When I finished teaching and got on the plane to come home, I fell into a deep sleep. On the drive home various moments from the day sifted back to me. The woman in a white sweater taking copious notes. The young man behind orange tinted glasses with a strange story about a ghost. The man in blue denim shirt in the front row who never spoke. The woman with black hair and a distinctive part and nose earring, whose questions were sharp and pointed, and I nicknamed her Dragon Tattoo.
I worked hard to make them laugh (what is this, Comedy Central?), and most difficult of all, to send a positive message. I so wanted the students to take something good away. Some shard of hope, some spark of inspiration. I looked out and saw half a handful of kids with their eyes at half mast. Some, eager sardines. All that you bring to the river, all that you write, all you know in your heart to be true, this is what matters, this is your art, this is your life. Others were thinking about lunch, or bunions. I myself went into a mini fugue state. Did I buy dog food? Should I leave therapy? Where did I leave my phone? Is that your umbrella? The long hand of the clock stood still. I lifted my eyes and the room appeared as a garden of marigolds, and I reached for one.
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First of all, I’m in Texas so all bets are off. Tomorrow, I crush the hopes and dreams of some forty graduate students and creative writers. And who said being an agent isn’t fun? Plus, I’m writing from a room that could double as Gertrude’s bedroom for the wine-colored drapes that hang from ceiling to floor and whose folds doubtless harbor a murderer.
Dear Betsy,
Twenty-six years ago on a freezing day in late January, I checked myself into a hospital. All I had with me to read was a Robert Frost poem folded into my pocket, given to me by Richard Howard, my beloved poetry teacher. I was long out of the practice of memorizing poems, but I memorized this one as I waited the long and terrifying hours until I was admitted. And I read it over and over again. In the hospital library I would find three other books that would keep me company during my long stay: Don Quixote, Middlemarch, and August. But it was that poem that kept me alive.
A very wise and generous person read my script and had the following insight about my so called unlikeable main character. He said that it wasn’t really his story and that the emphasis was misguided. In fact, I had started the movie with him and it’s really about the female lead. Start with her. He thought the character was fine, he needed to be minimized, co-opted differently. In all my years of editing authors, I had never proposed an insight like this. It was a lightening bolt and I’ve been re-writing like a mother fucker ever since. I’m talking like the old days getting up at five and keeping at it until my back cries for mercy. Other readers helped me kiss good bye some awful flashbacks, and quash some really stupid scenes. And I’m told Goth is out. Good to know.
Do you read the Garnet Hill catalogue and think your life might be nice if you were the one really pretty teacher in a large public school? Are you lying to yourself about your desire for fame? Did you remember your father’s birthday, now seven years gone? Are you constantly hungry? Do you think you saw Paul Mckenna and realized it wasn’t Paul McKenna and tried to recall what did or didn’t happen with Paul all those years ago. A Lean Cuisine and a wank. And always the city with her anonymous embrace. All the faces you can’t recall, and then a line of young children in bright puffy jackets holding on to loops on a rope so as not to get lost. Cue danger. Stop crying. This is your brain not on drugs. This is your beautiful house. Do not write this down unless you want to forget. 
I feel like saying something that might be unpopular, but I don’t believe that “characters write themselves,” that they “have minds of their own,” that they “do things you didn’t expect,” etc. To me that’s like saying a marionette moves his own strings, that an onion peels its own layers, or a nose picks itself. Writers say things like this to me all the time and I struggle to understand. For me the whole joy of writing is being the great and mighty Oz. It is true that sometimes, in the writing, aspects of story or character reveal themselves. But to my mind that’s from years of practice like developing the ability to see many chess moves ahead, or playing a riff like Jimmy Page.
Betsy Lerner 