I recently had a conversation with a writer whose editor told her that her pages, while well written, lacked emotional suspense. Intensity. How do you put that in, she asked, her voice gravelly with despair. Her editor had looked under the hood and found a clean machine that had no go. How do you give an ailing manuscript the infusion it needs?
Well, in the first place, can you dig deeper? Are you withholding? Protecting someone you love, yourself? Even a story written on the surface of things will make a deeper impression if done right. Ask yourself: why should we read you and not someone else? Have you compelled your book to say what it still needs to say (that’s a loose Malamud paraphrase)?
Next, do you have stylistic proclivities that dull out emotion. Meaning is it boring? Does your beautiful prose turn into wallpaper because every sentence is delivered with the same emphasis? Have you really looked at your sentence structure, word repetition, (mono) tone? What about your pacing or timing? Is there a clock inside your book meaning does the reader have an implicit understanding of how the story moves through time, or do you purposefully thwart such expectations to even greater effect?
Read your shit aloud. Do it. Use a highlighter and mark all passages that are boring or that even you, the author, want to skip over.
Don’t narrate. Story tell. What does that mean? We, your audience, are all twelve and sitting around a campfire. Don’t disappoint our eager faces.
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Let’s talk about poets. Poooets. Wordsmiths. Visionaries. Mongrels. Thieves. When I was getting my MFA, someone asked the great William Matthews why poets didn’t have agents. “Because 15% of nothing is nothing.” When people discover that I have a degree in poetry and won a couple of prizes when I was still in diapers, they ask me with a hopeful longing, “Do you still write poetry?” And it sounds like, do you cavort with the angels, do you still touch yourself gently, or lay down in a field of alfalfa where wild ponies run?
At what point do you stop saying, “Happy new year?” I always feel kind of like Eddie Haskell. Worse, is saying happy new year to Jewish colleagues at Rosh Hashana. It’s like all that brisket stinking up the room. Where am I going with this? Work protocol? Agent banter? Greasing the wheel. Sending out first project of the year. Getting back to work. Getting it up. Hey, happy new year. How was your vacation? If you consider gaining six pounds a plus, it was great.
Whenever assistants ask me what to look for in manuscripts, I always say page turners or prize winners. There is an assumption in my directive that the two are mutually exclusive. That’s a big topic which I’m not prepared to get into while watching The People’s Choice Awards.
Are you the kind of person who automatically points out a flaw once you’ve been given a compliment. For instance, a co-worker says, “I like your skirt,” and you respond by pointing out a tear or a stain. Or maybe you say you got it for a few bucks at a tag sale or on sale at Marshall’s. In that spirit, I feel like posting the two worst Amazon reviews for the Forest for the Trees. At first, I was mortifried when this sort of thing turned up. Now, I like to rub my body with it.
I used to crack the office window and smoke into the cold morning. Across the way a water tower. A woman moving inside a building — easy to imagine her more beautiful than I. The stone ledge smudged from so many mornings. It was the part of a lifetime. Do you miss me? Did I doze? Can you hear me skidding? Someone took the stones from my father’s grave. Who am I talking to? The end of the year means nothing, but visits upon me a strange feeling. Long ago, I resolved not to make any resolutions except to distrust people completely. Ha! Will I always be nine years old with my bangs cut unevenly across my forehead? Is there more faith in the world than in a plastic barrette plastered to the head of girl ready for greatness, poised for destruction.
Well, this incredible year is winding down. I felt like quitting publishing in March after I crashed and burned so badly on a project that I no longer trusted myself. And that, whether you are an agent, editor, publisher, or writer, is the worst. We’re all clomping around in the forest as far as I can tell, but when you realize you’ve lost your compass, well you’re fucked. All you really have is your taste, your belief, your instinct, your gut. Separate yourself from these for a moment and you are a goner. Nobody really knows what’s going to work, but believing in something and having the insanity of your convictions is crucial to any success. If you build it they will come, and all that. But of course, here in bookland, if you build it they can also ignore it, savage it, remainder it, and pulp it.
Betsy Lerner 