Betsy Lerner's Blog, page 19

What Goes Up Must Come Down

When I was a young editor, before I was medicated, I had tremendous bursts of energy/focus/ intensity. My boss said I had two heads. I bought an orange silk blouse with a purple collar. I went to London for four days and emptied my bank account. i slept with two different men on the same day at the national book conference. What I liked best about mania was how my mind generated ideas. I couldn’t walk a block without getting a new idea. I still have tons of ideas, but they arrive in napkins instead of flames. Today, my YouTube trainer said, “I love intensity, but I worship consistency.” Amen.

What do you worship?

My boyfriend’s back and you’re gonna be in trouble

I’m like a bad boyfriend. I think about you but I don’t call. I love you but I don’t show it. I’m totally wrapped up in myself and my work. I figure you’ll always be there. I had the shittiest boyfriends on earth. They weren’t even boyfriends, they were platonic friends I not so secretly loved, three night stands, broken divorced men, bicycle messengers and moths.

What does this have to do with writing?

God Only Knows What I’d Be Without You

Something I’ve noticed a lot of writers do is what I call stepping on their own lines. It’s when you write a sentence or two more than necessary at the end of a paragraph or chapter end. It’s as if you’ve glued the thing down and then you have the urge to throw a nail in on top of it. It’s bad for a few a reasons: a) you don’t trust your reader. b) you don’t trust yourself. c) you forfeit the beauty of understatement d) you lose the moment. Every time I start overwriting an ending, I try to remember to dial it back. It almost always works.

How do you find your endings?

Give Me Your Answer Do

So I found a fuck buddy. And by that I mean a writer who I trust and with whom I’m exchanging pages. Thirty a month. The first of the month, like the rent and electric. I wasn’t exactly looking for it, but through the blog, yes this decade-old screed from my heart, brought the baby Moses in a basket to my door, or was he still clinging to the reeds of a river, or before that when cuneiform figures were pressed into tablets of warm clay. It’s exhilarating and scary and good to have a cross in the snow where better men than me have searched the tundra and were buried. Good to have a furry hood. We’ve only exchanged once so far so but it was hugely encouraging and helpful. And while I’ve always believed in the solitary, solipsistic, narcissistic, self-aggrandizing, glorious solitude of writing, this is nice.

Do you have a writing buddy? If not, can you find one?

I Walked 47 Miles on Barbed Wire

I love people, but I prefer being alone. I am my own puppet show. Strings, puppets, stage, Geppetto. The sound of air clanging in the pipes. An ambulance horn wailing in the night. Have you met my ribbon box? I am madly in love with myself. I have everything I want. I have nothing I want. You look up and three hours have passed. Sentences. Paragraphs. Days. Years. I once had a young writer tell me that she didn’t work on spec. Everything I’ve ever done I’ve done on spec. I am not going to lie.

Who do you love?

You Just Might Find You Get What You Need

I recently cleaned out my desk at work and came upon a file I started when I became an agent 16 or so years ago titled “Asshole File.” Yes, the subtlety is overwhelming. I had never been on the rejection end of things and found it a bit hard to take. Don’t love it, not right for our list, not our cup of tea, not our cut of brisket. Thanks for sending your big fat stupid novel which we would never publish even if it were the last manuscript on earth. And your kid is ugly. I put the letters in the asshole file. Thus filed, they couldn’t hurt me. I’m rubber, you’re glue. Eventually, I found I could take it. Selling lots of books didn’t hurt. But in some ways those rejections made me more resolute in my beliefs. I’m not saying what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. I’ve always believed that what doesn’t kill you usually hobbles you.

How do you handle rejection?

Hello, It’s Me, I’ve Thought About Us for a Long, Long While

Dearly Beloved, I kept meaning to write but I’m on a wild jag. Getting up at 5:00, sometimes 4:30 and writing as if my ass were on fire. It started with our 30/30 and by the end of the experiment I had the base of something and from there it’s been a pinball game in my mind. Scattershot, lit. This forced locked down has also helped. The four hours I spent commuting is now time with my keyboard. I’m not saying I’m in favor of variants but time is time. I always did my writing on the margins of my day job, on the train, in a car, in the light, in the dark. It’s as if all the journals I scribbled in for all the years have appeared as sheet music. All I want to do is shed my office of pictures and trinkets. The holy trinity: coffee, keyboard, computer.

What have you been up to? Everyone okay?

You Are the Light of the World

How is everyone doing? Did you fall a cliff? Ride into the sunset? Are you playing musical chairs or clanging your cup on your prison bars? My writing schedule has gotten a little lumpy. More here, less there. I’m going to try to go back to the thirty minutes because I achieved consistency and consistency is a golden medal with a striped ribbon of blue and green. It’s enough to know you’re alive. We have until the end of the year to write a sentence, a paragraph, a chapter.

What’s it going to be?

Put Your Hands Up Playing My Song Butterflies Fly Away

Dearest Community of Writers, Thieves, Scoundrels and Cons: YOU MADE IT! WE MADE IT! Thirty minutes of pecking for thirty days. Tap, tap, tap. Scratch, scratch, scratch. We slung some sentences together and turned ourselves around. The feedback has been great: some started something new, some breathed life into something old, some found the daily task helped them find a groove. Some missed a day or two but got back in the saddle. I’m going to propose a weekly check in until the end of the year. My goal is to reach 100 pages and work on story. One question hangs in the air: why do we make ourselves write.

Leave it here: what is your goal for the end of the year? Commit! Commit!

And the Painted Ponies Go Up and Down

Today I wrote for two hours while my car was getting serviced, jacked up on decaf, avoiding a woman who wanted to engage. The more I wrote the more I became convinced that my project wasn’t sustainable. I’ve been at this rodeo before and I know that how I feel about my work is a reflection of how I feel about myself and not the work itself. Though of course the work may suck. Today is Day 29 and you know who you are and what it takes. Tomorrow let’s take the day off and we’ll have our final day, Day 30 on Friday. For now I just want to say that I’m so grateful to all of you. Thank you for being here.

Happy thanksgiving! Loyalty to the family is tyranny to the self!!