Betsy Lerner

I Want To Know What Love Is

Posted on May 21, 2009 by betsylerner

Maybe I’m elevating, but NYC, my giant ashtray, looked so beautiful this morning on my walk to work. I take the same route every day, but today everything is in high relief: a 9/11 sky, the baked red bricks of a crumbling building, a beautiful woman whose left cheek twitched as if the cricket from Times Square got in there. Even my shuffle offered up a perfect slate of rock anthems. Something has lifted.

Maybe I’m crashing, but a quick glance at my inbox spells trouble. Agh. What’s worse, so many little headaches or one huge migraine? One piece of great news, though, Columbine goes back up two spots on the NYT bestseller list. The list thing, it’s like an EKG. Of course so is everything else these days: blog stats, bank accounts, Amazon rankings, and of course, the master of all gauges of self worth: the scale.

Tomorrow, I will get back to answering publishing questions. And I also want to talk about the mystery wrapped in an enigma.

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Dismissed!

Posted on May 19, 2009 by betsylerner

First of all, I didn’t get picked for jury duty. Didn’t even get to the voir dire stage of the selection process. Painful flashbacks of camp socials watching everyone pair off to Color My World.

Next: what people are reading? Mostly the New Haven Register, USA Today, and the NY Post and Daily News. No one reading on a Kindle. The few books I saw:

Atlas Shrugged/Ayn Rand
All He Ever Wanted/Anita Shreve
The Bible
The Secret Life of Bees/Sue Monk Kidd
Invisible Prey/John Sandford

Not a single My Booky Wook or Silas Marner in the crowd. C’mon New Haven!

What did capture my imagination, however, was Judicial Marshall Josh. On the day that he was born, the angels got together and decided to create a dream come true. Beyond his broad sloping shoulders, his powerful chest, his badges, his sexy voice and fully loaded belt, Judicial Marshall Josh wears nerdy glasses. Is Judicial Marshall Josh…bookish? I wonder if Judicial Marshall Josh has an astigmatism, like me.

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Grab a Shovel

Posted on May 18, 2009 by betsylerner

Tomorrow: jury duty.

The last time I was on jury duty, everyone was reading the same book. Everywhere I turned I saw a black dust jacket with the red thumb print. It was 1987 and, of course, the book was Presumed Innocent.

Tomorrow, I will report back on what they’re reading at the courthouse now, in 2009, in downtown New Haven. I know, I can’t wait either.

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Turd by Turd

Posted on May 18, 2009 by betsylerner

Here are some tips I was going to include in The Forest for the Trees until my editor reminded me I was not Anne Lamott. (Funny, in graduate school a professor told me I was not Fran Leibowitz. That BDP I mentioned earlier told me I wasn’t Woody Allen.) Who the fuck am I? Anyway, here are some tips I dreamed up when my identity was still relatively secure:

Write your first draft in long hand.
Rewrite a famous story from the point of view of a minor character.
Rewrite a first person story in the third person.
Write a sonnet
Shower, dress, wear shoes that lace.
Do not show anyone your work until it’s in the third draft – at least.
Do not show your work to your mother, lover, or bff.
After you write something, leave it alone for as long as possible before you start revising.
Cut anything that bores you — be honest.
Use your dictionary.
Play Scrabble.
Go to a reading.
Write an editorial letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald about the structure in The Great Gatsby.
Write the same paragraph from three different points of view.
Write a character description without physical attributes.
Outline your book. Index cards for extra credit.
Clean your glasses with a soft cloth.

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Charlie Rose, Bite me

Posted on May 16, 2009 by betsylerner

I met Larry Dark in graduate school. He was a fiction writer and I was a poet which means we didn’t cross paths all that much. Then when I was a baby editor at Ballantine, we did a book together: Literary Outtakes. Now, these 467 years later, Larry developed, runs, and hosts the prestigious Story Prize. Here is the webcast from this year’s ceremony:

http://fora.tv/2009/03/04/The_Story_Prize_Awards_Ceremony_2009

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Get Off Of My Cloud

Posted on May 14, 2009 by betsylerner

When I became an agent, a lot of agents called me and said, welcome to the side of angels. Angels? Really? I thought I was signing on for the dark side. And most of the time, it is pretty dark if you ask me. (Of course, I could find the dark side of a lollipop.) But not today.

Today I got to tell a writer that we sold her book, which is basically the best moment in an agent’s life. Well, that and opening royalty statements with checks inside. I also signed a new client with a book that involves poetry, my first love. And I pulled a baby out from under a burning car.

No, that blinding light you’re seeing isn’t my halo. It’s my shit eating grin.

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At a Theater Near You

Posted on May 13, 2009 by betsylerner

JUST PUBLISHED:

letters of wcw0001

Three hundred letters from William Carlos Williams to his younger brother with whom he confides his desire to become a great artist. Edited by Andrew Krivak, poet, scholar, novelist and author of A Long Retreat.

ON THE RADIO:

Unbelievable_jacket

Stacy Horn on the Faith Middleton Showhttp://tinyurl.com/StacyFaith

FIVE WEEKS ON THE NYT BESTSELLER LIST: Columbine-1

http://vodpod.com/watch/1546705-maddow-columbine-facts-vs-myths

“ For any reader who wants to understand the complicated nature of evil, this book is a masterpiece.” — Seattle Times

Also this week:

I tried to wear my hair up with a clip. No one said anything so I’m assuming it was a disaster.

We threw a little party for our superb assistant Yishai on the occasion of his wedding next week.

We are booked solid for meetings with foreign publishers and film types who are coming to New York for the Book Expo

Someone who will go unnamed at the William Morris Agency is not returning my call. Unexfuckingceptable.

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FAQ: How Long Has This Been Going On?

Posted on May 12, 2009 by betsylerner

One of my devoted readers writes:

“I have an agent, but I don’t want to seem like a pest. Can you say something about how long it takes (on average) for publishers to make a decision once they have requested a book proposal? I realize there’s no pat answer–I’m just trying to get a feel for how the process works.”

Dear Devoted:

If your project is submitted by a reputable agent, you should get a response within three to four weeks. There are always exceptions. Books can be pre-empted overnight. They can be bought within days. Sometimes the process can drag on for a month or more, especially if your agent is staggering your submission. Long novels can take more time than non-fiction proposals, though The Historian was snapped up overnight.

Many agree that it’s all about the juice, your agent’s and the project’s. But there are also stories of bestsellers coming from unlikely sources. Dan Brown’s agent is best known for representing Drawing on the Left Side of the Brain (or is it the right?) and books about psychology and women’s issues. She is one of the loveliest agents in the business, but not someone you’d necessarily expect to see a thriller from. I wonder which side of the brain is used for counting dollars.

Bottom line, why are you afraid of appearing like a pest to your agent? He or she is working on your behalf. He or she should walk you through the process and answer these questions. And keep you apprised of rejections as they come in, possibly set up meetings for you with interested parties, and generally keep you informed of the submission process.

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The Rules of Engagement

Posted on May 12, 2009 by betsylerner

J. sent a query letter to ten agents. One invited her to send the proposal. Now it’s been six weeks and she hasn’t heard a word. Should she write to the agent? What is the right amount of time?

A few things to consider:

If you don’t have any leverage, you don’t have any leverage.
It’s very easy to get yourself branded as a pest or a pain in the ass. Every publisher I ever worked for would quickly chalk up an author as a nuisance if he asked for too much or too loudly. Unless, or should I say until, you’re a bestselling author you want to be working your charm over your indignation.
People have a lot on their reading plates. Unless you have something with obvious commercial appeal or prestige written all over it, your submission will likely languish on the bottom of the pile.
That said, send a polite note 3-4 weeks after you’ve sent the proposal. It was requested after all.

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The Woodhouse Way

Posted on May 11, 2009 by betsylerner

Continuing to pack for the move, well, at this stage, mostly throwing out crap, I came across the proposal for The Forest for the Trees.

It was sold with the title:

NO BAD WRITERS: An Editor’s Handbook for Procrastinators, Self-Flagellators, Manquees, Masochists, Imposters, and Dreamers — In Other Words, Writers of all Kinds — With Some Tips About the Writing Life and Getting Published.

Moving right along.

I originally got the idea for the book when, as a young assistant editor, I had to write a tip sheet (basically all the relevant information about a book boiled down to one page that pulishers use for their pre-publication meetings. It usually includes a keynote about the book, comparison titles, ISBN, sales track, brief description or key points, blurbs, etc.) for a dog training book called No Bad Dogs.

The author Barbara Woodhouse believed there were no bad dogs, only bad owners. She got into the psychology of dogs and she had chapters with names like: Nervous Dogs, Dogs with Phobias, Dirty Dogs, Living with Mentally Unstable Dogs, and Dogs that Hate Men or Women.

Though I didn’t write the proposal for another ten years, that’s where I got the idea to write about writers’ personalities.

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