Dear Betsy, Since January is the season to apply for summer writing workshops, I wonder what you think of them. For someone who is on draft 10 and year 5 of a novel he started during his MFA, is it worth $1,000 to get a manuscript evaluation at Tin House? Or is that nuts? Other than improving the writing, I imagine the workshops are good for networking. So if a fledgling writer is going to blow a few grand on a workshop, which one? Breadloaf or Tin House? Sewanee or Provincetown? Do you shoot for faculty you admire or authors who write the kinds of book you are writing and might help you land an agent? Thanks in advance for the wisdom and insight. Loyal blog reader
This belongs to Betsy Lerner
Dearest Loyal: I’m going to be honest with you. There is only one reason to go to a summer writing workshop and that is to get laid. I’ve been to four or five writing workshops as a student and I never got laid. This was a huge disappointment. Huge. And I’m not even going to talk about the “dance” they hold in the barn at Breadloaf, aka “Bedloaf.” It’s ridiculous. EVERYONE gets laid. There’s even a faculty fuck pad where everyone leaves their own bottle with name tags! Name tags!
I went to my first summer writing workshop at Johns Hopkins. I wanted to get the poet David St. John for a teacher but I didn’t. Good story? However, a met a woman who would become a lifelong friend, my client, and my best reader. Workshops: three thousand dollars. A reader you trust: priceless.
I think workshops can be extremely valuable. That said, I don’t think you can necessarily choose your teacher, and networking opportunities may or may not present themselves. Go because you need a shot in the arm, or some solid feedback, or the feeling of community. Go because you know you’ve been working on that novel for way too long and it’s time to pony up. Go because poets wear ballet flats and novelists play poker, because of conversation overheard, because you might get some writing done, because it might be fun, because a writer you admire is sitting at the next table, and because you might get lucky.
Any feedback from the summer conference world for my loyal reader?
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I want to talk about money. Impossible not to quote Samuel Johnson’s, “no man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.” Friends, I’ve worked with a lot of blockheads. Then there is the new age-y advice to do what you love and the money will follow. If that’s true, then how come no one ever gets paid for eating in front of the tv? Some writers keep their day job and write at dawn. Others forgo regular employment to support their writing, cobbling together a precarious income with no health benefits . It seems to me that whatever you say about money, you must also say something about time.
When I was in the fifth grade, I was crazy about my English teacher Miss Presnell. She has horse hair clogs and played Jethro Tull’s Aqua Lung during class, handing out the lyrics for us to analyze.
Does honesty have to be brutal? How many writers say: be brutally honest. Isn’t honest enough? And what are they really saying? In many cases, I think it’s code for: be gentle. Learning how to be brutally honest and gentle at the same time is the agent’s/editor’s duty. Obviously, some are better at it than others. Of course, I’d like to think I’m good at it, but who knows? You’re better at it with some writers than others. It’s often a matter of clicking, and in the best cases you inspire each other.
Thanks to everyone who read and continued to comment over the holiday. Apparently, some people didn’t think I could stay away, especially our darling A. who wrote, “Yeah, who knew Betsy had such self control?” Not how I envisioned her.” It’s true, self control isn’t my strong suit. My parents always accused me of “not knowing when to stop.” And god knows, I’ve found myself waking up in bushes enough times to know that I had a wee problem putting on the brakes.
I always feel that it’s a big mistake to tell people what you’re working on. In part, if you talk too much about it there’s a greater chance that you won’t do it. There’s also the feeling that if you give too much away, you leech the project of its essential oils. I’m never paranoid that anyone is going to “steal” my ideas; I don’t think people really can steal your ideas, or execute them the way that you would. Still, blabbing too soon is like an artist showing his subject the portrait when it is half done. You leave yourself wide open.
I used to write in the crawl space beneath the stairs when I was 10. I had a diary with a thin gold rule around the edges and a lock that a butterfly could pick. In there I confessed my hatred for my best friend, the ongoing torment from my older sister, my great love of hot dogs. When I think of myself down there, the blanket and pillow I purloined from the guest room, the shadeless lamp, I could really cry. Why did I need that makeshift bunker? What was I so desperate to express and why did I have to hide it?
The great paradox of my life as an agent is that I am able to walk through fire for my clients while I can barely ask for anything for myself. 
Betsy Lerner 