I’ve been working on this motherfucking screenplay all vacation. The elaborate outline bears little resemblance to what I’m doing. Yes, I’m going rogue, veering from the well-plotted piece of shit outline that seemed so brilliant five months ago when I first wrote it. Does this ever happen to you? You walk away for a day which becomes a week which becomes a month which becomes half a year. Why do I always get the runs when I write? It isn’t that exciting. I never stopped thinking about these characters. The idea is that each one has a secret of some kind and that secret deforms them in some way. But I’m not an idea based writer. I come to everything through character. What I learned from the big deal producer who toyed with my first script like a cat with a dead mouse is that character is not best revealed through dialogue. Characters have to act. So what I’m trying to do now is scrutinize every scene, to make sure it has some inherent action, or moves the story forward.
How do you scrutinize your own work. How do you pound the shit out of it?
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Well, this incredible year is winding down. I felt like quitting publishing in March after I crashed and burned so badly on a project that I no longer trusted myself. And that, whether you are an agent, editor, publisher, or writer, is the worst. We’re all clomping around in the forest as far as I can tell, but when you realize you’ve lost your compass, well you’re fucked. All you really have is your taste, your belief, your instinct, your gut. Separate yourself from these for a moment and you are a goner. Nobody really knows what’s going to work, but believing in something and having the insanity of your convictions is crucial to any success. If you build it they will come, and all that. But of course, here in bookland, if you build it they can also ignore it, savage it, remainder it, and pulp it.
Sold my last book of 2011 today. Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa. I know many of you hate agents out there and I get it. I hated most agents when I was an editor. Taking them to lunch so they could shit on your face, if you feel me. I once took an agent out to lunch who looked at the menu and said, “If I have one more cobb salad, I’m going to kill myself.” Another pulled a bill away as I was figuring out the tip and said, “Gimme that, I know 15% of anything.”
How can tell if your work is good? How can you tell if it’s done? how do you know if readers will feel what you want them to feel? See what you see? Why did you choose red over scarlet? Blue over cerulean? Dumb ass over douche bag? What’s the frequency, Kenneth? Is your character real or made from mix? Does your work scream amateur or does it mingle in a smoking jacket? How does time move? A day, a year, a century? A million kisses? Is there a clock? For whom does it toll? To thine own self? Or Ruth amid the aliens? What pattern is the wallpaper, the china, the china china? Are your similes brittle, brash, unexpected, bashful? Does a river run through it? Do you even know what it is “about?” And please don’t “about” me. Are you lean, concise, compressed? Bold, sassy, expansive? Highway or my way? Back hoe or pick? Do you tap, slam, rap, dip? Brush, smudge, thumb, tongue. Do you lick it, kick it, kill it, burn it. Are you in the driver’s seat? The sandbox? The stairway to my fat heaven. Can I see your license and registration? Do you seek the sun, the sea, the long finger of love.
According to Bookmovement.com, where over 26,000 book club groups are registered, here are the top twenty book club picks of 2010:
Kids! Great news! We made the 
The problem with watching too much In Treatment is that you begin to take on Gabriel Byrne’s characteristics, his brooding mien, his Irish accent, his eye twitches that signal he gets it. You start telling people to get a good look at themselves, to find the connections among various life events, to pick up the almighty pattern. And then you try to offer a little hope, just a wee bit of salvation or redemption or revelation. You know: insight.
Betsy Lerner 