
Just want to mention that I spent four hours in Temple and forgot to atone. Spent the entire time thinking about writing, my writing, the writing of others, the cover of the NYT book review, a new client I shook hands with, the way my eyes feel most of the time which is dry and achy and sometimes slightly pulsing. The lady in front of me had a lace doily folded in the shape of a piece of pie and pinned to her head with a bobby pin. But it came loose and the pleats on the doily were hanging precariously off her head, the bobby pin also hanging on for dear life. Really, pray for my sins and pray for the dead with all that going on? Please, ladies, attend to your doilies! I beg of you.
Free fall. You know exactly what I’m talking about. Finishing something and getting first reads. I’ve given my script to the young turk from my film class, my literary agent, my writing partner and bff, and a former film executive. What’s that on my shirt? Oh, did I throw up? What is the biggest fear? It sucks. Duh. But more than that it’s the strong possibility that people will see things about me that are humiliating and that I thought I had successfully concealed or transformed. I think that’s why I was drawn to poetry as a depressed teenager. I thought that writing things that people couldn’t understand would protect me and allow me to express yourself at the same time.
Betsy Lerner 