Cher Madame Lerner,
Until July 3rd of this year I never wrote anything but prescriptions albeit good ones like valium and prozac. Since then I have been writing about my recent mid life crisis which involved me walking away from a big career as a psychiatrist in Canada to clean toilets in rural France (seriously). Now every single day someone tells me that my doodles would make a great book. I imagine this falls into the same category as everyone thinking they have good taste, a great sense of humor and excellent driving skills.
My question is this. I have discovered that I love writing beyond all things but I have no idea if I’m any good or ‘marketable’ in any way so how does one test those waters? I know that you likely get a million emails like this every day but if you answer mine I’ll quid pro quo ya with 1 piece of free psychiatric advice. Desperate ploy I know.
Anyway, I really enjoy your blog and thanks for your time.
Regards, (Name Withheld)
Friends,
Often at writing conferences, when we are talking about the fine art of query letters, people ask me how I like to be addressed. Cher Madame Lerner is how I like to be addressed. I knew I would answer this letter long before the promise of psychiatric advise. Here’s the deal. You are smart to recognize that everyone thinks they are good at driving, etc. You are also in good company: Eat Pray Tampon. Under the Tampon Sun, A Tampon by the Sea. There’s lots of precedent for women doing mid-life, peri-menopausal walkabouts. I think I’m about to embark on one myself. I think I’ll call it Moby Tampon. IDK. All that matters is the writing. And if you evoke that universal feeling of being stifled, of loveless marriage, of desperately craving to change, and hungering for something that might be called spiritual, along with a good Fourme de Montbrison and Pinot Gris, who knows you might have a major bestseller on your hands and a movie that grosses 44 mil domestic unless Meryl Streep plays you, in which case bump that to 112 mil.
Dude, write your heart out. Delete half of it. Get it into the hands of a writing workshop, class or freelance editor. Work on it more. Repeat. Send it to moi and five other agents. See what happens. If you bottom out, try again. Revise. Start a new project. Revise, etc. Never give up. Self-publish. Just keep writing and developing and living. That’s the most important part.
If you comment today, please leave one free piece of psychiatric advise, either for me or the other mental patients who hang around this blog. And to to our French wanderer: Thanks for the question and Bon Chance!
Filed under: Writers, You Go Girl | 43 Comments »
This post is about living with writers. Can’t live with them, can’t get them to pay attention to you. Sometimes, my husband and I will hear someone say something and recognize that it’s a perfect line of dialogue, and one of us will say, “I call it,” like children fighting over the last piece of french toast.
My favorite part of any reading is the q&a that follows, just as my favorite part of most museum visits is the gift shop. And last night was no different. First, that awful anxiety when the crowd is asked: do you have any questions. No hands. No questions? People all squirmy. Finally, a hand goes up in the front row. Phew. A young man begins by professing his love for this author’s work, then he talks about his own generation of writers and what they have learned from her. Finally, the question comes: is there a young artist or writer who you feel carries your torch?
I’ve been doing a bunch of interviews for Forest for the Trees 2.O. I’ve been “upbeat.” I don’t even recognize myself. That’s an exaggeration. I recognize some part of myself, the part of myself that has been a cheerleader for writers for 25 years. But who is she?
I went to Blue State today, a local coffee swillery, to get some reading done. It was packed and I shared a table with a young man who kindly gestured for me to sit when he noticed my stunned where-am-I-going-to-sit-in-the-cafeteria look. Just a page into my manuscript, he asked me if I was reading a manuscript. Yes. Then, politely, he asked if I would tell him what I was writing. I explained that I worked with writers, that the manuscript belonged to a client. He wanted to know what it was about. I told him. I started reading again. He returned to highlighting his own notes in a wide, unlined notebook.
Janet Reid’s got a great
My husband sold his first novel last month. When we were just out of college, we’d meet on Friday nights, go for dinner at the Second Avenue Deli, go to the St. Marks Poetry Workshop, and then spend hours at the Cloisters Cafe talking poetry, love, life. I smoked Marlboro Lights. He smoked Parliaments. We didn’t become romantically involved until much later, but we cemented a friendship that was fueled in part by a belief in the other as a writer. Neither of us chose the path of a writer’s life. We’ve both worked full time in publishing for more than 25 years and have done all our writing on weekends, nights, or pre-dawn. When we had our daughter, we spelled each other for long weekend days so the other could write. We understood the desire to be alone. It’s more than a desire. It’s a necessity, an imperative.
Went to Brooklyn today (three subways) to talk with Pratt undergraduates about publishing. Naturally, I became nostalgic about my college years, never mind the near constant misery. The big difference as far as I can tell is that we never met publishing professionals, never talked about how to get published. I think in some ways we were lucky not to start those engines too soon. We didn’t even have a creative writing major. We were allowed to take one writing course and I took poetry; the professor favored the ballerina-poets. I wrote all the time in my journals. I went to cafes and wrote and smoked and read. But I had no idea what a query letter was or how to write one. I had no idea what an agent was or what they were for. Today’s kids have seen Jerry Maguire, they study the box office grosses, they know the names of power agents.
Do my tits look really big in this shirt? Agh, getting ready for a dinner party. Eighteen people. A frighteningly high percentage of poets. Other brainiacs from the campus known as Yale. Maybe some day, in anticipation of a dinner party, I will feel and behave like a grown up, but not yet. Why do I want to have a tv dinner and watch Glee in my jammies? My husband points out the networking possibilities. This is the exact wrong thing to say. Though I know he is right and I know that other agents would work the room like a square dance chain. Last night, in anticipation of the big event, I threw a shit fit over which water pitchers to use. My husband and daughter got really quiet and I knew crossed a line. It felt insanely good. One of my professors used to call parties enforced gaiety.
