Guess what: Editors don't lug home hundreds of pounds of manuscripts to read each year because they aren't looking for good writing. They won't take calls, they don't offer feedback-sometimes they don't respond to queries at all.
To writers, particularly unpublished ones, editors can seem imposing figures determined to thwart their success. "Like shrinks," she says, editors "have a privileged and exclusive view into a writer's psyche, from the ecstasy of acquisition to the agony of the remainder table." Like all experienced editors, Lerner has seen writers at their best, and at their worst. There are so many books by writers and agents promising to disclose what editors really want here, finally, is one straight from the source. In The Forest for the Trees, Lerner reflects on writing and publishing from an editor's point of view.
How rare and wonderful it must have been to have such an advocate, advisor, and, yes, admirer so firmly ensconced in publisher territory (at various times, Houghton Mifflin, Ballantine, Simon & Schuster, and Doubleday). But too bad for them: In gaining her as an agent, they lost her as an editor. Oh, sure, Lerner must be a fabulous agent.
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