Today has seen all the colors of the client rainbow. One was super cranky about his publisher. Another was intimidated by her publisher. One wanted to fire her editor. Another was pissed about publicity. One was grateful for his starred Publisher’s Weekly review. One was going nuts waiting for a contract. Another was waging war with his editor over catalogue copy. Another was thrilled with his jacket. (It is a kick ass, home run, slam dunk jacket.) One needed reassurance that he could write. Another wanted to have coffee to talk about new ideas. A new client needed help with his proposal. And one little piggy ran all the way home — turning in the final chapters of a novel that’s been in progress for a few years. And he nailed it. Dear Lord, help me help all my clients achieve their dreams. Help me help them.
What do you want from your agent? And if you don’t have one yet, what do you think you’d want?
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When I gave the talk at McNally Jackson, someone asked how I know if I want to represent something. I said it was physical, my palms start to sweat, I feel accelerated, I want to tell people about it. Wanting to tell people about it, knowing exactly how I would talk about it, pitch it, is also key. Sometimes, but rarely, I see dollar signs, too. For me, it’s very physical. It’s like attraction. I’ve never believed there was an objective standard — we are attracted to smell above all if you believe the biologists. Then, for me, its facility with language and sloping shoulders. With books: all you have is your gut, your taste, and then, all you can do is work your ass off to help make it the best book possible and get it in the right hands. Whatever it takes. My mother once asked me how you know. How do you know? You don’t know, I said. You believe. And with that I turned into a deranged Tinkerbelle on acid and flitted off for an irony time-out. But really, I do believe. I do.
I wanted to write something in my diary today. I took it out of its hiding place and realized it had been eight months since I’d last written in it. Part of me wanted to abandon it completely and start a new notebook as if the trail had gone cold. As if it would be easier to blaze a new one, even though I hate how self conscious the first page of a new diary can be as if it’s trying to impress somebody. But then I started flipping through the pages and I came upon a poem. One of two poems I’ve written in the last 25 years. It was terrible, but I loved it. I loved it for bringing me to the exact moment I was in when I wrote it. It was like my small handprint pressed into a plaster of paris mold, spray-painted gold, and hung with a length of white satin ribbon in my mother’s kitchen.
Well, every few years, someone comes around and feels the need to kick sand in memoir’s face. This weekend, in the NYT book review, it was the critic Neil Genzlinger. Too many memoirs, too much me, not enough art is the complaint. No one ever says: too many novels, or stop writing those dang poems. And the reason is obvious: the self is dirty. And narcy. And should be private. Genzlinger begins his article (which goes on to trash three out of four mems), “A moment of silence, please, for the lost art of shutting up.” Shut up! He goes on, “Sorry to be so harsh, but this flood just has to be stopped. We don’t have that many trees left.” You can read it 
2. Black Swan. Nina!
6. Tiger Mother blah blah blah.
I always thought that I would step in front of a bus, but today, dear friends, I think I just might jump from the roof of a major publisher. I know you’re not supposed to joke about THAT, but why not? Literary agent leaps to her death. Or better yet, Literary agent and beloved blogger leaps. Why is it so hard to get a fucking contract done and paid? Why isn’t everyone like so and so at such and such. My dad, who you may recall owned a lumber yard, always said that business was about collections. How could that be, I asked him, shocked that it all boiled down to chasing checks. But now that I have my own business, I see how right he was. Creative work is a cinch compared with getting laid. Er, paid. Today is my dad’s birthday. He would have been 83, I think. We clashed a lot, but he was a great business man. No college. Maybe a high school equivalency, maybe, but he was fair and smart and no bullshit. He got things done. He made a mean fried salami and scrambled eggs. He infused me with my love of film and television. And he was always as good as his word.
When I was an assistant in the sub-rights department at Simon and Schuster, a guy told me that the only reason to survive in publishing was so that you could eventually fuck over everyone who fucked you over. I knew I was in the right place. A lot of people ask me how I have the time to write with a full time job, teenager, cockapoo, etc. I usually say something glib like oh, well, I’m manic, la la, or I’m just compulsive, tra la. But really, I’m in it to fuck the world. I want revenge. I want the last laugh. I want the Oscar. Shit, I’ve got the speech. Thank you fuckers for throwing me out of NYU film school, thank you Professor Pulitzer Prize for making me feel like a piece of shit in your poetry workshop, thank you dad for pissing on my MFA, thank you dry cleaner for destroying my buttons. Thank you for Lithium. And Lamictal. And Tylenol PM. Thank you for the bicycle messenger and the supply closet. Thank you for no end of ideas, countries named after me, a statue whose gown gathers dirt and is stained with my tears. Thank you.
When you take a writing workshop, you are not allowed to speak when your work is being critiqued. This is the first law of the workshop. The idea behind it is simple: you can’t listen if you’re yapping. I actually think the rule of silence protects you from making an ass out of yourself. It prevents you from saying things like: what I was trying to do, what I meant was, it actually happened that way, etc. The only reason to get feedback, as far as I can tell, is to see if you got on base. Did you smack one out there? Some people at the workshop are intent on showing off, some are out to get you out of jealousy, and some are as thick as root vegetables.
Hi Besty,
Betsy Lerner 