"I wasn't the prettiest. I wasn't the most talented. I simply wanted it more than anyone else."
Her name's Betsy Lerner but the words aren't hers. They're from a factory worker named Norma in 1946. A foster child whose testimonial to tenacity stuck.
They're the words of Marilyn Monroe. And befittingly, they're in Betsy's book.
If you're an artist - listen. Surviving in the modern sphere is less about gift than grit. Whether you're a novice or a seasoned pro - Betsy's got the tea, and she's tableside ready to spill it. She's a writer turned editor turned agent turned writer, and her hamster-wheel-wisdom hacks not only the writing profession but the pathos of being an artist at large.
"Chances are you want to [be an artist] because you are a haunted individual, or a bothered individual, because the world does not sit right with you, or you in it. Chances are you have a deep connection to [art] because at some point you discovered [it was] the one truly safe place to discover and explore feelings that are banished from the dinner table, the cocktail party, the bridge game."
Whether you're an artist or not, the truth is - your whole life has been inundated with art. It's everything you see and hear and everywhere you go. In this incredibly saturated climate, how can one stand out from the rest?
In her book "Forest for the Trees" Betsy exposes the roots of an overcrowded marketplace and offers a path to irrigation despite the entanglements. She assumes the role of an artist's "sympathetic friend, coach, and psychotherapist all rolled into one... candidly drawing on her experience working both sides of the fence [as both writer and editor/agent], and offering hard-nosed advice on topics such as the dynamics of author relationships and struggles against the temptation of alcohol and drugs" (Publisher's Weekly).
Sound familiar? Since Covid we all won a piece of that shitty showcase. Bad habits we're still shrugging off. But instead of judgment, Betsy offers insight, reminding us of the delicate correlation between the artistic temperament and proclivity for self-medication:
"Being a writer or wanting to write is to live in a perpetual state of anxiety, where the chances of failing far outweigh the rate of success. It's a constant free fall. When the fear becomes overwhelming, when the anxiety nearly takes you out, it may seem that only a gin and tonic can take the terrible edge off."
Betsy cites relationships with clients who crossed the line, bailing on meetings for drugs, succumbing to habits that render even the redemptive powers of art mute. Then she digs deeper, examining the impulses beneath the symptoms:
"The writer's psychology, by its very nature, is one of extreme duality. The writer labors in isolation, yet all that intensive, lonely work is in the service of communicating, is an attempt to reach another person. It isn't surprising then, that many writers are neurotic. There is no stage of the writing process that doesn't challenge every aspect of a writer's personality. How well writers deal with those challenges can be critical to survival."
The main obstacle? Rejection. There is so much rejection in a career in the arts that Betsy devotes an entire chapter to it. But it's not the rejection that makes or breaks the artist. The only difference, she explains, between a good writer and a working one - is persistence. Something she constantly reminds her clients.
"Every editor becomes a de facto therapist...When an editor works with an author, she cannot help seeing into the medicine cabinet of [their] soul. All the terrible emotions, the desire for vindication, the paranoia, and the projection are bottled in there, along with all the excesses of envy, desire for revenge, all the hypochondriacal responses, rituals, defenses, and the twin obsessions with sex and money. In other words, the stuff of great books."
Betsy's presentation of the paradoxes within artistic industries and their existential mirrors in the minds of artists offers a refreshing perspective of what it's all about - that the artists "who mattered to you have dared to say I am sick." And because of their courage to express that - we are free from the same fate.
Her last advice?
"Stalk your demons. The more popular culture and the media fail to present the real pathos of our human struggle, the more opportunity there is for [art]. When the [artist] faces it all down and delivers something of beauty, all is forgiven."
What art has inspired you? Would you be the person you are without it?
-F. Redfern
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