Betsy Lerner

After All, Miss, This Is France

Posted on July 11, 2010 by betsylerner

I actually don't eat clams "trayf" but wanted to throw in some local color.

I was a guest at my sister’s Cape Cod house this weekend. There was a moment, I swear on my Little Necks, when everyone was reading! My sister was reading Abraham Verghese’s new novel for her book club. My brother in law was reading a Harlan Coban, my nephew was “reading” on his ipad, his fiance was reading some upscale trash that looked really good, my daughter was reading Member of the Wedding (school reading list), and of course I was happily reading a manuscript.

Later, I killed everyone at mini-golf. What about you?

Filed under: Uncategorized | 40 Comments »

Twenty-twenty-twenty four hours to go I wanna be sedated

Posted on July 8, 2010 by betsylerner

Dear Betsy:

I just read a review of a new book by Tom Bissell, Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter . My question: How many bad habits does a memoir need? Judging from the excerpt, nowadays you have to at least spice your memoir with some kind of overuse or abuse of drugs, and this is on top of what looks like overuse or abuse of video games.

Sincerely, Name Withheld

Dear Addict:

As David Carr pointed out in his review of the addict-du-jour memoir, Portrait of the Agent as a Young Addict, we love to watch car wrecks. So I suspect that as long as that is true, and I know I haven’t tired of bending my neck for even a nothing crash on the Merritt Parkway, there will always be room for narratives of self-destruction. When I think of memoirs that felt like game changers (and I am well aware that only assholes use the term ‘game changer’), I think of (in some kind of rough chronology): Anne Frank’s Diary, I Am Third, Papillon, Mommie Dearest, Sybil (not a memoir per se), The Words to Say It, Hope Against Hope, The Thief’s Journal, The Basketball Diaries, Shot in the Heart, The Kiss, Lucky, Autobiography of a Face, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, One More Theory of Happiness, Are You There Vodka, It’s Me Chelsea (okay, I haven’t read it but I love the title), and Just Kids.

In my own rich contribution to the genre, I wrote about the crossroads of bi-polar and food issues as the main course. I threw in as side dishes: promiscuity, suicide, shrink rage, prescription drug abuse, hospitalization and an abortion. It sold 16,000 copies. Hardly worth it.

What memoirs rocked your world with or without addictions?

Filed under: Authors, Memoir | 43 Comments »

If I Knew The Way, I Would Take You Home

Posted on July 7, 2010 by betsylerner

Ten Things I Don’t Need in 103 Degree Heat:

1. Trying to buy my NY Post after a long, hard day of superagenting, everyone pushing ahead of me, but instead of grabbing the top paper they have to pull the paper second from the top. Seriously? The second paper is hygienically superior? Untainted? Take the top fucking paper and move on.

2. Escalator etiquette: right hand side is for people who stand. Left hand side is for people who walk. So please move your skinny ass and the Samsonite suitcase with the “identifying” blue ribbon and move the fuck over. I am a commuter and the perfectly calibrated route from office to train can not be trifled with.

3. Two editors sounded exasperated with me today. Me? Really?The queen of collaboration? The middle child still trying to make everyone happy. The former editor of sixteen years who actually respects the process. Annoyed with me? Awesome!

4. Ninth reminder bill from HarperCollins arrives for books that were supposed to be comped. It’s a shame the hairs on the back on my neck are not rockettes.

5. A former client emails with asking a favor. Delete.

6. I don’t need one more person asking me about Kindles and IPads and what they mean to publishing. What they mean is that some people are going to read on screens, but most people still won’t read at all.

7. I do not need a mediocre cup of ice coffee for $3.54 and you know who you are. I’m sorry, I love you, cute little place two doors down from our office, but the iced coffee is crap and the price is insane. Plus, as my partner rightly points out, they give you a look if you don’t leave the change in the tip cup.

8. I don’t need to check my blog stats as frequently as I weigh myself in order to determine self-worth.

Four bucks and it's half ice! Do I sound cheap?

9. I do not need to turn fifty next month, but since I am my goal is to do it as fucking graciously and demurely as possible from that day forward (Aug. 9 if you need time to shop). Until then, I remain my usual raging cunthead self.

10) And I don’t need any commenters to chide me for bad language or my self-loathing. In the first place, self loathing is more than an address, it’s where I live. In the second, this blog is my persona. I’m really loving and giving, self-loving and giving, gentle and kind, just a big old hug of a gal.

What do you not need?

Filed under: The End of the World as We Know It | 44 Comments »

I Wanna Be A Billionaire So Fricking Bad

Posted on July 6, 2010 by betsylerner

What do you really want out of this rodeo? Publication, money, literary acclaim, celebrity? Do you want to write every day, find words every day, that sweet spot two hours in when the blessed motherfucker starts to write itself and you are roping it? Do you want that perfect solitude when you and the keyboard are one, when your brain exists only to bring forth words? Or do you want to help others? Yourself? Make someone proud? Dad? Mom? Someone jealous? Do you seek revenge, adoration, admiration? Or something spiritual, transcendent? Do you want power, dominance, do you want to tip? Blink? Do you want pussy? Looking to get out or get in? Do you want mastery over a subject? Do you want the last word? Do you want to make people laugh? Stay up past their bedtime? Afraid to turn off the lights? Are you a healer, a preacher, a teacher, a showman, a scholar? Are you storyteller?

What motivates you?

Filed under: Writers, Writing | 40 Comments »

You Probably Think This Song Is About You

Posted on July 5, 2010 by betsylerner

Away for holiday weekend. In laws, then my husband’s old friends from college newspaper. I am always a bit nostalgic around these people, that is if you can be nostalgic for something you didn’t have. In my case, that would be college friends. I did have some, but I blew through them pretty quickly mostly because I didn’t have a clue who I was, and basically walked up to people like the little bird in the P.D. Eastman book and asked, “Are you my mother?

I digress. What this post is about is people walking up to me and asking, in five simple words, words that feel like a switch blade to the jugular, a rope around the neck, a hot coal to the foot, the ginormous wheel of the M5 bus threatening to pull you under as it wheezes down Fifth Avenue and leaves you crushed among the spectacular debris along a Manhattan curb where just ten feet away a man coats a hotdog with mustard and hands it to a dad from Montclair who has just seen the Temple of Dendur and has already forgotten all about it.

But I digress. Five simple words: What are you working on? Variations: So, what are you working on? Working on anything new? Anything ever happen with that screenplay? Weren’t you working on something for tv? How do you get ideas? When do you have time to write? Still keeping at it? Wasn’t your sister writing something for tv? What happened to that?

How does it make you feel, you know, being asked in polite company, what you’re working on?

Filed under: Protocol, self-loathing, Writing | 36 Comments »

Please Allow Me To Introduce Myself

Posted on July 1, 2010 by betsylerner

To root or not to root

I went to lunch with an editor this week. I had sent her a novel which she loved, but couldn’t get any support to acquire it. She said the publisher had one iron clad criteria for acquiring books: there had to be someone to root for. There is was, four simple words: someone to root for. How, after 25 years in publishing, had I failed to get the memo?

Aren’t the greatest characters of all time deeply flawed, morally compromised, tragically poised, and often irredeemable? And why the hell do characters have to change? Isn’t it enough to know them better or watch them sink like Herzog, Hamlet, and Humbolt? Sympathetic characters who learn their lessons need not apply.

I want you tortured, disturbed, diminished, and drunk. I want you abandoned, lonely, jealous, and alone. I want characters who suck all the air out of a room, who you run from at a party, who always ring twice. I want it messy, hysterical, certifiable. I want too much or not enough. I want to root for every abject thing, for “the mole on the belly of an exquisite whore,” for the most glorious monster and the lowest angel. Unsympathetic, undeserving, unapologetic, unrootable. These are my people.

Who do you root for?

Filed under: Books | 33 Comments »

If I Had A Hammer

Posted on June 30, 2010 by betsylerner

I’ve been in therapy on and off (mostly on) for thirty-five years. None of these charlatans ever seemed to be able to remember the names of the people I spoke about. Most of the time I didn’t care. Who could expect them to remember every clown who made me feel bad?

Now, I’m finally seeing this woman who I think is extremely gifted and has helped me where none have even ventured. And, are you ready for this, she remembers the name of every one I’ve brought up, even if it was a year ago and only once. Reason tells me I should be pleased, impressed, possibly moved.

Here’s what I don’t get: it annoys me. How the hell can she remember every name? Is she taking notes? Does she actually review them. I am dumbfounded by her ability and find it as inexplicable as the magician cutting a woman in half and turning her into a dove. I tell her this, that I think she’s a show off, that I’m not impressed; on the contrary, I find it off-putting, irritating.

I will give a nickel to anyone with a reasonable explanation as to why I can’t stand her for remembering every person I bring up. Or perhaps you have a story of your own insanity. Always welcome here.

Filed under: self-loathing, The End of the World as We Know It | 67 Comments »

Sooner Or Later It All Gets Real

Posted on June 29, 2010 by betsylerner

Yesterday, I asked people what they did to escape. I think red wine was a front runner. But this remark from Shanna is the subject of today’s post, “It used to be books but I’ve hit a rough patch with reading escapism since I started writing. Which, by the way, makes me really sad.”

Something happens. You go from being that kid or teenager who finds within certain books keys to the world. Certain books let you in and your life is no longer lonely. Then we start to write, most of us as kids or teenagers (not Bonnie!), and this strange communion begins to take hold. I think for a long time we learn from everything we read. There is information in every sentence whether it’s a new word, strange syntax, use of tense. A way of getting inside a character’s head. Of ending a chapter. Using a space break. Every book is a university at which we study: plot, character, pacing, metaphor. And then, if this writing thing really takes hold, we find ourselves competing. We read something and think: I could do that, or could I do that, or I can’t believe that motherfucker just did that. And we think this whether or not it’s sheer hubris on our part. I remember one time when my sister ran out and bought a book the minute she heard about it. I asked what compelled her. “It’s the book I always wanted to write,” she confessed.

Shanna, what say you? Why is the glorious escapism no longer there? And is it true for all books or just contemporary? I really want to know what it’s like to read as a writer. Are you still able to escape, are you a sponge studying the craft, are you competing? What’s going on?

Filed under: Writing | 41 Comments »

Everybody’s a Dreamer

Posted on June 28, 2010 by betsylerner

Marisa, just in case you're reading this, and I have it on pretty good authority that you're not, I wanted you to know that my new screenplay is written with you in mind as the lead. Just so you know.

Kids,

I’m going to a movie tonight, so this is going to be brief. Some people have asked why I like Hollywood so much. Here is the corniest answer you’re ever gonna get out of me. When I was a little girl (yes, it’s true, I once was a little girl), my father used to take me to the Forest Theater on Forest Road for Wednesday night “Manager’s Special,” which was a double feature for the price of one movie. In addition, without my mother’s censorious eyes, we had both popcorn and candy. (I’m a Duds girl.) The food and movies fused together into the most perfect form of escape, which is something I have always craved. I’m sure I’ve told you this before, too, but I got kicked out of NYU film school, which is why I landed in publishing, and have served that god for 25 years.

Tell me how you escape.

Filed under: Film | 32 Comments »

I Am He As You Are He As You Are Me

Posted on June 27, 2010 by betsylerner

I was told posting pictures of cuddly animals increased traffic. Wrong.

Dear Ms Lerner,

How many POVs are best in a novel? I have been told no more than four.

The reason I am inquiring is my manuscript has two plots that intersect along with several sub-plots that thread their way in toward the end.

Thank you for your informative blog on writing and the publishing industry. It has been a great help in my writing.

Yours truly,

Dear Yours Truly:

These are the kinds of writing questions that give me a stomach ache. It’s a very good question, but it also reminds me of the kid who wants to know how long the paper has to be before he’s even figured out what to say. There are no rules; or, more precisely, you make the rules. Your narrator(s) and POV(s) are like the DNA in your book. You can’t impose them from the outside. They emerge as you write. Often a piece of writing begins with a high dive off the deep end, the narrative voice distinctive and high octane. But just as often that voice is difficult to sustain, the writer comes up empty or deploys a different narrative strategy.

Eventually, these questions will sort themselves out, third person or first, limited or omniscient, one narrator or twenty. Whoever said there should be no more than four was probably being practical; after all, it’s hard to juggle more than that. What baffles me about your question is: what does the number of narrators have to do with the plot and sub-plot lines? I believe these are separate issues. I don’t like multiple narrators because it often feels more like ventriloquism than storytelling. I also get attached to the narrator and fight the arrival of a new one. It’s always a little battle for me to start over with a new narrator. But fuck me, what do you all say out there? I’m too tired to even think of a novel with multiple narrators that I like.

Filed under: Writing | 37 Comments »

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