Posted on December 13, 2009 by betsylerner
Some of you may not know this about me, but I have two extraordinary gifts. The first is for pairing the perfect tupperware container with the amount of leftover food. It’s uncanny how I get it right every time. The other is for taking every positive message that comes my way and using it against myself. But somehow, those really nice comments about the one year anniversary of this blog really got to me and I felt good all weekend. Thank you.
Let’s get back to tupperware and how it relates to writing. When I studied and wrote poetry, I loved using the forms that most of the other students balked at. I loved writing in quatrains, and sonnets, and my magnum opus, my personal Howl, was a sestina, ” Calories and Other Counts”. What I loved about form was that it forced you to make decisions, it put you in a box, and half the fun was seeing if you could get out. It fit or it didn’t. I’m not saying poetry is easy, but there was a template if you wanted it. Or wanted to break it.
How the hell do you start a novel. With an idea? A character? A situation? Is it a novella, is it a trilogy, is it 300 double-spaced pages. I never once in my life asked the following two questions but always appreciated it when someone else did: Is it going to be on the test? And, how long does it have to be? A lot of writers ask me how long their novels should be. How long does it need to be? Does it say everything it needs to say. Did you finish or run out of steam. How many writers get to between 75-150 pages of a novel and hit a dead end. Was is a short story whose eyes were bigger than its stomach? A novella? The beginning of novel in earnest, but one that you were not yet ready to write? Length seems to be the least of it. Most important, does it say what it needs to say? And when it’s done, can you find the right lid?
Filed under: Writing | 10 Comments »
Posted on December 11, 2009 by betsylerner
Today is the one year anniversary of my blog. When I started, I decided to give it a three month trial period. I can’t believe how quickly I got hooked, though I shouldn’t be surprised given my addictive personality. As we used to say in the program of which I am no longer a part: I can get addicted to anything I can do more than once.
Since I’ve been writing and revising an Oscar speech my whole life, here’s my Blog version: I want to thank my readers most of all, lurkers and commenters alike. Though I love the commenters a little bit more. My mother used to say she loved us three girls equally, but I read Lear and knew she was lying. Sorry, off topic. I want to thank the bloggers who I’ve read over the years and who inspired me, the agent bloggers who have been very kind to me with tips and links. I want to thank everyone who has linked to me. To the folks who wrote in questions and subjected themselves to my answers. To Hillary Moss who set up the site. To the folks who participated in my fakakta surveys. I want to thank the people in my life who have to hear me say things like: today in my blog, or I have to post, or blog blah blah blah. And Riverhead Books and Becky Saletan who green lit the revision of FFTT. To Vivian who is so Swift. And to my bro, LC. And August, the month in which I was born. And to a poet who got so angry with me that he up and left when I wouldn’t or couldn’t help him. This has been an incredible experience. Dad, (now I get teary and look to the heavens) this if for you. (I say this shaking my imaginary statuette at the ceiling.) You never really believed in me as a writer and that gave me all I needed. Thank you.
Filed under: The End of the World as We Know It | 26 Comments »
Posted on December 10, 2009 by betsylerner
Do any of you actually like going to readings? When I was a freshman at NYU, I took a train uptown to hear John Ashbery read at Books & Co. on Madison Avenue. It was 1978. The place was packed. I couldn’t see or hear him but it was one of the best nights of my life. The exhilaration of maneuvering the city on my own, the famous store lined with portraits of writers and packed with people dressed in all black. Just being in the presence of one of my favorite poets — who I had discovered on my own — was fantastic.
I went to tons of poetry readings back then. I was hungrier for the anecdotes and asides that the poets told between poems more than for the actual poems. I loved listening to the way they pronounced words, took breaths, etc. I even loved watching a poet take a sip of water. Some would announce that they were going to take a drink. And we would nervously watch them, hoping they wouldn’t spill. Some trembled as they sipped. Others looked as if they were drinking the blood of Christ.
Then there are all those awkward moments poets have to navigate, especially if people start to clap after a poem and whether that sets a clapping precendent for clapping after every poem. Bad. I hate it when poets hunt and peck for what they’re going to read. If a rock star stoned out of his gourd can put a playlist together, I think a poet can manage mixing up the ballads with the sonnets. You know what else I hate about poetry readings? It’s when the poet delivers what I call as soft line and some people in the audience have mini-orgasms. You know what I’m talking about. When they let out a deep mmmmmm. Or some semi-swallowing sound in the back of their throat acknowledging for all of us to hear that they got it. I really fuckin’ hate that. Good, you came. Keep it to yourself.
Tell me about the worst reading you ever went to. Please.
Filed under: Poetry, Readings | 26 Comments »
Posted on December 10, 2009 by betsylerner
I’ve always been a little turned off by the expression, “finding your voice.” Was it lost? Behind door number three? Stolen by fairies in the night? And yet, we know when writers have one and we know when they don’t. My question is: is it something you can find or is it native. Can you locate it? Alter it? Develop it? Deny it? Can you choose it? Can you eat it? Can you fuck it?
What is it exactly: voice? Is having a voice and writing well the same thing? Can you write well and not have a voice? I think so. That’s a lot of what gets submitted. Is voice writing well + distinction? I think voice is like a stamp, a brand, a thumbprint. Even your physical voice. Is this Betsy? This is she. I know some of the commenters on this blog by their voice.
Is voice an extension of personality? Is it channeled? Marshalled? Arrived at? Discovered? Is it a put on? A fashion show? A daily special? All dressed up with some place to go? Or is it fuel, gas, highly oxygenated blood? Where will it take you? What happens when it goes?
Filed under: Writing | 40 Comments »
Posted on December 8, 2009 by betsylerner
True or false: the squeaky wheel gets the grease. I’ve been thinking about this lately. Some writers have no trouble asking for what they want and need. They are in your grill. Others nearly disappear themselves. Some authors send me a query letter and follow up a week later. One man this year wrote me every day pitching himself and the merits of his project. Some send a project and follow up many months later, hoping not to bother you. Why does it feel like the person who is too pushy can’t be a particularly good writer? Maybe because being a good writer requires a certain amount of emotional intelligence, sensitivity, communication skills. Then again, there are the Norman Mailers of the world. I’m just guessing, but I don’t think Mailer was shy about what getting what he wanted.
Sometimes I bristle when a client pushes me too hard, but then I tell myself that this is his job. If he can’t be ambitious about what he wants, who can. Other clients need me to be ambitious for them, to suggest the parameters of a dream, or look into my crystal ball. It’s extraordinary, really, watching how a writer’s ego, esteem, confidence, insecurities, and talent combine to help or hurt them as they put their work forward. Even after 25 years of working with writers, I marvel at how some can shout it from the mountaintops, while others barely whisper in your ear. How do you comport yourself as writer or author? Do you find you get what you need, and if so how? More bees with honey? The squeaky wheel?
Filed under: Authors, Protocol, Publishing | 28 Comments »
Posted on December 7, 2009 by betsylerner
After the fact, I discovered that my co-publisher Bruce Craven had named our magazine after this movie.
Rick Moody emailed me out of the blue because he needed a copy of a piece he had written in a magazine I published in 1990. He was wondering if I still had the issue. Well, they don’t call me the Archivist Extremis for nothing. His piece was in our last issue of BIG WEDNESDAY, Volume 2 Issue #1. We published the likes of Bill Matthews, Campbell McGrath, Kate Braverman, Pagan Kenedy, David Means, Denis Johnson, and others. We promoted our publication with a monthly gathering at a bar with a game show-style event called Wheel of Poets. Our emcee was a woman named Jennifer Blowdryer. We actually had a wheel and she spinned it with it about as much disgust as you could possibly muster.
Filed under: Uncategorized | 8 Comments »
Posted on December 6, 2009 by betsylerner
Sometimes I think that all writing is an attempt not to disappear, not in the sense of being immortalized, but in the act itself, the actual writing. That every pen-stroke or key-stroke is a way of refusing to be erased, a way of making sure you’re still there.
I used to write in the crawl space beneath the stairs when I was 10. I had a diary with a thin gold rule around the edges and a lock that a butterfly could pick. In there I confessed my hatred for my best friend, the ongoing torment from my older sister, my great love of hot dogs. When I think of myself down there, the blanket and pillow I purloined from the guest room, the shadeless lamp, I could really cry. Why did I need that makeshift bunker? What was I so desperate to express and why did I have to hide it?
I had no idea that I would grow up and help countless writers out of their bunkers, help them with their books, see the light of day. Though I have a few writers with a positive outlook, I’ve mostly observed that writing comes out of darkness, that writing seeks light. I think that’s what I was doing in my bunker when I first found words. I would love to hear from other writers who wrote as children or teens and what they recall of their first efforts.
Filed under: Writers, Writing | 38 Comments »
Posted on December 4, 2009 by betsylerner
I only knew Don Congdon by reputation, and that he represented David Sedaris. Oh, Envy! When I read his obituary this morning I was really moved. Apparently, as a young man he came to New York with $8 and started out as a messenger for a literary agency. He would eventually work as an editor and agent before starting his own highly successful company.
It was this quote, by Ray Bradbury, a lifelong client, that really got to me:
“I married Don Congdon the same month I married my wife,” Mr. Bradbury said in a speech to the National Book Foundation in 2000. “So I had 53 years of being spoiled by my wife and by Don Congdon. We’ve never had a fight or an argument during that time because he’s always been out on the road ahead of me clearing away the dragons and the monsters and the fakes.” Mr. Bradbury dedicated his novel “Fahrenheit 451” to Mr. Congdon.
The dragons and the monsters and the fakes. Would that I could keep you safe.
Filed under: Agent | 6 Comments »
Posted on December 4, 2009 by betsylerner
Years ago, long before I became an agent, I fixed up three couples, all of whom got married. I didn’t even know any of them particularly well. I just had a “feeling.” And when things worked out for the happy couples, I applauded my own prescience. (Let the record show that this skill did not extend to my own romantic adventures.)
My point: this same “feeling” applies to agenting. Of all the things the job entails, first and foremost discovering writers, the next most important decision you make is selecting the editor you are going to submit any given project to. I think this is common knowledge, but in case it isn’t, you can only submit your book to one editor at a publishing company. If that editor passes, it’s a pass for the whole house. You can’t try the editor in the next office over. Your chance with that the publisher is over. So a good agent will have relationships with a few or more editors at every house and have as much hard as well as anecdotal information about each editor with which to target the submission. Writers often ask how we decide which editors to send to. You choose a certain editor over another at a publishing house to submit a project to because :
- You have a perfectly clear sense of what they are looking for; it has “their name on it,”
- You have sold them books in the past and you’re tight.
- You have some inside knowledge from lunch dates about the editor’s life or taste .
- You’ve done copious research (i.e. a publishersmarketplace.com search) into their buying patterns .
- You saw their name on a restroom door at Grammercy Tavern in conjunction with a certain sexual proclivity.
I wonder what’s more difficult these days: getting married or getting published.
Filed under: Authors, Client, Editor, Protocol | 8 Comments »
Posted on December 3, 2009 by betsylerner
Lately, a few of my clients have asked if a particular post were about them. It’s funny because I think I go out of my way not to write about my clients and to never write about any ongoing deals, like the seven-figure advance I’m brokering for the White House party crashers. And the film deal with Happy Madison. Ixnay on the etailsday.
I'm so vain.
What’s your experience writing about people you know? Any horror stories? I sometimes think fiction is worse, more room for projection.
Filed under: Authors, Client | 20 Comments »
Betsy Lerner 