I’m back from the brisket brigade, otherwise known as New Year’s dinner at my mom’s. I have to hand it to her, at eighty she still makes homemade gefilte fish, matzoh ball soup, brisket, chicken, potatoes, Kasha varnishkes and honey cake. This post is an appreciation of the woman I never really appreciated. My mother always made us look words up in the dictionary. “Mom, what does Blah mean.” “Look it up,” she’d yell back. And then we’d have a conversation about usage. My mother admitted to me that she had picked out a pen name from a young age when she wanted to be a writer. Lynn Carter. My mother smoked Tarryton’s and drank scotch. I can’t believe she didn’t put pen to paper with those vices. She was a big reader, and I remember her reading to us in bed, taking turns between my older sister’s and my twin bed on alternating nights. And how I loved having her in mine when it was my turn. She was very theatrical and gave her thumb a good lick before turning a page.
What about your mom? Oh, happy new year.
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Today, I received a three page query letter from a man who had one project ready to go and four others he wanted to mention. If you know me at all, you know I think query letters should be about a paragraph or less. Great title, brief description (no plot if you can help it) and your creds. If you know me at all, you know that I think it’s advisable to pitch one project and one project alone. And to lead with your best and most recent work. To make matters worse, this writer couldn’t settle on a title and devoted an entire paragraph to what amounted to a brainstorming session on titles. Normally, I would jot “please decline” on the top of the letter and shove it into an inbox near my assistant’s desk, and within a day or so, an intern would send a rejection letter. Basta.
I was at a dinner party over the weekend with a group of people I was mostly meeting for the first time. One of them turned to me at one point and said that she had read my memoir. She wanted to know if it had been difficult to write. It wasn’t. In fact, it was easy. Even the parts I sobbed through. I knew what I wanted to write. I had over twenty diaries from the time period I was writing about. I had an in-depth outline, but more than that I knew every key scene I had to write and the way each one connected to the next like the stars in the big dipper. I knew what I would say and what was off limits. It was all clear to me, there for me.
Today, the most remarkable thing happened. A client sent me an idea for a non-fiction book. I liked it, but had that same old sinking feeling that it wasn’t “big” enough. What does that even mean. We know what it means when we are talking penis size, portfolio size, your number of Twitter followers, and yes I’m looking at you Ashton Kutcher who apparently has all three. But what the fuck does it mean to have a big book, to conceive of one, to put a proposal together that feels…big. Well, it can be idea driven (Tipping Point), story driven (Sea Biscuit), personality driven (Keith Richards). It can be new age driven (the Secret), it can be high concept (The Seven Habits of Highly Defective People). It can be real-estate driven (The Fuckin’ South Beach Diet.) Oh, canine-driven (Marly and Me). Goopy-driven (Morrie and Me). Or find a little known story set against an exciting moment in history (Devil in the White City). Or you can just be an exception to all that (Just Kids).
The Fall is always a time when projects are flying fast and furious around town. Publishers and editors are in a buying mood with the back to school snap in the air. Foreign publishers are criss-crossing Manhattan in search of a big book to bring back in their suitcase. Scouts are chasing down every lead so that their publishers are pre-Frankfurt ready. So how do you feel if you’re an agent without a big Fall book to sell? How do you think?
Some writers want to work without thinking or caring about market concerns. I get that. Some are hyper-aware of marketing concerns and want to reach a specific audience. I get that, too. There are some projects that have some kind of magnetic force field that draws the market out. You can often see it first inside the publishing house where interest pools around a book in the form of buzz, of galleys disappearing, of people wanting to work on it, a kind of momentum starts to build driven by in-house reads, rep enthusiasm, etc. Most books, however, need a push. And to that end, while you are writing, or when you’re shopping your project, and again when it is published, the clearer your idea is of your market, the more likely you might actually reach it.
Dear All:
I’ve often wondered what it’s like to be an actor and go out on auditions. Standing on a stage, a few deep breaths, a monologue. Someone calling out, “Thank you, next.” I’ve wondered what it’s like to be a dress shirt on a dry cleaning carousel. Or to be taller than everyone in the room, to have a cashier’s love for change, or to find a tiny monkey carved from a peach pit under the stage. Is this my imagination? Or the last thing I will ever write? No, sweet love, this is just a small child’s forehead waiting, in the dark, for a kiss goodnight.
Betsy Lerner 
