Posted on January 29, 2016 by betsylerner
I know it looks like The Bridge Ladies have hijacked my blog about writing, depression, and how publishing will break your heart in a hundred different ways. The Bridge Ladies is my new book and it’s coming out in May and if you love me even a little please buy a copy or 200 for your local synagogue’s sisterhood. Or pre-order. 😉
So I’m working on changing the blog and trying to keep it the same. I’m trying to lose weight and am gaining it instead. I’m trying to sleep through the night but I’m up every hour. It’ been seven years since I published a book and I feel as nervous as a virgin. I want to spread the word about Bridge Ladies and hear from people about their Bridge memories. But I also want to throw my mashed potatoes on the floor and spit peas through a straw at the ceiling.
I’m thinking about blogging about the publication of the book. Is this interesting or even more indulgent than the thousand plus posts I’ve dumped on a beautiful and unsuspecting world.
What would you do if you were me?
Filed under: Bridge Club, neurosis, Publishing, self-loathing, Self-promotion, shana mahin, Uncategorized | 32 Comments »
Posted on January 26, 2016 by betsylerner
BARNES & NOBLE DISCOVER PRIZE
Nonfiction Finalist
Filed under: Uncategorized | 7 Comments »
Posted on January 26, 2016 by betsylerner
Congratulations to my dear friend and client GEORGE HODGMAN on his NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE nomination. New York Times Bestseller Bettyville available in paperback March.
Are you the kind of person who prepares his acceptance speech or wings it?
Filed under: Authors, Bestseller, Books, Memoir, Uncategorized | Tagged: george hodgman, national book critics circle, penguin random house | 11 Comments »
Posted on December 30, 2015 by betsylerner
It’s that time of year: THE HATE LIST 2015
- Carrie’s wig
- Jimmy Fallon and the new late night TV line-up with the exception of my new boyfriend James Corden. I HEART JAMES CORDEN.
- Snatch chat.
- That McNulty/Noah Saloway is British. How?! How?!
- The only movie I loved this year will not get nominated. Room.
- Unsubscribe feedback requests
- The House of Trump.
- I hate the jacket of PURITY so much I can’t pick it up which is okay since I haven’t read The Goldfinch yet.
- The term “binge-watching.”
- FOMA (there is nothing better than missing out)
What’s on your list. Let’s make it long and ugly. Happy new year! Love, Betsy
Filed under: Uncategorized | 19 Comments »
Posted on December 29, 2015 by betsylerner
Dear Ms. Lerner,
May I hire you as an online writing coach?
Even a few feedback sessions for an exorbitant amount of cash would help.
Sincerely, NAME WITHHELD
Dear NAME WITHHELD:
I don’t even know what a writing coach is. Is it an editor with a whistle and clip board? I also don’t believe that writers need coaching. WRITE TEN SENTENCES OR DROP AND GIVE ME FIFTY. I would be more impressed with the push ups. In any case, when you can’t write, you’re supposed to wallow. You’re supposed to turn on yourself. Pull the hair from your chest, grow bitter and alcoholic. Hiring a coach could potentially ruin all that. On the other hand, what kind of cash are we talking about? Would it fund a month at Canyon Ranch? A nip and tuck? First class air fare for the year. Pavers? Let me know. Love, Betsy
How much would you pay me?
Filed under: Uncategorized | 21 Comments »
Posted on December 28, 2015 by betsylerner
Just saw Joy. Oy. This movie suffers from the fallacy that lightening can strike twice. That you can make magic instead of respecting the fact that magic happens. That you can put Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper and Robert DeNiro in a bottle, shake, and voila: movie magic. The worst part for me was when Joy, out of despair, cuts her own hair. Then, a few days later, it looks like Frederic Fekkai cut and blow dried it. Friends, I am familiar with self hair cutting. My first attempt was in the third grade when I tried bangs. The year resulted in my plastering down the too short pangs with a parade of barrettes. Now, with the equivalent of a toe nail scissors, I take to my own locks when I’m stressed. It starts as snipping and ends up Bellevue. I do this a lot when I’m writing. Picking, snipping, jerking off. I love writing.
Any corroboration?
Filed under: Uncategorized | 11 Comments »
Posted on December 23, 2015 by betsylerner
Three years ago, I started working on a new book. It was going nowhere fast and my husband kept saying that I had to use my blog voice. My what? My sociopath voice? My whiney vaginey voice? My pitted, potted, sometimes besotted voice. My childlike wonder, my hemorrhoidal idyll, my knock knock give a dog a bone. Short story long: my new book is coming out in May, 2016. It wouldn’t exist if not for the four years of writing here, the incredible love and support from our merry band. Even the guy who said he wanted to kill me and Patti Smith with a pitchfork. You gave me the chance to develop my voice, and as we say in these parts, I finished the fucker. Will say more about it soon. Until then, THANK YOU dearest readers of this blog. Love, Betsy
Filed under: Authors, Books, Freak Flag, Memoir, shana mahin, The Bridge Ladies, Uncategorized, Writing, You Go Girl | 24 Comments »
Posted on December 11, 2015 by betsylerner
Carrie Mathison decides to go off her meds to get her mojo back. She’s figured out if she goes off her lithium, she’ll have a window during which the mania will kick in and with it her x-ray vision, super-human powers. I know it’s just television, but this is mental. What were they smoking in the writer’s room? This is my illness and it’s not user-friendly. Not that I haven’t been tempted.
Writers, stay on your meds. Okay?
Filed under: Uncategorized | 8 Comments »
Posted on December 10, 2015 by betsylerner
I’m working on the acknowledgments to my new book. I’ve always felt that the acknowledgments are the closest thing to Oscar acceptance speeches that writers get. I’d like to thank my mother, my father, my therapist in Riverdale. I’d like to thank my left foot, Daniel Day Louis, Julia Louise Dreyfus, my hedge fund manager, my hedge hog, my cockapoo. I’d like to thank my pain. I’d like to thank all the people who didn’t believe in me. I’d like to thank the one man who opened a door for me at Grand Central. I’d like to thank my eye surgeon Dr. Craig Sklar. I’d like to thank the woman at his office who did my paperwork. I’d like to thank my personal assistant, my personal trainer, my personal planner, my personal pizza. But most of all I want to thank the Duplass Brothers.
Who do you thank?
Filed under: Books, Memoir, Uncategorized | Tagged: Acknowledgments, Duplass Brothers, Oscars | 13 Comments »
Posted on December 7, 2015 by betsylerner
I’ve never believed in
“best of” lists until now. Congratulations to George Hodgman and Patti Smith. Thank you Maureen Corrigan of NPR. Fucking A.
In Bettyville, George Hodgman, who had a major career in editing and publishing in New York City, writes of moving home to Paris, Missouri to care for his elderly mother, Betty, who’s never acknowledged that her son is gay. In the opening scene, Hodgman is roused by a fretful Betty in the middle of the night: “[h]ere she is, all ninety years of her, curlers in disarray, … peeking into our guest room where I have been mostly not sleeping. It is the last place in America with shag carpet. In it, I have discovered what I believe to be a toenail from high school.” Like Roz Chast’s Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, Hodgman’s Bettyvillecaptures the exhaustion, sorrow and moments of absurdity involved in caring for elderly loved ones.
Unlike her first memoir, the now classic, Just Kids, which was all about the thrill of “becoming,” Patti Smith’s incantatory M Trainis mostly about the challenge of enduring erosion and discovering new passions (like detective fiction and a tumbledown cottage in Rockaway Beach, Queens). Smith, of course, is a “kid” no longer. She’s now 68 and she’s suffered a lot of losses, including the deaths of artist Robert Mapplethorpe, who was her partner in crime in the Just Kids years, and her husband, musician Fred “Sonic” Smith, who died suddenly in his 40s. “They are all stories now,” says Smith, thinking of these and other deaths. The narrative of M Train, fittingly, is fragmented and incantatory, more like Smith’s distinctive song lyrics. At bottom, though, both of Smith’s memoirs tell a haunting story about being sheltered and fed, in all senses, by New York City.
Filed under: Uncategorized | 12 Comments »
Betsy Lerner 