Went to Brooklyn today (three subways) to talk with Pratt undergraduates about publishing. Naturally, I became nostalgic about my college years, never mind the near constant misery. The big difference as far as I can tell is that we never met publishing professionals, never talked about how to get published. I think in some ways we were lucky not to start those engines too soon. We didn’t even have a creative writing major. We were allowed to take one writing course and I took poetry; the professor favored the ballerina-poets. I wrote all the time in my journals. I went to cafes and wrote and smoked and read. But I had no idea what a query letter was or how to write one. I had no idea what an agent was or what they were for. Today’s kids have seen Jerry Maguire, they study the box office grosses, they know the names of power agents.
I’m old fashioned. I think it might be better to stave off getting that knowledge for as long as possible, to protect your innocence as a writer the way we try to protect childhood. Am I ridiculous? Does the act of writing imply the desire for publication? Is it better for young people to get as much information as possible, to hear about how publishing works from people like me? Do you remember when you made your first attempts to get published or find an agent — whether you got one or not, got published or not — how did it feel to enter the fray?
Filed under: The End of the World as We Know It, Writing | 39 Comments »
I spent a few days thinking of ways to mortify Betsy in this space, but I don’t have a copy of her updated book, and I don’t have the patience to click on every link in her blogroll looking for things to hate. I considered writing about how your publishing ‘team’—your agent and editor and publisher—functions like a family, more specifically a family in which your publisher fucks you under the stairs while your editor pretends not to notice.
I was on a flight from Amsterdam to Newark the other day when I noticed that every other person was reading a Kindle. Then it hit me. I am almost fifty years old and I might never have a book published. By that I mean a real book that I can hold next to my heart and then put away on a shelf. Even better, on my mother’s shelf. Something I can finish. Something I can dedicate. I have written all my life, but nothing has ever been really truly finished. I enjoy my status as a late bloomer, but now I see I may be too late for a real book.
This may be the last post I will ever write. Tomorrow, I am driving to the Adirondacks to participate in a writers’ conference. In the first place, I am a crappy driver. In the second, it’s like a five hour drive and they are expecting torrential rain. On top of that, the organizer sent directions and explained that the last thirty miles or so are really really dark, that there’s no food after 7pm so I should stop at an earlier exit if I want dinner, and there will be no one there to greet me — an envelope with a key will be waiting for me. I am sincerely hoping I don’t smash my husband’s luxury sedan. I am sincerely hoping that dark the stretch of road doesn’t devour me into a Blair Witch nightmare, my life ending in a series of handprints on a concrete wall.
Grand Central Station. 8:20 p.m. Downstairs where commuters grab a quick bite. A woman in her sixties or so has Parkinson’s or a similar disease. Her hands and body are shaking uncontrollably. It’s painful to see. The man beside her, her husband I’m guessing, holds a bottle of juice to her mouth and she drinks. More? Yes, and again he holds the bottle to her mouth. When she is finished, he holds her hand and for a time the shaking eases. Then it starts up again and their hands shake together as one.
Somehow, I got to be fifty fucking years old and half my life has been lived in the service of helping writers bring their work to the public. There isn’t a day when I’m not that girl in an ill fitting Ann Taylor suit riding up the elevator on her first day of work at Simon and Schuster, or making my first offer on a book and being embarrassed to say the number, or opening the NYT and seeing my author get a rave review, or crying in front of my boss John Sterling when a book was trashed by same paper, or going to the National Book Critics Circle Award or a reading on the lower East Side, or asking an agent over lunch if he and his wife were gay (did not go over), the BEA when I slept with two writers, and the BEA when I picked my face so badly it bled. I remember pencil shavings covering my chest and post-its lining the walls, and playing Scrabble with Rick Moody in his boss’s office and soaking up everything I could learn about the literary life, hearing juicy gossip about people you only knew by reputation, spreading it. I remember the great Alice Mayhew furiously marching down editorial row screaming “Amateur night, amateur night,” when she believed an agent had botched an auction. And I remember thinking that was the worst thing you could ever be called: an amateur. I remember feeling betrayed, loved, admired, hurt, stung, played, and appreciated. Then there is every book I’ve ever worked on and the story of how it came into being, the back story of every decision and choice that we agonized over in the hope of getting it right.
A soccer mom buddy is reading the Franzen on her Kindle. I submitted a new project to 16 editors on Friday; they all wanted it for their Kindles. Friends, I can feel it. Just like the answering machine, the VCR, the cell phone, the IPod, and sanitary napkins with wings — innovation will win out. I noticed at B&N that you could get a Kindle cover from Lily Pulitzer, Coach, and Burberry. Now, that’s special.
Betsy Lerner 
