Today's edition of The Writer's Bookshelf is from author Marian Pereira. Enjoy!
Betsy Lerner’s The
Forest for the Trees is many things—an editor’s advice to writers (it says
so on the cover!), a memoir of working in a publishing house, and a slice of
history. I enjoyed reading it, because I love learning about what it’s like on
the other side of the desk, but there are plenty of sound tips for writers as
well.
My version of the book was published in 2000—partly because
I haunt used book stores—but there’s a revised and updated version that came
out in 2010, and the book is available on the Kindle as well. A lot of the
fears and problems that writers had a decade and a half ago are still the same.
If you’re concerned that a good editor at a major house is likely to stifle
your voice or request too many changes, this book will help. It explains why
determination is so important in publishing, and why agents sometimes find it
easier to sell a debut novel than a midlister’s book.
And I loved the fact that even back in 2000, she mentioned
“so much industry instability”. Some things never change.
Betsy Lerner has worked as both an editor and an agent, but
like all of us, she was new and inexperienced once. So much so that when a
literary agent asked her to deal with a slush pile manuscript, she read it
thoroughly and compiled a four-page report on the manuscript despite knowing it
was unpublishable. The agent took one look at the report and said four words:
“Did you like it?”
“I lost my publishing virginity that day,” she writes
ruefully.
Another favorite part of mine was the unsolicited gifts she
got along with manuscripts or queries. Nothing will ever beat the banana
that Jane Smith received, but Lerner got “baby booties… a pair of dice, a
five-dollar bill.” No, I don’t know what those were about either.
As Lerner says, this isn’t a book about how to write. It’s
more of a step back to look at the bigger picture of publishing, and the many
ways writers interact with their publishers: sometimes funny, sometimes inspiring, sometimes
depressing (like the brilliant author with the heroin addiction). It’s an
insight into how the people on the other side of the desk think, whether those
people are literary agents or publicists. If she had included a chapter about
cover artists as well, the book would have been perfect.
It's also peppered with memorable anecdotes and
quotes about writing and publishing, such as this one about Flannery O’Connor:
When asked whether she
thought writing programs in universities actually discouraged young writers,
she replied, “Not enough of them.”
For writers who are curious about trade publishing, this is an
entertaining, easy-to-read combination of memoir, self-help book and insider
look into a business I find fascinating. It’s a long book, but that’s all the
more to read. And here’s another four-word quote that I think is excellent
advice: “Good writing creates luck.”
The Forest for the
Trees is available on Amazon in paperback.
Bio : Marian Perera has three fantasy romances
released by Samhain Publishing, with four more due in 2015 from both Samhain
and Loose Id.
She blogs about writing, publishing and her favorite genres at http://marianperera.blogspot.com,
tweets as @MDPerera and has excerpts from her novels at http://www.marianperera.com. She
collects books and swords, grows tomatoes, loves writing and reads
everything.
MarianPerera.com
Flights of Fantasy
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