Betsy Lerner's Blog

End of summer writing report. I have 300 pages of a new novel. About 30 of them worth keeping. LOL. I’ve been through two rounds of index cards, four outlines, countless drafts. It finally got into my thick head that I had to introduce the parallel storyline in the second chapter instead of 50 pages in. Today, in a last gasp effort to sidestep madness, or perhaps madness itself, I printed the whole fucking thing out, found an old binder and am currently on the hunt for my three hole punch.

How are you doing?

I wish I could say that I’m making progress with the monster, but I’ve been working in fits and starts. There are two significant plot points that need to be resolved. And I’m stymied. I keep hacking away at it and making it worse, sort of like when I cut my own bangs in the fifth grade. I knew I should stop, but I just kept going.

Any advice?

Here are all my trade secrets about the true marketing whore that I am.

Finding Your Voice, Writing Across Genre And Loving Book Marketing With Betsy Lerner

How the fuck is everyone? I’m finally back in a writing groove. I’m only writing for an hour or so every day, but it’s just keeping the thread going that I find so helpful. It’s when I skip a few days or more that makes it so difficult to “get back in.” Kind of like working out. Exactly like working out. Only I hate it when people say that writing is a muscle or that you have to develop your writing muscle, but I’ll cave and say I think that’s probably true. On the other hand, I think my main motivation for writing is that I’m really unhappy/agitated if I’m not writing, I’m deeply compulsive, and it’s how I figure out who I am.

What motivates you to write?

I’m completely off my highly rigid writing schedule in favor of sleeping in the morning. Getting up at 5:00 a.m. was how I did all of my writing, pre-dawn, before the world (aka my clients) needed me. Happily padding into my office in my pajamas, robe and slippers with a cup of coffee. It’s been a month since I’ve strung two writing days together back to back. I feel completely shitty. And when I tried to write the other day, I quit after two hours of destroying my manuscript like a toddler having a tantrum. I just learned the different between a meltdown and tantrum.

Can you guess what it is?

Here’s a podcast that I did with Chris Holmes on Burned by Books. Apart from the horror of hearing my own voice, I love the conversation. Holmes is a fantastic reader and he asked questions no one else did.

What are you listening to?

I did something stupid. Rookie mistake. I shared the first 100 pages of the manuscript I’m working on before they were ready. I mean of course I thought they were ready, but now that my reader (and she is a brilliant reader) has pointed out an enormous problem, I feel like throwing the whole thing out. Yes, petulant baby. Of course, the whole reason I gave it to her was to see if the structure was working, cutting back and forth between two time frames. And it’s what I wanted to know, but it isn’t what I wanted to hear.

I hate writing today. How about you?

Photo: Pexel

Tonight I have the great pleasure of attending the tribute concert honoring Patti Smith at Carnegie Hall with an incredible roster of artists and actors playing her songs and reading her work. When I was fifteen years old, in 1975, I discovered two works that would change the course of my life. Ariel by Sylvia Plath, that slim volume of poems that spoke to all the pain I couldn’t name. And Horses, the album, that spoke to all the rage. I found it in Cutler’s, the New Haven record store, where I spent many hours perusing albums. I hadn’t heard of Patti Smith, but the jacket art called out. An androgynous looking woman in a black and white portrait photograph, white shirt, suspenders, an unapologetic gaze. Reader, I bought it. From the very first lines, I was galvanized, besotted. When I wrote to Patti Smith as a young editor wondering if she’d consider writing her memoir, I never could have possibly imagined that 28 years later we would have become compatriots, friends, editor and writer connected through language and poetry, life and art. Tonight is a night of nights.

Photo: Steven Sebring

People always ask me what I’m looking for as an agent. Besides a house in Santa Barbara and a lifelong supply of Ambien, I usually say something like “prize winners or page turners.” Or, “I’ll know it when I see it.” Or something else equally evasive. I’m not trying to be cute, it’s just really hard to describe. Today, I read an interview with theater producer Sonia Friedman and she said, “I don’t want the writer to write what I want; I want the writer to write something that I didn’t know I needed. And that’s been the rule for me throughout my working life, to do with the thing that’s almost impossible to articulate, which is a about a feeling, about a chill, about a goose bump, holding your breath and realizing that time has stopped and I’m lost in another world, and if that happens, I’m all in.”

I’ll have what she’s having. What makes time stop for you?

photo: Sip and Feast

It’s seven weeks into the new year, do you know where your writing project is? Hitting it, fits and starts, stalled out? I’m deep in and it’s all I want to do but I will confess that every other day I think it sucks, that I’m deluding myself, that I was never meant to write fiction, imposter syndrome run wild. But then every other day, I’m in the saddle, writing until my hands cramp. I’m in the whiplash stage, but I’m determined to push through. I also understand that the project might wind up in the drawer but I have to finish the fucker. I don’t believe in closure, but I love completion.

If you’re still hanging out at The Lerner Home for Wayward Children, let me know what you’re working on and how it’s going. Or if you need a kick in the ass.