Posted on May 11, 2011 by betsylerner
Today it was announced that an editor who left to become an agent has returned to the publishing side. Couldn’t hack it, I guess. Ha ha. It’s not easy working for the devil. A decade ago when I joined the dark side, I was petrified. Mostly, I now realize, it was losing my identity as an editor that upset me. That, and the child sacrifice. What’s that smell? I never wanted to be an agent. Turns out, I’m actually cut out for it. A lot of people ask me if I miss editorial life, if I would go back. My dream is to rehab a dead factory in New Haven and start my own publishing company and film production company. ANd I want to offer classes to high school kids, and have screenings, and a cafe. I guess if someone offered me an imprint and said here’s your budget, hire your own people, do what you want, that would be cool. I always liked putting on a play. In the wake of yesterday’s pity party, I have to admit I love my clients and sometimes I feel as if we are on a grand journey and over the course of many books we have built a library of our own imagination.
What do you think of editors vs. agents? Don’t hold back.
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Posted on May 10, 2011 by betsylerner
Tonight’s post isn’t for everyone. If you don’t like it or if you detect a spelling or grammatical error or just some shit writing, please leave some love on someone’s else blog because over here at Betsylerner.com, I am about to fucking snap. I’m not used to being played. I’m a middle child. I love to manipulate, triangulate, irritate. I like to come between people, isolate, dominate. So when I get the boomerang shoved up my ass, I don’t like it. I took it all day. It was open season.
What the fuck did I do? Even though I’m a hater, my persona is nice. THe more I hate you, the nicer I’ll probably be. So why can’t the people who hate me be nice? Why can’t anything just be over? Let’s admit we made a mistake, but can’t we still be friends? Look, I obviously can’t talk about it which is why I feel like my chest is exploding, that or I mistakenly wore my daughter’s bra again. What’s really bothering me is that the old person I’ve schlepped around for fifty years is no longer comfortable, if she ever was, with the doormat routine. So, now, when you wipe your fucking feet all over me, it no longer feels good.
What’s your birth order and what does it have to do with being the kind of writer that you are?
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Posted on May 7, 2011 by betsylerner
Nearly every writer I met with in Miami was working on a memoir. Each one had a story more harrowing than the next: disease, abuse, mental illness, etc. Each one moved me, and you know I’m a misanthropic bitch who really only cares about a handful of people in the universe and where I’m going to get my next Twix bar. So what the hell happened down there? Am I going soft?
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Posted on April 29, 2011 by betsylerner
Here’s August, once again:
Eight things I like about publishing.
1) 1. My previous job was doing data entry for a title company. My immediate superior was my wife’s high school boyfriend. His name was Cameron. He had a beautiful head of hair. This is better than that.
2) 2. Free meals in NYC. (Protip: the writer never pays. Make them feed you.)
3) 3. I hate women, but I hate men more.
4) 4. Last year I wrote off my membership to Joi Ryda’s website as ‘research’: http://tinyurl.com/6jel734
5) 5. People who don’t know better envy my job.
6) 6. A writer with psychosexual mother issues is a cliché, but a high school guidance counselor with psychosexual mother issues is a flight risk.
7) 7. There’s nothing else. What else is there? Nothing. The world doesn’t owe me a living? Fuck that. This isn’t a balance sheet. I don’t give a shit what I’m owed; I only care what I want.
8) 8. Bulk ordering Tylenol PM.
Sing me your love song to publishing.
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Posted on April 27, 2011 by betsylerner
Dearest, darling readers of this blog: I neglected to mention that I’m jetting off to LA for the book festival for two days. While I’m sipping Arnold Palmers at the Chateau and doing blow at the Viper Club, I’ve finagled a couple of posts from the most wanted man on this blog, our august August. Please don’t hate him for being beautiful.
Books might sell in clean well-lighted places, but they’re written under the floorboards, where mushrooms grow and centipedes crawl. I despise all the twee bullshit about how we “can’t not write,” the mystical jerkoff writing guides about Bones and Birds. Still, I think that’s the great divide. That’s why all the chipper Facebook updates are lies, why the happy how-to blog posts are bullshit. That’s why giving talks at the local birdwatching society isn’t just good marketing, it’s also bad writing. That’s why lurking in the foyer of an elementary school looking like you cut a slit in your trenchcoat pocket is worse than merely uncomfortable.
Writing is private, publishing is public—hell, the words probably have the same root, publishing and public—and the motherfuckers keep trying to drag me into their world. Of course the sunlight burns, but that’s not what bothers me. The cliché is true: sunlight the best disinfectant, and I prefer to stink of mildew and woodrot. Self-promotion and blog tours and library talks don’t just piss me off because they’re worthless. They don’t just piss me off because they’re distractions from writing. They’re the opposite of writing. They’re unwriting. Maybe you’re the kind of freak who gets off on that shit, fine. At least giving a speech costs less than a fursuit with a built-in diaper. But how is this anti-writing crap the default?
I’m working on a story about a talking mailbox right now, so it’s not like I’m in love with my literary purity, but this is like telling a Republican that she’s gotta care about poor people even when they aren’t white. This is like judging fashion models by how much they can bench. It’s like training a dog not to sniff assholes.
I read a blog post recently where a cheerful novelist said, “Do what comes naturally. Say ‘yes’ a lot.”
What comes naturally to you?
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Posted on April 21, 2011 by betsylerner
Why are poets such a-holes, you might ask. Is it their power with language, is it their widow’s peak streaked with white, is it their penetrating gaze or the way they pronounce poem pome? HOw about the way they read their own work? It’s like watching someone masturbate in slow motion. God, it’s gross. I used to love poetry readings, soaking up the beret life, drinking the warm Chardonnay. I fucking hate Chardonnay. And for some damn reason when I tell a waiter that I would like white wine, they always ask if I’d like Chardonnay. Is there something about me that screams Chardonnay? Why can’t they ask if I’d like a Pinot? A Sancerre? Another thing, poets think they’re better than other people.
WHen I was little, maybe eight, my mother and I were driving by a corn field, newly covered in snow. The dried stalks were sticking up through the snow. I said the field looked liked a man’s stubbly beard. My mother said that I had made a simile. Then she explained what a simile was.
Maybe it’s because of the white space, or the pressure not to rhyme, or the fear of anonymity, of reaching for something that isn’t there like a branch or a stalk or dying on the Spanish Steps or near the Spanish steps, your body covered in boils, your lips cracked. Or dying under a dream of morphine and regret, a hospice nurse as nice as pie, generous with ample hips. If you can read this, you are my love. My line break.
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Posted on April 19, 2011 by betsylerner
Maybe because I was wearing my Johnny Cash shirt, but something got into me today. I met with this acclaimed film director to talk about a project. THe hour or so went really well, then we segued into the small talk before parting. We discovered that we both loved Blue Valentine and Ryan Gosling’s broken man thing. I ventured that I love Mark Ruffalo’s broken man thing even more. She totally agreed — so I started yammering about his other movies like You Can Count on Me and Eternal Spotless Sunshine and she said, no, wait, it’s that other movie that he’s so great in. I guess Zodiac, and she says no, no, the one with Meg Ryan. I knew exactly what she meant but instead of saying In the Cut, I say you want me to eat your pussy in my best Mark Ruffalo impression. She rears back, like what the fuck! Idiotically, I say it again, only this time more emphatically and trying to pooch up my lip like Ruffalo’s, you want me to eat your pussy.
What are you looking at?
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Posted on April 18, 2011 by betsylerner
I turned in my revised article to Poets & Writers today. I’m really hoping they take it because I could use the dough. And I’ve always wanted to get in there ever since they turned down my article about author photos eight years ago. I still can’t believe they didn’t snap it up. Speaking of snapping things up, I received three Monday morning rejections today. It’s a good fuck me Monday morning feeling. Saw my therapist today, usually I go on Fridays. I’m the same fucked up person on Mondays as I am on Fridays. Why is this day no different than all other days?
Two of my clients received amazing blurbs. Two of my clients are waiting for months to hear from their editors. Two of my clients are AWOL. I can’t get the dermatologist to call me back. Jon Stewart is wearing glasses tonight. I’ve always liked men in glasses. I did all the edits for the P&W piece on-line. Believe it or not, I’ve never done that before. I wish my life had a track changes option. Show changes. Show final. Me on a slab ready for stuffing and lipstick.
What would you like your epitaph to say? AED once said mine would say, She Dieted. Ha ha. She got that right!
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Posted on April 11, 2011 by betsylerner
FAME: A Five Part Series
Part II
Your Picture Here
Do you have to court fame to get it? Network. Schmooze. Glad hand. Rub shoulders. Back slap. Kiss kiss? Do you need to drink all night at Breadloaf, hold court at Yaddo dinners, buy rounds at Kingfisher? Wear your tangerine seersucker to the latest Paris Review bash? Or did you fall off the parsnip truck, spit and cough your way to life? Did you shove your manuscript through the gate of a reclusive agent, meet an editor, by chance, on a plane?Do you serve yourself up like shrimp at a buffet. Do you dip yourself in cocktail sauce, pull a skewer through you vital organs?Do you write all night on the fire escape, in the boiler room, on a night train to the Czech Republic.
What do you want and how badly do you want it?
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Posted on April 4, 2011 by betsylerner
It’s the Jon Stewart hour after a long Monday. I have a stack of manuscripts that still need reading and a 378 page Restoration Hardware catalogue. It is the mother of all RH catalogues. There’s a also a Garnett Hill and Eddie Bauer, but they seem lame compared to this tome from RH. I realized some time ago that home decor catalogues were almost as good as Valium and twice as addictive. I tell myself to read at least one more proposal. But I just want one little peak inside the catalogue. One little peek at the nickel finishes, the “antique” sconces or the generously proportioned mirror recalling the shape of Moorish windows — a zinc finish lends the wood molding an aged patina. I wonder if I could do mash up of Pride and Predge with Restoration Hardware? Maybe I could do a mash up of my ass and my face.
What’s your favorite catalogue? Or mash up?
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Betsy Lerner 