Melanie Jennings
Melanie Jennings earned an MFA in fiction from Mills College and a doctorate in American Literature from UCSD. She has taught creative writing and published poetry and fiction in such publications as In the Grove, spelunker flophouse, Crab Creek Review, and Redwood Coast Review. She has been awarded writing residencies at the Espy Literary Foundation and the Jentel Foundation.
When she grows up, Melanie wants to be a novelist and a pastry chef.
The Forest for the Trees: An Editor’s
Advice to Writers
by Betsy Lerner (Riverhead)
Reviewed by Melanie Jennings
Copyright 2004
All Rights Reserved
"An Editor’s Advice to Writers" sounded about as interesting as a lampshade, but from the opening page to the last, I was riveted. The Forest for the Trees by editor/agent Besty Lerner, once an aspiring and award-winning poet herself, offers writers at all stages of their careers a voice of reason ("Is your neurotic behavior part of your creative process or just…neurotic behavior?") and support ("It is my deepest hope that this book will offer helpful advice to beginning writers, but even more that it will inspire the late bloomers, those who have worked in fits and starts over the years but have never just quit or given up the dream completely").
A consideration of writer "types" comprises the first half of the book. We’re offered compelling portraits of the "ambivalent" writer, the "natural," the "wicked child," the "self promoter," and the "neurotic." Any serious thinking lately about your life as a writer and you’ll find yourself cringing with recognition: "If you are guilty of sending your first short story or poem off to the magazine [The New Yorker], as well as your second and third, in the vain hope of hitting the jackpot, you are not alone." But with those stings come the salves:
I won’t say there is no such thing as a natural talent, but after working with many authors over the years, I can offer a few observations: having natural ability doesn’t seem to make writing any easier (and sometimes makes it more difficult); having all the feeling in the world will not ensure the effective communication of feeling on the page; and finally, the degree of one’s perseverance is the best predictor of success. It is some combination of ability and ego, desire and discipline, that produces good work. And a writer’s success or faltering can usually be traced to some abundance or deficit of those elements….Lack of discipline, desire for fame, and depression often thwart those whose talents appear most fertile, while those who struggle with every line persevere regardless.
While the first half may help you determine whether you’re a writer or not, and if so, which kind, the second half is just downright informative. I’ve never read a more detailed account of the process of publishing a book. Throughout, Lerner’s anecdotes offer a glimpse into a world we writers rarely see. We know, vaguely, that we must write a proposal or query and that we must make it good. What we don’t know is this:
I am always struck by the writer who, with no credentials per se, blithely compares his work to any number of current or past bestsellers. As if! Every writer who proposes a book of oral reportage swears that he’s the next Studs Terkel. Those who want to describe a year in the life are the next Tracy Kidder. Every lawyer is the next Turow or Grisham….Just once I’d like to see a writer make a humble promise or estimation of his expectations. Just once I’d like to see a writer compare his or her work to a book that isn’t a commercial blockbuster….Remember, Terkel, Kidder, Turow, Grisham, Faludi, and Frazier were once nobodies too.
With this kind of information, thankfully, we can avoid making total fools of ourselves.
The chapter on rejection alone is worth the money: "If you are still unpublished, you probably suffer from the misconception that publication in and of itself will cure everything that ails you." (God, was she reading my diary a few years ago or what?) She reminds us that it ain’t about the glory, it’s about the work. Take this little diddy:
There is no better story in publishing history than that of mega-best-selling writer John Grisham. His first novel, A Time to Kill, which he wrote in the predawn hours over a three-year period while he juggled a high-stress sixty- to eighty-hour work-week and a young family, was rejected by dozens of agents before he found one who would take it on. His agent then submitted the book for a year, also amassing a pile of rejections, before finally placing it with the now defunct Wynwood Press for an advance of $15,000. The book had a 5,000-copy first printing. ‘I bought 1,000, and another 1,000 were sitting in a warehouse,’ said Grisham in a 1993 Publishers Weekly interview. ‘So you know not many were out there." Not exactly an auspicious debut.
But as is his habit, Grisham started his next novel the day after he finished A Time to Kill (and more important, long before the world responded with its resounding yawn). [italics mine]
Lerner’s expertise and insight helped me sleep at night for a couple of weeks (I’m a "neurotic" if you haven’t guessed). Her generous tone, good-natured wit, and down-to-earth guidance demystify both the creative and publishing processes. The Forest for the Trees is a good read for any writer.