Betsy Lerner's Blog, page 26

Cry Me a River

The New York Times Book Review has this column every week where a writer is asked a bunch of questions such as what books are on your night stand, what’s the last book that made you laugh, what was the last book that made you masturbate? This week, the novelist Diane Johnson was asked, among other things, what was the last book that made her cry. She replied, “I’m a hardhearted professional writer — I’m always more interested in how it’s done. It was probably Anna Karenina when I was sixteen.”

I’m with her on that. I don’t read so much as study. I care more about the prose than the subject. I like to get under the hood. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good cry. I honestly can’t remember the last book that made me cry.

What was the last book that made you cry.

Catch Your Dreams Before They Slip Away

[image error]

My entire life has been defined by writing. Keeping diaries as a girl that morphed into journals in college and throughout my twenties. All the little poetry fragments that became grown up poems and got me into graduate school. There was the classic MFA breakdown, the internship at Simon and Schuster, the Ann Taylor suits and Ferragamo shoes my mother bought me for my first day as full editor at Houghton Mifflin. The writers, the writers, the writers. And then somehow harnessing my own will and creative spark to publish my own work. I never expected to kick things off with an advice book to writers, but that happened. I often act cynically and jaded. Like many seniors, I have less elasticity and patience. But I also have immense gratitude and can still connect with the girl who kept her secret diaries in a crawl space beneath the stairs, committing her secret thoughts to the page knowing on some level that feelings needed to be managed or handled.

What is your writing time line?

Hold Me Like You’ll Never Let Me Go

We’re going on vacation in a couple of weeks and the piles have started to appear. I’m referring of course to the book piles on the dining room table. It’s this delicious dance of adding and subtracting books that we might take, imagining what might be the ticket. It’s got everything from what I’ve wanted to read, have been desperate to read, felt I should read, a guilty pleasure, a prize winner, a book that’s been on the bestseller list for 103 weeks, a book that’s buzzy or an odd little duck that no one gives a fuck.

What do you recommend we take?

Hey There Lonely Girl

For me, for most of my life, writing and loneliness went together. I was a lonely kid. I was perfected my chameleon skills in high school, I passed through college unnoticed. Every diary I have is a study in loneliness, is a sustained screed, a nursed wound, a bruise, a plum. Writing for me was not being alone. Writing was a great conversation, a balm, a salve, a bicycle built for two. I’ve been thinking of throwing them all away, the thirty or notebooks, the pages like cotton batting, the covers plastered with ticket stubs and photo booth pictures, and the silver backs of gum wrappers.

Why do you write?

From Your First Cigarette to Your Last Dying Day

What I like about agenting is that it’s a three ring circus. Just as you sign a new client, or sell a new project, another client delivers a book, you go to a publicity and marketing meeting, or you get out your red shoes and go to a reading or party for a book just published. You’re there for the birth and baptism, the prom and wedding, the break-up and divorce, the death rattle and death. In my heart of hearts, I’m still an editor. I wonder if I would have lasted or gotten bumped like so many others on editorial row. I preferred being an editor because you’re closer to the whole gestalt of the book from editing to jacket to publishing plans. And I liked being part of a publishing team.Though I was also part of some pretty viscous teams. LOL. People trust editors. Agents not so much.

Are you an agent or an editor? A Jet or a Shark?

I’m Just a Poor Boy Nobody Loves Me

Similes and metaphors blah blah blah. How do you pick out the telling details? The pencilled in eyebrows, a long second toe with a gold ring and a peridot, the moles in the shape of a spade on a large man’s lower back. Panty lines, chipped plates, a piece of floss on a painted cement floor. The girl with bangs and a cello on her back. A man trying to smell his own breath. A moon that means nothing. A sunset that means less. All of nature and her cubs. A wash of guache. Some days I think I’m Michael Barbaro. Other days Mare or Mary Anning. Is it possible to be sixty years old and still walking up to cranes with the one and only essential question of the universe: are you my mother?

What was the question?

You’re a Bendel Bonnet, A Shakespeare Sonnet

It looks like publishers are opening up their offices slowly and more fully after Labor Day. It’s all a big work in progress trying to figure out post-Covid office life. Every editor I’ve spoken with is thrilled to know that he or she could work from home 2-3 days a week. What most writers don’t know is that editors don’t get to edit at their desks. It’s mostly done during the evenings, weekends and for some early risers the dawn hours. It takes sustained, quiet time, which is the opposite of the office life where meetings crowd the day, and phone calls and email and lunch dates and liaising with all the other departments. Editing is the heart of the job and it’s what most editors take the most pride in. It still is for me even though I crossed over to the dark side 15 years ago.

When do you get your work done?

I’m Not Too Blind to See

I had my first post-Covid lunch date with an editor yesterday. I was rusty, I admit it. Plus, I will also admit that the older I get the more irrelevant I feel even if i am a badass or am a former badass or whatever. When I was a young editor, I HATED having lunch dates with agents. They were all so fucking sure of themselves. Established. Had all this insider knowledge and summer homes and kids in boarding schools and designer tote bags. And I’d be in my little Anne Taylor suit just trying to pretend I knew who or what they were talking about. I remember listening so hard and pretending to be empathic. The whole point is to get them to send you their projects. One of the more powerful agents sent me something I really liked but the editor in chief made me turn it down. When I told her I couldn’t make an offer, she said, “Well, you obviously don’t have any power over there.” LOL you go that right. I’m just a turd with an expense account. And then, Alice, I became an agent. Here I am. Blinkety blankety boo. The young editor I met yesterday was LOVELY. Smart, funny, discerning, spoke about books in an original and fresh way. None of this “I’m looking for bestsellers” nonsense.

Describe your ideal editor.

Brown Paper Packages Tied Up in String

An old friend gave me some notes on my script over the weekend. They were fucking excellent. I know this because I didn’t get defensive. I didn’t curse her out. I didn’t start picking my face. I knew they were right. It was like having an infection and someone offers you antibiotics. You fucking take them. Great notes are like gold. They’re like a rope ladder, a nest of threads, clouds moving over the moon. Gratitude, Queen.

How well do you take notes?

I Started a Joke

I did a zoom event tonight with a group of women in sisterhood at a Florida synagogue. It had been a long time since I had the chance to talk about The Bridge Ladies. I had been to over 40 synagogues and JCC’s and libraries when the book came out. I had my schtick down. Knew where I could get my laughs, where I tried for a few tears. I felt like a cross between Henny Youngman and Totie Fields. Often the places were decked out with bridge decorations and bowls of bridge mix. Like so nice. Once, I got to play with a bridge master. Usually, I’d collapse in my hotel room after a burger, fries, and a gin and tonic. I can still hear the sound of my suitcase wheels clicking along the tile floor at the Sheraton. Tonight, the rabbi who hosted the event quoted lines from the book that went to the heart of things. Really wonderful questions. I was so grateful for the chance to revisit the book, the bridge ladies, and my mom. She died two years ago.

What question would you most like people to ask about your work?