Posted on October 28, 2016 by betsylerner
This post is about brick walls. Hitting them. Projects dying on the operating table. On the vine. That fail to thrive. Sixty pages falling off a cliff. A boulder rolled in front of a door. This is about a minute, an hour, a day, a lifetime. This is cuticle time, eyelashes and wine. This is the knowledge that when one door closes, it’s closed. How do you solve a problem like Maria? How do you catch a cloud and pin it down? Practice your chord changes. Write a poem. Study a new language. Do not let the engine rust. Do not overtax the metaphor. Do not give up the ship unless the mother’s life is at risk.
What’s more painful? Writing or not writing?
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Posted on October 27, 2016 by betsylerner
Do you get high? I mean for medicinal purposes, to help with the writing. Are you a pill popper? Gin drinker? Are you on prescription meds? Anti-depressants, beta-blockers, lithium for Medea? How do you get to sleep, wake up, stay up? How do you turn it off, on? Starbucks shots? Are you a sneak smoker, eater, tweaker? Sex addict? Claustrophobic? Writers make great hypochondriacs! If you’re not high on life, what the fuck are you?
What’s in your medicine chest?
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Posted on October 26, 2016 by betsylerner
Discipline, desire, commitment, obsession. What gets you up at five, your silhouette ghost-like in the dark pre-dawn windows. Why would you rather be alone than at a party thrown in your honor? Why does everything in the world seem dull unless you are writing? Transforming overheard conversation. Reaching for a simile that links up thematically. A eureka moment that fizzles. I deal with writers all day long and they are living in a parallel universe where there is hot soup, where they can’t find their pen, where their mothers love them. Ego without confidence. Confidence without ability. Ability that can’t find it’s own elbow. Love that doesn’t know its name.
What am I trying to say?
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Posted on October 24, 2016 by betsylerner
Dear All: I am living the dream. After going to three Patti Smith shows in LA, I am now spending a couple of days in Malibu editing a book I love on a balcony overlooking the ocean. In the far distance, a bunch of surfers are basking in the sun on their boards. Okay, the real dream would be for all this to happen without my eating stale Dean & Deluca candy off the mini bar as if I were a lab rat. If I didn’t pick all the polish off my toes. If I didn’t seize with panic attacks every hour and a half and do a blackhead patrol.
What’s your dream and would you fuck it up?
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Posted on October 20, 2016 by betsylerner
So a writer approaches me with his manuscript. I see that he has fantastic credentials, has published widely and in all the right places. The concept seems muddy to me and I tell him so, describe how I would refocus the project. I think about taking it on, but step aside. Honestly, it feels like a lot of work with no certain outcome. Still, I provide a few comparison titles to give the writer my take on the project and urge him to find a new title. He’s very appreciative and asks for a few agent names. I don’t usually supply names (do your homework!), but I do here. The writer has been especially polite so what the fuck. He writes me today to let me know that one of the agents I recommended took it on, sold it for a bucket of money, and the book is debuting on the NYT bestseller list at #5. He’s writing to thank me.*
Thank me? How about fuck me? I guess I have to file this under win some lose some. Or I could beat myself forever and ever, which, if history is our guide, is my method of choice.
How do you punish yourself?
*this little anecdote is a composite of two stories.
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Posted on October 18, 2016 by betsylerner
I did an event today with my mother. After the luncheon, I read a small passage from the book and then we took the stage. She in her Eileen Fisher, me in my Uniqlo. She accessorized up the wazoo. Me wearing my watch. Her nails flawless, mine chewed. Her hair styled, mine frizzy and unruly. A conversation ensued and, without warning, my darling 85 year old mother morphed into Rodney Dangerfield. She starts whipping off one-liners and zingers. And she’s getting all the laughs.In the car on the way home, she says, “Bets, I think I got the bigger laughs.”
Tell me about your mom.
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Posted on October 16, 2016 by betsylerner
It’s really hard to think about writing, publishing, virtually anything while our world hangs in the balance. I’ve never been political in any of my blog posts and I doubt I have anything new to add to the conversation, but it really is hard to feel that anything matters. How do you write a book about butterflies, or calories, or Mark Twain’s beloved butler? How do you quiet all the voices, put your blinders on, and not think about Donald popping Tic Tacs and groping women. Let alone blowing up the world.
How do you do your work?
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Posted on October 15, 2016 by betsylerner
A lot of people are talking about Bob Dylan getting the Nobel Prize.
What say you?
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Posted on October 12, 2016 by betsylerner
Every year I sit with my mother for Yom Kippur services. I space out for most of it, hum along with prayers I learned years ago, stare at the stain glass panels searching for imperfections, read the prayer book randomly like people who spin a globe and go to wherever their finger lands. The music is familiar, heavy. Waves of sadness move through me. My father. My sister. The young son of an old friend. I say I hate coming, but I’ll miss it when she’s gone. I’ll miss everything.
May you be written in the book of life.
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Posted on October 11, 2016 by betsylerner
I have a client who has either no or negative self-esteem. That said, he is a writer. And I’ve always believed that writers are egomaniacs, often closeted, but egomaniacs all the same. How the hell else do you bank your life on sentences knowing that there is a mighty chance that no one will read them, and make them anyway. Is that ego, insanity, possession, obsession, neurosis, inspiration, habit, faith? I think the reason people write is because they need to. This post is all over the fuckin’ place.
Are writers egomaniacs?
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Betsy Lerner 