I’ve been doing a lot of readings and events lately. And every time the exact same thing happens. In the two hours before the event, I become extremely irritable. It’s super convenient when my mother comes with me because I can take it all out on her. But either way, I feel a kind of free-floating churlishness, my inner monologue is hideous. Sometimes I even scare myself silently mouthing off to people who happen to fall in my path, taking too long fishing for coins in their purse, scrolling on their phone with an obnoxiously articulated thumb swipe, etc. By the time the reading starts, I’m a kitten. Then I get a bag of Swedish Fish on the way home.

What was your worst reading experience (either that you gave or saw).

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TOP TEN REASONS TO STAY IN PUBLISHING:

10) Gossip

9) Constant bitching

8) What goes around comes around

7) The unexpected

6) Friends

5) Genius adjacent

4) Praise, prizes

3) Royalties

2) Reading

1)  Books

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I was on a panel about mothers and daughters over the weekend at BinderCon. I have to admit I was dubious about attending, (don’t want to be a member of any club that would have me bullshit)  but it was galvanizing. We were four women with entirely different experiences about motherhood. Naturally, I stood for maternal criticism and daughterly low-self esteem. Got a lot of laughs, but was truly more moved by a Jamaican novelist who portrayed a matriarch lecturing her daughter about her lack of worth in their town and the larger world. Also a woman read about her daughter developing Tourette Syndrome. She could barely get through it and we were all with her. She wrote with such clarity and specificity; we were in her thrall.

Do you have a mother-daughter story?

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I’ve compared agenting to baseball in the past, but it seems apt now in the bottom of the fifth. You send out a project to 16 editors. The possibilities: get on first with a single modest offer; get on second with a couple of mid-size offers; get on third with a few offers now getting competitive; home-run = an auction, multiple editors chasing, the offers increasing; grand slam:all your dreams come true. Agenting is also like baseball in that you can, and will, strike out. When you can’t sell a book you believe in, when your writer gets called back to the farm, when you question everything you know, it’s all a bright beautiful shit show.

What’s your sports metaphor?

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This post is about brick walls. Hitting them. Projects dying on the operating table. On the vine. That fail to thrive. Sixty pages falling off a cliff. A boulder rolled in front of a door. This is about a minute, an hour, a day, a lifetime. This is cuticle time, eyelashes and wine. This is the knowledge that when one door closes, it’s closed. How do you solve a problem like Maria? How do you catch a cloud and pin it down? Practice your chord changes. Write a poem. Study a new language. Do not let the engine rust. Do not overtax the metaphor. Do not give up the ship unless the mother’s life is at risk.

What’s more painful? Writing or not writing?

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Do you get high? I mean for medicinal purposes, to help with the writing. Are you a pill popper? Gin drinker? Are you on prescription meds? Anti-depressants, beta-blockers, lithium for Medea? How do you get to sleep, wake up, stay up? How do you turn it off, on? Starbucks shots? Are you a sneak smoker, eater, tweaker? Sex addict? Claustrophobic? Writers make great hypochondriacs! If you’re not high on life, what the fuck are you?

What’s in your medicine chest?

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Discipline, desire, commitment, obsession. What gets you up at five, your silhouette ghost-like in the dark pre-dawn windows. Why would you rather be alone than at a party thrown in your honor? Why does everything in the world seem dull unless you are writing? Transforming overheard conversation. Reaching for a simile that links up thematically. A eureka moment that fizzles. I deal with writers all day long and they are living in a parallel universe where there is hot soup, where they can’t find their pen, where their mothers love them. Ego without confidence. Confidence without ability. Ability that can’t find it’s own elbow. Love that doesn’t know its name.

What am I trying to say?

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Dear All: I am living the dream. After going to three Patti Smith shows in LA, I am now spending a couple of days in Malibu editing a book I love on a balcony overlooking the ocean. In the far distance, a bunch of surfers are basking in the sun on their boards. Okay, the real dream would be for all this to happen without my eating stale Dean & Deluca candy off the mini bar as if I were a lab rat. If I didn’t pick all the polish off my toes. If I didn’t seize with panic attacks every hour and a half and do a blackhead patrol.

What’s your dream and would you fuck it up?

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So a writer approaches me with his manuscript. I see that he has fantastic credentials, has published widely and in all the right places. The concept seems muddy to me and I tell him so, describe how I would refocus the project. I think about taking it on, but step aside. Honestly, it feels like a lot of work with no certain outcome. Still, I provide a few comparison titles to give the writer my take on the project and urge him to find a new title. He’s very appreciative and asks for a few agent names. I don’t usually supply names (do your homework!), but I do here. The writer has been especially polite so what the fuck. He writes me today to let me know that one of the agents I recommended took it on, sold it for a bucket of money, and the book is debuting on the NYT bestseller list at #5. He’s writing to thank me.*

Thank me? How about fuck me? I guess I have to file this under win some lose some. Or I could beat myself forever and ever, which, if history is our guide, is my method of choice.

How do you punish yourself?

*this little anecdote is a composite of two stories.

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I did an event today with my mother. After the luncheon, I read a small passage from the book and then we took the stage. She in her Eileen Fisher, me in my Uniqlo. She accessorized up the wazoo. Me wearing my watch. Her nails flawless, mine chewed. Her hair styled, mine frizzy and unruly. A conversation ensued and, without warning, my darling 85 year old mother morphed into Rodney Dangerfield. She starts whipping off one-liners and zingers. And she’s getting all the laughs.In the car on the way home, she says, “Bets, I think I got the bigger laughs.”

Tell me about your mom.

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