For some reason, all of my lunch dates over the past two weeks have been with thirty-something editors. I still can’t quite fathom how I got to be the geriatric half of the lunch date equation, no matter how young, hip and cool I am. Still, I’m the one being courted by ARP, have a teenager, and get erratic periods. I often time travel a little during these lunches when I am visited by visions of my younger self, and I wonder how I ever pulled it off given my powerful impostor complex coupled with a tender misanthropy. And yet, and yet.
There was a two pack a day phase when I wore Ann Taylor suits, carried a Coach tote, and slept with crime writers. When I swam laps at 5:30 in the morning, wrote eleven page editorial letters and threw publication parties in my apartment with the brick fireplace. I hunted blurbs like large game, spent six weeks in London publishing, made a friend for life. Shrink after shrink after shrink. Husband. Baby. Promotions. Miscarriages. When I was in my publishing thirties it was musical chairs and making love to my Selectric. I don’t know how I pushed myself, or what compelled me. Love of language? An Amex card? A place at the grown-up table? And now, what? What?
What do you dream of, my darling young ones?
Filed under: Undead | 77 Comments »
This is so fucked up, but I hate it when people recommend books or movies to me and say, you are really going to love this. Or, this is right up your alley, or: you have to read this, it’s so you. I may not be a mystery wrapped in an enigma, but how the hell can you possibly know what I would like or why I even read or go to movies in the first place. Look, I’m perverse. Everyone loved Mr. Burns in seventh grade, the hip history teacher who talked about Jethro Tull in his plaid polyesters. Everyone loved ET. And Elton John and Joni Mitchell. I do not do. I don’t like something because it’s dark or mentally ill or self-hating or Jewish or calorically challenged. I have inexplicable prejudices, pet peeves, and I read with a glow in the dark ring. This weekend I read a book that three separate friends said I would love. I loathed it.
You know I’ve been whoring all over god’s creation trying to sell my book. I was recently asked what exactly I’ve been doing to raise my profile. I’ve been writing articles for writerly magazines and websites. I sent out an e-card to everyone I’ve ever met, to writing programs and conferences. I’ve said yes to every gig I’ve been invited to including the local Psoriasis Society, but they flaked out. What won’t I do to spread the gospel according to me and my fat ass? I’m about to do an actual book mailing to MFA types in the tri-state area, have crafted a letter that only be described as smeg. I’ve even created an 
I have a confession to make: I’ve been thinking I should get a device. I know I’ve gone on the record for how much I loathe devices. But it’s going to become a professional liability to not understand and participate in this craze that is sweeping the nation. Drink it, dude. I don’t know. GOd help me, I was hoping to retire before I had to cross this electronic bridge but it’s all happening so fast. I wish I could have had an enhanced e-book for Food and Loathing. There could have been links to Dunkin’ Donuts, Entemann’s, and Little Debbie. THere could have been clips of people at OA meetings talking shit about themselves and pretending to be grateful. There could have been a simulated psychiatrist’s session where a girl cries and a middle aged white man in a window pane suit and saddle shoes tells her to stop crying wolf. And then there can be an app for calorie counting and weighing yourself and calibrating how much you hate yourself. And then you can link your fine ivory ass to Assbook and make friends or frenemies with other people who also hate themselves and like to post pictures of themselves at National Parks. And then you can tweet the whole motherfucking thing. Maybe I’m not ready.
Do you ever wish you could just give up on this whole fucking thing and join the human race? Why do you have to write shit down? Why do you have to set yourself apart and pledge your allegiance to sentences that, like bratty children, didn’t ask to be born? Why must you pull your pants down, raise your freak flag, let it wave? Why do you have to sit all alone up there in your office while we are playing whist by the fire? Why can’t you walk down a city street or through a field of thistles and leave it alone? So what it if looks like something else? So what if your life is a perfect metaphor for being an asshole, or an ass wipe, or a door mat? So what if sentences are coiled in your soul. If you could turn the world on with your bile? Or cross Narcissus with Icarus and watch yourself burn? So what?
There was an article in today’s NYT (god forgive me for starting a post with as lame an opening as that. I once had a boss whose entire social skill consisted of asking if you had read a particular article from either the WSJ or NYT. I always felt I had to read both papers when I worked for him and cram before I went in every morning, but I digress) about
I spent the weekend putting the finishing touches on a writing project. I’m talking everything from catching typos, to seeing that a scene was missing, to sharpening up some dialogue, to making a final decision about the last scene in which I have taken a chance. Crazy or canny? I feel like a nervous bride on her wedding night. A clown in a dunking booth. Polly want a cracker. This is the moment no one has been waiting for.
The other day, a writer asked me what I get out of blogging. Friends, for starters. Deep, abiding friendships with thousands of people I’ll never have to meet or go to their kids’ bar mitzvahs. Nothing puts me in a worse mood than a bar mitzvah. Next, I got my publisher to let me revise my book by showing them how hip, viable, and down I really am. Next, I was approached by a publisher to write a young adult novel. I’ve adapted The Good Earth, set in Beverly Hills, and it’s coming out in 2012. What else? I’ve learned a lot about blogging, social networking, e-book marketing. This is useful in my role as an agent. The biggest plus is it’s taken ten years off my life. Maybe you’ve heard: blogging is the new forty. I haven’t made any money, but I’m doing what I love so I know the money will follow. Right?
Betsy Lerner 