Do you ever feel free? I remember writing poetry before I went into the MFA program and that was the last time that I “just wrote.” I wrote whatever I wanted and I didn’t expect to get published, didn’t particularly care, at least not yet and not for a while. I spent more time writing in my diaries than anywhere else. And it was in those diaries that lines took hold, became first lines, became poems. And it was a mess of private associations and agonies. It was all under the cloak of my own darkness. It was a girl whose fingers were blue and flat with the pressure of a ball point pen writing as fast as she could. I would like to get that back.
What part of your writing life do you miss?
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I’m at my sister’s and I’m looking at her bookcase, which isn’t organized in any particular way. THough in her guest house, where I’m staying, the shelves are filled from her life as an MFA student in theater. So there’s lots of heady stuff along with the classics like Ibsen, Chekov, and Shakespeare. Upstairs, there’s everything from Roberto Bolano to Prep. The requisite Franzen. This guy Jonathan Tropper who she loves. Lots of contemporary fiction. The novel, at least around here, is not dead.. When I used to date (which is euephemism for two week stands), I’d always check out the guy’s bookcase. I’d flee if he had a tattered copy of The Fountainhead or On The Road, and stay if he had Fitzgerald or Lawrence or Hawthorne or Melville. And to this day, if there is a bookcase in a room, I will always gravitate toward it and construct an identity based on what I find there: a person’s tastes, moods, passions, perversions. I will fill in the blanks, pass judgement, and often rethink that person based on his shelves. Not to mention the sheer beauty of book spines. It just can’t be the same as scrolling through a KindleNookIpad.
I met with my youngest client today. He had just finished his first book and the mood was festive, or was that the Sauvignon Blanc speaking? I asked what the reaction had been among friends and family, and he said reactions had ranged from tepid and dismissive to sometimes hostile. The young man was surprised, possibly hurt. And I say possibly because he seemed to take it all with a grain of salt. I asked about his parents, and even they, who had always been supportive of his writing career, now when he finally had something to show for his efforts, were somewhat indifferent. More than a few friends barely feigned interest in his book, others were happy to exhaustively describe the book they wanted to write. I understand jealousies and rivalries between writers but where was this coming from?
Sometimes I’ll ask a writer to think about the grand scheme. I ask how many books he would like to see on the shelf at the end of his life. Ten? Five? One, like Harper Lee? There are a lot of reasons people don’t or can’t write more than a book or two. Sometimes the experience of being published is devastating, whether good or bad. If it’s very good, I’ve seen writers buckle under the pressure of living up to their early promise. If it’s very bad, they can be crushed by the disappointment. Sometimes it’s a failure of imagination or the well is truly empty. Sometimes a nervous breakdown or crippling depression is responsible. Or alcoholism and drug addiction. Or, like JD Salinger, the critics killed the entire enterprise, or so he’s said. Or maybe the writer turns to another form: screenwriting, playwriting, finger fucking. I try so hard to motivate writers, but maybe silence is molten.
This morning I received an email from a FOB (friend of the blog) saying that I can’t say IFLKM (Ifeel like killing myself) and then not post the next day. I apologize and thank said FOB for reaching out. I too am a worrier when people say things like that. And since I post as regularly as Rob Lowe brushes his teeth, it might be a tad disconcerting when I miss a deadline. To be clear, as said IFLKM because some soft porn got buckets of publishing dollars. I would never kill myself. The worse day alive is better than the best day dead. Life is for the living. I love all of you who wake up and write or try to write or shake off a rejection or get some good news.
I had lunch with an editor last week and we found ourselves talking about the phenomenon when writers turn on their work, when it becomes the enemy or the receptacle for all of their anger, when the very fact of it sickens them, embarrasses them, as if the work itself betrayed them. It’s like a drunk on a bender, out of control, on a collision course. I used to gravitate toward those writers, confusing their self-destruction for authenticity and complexity. Some writers truly love their work, and continue to love it, like a first grader her first potato print. I feel so insanely proud of my clients’ work, but I’ve never been able to fully muster that feeling for my own writing. One of my writers once said that if she were a general, she’d polish her brass every night. I wondered what it would be like to feel that kind of pride. To stand up straight and salute the clear blue sky.
Betsy Lerner 