THE FOREST FOR THE TREES is about writing, publishing and what makes writers tick. This blog is dedicated to the self loathing that afflicts most writers. A community of like-minded malcontents gather here. I post less frequently now, but hopefully with as much vitriol. Please join in! Gluttons for punishment can scroll through the archives.
If I’ve learned one thing about writers, it’s this: we really are all alone. Thanks for reading. Love, Betsy
Worked all weekend uninterrupted on my revision. So deeply in my own head amazing. Down to the last three chapters, also the most difficult in terms of, well. everything. This is where the roosters crow, where everything has to pay off, where I want you to cry or get an enormous lump in your throat. I’ve probably rewritten fifty or more percent of the book. Tried to eliminate confusion, howlers, lapses in time line, sharpening dialogue. Making sense. Finding exciting verbs. Using the word jettison. Running a few new similes up the flag. Pulling some poetry out of my ass to give the thing the ring of truth.
Today I was a jumping bean. Could not work on more than a few sentences before I had to empty the garbage, clean out a desk drawer, measure for a new faucet, think about doing laundry, transfer blueberries, wash dishes, file my fingernails, make a to-do list, make the bed, and look at a billion clips and pictures of Harry Styles on Instagram, My company is converting to a new data base and I did some contract entry. Very satisfying.
Another horrid day. I need to move forward but I’m so goddamn compulsive.I must pay the rent. You can’t pay the rent. Why do we put ourselves through this. What and leave show business? Rashes keep springing up on my body. I spent the day painting myself into a corner. I took a long walk in the middle of the day, tried to reset. Came home, tinkered to no avail and succumbed to answering email, soothing distracting endless email. Watched a half an episode of the Crown and ate whole wheat spaghetti. The crux of it is that I want readers to believe that a fucked up character is lovable, that people are highly inconsistent, and that love is a fraud.
I had a good day today. Chapter Ten was like a math equation such that no matter what I did, it didn’t add up. I struggled with it for a week, tried to break it in two. Made a thousand small cuts. Rewrote two sections from scratch. Added a new section. Then I saw that I had made incremental mistakes with the order, so I ironed that out. And then things started to fall into place. At least until I look at it tomorrow,
Hi All: I’ve been out of touch because I’ve been writing and revising my ass off. Thank god I have some editorial skills to call forth because this manuscript is a mess. Not a mess mess, not a shit show, not a rat fuck, not two slugs fucking in a snot can, but it’s rough. In the meantime, the incredible Neil deGrasse Tyson did this.
I feel like I’m playing three card monty with myself. I cannot hold the whole book in my head. Last night at three in the morning it occurred to me where a section introducing a new character could go. I’d been struggling all day. I would have to redo my cards, my map, take one card out and does the whole thing fall. I love it I hate it I love it I hate it.
Remind me why surgeons don’t operate on their family members…
I’m obsessed. I remember when I was in graduate school putting my final collection of poems together. l lined them up on the floor, stalked around them, smoking, looking for the move. Flow, impact, modulate length, feeling, keep the line moving. Into the abyss, into the fray. Or so it felt, my fifty some odd messages to the gods of confusion and obfuscation. My beloved professor compared me to Fran Leibovitz, not as a compliment. To this day, when I read a collection of poems, I start with the first, read the title poem, and then the last. By then I’ll know. I’m so tired of people saying you should give him another chance. With this novel, it’s more like a sliced rye and a rubber room.
Sometimes when I’m wrestling with a sentence or a paragraph or a phrase that proves elusive, I tell myself to fight for it. Don’t just let it go because you can’t make it better or grasp it or transform it in the moment. When do you fight and when do you throw in the towel. Or give it a few days and see if it yields. It’s like sitting in traffic.
I was getting groceries today at Fairway, a big supermarket on the upper west side of NYC. It’s sort of sprawling and chaotic. I didn’t realize that there was a line for the check out. A woman called out Ma’am. Then louder her voice a wall of sublime irritation. I immediately apologized and turned to find the line. Reader, this should have been sufficient, but she stared me down. I apologized again but she couldn’t let it go and said, What are you blind? On the walk back to my apartment, my honor challenged, I replayed the scene and thought of all the witty rejoinders I might have leveled at the women in the pink mohair beret and oatmeal vest.
I am so in my head. For the last three weeks, I’ve gone through my manuscript on paper, filled half a notebook with rewritten and new scenes, did a chronological timeline for accuracy, a map for major characters, I’ve weighed chopping a key chapter in two. I’ve gone back and forth between dividing the book in two or three parts. I’ve identified the phrases I need to word search for repetition, I’ve thought of more possible titles, I’ve got a list of things I need to research a little more. I’ve done index cards on my bulletin board, moved them around like checkers, and revised the first four chapters.
No one will love you more or hurt you more than a sister.
It is said that when one person in a family is unstable, the whole family is destabilized. Meet the Shreds. Ollie has no breaks. Amy can't get her life started. Spanning two decades, Shred Sisters is an intimate and bittersweet coming of age story exploring the fierce complexities of sisterhood, mental illness, boundaries, loss and the limits of love.
Betsy Lerner 