Betsy Lerner

You Would Cry Too If It Happened To You

Posted on December 18, 2009 by betsylerner

It’s 2:00 a.m. Home after the annual agency holiday party. I’m wired, agitated, and depressed all at once. I’m one of these people who dread all social gatherings. Then I have a really good time. Then I hate myself. It’s so fucking predictable.

Our party is just for our clients. No publishers, no editors. Just the talent. I have this fantasy that we’ll still have the party when we’re in our eighties and it will be a sort of Broadway Danny Rose affair. I like to think that I’ll still be at my desk, my hands knotted with arthritis, a ciggie dangling from my lips (I plan to take up smoking again after eighty), barking to some editor how I want a better royalty rate for a z-book, which will be a book that you download out of your ass.

I also have a fantasy that if I die young all my clients will come to my funeral and say extraordinary things. Not because I’m the end all and be all, but because they are brilliant writers and know how to string sentences together that dazzle. You have no idea how much I love the people who trust me with their work. And yes, I had a bit too much to drink. But they will come and they will read. And one will sing.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 19 Comments »

SOmeone LIke You Makes It Hard To Live WIthout SOmebody Else

Posted on December 16, 2009 by betsylerner

I wish I had something to say to inspire you tonight, but my tank is low if I’m going to be honest. I know I’m not an ER nurse, but sometimes this work is incredibly draining. Worse, I know that whatever anxiety I’m feeling whether it’s waiting for an editorial response, waiting for money, waiting for an offer, etc. it’s far worse for the writer. I have all these children living in my shoe. When something doesn’t happen for one, it’s bound to happen for another. One writer is getting tons of attention, a fat new offer on her next book, foreign sales galore. Another writer can’t get arrested. And three years from now their situations might be reversed; fickle are the gods of publishing.

This year has also brought even more uncertainty and fear about the fate of books. How many billions of conversations we’ve had about Kindle and Nook and Google, etc. and still don’t where the hell it’s going. We are obsessed with the question of the future and how to protect our writers’ interests. My question is: how as a writer do you get it up in the face of so much uncertainty? How the fuck do you do it?

Filed under: Authors, Books, E-books, The End of the World as We Know It | 42 Comments »

Maybe You Want To Give Me Kisses Sweet

Posted on December 16, 2009 by betsylerner

Two manuscripts came in last week on stretchers. One needed a heart transplant, the other a new leg. It took hours of surgery, but they are both doing well. People ask if I still edit. I can’t not edit. I think we all read with pencils in our hands. Isn’t that the job?

I’ve been editing writers for 25 years. A lot of the work is routine by now, easy to spot, easy to fix. Sometimes the diagnosis is more difficult. You can have a very well written book that doesn’t move you. You can have a beautiful mess. You can get a beautiful mess into shape. But how do you add feeling?

Editing is also about trust. It’s a dance. You have to feel that your partner won’t drop you. Will catch you. Sees the forest, sees the trees. Sees the birds. Sees the maggots. You know I love to hear stories about worst experiences, but I’d really love to hear about the best thing you learned from an editor or reader.

Filed under: Editor, Writing | 14 Comments »

All In Love is Fair

Posted on December 14, 2009 by betsylerner

This just in:

Is it OK for a writer to seek another agent for their second book, while the first book remains with the first agent, regardless of whether the first book sells or not? Of course, it’s taken for granted that the writer informs the agents about each other. In other words, is it OK for a writer to have different agents for different books? We’re talking fiction here.

In a word: NO.

Let me put it this way: NO.

You can’t have multiple agents. It doesn’t make sense unless you’re writing in different genres and your agent only specializes in one. For instance, I am working with a young adult novelist on his adult material. He has a YA agent for his fiction. But this is the exception.

One agent per customer, please. There is so much involved in representing a writer; you would be crazy to split up your properties and by extension how they were then handled in Hollywood, abroad, etc. It would be extremely confusing to the publishers as well. And, ideally, you hope to develop a relationship with your agent over time such that he or she fully understands you, your work, your needs, etc.

What happens more frequently is that a writer will become disenchanted (euphemism for disgusted) with his agent and want to make a change. He will talk to prospective agents before “breaking up” with his current agent. He wants to make sure there’s someone to catch him before he leaps. I totally get this. It’s a shame when a misunderstanding doesn’t get aired and leads to a break-up, but usually people do what they need to do for cause.

Maybe what you’re asking for is some new vision of the future where clients can have multiple agents like Tiger has multiple blonds. For the moment, I think monogamy in client-agent relationships is best. That said, some relationships stop working and it may be time to move on. For whatever reason, you no longer believe that your agent is the best advocate for your work. Trust has broken down. Sometimes, an agent feels she has done everything for a client and nothing is working. Just as authors need to change publishing houses to get a new start, clients and agents sometimes need to make a new start.

I’ve lost a handful of clients over the ten years I’ve been an agent. Some dumped me. I parted company with a few. It was always awful. Often painful. Even when it’s for the best, it sucks. When I was a young editor, a powerful agent told me that she never fired clients. She just stopped returning their calls. She waited for them to get so angry that they fired her; her reasoning that it would have been far worse for them to have been fired by her. Oh, merciful tyrant, you are too kind. WTF. Is there ever a good way to break up?

Filed under: Agent, Client | 12 Comments »

It’s Been 7 Hours and 15 Days

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 »

One is the Loneliest Number

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 »

Put Another Dime in the Jukebox, Baby

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 »

One Love

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 »

I Saw Her Today At The Reception

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 »

Well East Coast Girls Are Hip

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 »

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