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
Dearest Readers of this Blog: I have been cheating on you. I’m not going to lie. I’ve been seduced by TikTok, BookTok specifically. A year ago, people in publishing were saying that it’s the only social media to move the needle (the sales needle). So while most people turned their noses up at it, and Colleen Hoover, I decided to check it out. I’m astonished at what I’ve found, dancing cowboys and kitten videos aside, there is a vibrant community of book lovers who read in every genre, including classics. It’s a way to discover what is popular and why. A lot of people are reading out there, and sharing their thoughts, and creating communities. I’m definitely a newbie, but when I make a video that people respond to, I have to admit it’s thrilling. If you’re interesed, check me out @betsylerner
In other news, my debut (!) novel has gone into production and will come out next year in November. My editor has kicked my ass seven ways from Sunday and I’m beyond humbled and grateful. Not only have I improved by book as a result of her painstaking work, I feel as I’ve become a better editor myself.
To anyone who is still hanging around the Lerner Home for Wayward Children, I hope you’re okay. I hope you’re bringing a writing project to fruition or starting a new one, or just writing in your diary, or a long letter to a friend. If you’re out there, catch us up. xo, Betsy
Even though I’m an agent, I still do a great deal of editing for my clients. Lately, I’ve been working with a writer I’ve known for over 25 years. By now, it’s like we’re an old married couple. I know her strengths and weakness. She knows my pet peeves and prejudices. We bicker about the same things, agree about the same things. Sometimes we don’t have to say anything at all. When I suggest a more apt word, move a paragraph, change the tense, she’s delighted. Calls me a genius. A small halo lights up over head. No change is too small. And I am thrilled when she takes a chance, makes a leap, says “look ma, no hands” with a string of sentences that blows my mind. In the end, it’s the dance. The call and response. The trust that if I know you’ll catch me, I am free to fall.
I’ve been working on my editor’s notes for a month with ten days to go. She has nipped, tucked, corrected, questioned, prodded, challenged, and inspired me. Word choice, cliches, active verbs, varying sentence structure, wordiness, tightening, extraneous details, point of view. After 30 years of editing, I’m humbled by her work. If a sentence, sentiment, or thought is off by a hair, she questions it. She calls me out on all my bad habits. She has also encouraged me to take more chances. I am almost ready.
My editor sent my quote unquote novel back with her notes. It’s a true, old school line-edit. Be still my heart. Her pencil is everywhere: tone, structure, point of view, word choice, continuity, transitions. There is nothing like being in the hands of a real editor. The careful attention, the big picture, the perspective. You know my level of gratitude is enormous. That’s not to say that I didn’t plummet to the depths today, just facing how bad the bad parts are, the rookie mistakes, the wanton abuse of semi-colons. The sheer wordiness (which I had deluded myself into thinking was my “voice”). I’m gonna get a good night’s sleep and hit it again in morning. The one guarantee about writing: One day you’re great and the next you’re the worst.
Someone called me “driven” the other day and it kind of bothered me. What does that even mean. Honestly, I’m probably more compulsive than I am driven. I don’t like leaving things unfinished. It’s also true that I get frustrated when people tell me that they can’t write, or they have to make themselves write, or they need certain circumstances in their life to be able to write. In my mind, it’s something that you do because you don’t know how to make sense of the world any other way.
When I was about around eleven or twelve, my mother and I were driving by a corn field dotted by brown stalks sticking out of the snow, and I remarked that they looked like the stubble on a man’s face. She said that my observation was a simile. A comparison using like or as. I attribute my love of poetry and writing back to that moment and pleasing my mother, a woman difficult to please. Metaphor, more abstract, came later, more gradually. When I finished War and Peace the other day, I felt as if a glacial metaphor had moved through me, the book encompassing all of life on a grand scale and also on the most intimate. And yet through all that, one image keeps coming back to me. There is a hunt for rabbits where thousand-ruble dogs compete with mongrels, and a mongrel named Rugay is the victor. Tolstoy writes, “For some after, they kept looking askance at red Rugay, who trotted along Uncle’s horse with mud all over his hunched up back, jingling the fittings on his leash, with the serene air of a conquerer.” Yes, a metaphor for the whole book, the Russian army defeating the French, but oh that phrase, “the serene air of a conquerer,” the sound and flow of it, the feeling and image it stirs, the inherent simile. And that, dear reader, is the depth of my love of writing, right there in a single phrase.
Remember, on the first day of school, you will be asked what your did on your summer vacation. I hope you’ve been writing. Honestly, I’m stalled out waiting for notes. I tried to jump back into a screenplay outline that feels dead on the vine in this post-Barbie landscape. Actually, Barbie has nothing to do with it. When do you declare a patient dead? DNR? Now that I’ve finished War & Peace, I’m determined to read a lot of really short books that also promise to change my life. I’m starting with Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector. So far, it’s brilliant. And she wrote it when she was 23. Fuck me dead.
Are you there god, it’s me Betsy? I have big news: I finally finished War & Peace!! It took a full year of chipping away, plus the last three weeks in a more concentrated effort, but the fucker is under my belt and I can now happily go to my grave. Was it worth it? Yes. Top five books I’ve ever read. The sweep and intimacy of it will never leave me completely. Sentences I had to copy out for their beauty and precision. Now, I’m going to read four or five very short books.
How have you all been? If you’re out there, I’d love to know how the writing is coming along. I hope to check in a couple of times a week with reports of my first novel, which was sold to Grove Publishers! I want to capture all the agony in real time as I expose myself (not in the Louis CK mold) yet again to that particular pain of holding out all your hope in sentences and paragraphs that won’t set you free, AKA the publishing process. I’m very grateful to have sold my first novel, don’t get me wrong, but that doesn’t mean I can’t exercise my god-given right as a writer to moan about it every step of the way.
In other news, I’ve attempted to join the whack-a-mole community of book lovers on TikTok known as Booktok. You can find me @betsylerner if you’re curious. But do check out Booktok – it’s the wild west where you can find lots of passionate readers, book recommendations, everything from the sublime to the ridiculous, plus lots of people dancing.
Dear Beloved Readers of this blog: As some of you may know, I’ve been reading War and Peace since the summer and I’m only 600 pages in. I want to finish this book and a few others before I die. To that end, I’m going to go off social media and take a blogging hiatus. I will miss you dearly. I will really miss Harry Styles. Please keep writing every day if only to be reminded of how intensely pleasurable it is to commune with your demons, stare down your detractors, sacrifice your health and well-being, and make your own magic. Tolstoy or bust! Be good. Love, Betsy
So, fuckers, I finished a draft last night. I mean I still have to go through it all again ON PAPER, but I feel…close. I’ve now officially spent twice as much time revising as I did writing. I’ve been helped immeasurably by some incredibly astute readers and a fairy godmother who appeared in the form of an old friend and brilliant writer who supplied a close read when I needed it most. I am so humbled by this process and humility is not a strong suit.
Who are your readers?
CONTEST RESULTS: Bonnie has to win this one for best Cinderella story. Bobbie honorable mention for such a wonderful story that involved moi. And shout out to Mike for best stoner story. Full stop. (Bonnie send me your address to Thebridgeladies@gmail.com to receive your prize.. & thanks for all the stories.
Betsy Lerner 