THE FOREST FOR THE TREES is about writing, publishing and what makes writers tick. This blog is dedicated to the self loathing that afflicts most writers. A community of like-minded malcontents gather here. I post less frequently now, but hopefully with as much vitriol. Please join in! Gluttons for punishment can scroll through the archives.
If I’ve learned one thing about writers, it’s this: we really are all alone. Thanks for reading. Love, Betsy
I’m watching the final episodes of the Sopranos. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I can sense it. The tension is building. Almost unbearable. How do you build tension in a piece? A stray cat? A mother pushing a stroller with a kid in a pink snowsuit, a double breasted robin? Do you ask questions? Do you withhold information, give too much? Is it pacing? Tone? Do you drop clues? Deepen your characters? Makes things more complex? Or clearer. Collude with the reader or keep her at arm’s length. Cliffhangers? Clues? A stray cat, a mother pushing a stroller with a kind in a pink snowsuit, a double breasted robin?
I’ve been working with Patti Smith for 25 years. I was 36 when we met. I was five months pregnant with my daughter. She was my hero and I was petrified. I would never be cool enough. Her lawyer told me to choose a restaurant and I was nearly paralyzed with the choice. What if she hated it? I chose a place called Nirvana with a nod to Curt Cobain. It was 15 floors up with sweeping views of Central Park. I recall that no one else was there, though that can’t be possible. I can’t recall what we ate. I was astonished at how friendly she was, how interested she was in my pregnancy. She wanted to know the due date – February 12. Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, she told me. First Just Kids, then a poetry book Auguries of Innocence, then M Train, Year of the Monkey and now this gorgeous book, A Book of Days. Happy publication, Patti.
Started with a new assistant today and so far so great. Working with someone who is eager to learn about publishing and is curious and excited to be around a lot of bookcases is so lovely. When I was in graduate school, I answered an ad for an assistant position at a literary agency off of Gramercy Park. The agency was housed in the basement of the couple’s brownstone. It was book-lined, manuscripts were piled everywhere. A bulletin board was fixed with book jackets. I couldn’t believe such a magical place existed and for the first time in my life I believe I found a place where I might actually fit it.
End of an era. So I stopped taking my Lithium as of yesterday. Well, we go off it gradually. Please watch for signs of elevating and mania. Sleeplessness, grandiosity, savior complex, promiscuity, risky behaviors, convinced I’m a genius. You get the picture. If I sound cavalier or flip, it’s only because I’m totally freaked out. Lithium and I go way back. Longer than most marriages. Then again, I’m not freaked out. I have a great doctor. I know myself. I’m not 26 and wearing a backless dress to a book convention. I’m not fucking a bike messenger in a utility closet at Morgan Stanley. I’m not standing on Madison Avenue transfixed by the massive wheels on the bus. I’m not walking seventy blocks from Columbia to my apartment and stopping in one bodega after another bingeing my brains out. Those are not the lockers of my high school slamming shut in a deafening domino effect. I’m going to be fine because I want to be fine. I’ve gotten the hang of it.
I’m never jealous. You’re never jealous. We’re never jealous. Then why do I feel so fucking jealous when I see that a Netflix movie I’m truly enjoying is created, adapted, written and produced by a famous magazine writer novelist. Obviously this person has worked like a dog and deserves every minute of every day and every avocado on whole wheat toast. What am I going to wear to the Emmy’s? If only I stayed awake through Battleship Potemkin? If only I’d stayed awake through my art history exam. Stayed awake through my SATs for that matter. Fuck.
I have the smallest doll, a peanut really, from a matryoshka doll. I have hard plastic see no evil monkey. I have a picture of my dad looking really happy, not worried about keeping us all afloat and seeing his three girls married. I have a row of lions on a window sill in descending order, all given to me by my mother because I am a Leo. I have an artist’s stand that doubles as a dictionary stand. I have a glass paperweight globe that says “Thinque of Me,” given to me by my beloved friend George who took his life three and a half years ago. I have a framed razor given to me by my bestie. An ashtray I stole from an LA restaurant called Citrus. A wooden stand for papers that an old friend made for me. Our letters and conversations of thirty years ago were the kindling of a literary life.
Monday was publication day for Patti Smith’s new book, A BOOK OF DAYS. She did a reading and performance at the Great Hall in Cooper Union, the line went around the block on a crisp New York night. Felt really good to be alive. I’ve worked with Patti for 25 years and it’s a privilege to be her Sancho, sidekick, Plus One. A Book of Days is 365 illustrations (plus one for leap year) and captions that capture her idiosyncratic aesthetic, her passions and obsessions. The graves of writers and guitars of rock stars, journal pages and beloved poets. Pinocchio and Kurt Cobain. RayBans and coffee cups. Her Abyssinian runt Cairo. It’s a beauty.
I had coffee today with a baby editor. And by that I mean he has acquired and published exactly one book. I’m guessing he’s 25. I’m 62. You know how you walk around for most of you life and feel like you don’t know what the fuck you’re doing? Not today at coffee. I felt like a life wizard, I felt like I had a hundred years of solitude. I remember when I first started taking agents to lunch when I was a baby editor. God it was painful. They were such assholes. I remember one agent dressing down a waiter and I didn’t have the gumption to say something. I had lunch with a guy who had four bloody mary’s and talked about the one big hit he had twenty years ago. It was always an ordeal. I think I’m nicer. More approachable. Less braggy. Less of a showboat. But who knows? I will say I was glad to be at the end of the road instead of the beginning.
I totally agree that MFA programs and writing groups can be hazardous to your health. I had a nervous breakdown after my first semester. I can’t really blame it on my program. I was an unmedicated breakdown waiting to happen. Still, there’s nothing like the thrill of having your work killed by a thousand cuts. The most important thing you can get from a writing workshop is connecting with an ideal reader. Someone with whom you can exchange pages and be honest and constructive. It may not be the person who “likes” your work the best, but who gets what you’re after and responds. For me, that person was and is Jean Monahan. I’m still reading her poems almost 40 years later, often as her first reader, happily making notations, questioning line breaks, word choices. I love when a poem of hers turns up. As for me, from the moment I graduated I never wrote another poem.
How do you know your work is ready to submit to agents? If your answer is that your mother loved it or your boyfriend, you are not ready. Don’t trust anyone who either diapered you or has sex with you. They are not objective. What you really need is a writer’s group. Other writers who will read your work and critique it and give you feedback. I wouldn’t be surprised if these groups exist online now. Or a class, again probably also available on line. There are Lo-res MFA programs, writer’s conferences and free-lance editors. I don’t think there is any other way to get solid feedback on your work. It’s also a really good idea to get some publishing credits before approaching agents. When someone tells me that they’ve sent out their manuscript fifty times and no one is interested, they rarely think the problem is with their material. Instead it’s the fault of the agents or the system. I’m going to say this: had I not worked in publishing I’m pretty sure I would never have gotten Forest for the Trees published. I had contacts. I made one phone call and got an agent. So fuck me, yes. But when someone has 50 rejections, even 20, I think they need to stop submitting, get into a workshop and be open to heavily revising their work including the title, query letter and most importantly the text itself. I know it’s hard to put on the brakes, I know it’s difficult to find a good writing group, it feels almost impossible to get writing credits, and harder yet to find an agent. So I ask you this:
No one will love you more or hurt you more than a sister.
It is said that when one person in a family is unstable, the whole family is destabilized. Meet the Shreds. Ollie has no breaks. Amy can't get her life started. Spanning two decades, Shred Sisters is an intimate and bittersweet coming of age story exploring the fierce complexities of sisterhood, mental illness, boundaries, loss and the limits of love.
Betsy Lerner 