I take a pill for my moods. I take a pill to boost the pill I take for my moods. I take a pill for my thyroid, and a pill to help the thyroid pill. I take a pill to sleep and a pill to wake. I take a pill for dreams and a pill for nightmares. I take a pill to crap, and a pill not to crap. I take an iron pill. And magnesium. I take a pill to help me write. A pill to help me read. I take a pill for memory and a pill for forgetting. I take a pill for nosebleeds and sexual tension. A pill to help me drive at night, to reduce the effect of bad manners, and to get the waiter’s attention. I take a pill to pitch books, handle rejection, conduct auctions, and parlay offers. Infrequently, I have to take a pill to let an author down when his book doesn’t sell. That is a bitter pill.

What do you take?

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If you prefer the highbrow literary repartee that characterizes this erudite blog, don’t read any further. Tonight, I am compelled to compare and contrast two of the latest additions to the beloved film category known as the rom-com. I’m talking about No Strings Attached and Friends with Benefits, of course. Both movies ask the age-old question: can two people fuck without any further involvement? It’s been quite a while since Harry met Sally, but if you ask me nothing has ever topped that movie in the what happens when friends fuck department. I wish that Billy Crystal had been played by someone with a little more sex appeal, like Mr. Magoo or Fred Mertz, but so be it.

No Strings Attached: Okay, Natalie Portman and Ashton Kitchen, big guy from Seventies show who is wed to Demitasse Moore AND has more twitter followers than Obama. It’s the big guy who breaks, who wants MORE from the relationship FIRST, gets all sad and weepy. Talk about a crazy twist! Natalie has intimacy and workaholic issues like lots of us career gals. It’s douchy, but isn’t that the point? Bonus points: Natalie looks terrific in scrubs and the lamp posts outside LACMA are immortalized.

Friends with Benefits: Mila Kunis and Justin TImberlake who is trying, Mark Wahlberg style, to reinvent himself.  Bustin’ moves isn’t going to help. This time, it’s the usual, the chick going all sad and wanting MORE from the relationship FIRST. Boring. Here, we also have a kooky mom played by the elegant Patricia Clarkson who I hope made enough money to justify this stain on an otherwise brilliant career. Ditto for Richard Jenkins who plays Timberlake’s father who is afflicted with  Alzheimer’s  and forgets to wear his pants. Fun! Bonus points: Mila going down on Natalie in Black Swan trumps Timberlake going down on Mila.

What’s your favorite romantic comedy?

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What does it mean to be afraid of success? Does it mean you would rather live your life in the tenth row of a movie theater watching other couples kiss. Or watching families greet and part at the airport? Packs of identically dressed teenagers looking for something just outside their realm of experience? Or the walleyed toll taker on I-95? Does fear of failure show up like a dance? Like a velvet curtain? Or a small stitch in a torn pant? Are those my shoes? Can my lips tilt up to yours? Was that a poem no one read? Are you in line for the audition? Did you get her number? You can not stay there forever. There is no big picture. You can’t see it. The world will never end.

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While I was on vacation, I read a few screenplays. Reading screenplays for me is like taking a watch apart. I love figuring out how it all fits together. I love tracking the movement of the three acts. I scrutinize every description. Every action. Weirdly, the dialogue is the least of it. Or rather the least interesting to  analyze. I don’t just read these motherfuckers, I get my gloves on and reach into the chest cavity. I used to do this with poems, but now I find I can enjoy them, sip or drink deeply. I think it comes from years of study, a certain comfort level with the form,  and the fact that I no longer write poems. But these screenplays, they have me by the short hairs. And I love it. Every move, every lick, a screenwriter makes that reveals his craft blows me away. The concision, which reminds me of poetry, is like some brilliant morse code to me.

How do you read the kinds of books you’re trying to write: competitively? As a student? A voyeur? A spy in the house of love?

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I call them orphans. Books you wanted, bought, and then remained unread. Migrated from the bed table to the floor where it gathers the great dust bowls of the prairies. The spine sneers at you, winks at you, wonders why you abandoned him. And you have no good answer. You become the guy who fucks you and never calls back. Why? Why?

That book, for me, on this vacation, was Not That You Asked by Steve Almond. Its bright red spine is like a gash. I bought it a writer’s conference a few years ago because I heard him read and thought he was hilarious.  I even love the cover — another part of the great mystery why I orphaned it.

I’m reading it now and loving it. Laughing out loud. It’s all about voice and the particulars of an unquiet mind. What book have you orphaned and why? Why?

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When I was fifteen, my mother told me she didn’t like me. I refused to doubt that she loved me, though, so I decided that the two things were entirely distinct. ‘Love’ was over here, ‘like’ was over there.

And I admit that there are a few things about publishing I don’t like. I don’t like acknowledgements and twitter and book signings, I don’t like conferences, I don’t like reviews. I don’t like pub dates. I don’t like my crappy sales and I don’t like that strangers read my books. I don’t like idiots who think there’s a trick to query letters. I don’t like fanfic writers, I don’t like self-publishers. I don’t like anyone who NaNoWriMos—and I hate that I know the acronym. I don’t like writers who ‘can’t not write,’ I don’t like editors with unblemished skin. I don’t like independent bookstores, and I hate the chains. The chain. I don’t like that writing a bad sentence is as hard for me as writing a good one. I don’t like Sonny Mehta. I don’t like that publishing is in New York—we’re not even shabby genteel anymore, move your overprivileged asses to Dubuque.

Okay. This is my confession. Betsy said, ‘write about your secret shame,’* and maybe it’s no secret, but here’s my shame.

I hate all those things, I really do. But I love all those people. I love fanfic writers who refuse to say goodbye, I love the jittering idiots who agonize over a paragraph break in a query letter. I love the self-impressed schmucks who take offense if you use ‘magical realism’ wrong. I love those half-formed, smooth-limbed, bookdrunk editors who tell you with an awful dorm room earnestness how much Harry Potter means to them, or Joan Didion, or Donna Tartt. I love anyone who feels the hot prick of shame when a bookstore closes. I love anyone who loves ereaders, though I also like anyone who hates them. I love agents—unfeeling, unknowing, unrequited. I love bloggers and pornographers and Amazon reviewers who give two stars because the cover didn’t accurately reflect the genre. This is my tribe, these are my people: this shit runs deeper than ‘like.’

Did your mother love you (or not)  and how has that  affected your writing?

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I think I became an agent today. On a cellular level. After a decade of wingeing about being an editor in agent’s clothes, or pining for marketing meetings, or confessing how much I loved sale conference, something in me snapped. I’m on vacation (yes, that’s a euphemism for rehab), when I idiotically checked my blackberry between 12 step meetings. I see that one of my writers who had been promised his check on Monday still hadn’t received it because of a “glitch” at the publishers. Now, it would be another two weeks before they could cut a check. Yes, that was the sound of my head exploding. When I got to make my one phone call, I called my husband (who happens to be a publisher), and I railed against publishers, screaming that the artist is always the last one to get paid. And how there wouldn’t be any publishers without writers, etc. You sound like an agent, he said. So. Be. It.

What pisses you off most about publishers?

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A writer gets in touch, an editor recommended him. You like the topic of his project and request to see the proposal. You ask if any other agents are considering, and the answer is yes. In fact, the writer tells you that some agents have already expressed interest, could you make it snappy. Naturally, you wonder why you didn’t get it when the other agents did. Is the writer bullshitting about interest. Is the writer, suddenly realizing that he is in demand, interested in trading up or widening the potential circle of agents from which to choose. You read it over night. You’re not blown away, but still, the psychology of the hunt works its magic on you  and you make an appointment to meet with the writer.

He is breathtakingly handsome, mid thirties, cool sports jacket, just the right amount of gel in his brown locks. Horn rimmed glasses like Paul Theroux. Firm handshake. Looks you right in the eye. Steady, steady. You ask all the usual questions, how did you get the idea, how long have you been working on it, what other writing have you done, what books would you compare it to? And you explain all the usual things, the process of getting a proposal ready. The writers is eager to “do what it takes.”  you explain  the submission process and what happens after the book is (hopefully) sold. Then, he asks how much it’s worth and you hem and haw. You can tell he wants to hear a big number, but you actually think the project is mid-list at best.

You  can see right then in his eyes that you are not going to be his agent. That he has bigger fish to fry, or another agent has shot him up with publishing heroin and he is happily stoned. You start to make all the usual noises about advances being unpredictable. There is also the small matter of this writer not having any real credentials to speak of. There is also the small matter of the subject being interesting, but not riveting, not necessary. And there is the small matter that nothing is selling and fewer and fewer books are deemed essential. You look at the table. You have twisted your straw wrapper into the equivalent of a  snot rag. A few days later he calls to say he has chosen someone else.

How do you feel?

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Fuck the Forest, Let’s Talk about Me: A Writer’s Advice to Agents —GUEST POST by AUGUST

1) Never forget that we’re children. Needy, needy children.

2) Never say ‘draft.’ Nothing we give you is a draft, because everything we give you is perfect. Say ‘manuscript.’

3) Never say you ‘haven’t finished reading the manuscript yet.’ First, because it’s a lie. You haven’t started. And second, what we hear is, “I abandoned your novel without the slightest hesitation, because it defines ‘putdownable.’ I can’t remember a story that affected me less.”

4) Practice the ‘shit sandwich’ form of criticism. First a tasty hunk of bread: “You’re a genius. This is what Shakespeare wanted to write, but never did.” Then move to the shit. “But readers are morons. They won’t understand your intent, when you start referring to Frederick as ‘Joseph’ halfway through the manuscript. They’ll think you need rising tension instead of 100 pages of Anastasia’s journal from the 16th century.” Then finish with more bread. Favorable comparisons to famous writers is a plus. “After reading this, people aren’t gonna say you’re the next Harper Lee. They’re gonna say, ‘Harper Who?’”

5) Don’t explain. There is no good way to tell me I need to lose the melancholy bus driver, but the best is, “You need to lose the melancholy bus driver.” After that, any explanation just sounds like a wasp crawling around my ear canal, preparing to sting.

6) When you explain anyway—you can’t help yourself, you’re a special kind of idiot who believes that forthright, honest communication actually solves problems—keep it bone simple. Otherwise I’ll pore over your comments, trying to decipher the imaginary code. If you say you don’t like the bus driver’s moustache, I’ll delete the chapter about the Treaty of Versailles.

7) Underpromise and overdeliver. If an editor tells you she’ll know in a month, you know she’ll tell you in two months. So tell the shmuck of a writer it’ll be three months and thrill him by being one month early.

8 ) There is a good way and a bad way to use social media. The good way is to sing my praises. The bad way is anything else. I don’t want to know you’re on vacation in Nantucket. I don’t go on vacation. I don’t go to Nantucket. I write in a garage with an extension cord running in through the window. And think before you tweet that you just finished the best manuscript you’ve read in five years. Think about every one of your clients hoping you’ll lock your babies in an overheated car.

9) Hate with us. When I slam the door and flop onto my bed shouting “I hate him,” because my editor queried my use of semicolons, don’t explain his perspective. This isn’t about grammar, I’m trying to make you choose between us; there is only one correct answer.

10) Lie to us. The agent/author relationship is like a happy marriage: based on supportive falsehoods. Tell us you love us. Tell us nobody’s ever made you feel that way before. Shudder a little. Maybe weep.

After writing half this post, I realized I’d written it before. I searched, and sure enough, it was my second or third post on Betsy’s blog. Then I cannibalized. I’m my father; my stories aren’t done until I’ve repeated them so often that no meaning remains.

What stories do you repeat? What subjects won’t leave you alone? What axes do you grind?

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You get on a plane. The person you’re sitting next to sees that you are reading a manuscript. You can feel their eyes on the page, you know they are trying to say something. They will either blurt it out or start with some small talk. But you know what they’re thinking. They have a story to tell, they survived something, or went somewhere or ate something. Or they know someone who went somewhere or ate something or survived something terrible. Then, it happens. They cross the line and ask what you do and you think about lying, about saying anything: you’re a post partum doula, you’re a designated hitter for the Tampa Bay Rays, you own a ribbon shop in Santa Barbara called Ribbons! Ribbons! Ribbons!. You ask god why he made you an agent, why people think that whatever happened to them is of interest, no matter that they have never written a word. Can’t you just hire a ghost, they ask. Isn’t that what editors are for? Please, 24B, do not tell me that your son-in-law is a writer, that your mother escaped Poland, that you love Harry Potter and always thought you could write a children’s book. Would you ask a dermatologist to look at a pimple on your ass, would you ask a banker to evaluate your portfolio? Please wannabe writer don’t sit next to me, don’t ask me what I think of electronic books, don’t tell me how much you love your Kindle. Don’t ask me how publishing works or if you can give my name to your colleague who is writing a memoir about her herb garden. Just be quiet and enjoy the in-flight magazine’s cover story about Bobby Flay and leave me the fuck alone.

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