THE FOREST FOR THE TREES is about writing, publishing and what makes writers tick. This blog is dedicated to the self loathing that afflicts most writers. A community of like-minded malcontents gather here. I post less frequently now, but hopefully with as much vitriol. Please join in! Gluttons for punishment can scroll through the archives.
If I’ve learned one thing about writers, it’s this: we really are all alone. Thanks for reading. Love, Betsy
When I was younger and people said TGIF I was like WTF. I knew I would never be the type to live for the weekend. If anything, the weekends were my personal nightmare. Am I a workaholic or do I just like to work all the time? Smelling the roses is overrated. If I have no plans on a weekend, I’m thrilled that I can work all weekend. Even the dog is like, can you fucking walk me? Can you take a break? There are people who will tell you that on your deathbed you’ll never wish you spent more days at the office. Blah blah. Work is my church and state. Gorgeous day? Who gives a shit. Friends in from out of town. Duck! Work is easier than life.
Here’s what’s going on. I have to get off the meds I’ve been taking for thirty years because its causing kidney failure. I’m not writing this hooked up to a dialysis machine, it’s not that bad yet. But I have to go off the meds and try to find something else if I want the contain the damage. Except for shredding my organs, Lithium pretty much saved my life and I’m more grateful than upset. My relationship with Lithium has lasted longer than more marriages. It stabilized me, gave me a floor and a ceiling. I’m not happy with the idea of finding a new drug but for once in my fucked up life, I’ve decided to be positive about the change.
The four horsemen of the apocalypse: marketing, publicity, social media, events. Almost every author I talk to says, I’m bad at marketing. I’m bad at publicity. I hate social media. You get the picture. My hero P.T. Barnum said, “Do you know what happens if you don’t do any marketing?” A beat. “Nothing.” I think authors don’t realize that they need to do the heavy lifting. They need to treat their book as if it’s a new store and it’s their job to get people to come in and buy something. I get that you can’t be good at all of it, but you can get good at something. If you’re as charismatic as me, you’re going to want to set up your own tour and get out there. I spoke to thirty or more bridge clubs with the Bridge Ladies. I sent them letters, offered my talk for free if they sold books at the event. I hired students and fed them beer and pizza to cull the list of bridge clubs with contact info. Non-fiction is easier in many ways, but there are more than one way to skin a cat. (I actually think there’s probably one or two ways tops.) If you want to sell your book you have to go way outside of your comfort zone.
I’m gonna say something really unpopular. Getting published sucks. It’s like running around the town square with a paper bag on your head and your pants pulled down for as fast as you can for 2-6 weeks and then it’s over. And that’s if all goes well. You have this dream of getting published. You believe the angels will sing meaning people show up your reading, reviews praise your prose, you have a meaningful conversation with an NPR host and some jaunty repartee with Steven Colbert or Bill Maher. There’s no handbook, no counseling, no support group of people in a circle of folding chairs admitting they are powerless over words and their lives had become unmanageable.
I went to the 110th anniversary of Poetry Magazine over the last two days. An incredible line up of 11 poets were awarded the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. I was not an honoree in case you jumped to that conclusion. I was there a sturdy Plus One to my great friend Patti Smith. Just want to say, if you need a Plus One think of me. I’m really good at it. Sandra Cisneros was there. Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez, and Rita Dove. Respect! I thought a lot about why I stopped writing poetry when I finished graduate school. I’ve never come up with a satisfactory answer. Though being in close proximity to those poets made me see something of what they have that I don’t beside a penchant for flamboyant style. They do more than write poetry, they live it.
A doctor asked me what keeps me up and I said, me. I keep me up. I do email and tiktok and instagram and facebook. Before that I watched late night TV. And movies in black and white. And before that I made wild passionate love all night. And before that I wrote in my diary, pages and pages about being lonely in one form or another. Poetry & before that I braided my hair. I bought a green jacket with blue piping with a silk lining and tiny daisies. And before that I cried in my crib. Inconsolable. Same difference.
Much gratitude for all the good wishes. Could I have done it without you? Probably. But this little blog, which I started in December, 2008 has been a lifeline, a needle in the vein, a poke in the eye, a kick in the pajamas, it’s been friendship, inspiration, irritation, and a guilty mess. It’s a lot of bad grammar and typos and dangling martinis. I can’t tell y’all what y’all mean to me. I found my voice here, or a voice, a persona that looks like me at seven in other words adorable and chubby in all the right ways. Yes, body acceptance begins where? I wrote when I couldn’t write. And that, I think, has made all the difference.
Donna Everhart, you minx. Well, now that you’ve hinted at my big news, I’ll come clean. All this time I’ve been in my office gnawing at my limbs, splitting my hairs, scouring my face like the surface of Mars. In other words, I’ve been writing. Remember when we did thirty minutes for thirty days of writing. Well, that tapped something in me and by the next month I was writing for an hour, then two, then five until my fingers cramped up. I think part of the experience was the newfound freedom of fiction. After all the non-fiction I was free to make shit up, no more quadruple fact checking, reading abstracts over and over to comprehend one thing. Interviewing people for hours to get one nugget. I was having…fun. The voice came to me first and then the story. My greatest joy: making similes, which I rank because all similes are not created equal (not for today). Anyway, I finished the fucker and am so proud and delighted and humbled to have the book accepted by Grove Press with one of the world’s best fiction editors.
Guys, I have to flex. Two of my clients’ books are on the New York Times Bestseller List, which of course is all that matters in the entire world or so it feels when you work in publishing. What makes this so sweet is that I’ve worked with both Neil de Grasse Tyson and Temple Grandin for more than 25 years. We have literally grown AARP together. Congrats to these two incredible people who continue to inspire me and the world.
The #1 nonfiction book on the New York Times Bestseller list for a couple of months is I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jeanette McCurdy. Ballsy title. Perfect for the Mommy Dearest Crowd, could alienate the Hallmark crowd. I hadn’t heard of the actress or the show she was on for years as a kid. I read it because I was genuinely curious why it was a #1 bestseller and because I like to stay current with the genre. Mama drama. Friends, I devoured it.I didn’t realize that the A story describes a lifelong struggle with bulimia, largely due to McCurdy’s stage mother who taught her how to keep her body from developing so she’d land more kids’ parts. It’s also a story about an over the top stage mother. Visceral, acerbic wit, honest, real. Finally, it’s about the struggle for self-acceptance. At 62, I’m not even close.
Betsy Lerner 