I call it the twilight zone. It’s that fateful time between when you’ve corrected your proofs and when the book comes into the world. Apart from social networking yourself up the ass, there is nothing you can do: you’ve written your book, it’s been committed to type, it’s going to the printer, it will emerge with its own jacket and bar code. Fine, if only the writer could put his brain on ice, or escape to a tropical island, or whip himself into a frenzy attacking a new project. The last is the only inoculation I know of that staves off pre-publication shpilkes.
You can not help but dream that your book will hit the list, that you’ll banter with Colbert, opine on NPR, that the movie rights will be sold. To Clooney! To Scorsese! To Spielberg! The only good thing about Oprah going off the air is that perfectly reasonable people no longer think they are going to be her guest, or should be. Never, not once, has a writer ever said to me that he thinks his book will have a modest success or almost no impact, even though most books don’t sell enough copies to feed a small family in East Islip for a month. Writers are dreamers, and never are the dreams more heightened than awaiting publication. Finally! Finally! An editor I know once likened book publishing to the funeral business given how many books get buried. Sadly, more people will probably show up for your funeral than your book signing. Oh dear lord, I am feeling the darkness today. Beautiful weather always brings out the worst in me.
What’s the worst part?
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I heard this NPR segment today about the harvesting of organs. Apparently, after they take you off the ventilator to make sure you are brain dead (and you are), they put you back on the ventilator to oxygenate your lungs and organs so that they are in the best possible shape for transplant. Some believe you are alive when they hook you back up and this makes the harvesting process seem somewhat disturbing. Others understand that the person is gone and the organs are being kept vital.
Do you ever feel free? I remember writing poetry before I went into the MFA program and that was the last time that I “just wrote.” I wrote whatever I wanted and I didn’t expect to get published, didn’t particularly care, at least not yet and not for a while. I spent more time writing in my diaries than anywhere else. And it was in those diaries that lines took hold, became first lines, became poems. And it was a mess of private associations and agonies. It was all under the cloak of my own darkness. It was a girl whose fingers were blue and flat with the pressure of a ball point pen writing as fast as she could. I would like to get that back.
I’m at my sister’s and I’m looking at her bookcase, which isn’t organized in any particular way. THough in her guest house, where I’m staying, the shelves are filled from her life as an MFA student in theater. So there’s lots of heady stuff along with the classics like Ibsen, Chekov, and Shakespeare. Upstairs, there’s everything from Roberto Bolano to Prep. The requisite Franzen. This guy Jonathan Tropper who she loves. Lots of contemporary fiction. The novel, at least around here, is not dead.. When I used to date (which is euephemism for two week stands), I’d always check out the guy’s bookcase. I’d flee if he had a tattered copy of The Fountainhead or On The Road, and stay if he had Fitzgerald or Lawrence or Hawthorne or Melville. And to this day, if there is a bookcase in a room, I will always gravitate toward it and construct an identity based on what I find there: a person’s tastes, moods, passions, perversions. I will fill in the blanks, pass judgement, and often rethink that person based on his shelves. Not to mention the sheer beauty of book spines. It just can’t be the same as scrolling through a KindleNookIpad.
I met with my youngest client today. He had just finished his first book and the mood was festive, or was that the Sauvignon Blanc speaking? I asked what the reaction had been among friends and family, and he said reactions had ranged from tepid and dismissive to sometimes hostile. The young man was surprised, possibly hurt. And I say possibly because he seemed to take it all with a grain of salt. I asked about his parents, and even they, who had always been supportive of his writing career, now when he finally had something to show for his efforts, were somewhat indifferent. More than a few friends barely feigned interest in his book, others were happy to exhaustively describe the book they wanted to write. I understand jealousies and rivalries between writers but where was this coming from?
Sometimes I’ll ask a writer to think about the grand scheme. I ask how many books he would like to see on the shelf at the end of his life. Ten? Five? One, like Harper Lee? There are a lot of reasons people don’t or can’t write more than a book or two. Sometimes the experience of being published is devastating, whether good or bad. If it’s very good, I’ve seen writers buckle under the pressure of living up to their early promise. If it’s very bad, they can be crushed by the disappointment. Sometimes it’s a failure of imagination or the well is truly empty. Sometimes a nervous breakdown or crippling depression is responsible. Or alcoholism and drug addiction. Or, like JD Salinger, the critics killed the entire enterprise, or so he’s said. Or maybe the writer turns to another form: screenwriting, playwriting, finger fucking. I try so hard to motivate writers, but maybe silence is molten.
This morning I received an email from a FOB (friend of the blog) saying that I can’t say IFLKM (Ifeel like killing myself) and then not post the next day. I apologize and thank said FOB for reaching out. I too am a worrier when people say things like that. And since I post as regularly as Rob Lowe brushes his teeth, it might be a tad disconcerting when I miss a deadline. To be clear, as said IFLKM because some soft porn got buckets of publishing dollars. I would never kill myself. The worse day alive is better than the best day dead. Life is for the living. I love all of you who wake up and write or try to write or shake off a rejection or get some good news.
Betsy Lerner 