Got another query letter from prison today. It comes stamped on the back with a notice about what to do if you are receiving unwanted correspondence from an inmate. This particular prisoner quoted some of the best bits in The Forest For The Trees to impress upon me why I might like his work. Many writers have done this, but when it comes from the incarcerated it is unbelievably touching and a little scary. The letter was also hand written in the neatest imaginable block letters. Maybe I’ve seen Dead Man Walking too many times, but it amazes me to think that my book has found its way into a prison and a person there who wants or needs to write connected with it. I once read that a prisoner who was denied pencil and paper wrote sentences on the roof of his mouth with his tongue.
Did everybody write today? And if not, why not?
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My submission strategy appears to be largely unsuccessful, though appearances can be deceiving. A small press has recently accepted one of my books for publication. This will be my first published book. –
I am on empty.
Today is publication date for Eli Gottlieb’s 
IS THIS LIKE A PUBLISHER’S SWEEPSTAKES SORT OF THING? Was I born yesterday? Do I have to write a check to get in? Wear pork chops around my neck to get the dog to play with me? Is this a gateway award that will lead to crack or oxycontin? Did I ever mention that I won a poetry prize in high school and there was an awards ceremony in Hartford and I wore a hunter green plaid skirt cut on the bias. Tell me about everything you’ve ever won or wanted to win. Badly.
I’ve now heard from three of my four readers about the script. The feedback was better than I had hoped for, especially from the youngest and toughest critic. He thought the action was suspenseful. The script tight. He was really flattering. There was only one problem: the main character. He hated him. Everybody hates him. I think I probably hate him. He’s a shit. He’s in pain. So what. I don’t have the first clue as to how to rewrite him. He’s that guy that people hate, mostly because his life looks so easy and he’s smart and good looking. Maybe I should give him a pair of glasses.
Some comments lately have noted that my blog is more negatively cast than my book, FOrest for the Trees. They should have seen the first draft of the book. My editor covered the margins with her blue pencil saying the same thing over and over: too negative, too dark, too pessimistic, and my all time favorite, “why would anyone want to read this?” LOL! Actually, at the time, I was pissed and hurt. Wasn’t I a realist, after all? I never promised you a rose garden. For every happy writer there are thousands working in obscurity, collecting rejection slips, miserable and anguish-filled. And in my experience even so called successful writers can hit a patch of black ice and wind up in a ditch, shattered and stuck and totally fucked. This is not a game for the faint of heart. You need guts, courage, talent, wit, cunning, stamina. You need to be smart and clever, handsome and strong, or strange and winsome. You need to have bad teeth and habits, a flat ass and corns. You need to be the ugliest person in the room and proud of your penis. I’m sure you need a waist coat and velvet slippers. You need to love women and carry chap stick and run a never ending ticker tape of words inside your noggin.
People always ask how many clients I have. Fifty-nine. Okay? Is that a lot? A little? Or just right? Fifty-nine, but they’re not all active. No, not sexually active. They’re not all writing. Some wrote one book and that’s all she wrote. Some take years on a single book. Some are AWOL. And by that I mean they’ve stopped responding to emails and phone calls. Some have been seduced by industry or Hollywood. Some are stuck. Some depressed. SOme have stage fright. Some lick their wounds and come back fighting. Some reinvent themselves. Some reliably deliver a book every 18 months. And some go crying wee wee wee home.
Manuscript fatigue. It’s a fairly widespread condition. Symptoms: you can’t look at your manuscript anymore. You start to hate it, turn on it, call it names such as “that fucking manuscript,” “that motherfuckingcocksucking manuscript,” “my shit eating novel,” or “my douchy poem.” You start to cut like a depressed high school girl. You gain or lose five or ten pounds. You snap at the dry cleaner. You scream your answers at an automated voice system. You forget to take your meds or you take them twice. You can’t read anything. You alienate the people you love the most. You alienate people you barely know. You’re terrified if you leave it you’ll never go back. You fear if you go back you’ll make it worse. Why are you looking at me? I’m not a doctor.
Betsy Lerner 