Is this My Beginning or is this the End (Part 2)

Are you there god, it’s me Betsy? I have big news: I finally finished War & Peace!! It took a full year of chipping away, plus the last three weeks in a more concentrated effort, but the fucker is under my belt and I can now happily go to my grave. Was it worth it? Yes. Top five books I’ve ever read. The sweep and intimacy of it will never leave me completely. Sentences I had to copy out for their beauty and precision. Now, I’m going to read four or five very short books.

How have you all been? If you’re out there, I’d love to know how the writing is coming along. I hope to check in a couple of times a week with reports of my first novel, which was sold to Grove Publishers! I want to capture all the agony in real time as I expose myself (not in the Louis CK mold) yet again to that particular pain of holding out all your hope in sentences and paragraphs that won’t set you free, AKA the publishing process. I’m very grateful to have sold my first novel, don’t get me wrong, but that doesn’t mean I can’t exercise my god-given right as a writer to moan about it every step of the way.

In other news, I’ve attempted to join the whack-a-mole community of book lovers on TikTok known as Booktok. You can find me @betsylerner if you’re curious. But do check out Booktok – it’s the wild west where you can find lots of passionate readers, book recommendations, everything from the sublime to the ridiculous, plus lots of people dancing.

Hope to hear from you. Love, Betsy