It’s that time again: HATE LIST.
1) People asking me what I think about Amazon publishing books.
2) People asking me if I’ve read Fifty Shades of Gray.
3) Jennifer Anniston’s new guy.
4) My insane jealousy of Aaron Sorkin.
5) Flats that make your feet looked webbed.
6) The Dukan Diet and everyone telling me about it.
7) That Tosh is already represented.
8) That I am an adolescent boy trapped in the body of a middle-aged woman.
9) Scramble with Friends and my nemesis City of Angels
10) Every blogger who becomes a huge bestseller who is not me.
DId I miss anything?
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In the current issue of Poets & Writers, there is a section called “Critical Links,” and it charts how the author found the agent found the editor. Just as I always like to know how couples first met, I love to know how writers hook up with their agents, and how their agents in turn get them placed with publishers. It’s a form of matchmaking, and since I’m probably more interested in relationships than anything else I could read about these hook ups all night. For me, most of my clients come from referrals, from other writers, from editors. Some were friends from graduate school. Some queried me and I just liked the sound of their letter or project. And some I stalked.
You are the captain of your own ship. My grandmother used to say that when I was young and I would actually see myself as a child in grown up clothes, Naval dress, standing in the prow of a ship, a large hat swimming on my head, long pant legs cascading over my feet. A sort of Wes Anderson tableau. As I got older, I saw myself as more of a wayfarer in the middle of the ocean, more daring, more beautiful, thinner, and with lustrous brown hair clipped back in a tortoise shell barrette. Now, there is no image, just this clarion call, this fierce reminder in one’s ability to chart the course of her life. Why do I bring it up tonight? Perhaps to remind myself to hang in, that not knowing how to revise or what the next step is doesn’t render me finished, that all is not lost when you put another script in a casket and dig a six foot hole and when the first shovel of dirt is your own. Or when your new “idea” is only that or less than that because the execution evades you, or when you start to doubt the whole endeavor, when you fondly think back to high school and college when you were the queen of bagging groceries (winner of the cleanest station of the week 14 weeks in a row) or serving quiche at a pretentious cafe, or decorating the whale room in the Natural History Museum with a thousand neon green and blue streamers. An underwater diorama. Kissing a boy you had a crush on in that stream of crepe anemone. Remember this: Don’t give up the ship.
This morning I wrote an essay inspired by the deaths of Whitney Houston and Mary Kennedy. I had been thinking about them, but hadn’t plan to write anything and certainly not this morning when I had two editorial letters to write and a half dozen manuscripts to read. When I looked up, I had six pages and two hours had gone by. Blip. The question is: is the piece any good? WHen something comes out in a rush of energy, it’s easy to get carried away, think it’s better than it is. I guess the real test would be to send it out. Are rejections and acceptances the only gauge? What about personal satisfaction. What about those two hours spent so happily in Neverland. Does that count?
Tonight I went to hear some music that is part of an annual series called “Arts & Ideas.” It’s festival that brings in a palette of international performers, musicians, artists, etc. It’s really quite impressive and I feel like a petulant child to say that it makes my skin crawl. I’m not sure if it’s the arts or the ideas, or the way it’s all served up on a bed of bright lettuce, or maybe it’s just the word “festival” that makes me want to wear velvet slippers with tiny jingle bells. I hated the concert tonight so much that I leaned over and whispered to my husband that I wanted to go He mouthed back, “what?” I leaned in to say it again when the man in back of us tapped my shoulder and said, “would you stop talking.” THere is some dispute as to whether he said “stop talking” or “PLEASE stop talking.” Whatever. I wanted to die and then I wanted to kill him. I spent the balance of the performance fantasizing about how I was going to turn around and say: why don’t you shut the fuck up. Or, what the fuck is it to you? Or, you really wanna fuck with me mother fucker. But instead I just slumped down and tried to drown out the concert, and stop thinking about how badly I wanted fro-yo.
Just in from a late night of boozin’ and brawlin’ at a launch party for 
I’m in a good mood. I admit it. Sorry, August. But since I’ve been back, there’s been a lot of good news. So much so, that a) I’m sure I’ll be hit by a car and b) leads me to believe that going away for ten days might be the ticket instead of sitting at my desk and gnawing at my limbs and digits. The truth is I’ve learned over the years how to compartmentalize the agony associated with waiting to hear if an offer will be tendered, if a book gets reviewed in the NYT, if there will be a movie deal, if there will be a Turkish deal, if the jacket will be beautiful, if the title will be perfect, if the writer produces a book better than he or she thought possible, and beyond what anyone expected. I first learned how to wait as a teenager waiting for guys to call. Here’s what I could accomplish while waiting: organize my drawers, whiten my teeth, decoupage a box I bought at a tag sale, tweeze my eyebrows beyond recognition, re-read Me, Natalie, and eat a pound of pasta. As an agent, I handle the waiting by getting busy with administrative duties and sometimes slipping into a movie.
Betsy Lerner 