Betsy Lerner

So You Wanna Be a Rock & Roll Star

Posted on August 12, 2009 by betsylerner

Tonight, at Cake Shop, Care Bears on Fire. Three fourteen year old girls playing the loudest most pumped rock I’ve heard in a long time. Favorite songs: Get Over It, You Can’t Make Me, and a two minute ass-kicking version of Everybody Wants to Rule the World. Full disclosure, the drummer’s dad is my client. But no arm twisiting was involved. I was born to stand against the dank wall of a basement club.

In 1975, with my babysitting money burning a hole in my pocket, I went into Cutler’s Record Store in downtown New Haven. A new release caught my eye. The album cover was black and white. A woman in a white shirt with a jacket tossed over her shoulder stared out unapologetically. I had to have it, though I hadn’t heard of the artist or any of the songs. The album, of course, was Horses. It changed my life.

Filed under: The End of the World as We Know It | 4 Comments »

I Bet You Think This Song Is About You

Posted on August 10, 2009 by betsylerner

A reader writes in: I thought this might be a good question to ask “Betsy the Blogger.” Before we continue, let it be known that Betsy does not like being referred to as “Betsy the Blogger.”

So, I’m writing a memoir on painkiller addiction, and much of my story involves my experiences in “Drug Court”. Proof positive: I attract junkies. And as I’m writing, a nagging voice keeps suggesting to me that perhaps there is a book in the Drug Court story alone… so, a few questions:

First, is it completely solipsistic of me to think about a second book before finishing the first? YES.
And, if it were reasonable for me to contemplate a second or “follow up” book, should I be concerned with how much subject matter I cover in the first? NO.

I have trouble evaluating at any “communication” in isolation. That’s the great existential joke. The writer is often that last person to know if his work is any good, and by that I mean if it communicates or reaches other people. That’s why it’s usually so terrifying to put it out there, worst fears confirmed. I think everyone will agree that it is worse to be met with silence than rejection.

So, is it crazy to think about your sequel before the book you are working on has found its place on the shelf? Yeah, of course it is. But it may also be a sign of mania, and/or what I call the rapture of the deep. This is where you’re so deep into your work that you think everything you see and touch is related to the book. That it’s not just one book, but two, and maybe a series.

Dearest writer with checkered drug history, just remember, one book at a time.

Filed under: FAQ, Writing | 7 Comments »

Feeling Good Was Good Enough for Me

Posted on August 9, 2009 by betsylerner

Many, many thanks for birthday wishes from far and wide. Here’s what I got, loot-wise:

A check from my mother. Ca-ching.

People Magazine renewed for another year from my sisters.

A Miele vacuum from my significant other. Friends, this is a top of the line appliance.

A ring inscribed sono il tuo Dodo from PLS.

And, from BFF, a small antique frame — inside a rusted razor blade. Genius.

And, for once, when I made my wish I didn’t wish for permanent weight loss or Hugh Grant making my movie. I wished for something real.

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Yankees – 13 Red Sox – 6

Posted on August 7, 2009 by betsylerner

I’m not going to vouch for this post. I’m just going to wonder how it is a Jewish girl with no brothers and a father who only watched golf could become obsessed with baseball in the last decade of her life. And that the decade just so happened to correspond with the years during which she became an agent…

And this is where I might lose you if I haven’t already. But I see baseball as a metaphor for agenting. First, there’s the pitch. You know as you’re on the phone describing a book to an editor if you’ve hit the sweet spot, or if they’re just going along, yeah, yeah, send the motherfucker, they seem to be saying through a thinly veiled lack of enthusiasm. Then, once the book is out, a number of things can happen. You can get on first base with a modest offer, you can get a double or a triple with some decent money, or, happy day, you can have a grand slam when you hit it out of the ballpark. And, of course, you can strike out, return the dug out head hung in shame.

Idiotic? Sure. But baseball’s also about hope, about chances and stepping up to the plate, it’s about the beautiful arc of a ball and the ringing crack of a bat. It’s about grown men in uniforms and caps. Uniforms and caps! And the grace of an athlete moving through air. It’s about the loud mouth of a collective New York. And last night, the full moon over the stadium, the lights in distant buildings twinkling like stars, my two best friends, and a hot dog.

Filed under: Agent | 10 Comments »

Mind the Gap

Posted on August 5, 2009 by betsylerner

It became evident early on in my career that I worked with a disproportionate number of writers who suffered from addiction and depression. Coincidence?

Now, when I hear of someone struggling with these issues, I want to run. It wasn’t always that way. I used to be upfront and center. Now, the drowning man terrifies me.

I’m sure you’ve seen me. The girl who stands with her back to the subway wall. I no longer peer into the track. The third rail is always there, magnetic and menacing. But like a child who’s come too close to the stove, I’ve learned not to touch it. And eventually stopped craving it.

Sunday is my birthday and I will celebrate seventeen years of being well, my manic depression miraculously under control thanks to my brilliant doctor, my own vigilance and pure good fortune that medication works for me. Certainly not true for everyone.

And yes, I am dropping a hint that Sunday is the big 49. That’s Sunday, August 9th. I share this great birth date with Alfred Hitchcock and Philip Larkin, and the anniversary of Richard Nixon’s resignation and Sharon Tate’s murder.

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You Only Make a First Impression Once

Posted on August 4, 2009 by betsylerner

We interviewed a new intern today. She just graduated from college, moved from Florida to New York City to pursue her dream of working in publishing. It could just about break your heart. She was nervous, eager, open. I thought of all the kids I’ve interviewed over the years, the bluster and insecurities, the earnestness and ambition. Once, I asked a candidate if he had any special skills. He looked me directly in the eye and said, “I could kill you with a pencil.”

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MAD LIB

Posted on August 4, 2009 by betsylerner

(Proper Name) ought to be an easy person to (Verb). He is (adjective), (adjective), (adjective), and ridiculously well connected. His father is (Proper Name), the editor of (National Magazine), and he grew up in the kind of gilded New York (noun) where Joan Didion, Jay McInerney and George Plimpton were drop-in guests. His godfather is Morgan Entrekin, the publisher of Grove/Atlantic, who bought (Proper Name’s) first novel, “(Book Title)” when (Proper Name) was just (Age). Hunter S. Thompson, another family friend, came through with a timely blurb, saying, “I’m afraid he will do for his (Noun) what I did for mine.”

Photo: Michael Nagle

If that weren’t insufferable enough, (Proper Name), now 25, has a third novel, “An Expensive Education,” being published on Wednesday by Atlantic Monthly, and “,” meanwhile, is being made into a (Noun) starring Kiefer Sutherland, Chace Crawford and (Your Favorite Rap Artist).

*Copy supplied by Charles McGrath/NYT/8/3/09

Filed under: Authors, Books, Film, Media, Publishing | 4 Comments »

The Tracks of My Tears

Posted on August 2, 2009 by betsylerner

I asked the cashier for a bag because I was too ashamed to carry it out of the store. In question: Marley and Me, the DVD. I was looking for a lachrymal stimulater — in other words, I wanted a good cry. I should have rented Love Story. Never fails.

Before I discuss what this post is really about I want to ask, if anyone knows, did Owen Wilson try to kill himself before of after this movie? And next, whatever they used to put that dog down so peacefully, I’d like some of that when I lose my verve to chew through manuscripts.

When I was fourteen, I went to an “alternative” arts camp. Instead of putting on Fiddler on the Roof and Guys and Dolls as we had at my previous camp, I was now in plays by Lanford Wilson and Edward Albee. Musicals gave way to theater, or more precisely drama. It was my first exposure to “serious” art and, little sponge that I was, I picked up on my counselors’ disdain for Neil Simon and his ilk. I came home that summer changed. Soon after, I started reading poetry and writing. And I would continue to gravitate towards counselors and teachers who shared a similar world view.

I wonder how my tastes would have developed without that experience. I’m still a deeply sentimental person. At a recent middle school performance of “You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown,” you could find me bawling during what may have been the most off-key rendition of “Happiness” the world has ever heard.

I like to cry. I want to cry. So what does it take? Why did four million or so people cry for Marely, and not me? Or Tuesdays with Morrie? Or Last Lecture? My dying uncle, who read and loved Tuesdays with Morrie, said I was a snob. People cry when labradors and old professors and young professors die because it’s fucking sad. But it’s kind of like Woody Allen’s line: if a person is stoned and you get a laugh out of them, it doesn’t count.

Why do we feel one kind of writing is manipulative and another authentic, when it’s all manipulative? There was a really cute guy at that alternative camp who I had a major crush on, until he read me one of his poems. We were in the woods and I believed my first kiss was around the corner. He read the poem as if he were alone, which is to say with too much feeling. When I said that I didn’t think it was quite working, he said in his own defense: these are my feelings, you can’t criticize feelings.

A full calendar year would pass before I would know the sublime pleasure of a first kiss.

Filed under: Books, Film, Writing | 10 Comments »

Everybody Hurts (reprise)

Posted on July 31, 2009 by betsylerner

A reader asks, “Is it worth it — working so hard and long on a book to see it barely sell and get ignored by the media?”

A writer friend compared publishing a book to bringing a bucket of water down to the sea. I feel this way on many days when a client’s books doesn’t “perform in the marketplace.” And sometimes I think I’ve dried enough tears to fill an ocean.

Is it worth it? I wish I could yes, but all fruits bruise in their own way.

Spike Lee once said, after getting trashed by the critics, that that was the price for getting in the game. And then to quote a literary light and personal hero, Derek Jeter, who once said when the team was on a losing streak, “It makes you sick. How else can it make you feel. If doesn’t make you sick, you shouldn’t be competing.”

These words I took to heart when I started selling books, and eventually when I wrote my own. And to this day, I’m glad to be in the game and it makes me sick.

And since you put it that way, is anything worth it?

Filed under: Authors, Books, Publishing | 3 Comments »

The Magic is In the Hole

Posted on July 30, 2009 by betsylerner

You know how lots of paperbacks now have those “Questions for Reading Groups” at the back, which could also be called, “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?” These really idiotic questions that would actually insult a fairly bright fifth grader. Well, check this out.

I recently read Elizabeth Strout’s stories, Olive Kitteridge. I was deeply moved by a few stories and admired the book greatly. In fact, I keep thinking about one intimate exchange between a long married couple. The book is a huge commercial and critical success, wins the Pulitzer, all good. But then, something goes terribly wrong, and I’m not sure if anyone has mentioned it.

When you come to the end of the paperback edition, there is: “A Conversation with Elizabeth Strout and Olive Kitteridge.” Seriously.

Here’s how it begins: “Random House Reader’s Circle sat down with Olive Kitteridge and Elizabeth Strout in a doughnut shop in Olive’s hometown of Crosby, Maine.” Was someone having a cute attack that day at the marketing meeting?

Random House, the author, and her character all chat about lots of literary matters, but then Random House goes for the jugular and asks why doughnuts figure so prominently in the stories. “Olive” answers that they sure do seem to show up in a lot of the stories. Then the author allows how the doughnuts, for Olive, represent “a certain heedlessness in her desire to appease her appetites.” And then (this gets better, folks) “Olive” herself asks her creator if she has a doughnut predilection. And Elizabeth Strout chides her character, “Oh, don’t be defensive, Olive. I know exactly how pleasing a good doughnut can be.”

Am I the only one having an aneuryism here?

Full disclosure and in the spirit of true modesty, I do feel I’ve written one of the all time great doughnut scenes in my memoir, so maybe I’m a little touchy when someone takes the Lord’s name in vain. But for St. Dunkin’s sake, since when is it okay ON ANY LEVEL to have an author interview her character? Are we Pirandello?

Also, I keep forgetting to mention that in Portland, they have this place called Voodoo Doughnuts and they sell BACON doughtnuts.

Filed under: Authors, Books, Publishing, The End of the World as We Know It | 10 Comments »

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