The Forest for the Trees: An Editor's Advice to Writers (original 2000; edition 2000)

A straightforward, honest, intelligent, and useful look at the business of writing from an editor's view. Not really a "how-to" guide, it is both informative and entertaining. An extremely helpful book for writers. ( )

Great advice for writers on everything from inspiration and craft to managing the publication process and handling crippling doubt. It's also full of wonderful anecdotes about literary and publishing history, and the bibliography alone, a treasure trove of writerly wisdom, is worth the price. ( )

This book surprised me on many levels. I bought it and expected a dry yet useful commentary on the publishing industry and what writers must do to survive. Instead, I discovered something that was highly readable--as smooth as fiction--and comparable to someone taking a writer by the hand to offer them advice. The Forest for the Trees is a gentle book. Lerner's approach is that she understands writers, with all their angst, writer's block, and depression, and that it takes more than talent to succeed in the business. She's blunt in her assessment of the rapid changes in the industry and that publishers never know what will be a hit or not. It's nice to see the viewpoint of someone with experience as an editor and an agent; the information is familiar from other writing and author blogs and books, but the angle is different and appreciated.

It's a useful read, but I admit it didn't resonate with me as much as Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. Still, it's a solid read and a recommended book for any writer who is just starting out or has become disillusioned along the way. ( )

This is an enjoyable, engrossing and unfailingly interesting book. The author is an experienced editor who is distilling her years of working with writers into a book about the editing and publishing process. Early chapters are about different types of writers she has encountered and how they get (or don't get) their writing done. Later ones are about different facets of the publishing process, leading inexorably towards the moment when the accepted, edited, jacketed, marketed, sold and distributed book sees the light of day. Her writing is economical and marked with deep insight into and respect for the creative process, and the mysterious synergy that is successful editing. At the same time she isn't mealy-mouthed; you are left in no doubt that some agents, editors and writers are creeps of the first order. Her literary preferences and judgements are clearly expressed and occasionally trenchant.

From her account of the publishing process, I get this sense of potential books swimming upstream like salmon to spawn, of which many get eaten, or just end up dead in the water. Yet amid the Darwinian carnage authors do get discovered and books do get published, because enough agents, editors, publishers and sales staff continue to care about writing.

Does what it says on the tin, and does it well. Some of the book is perhaps a touch dated, but most of the advice surely still holds. Lerner advises gently and with a reassuring air of authority. Not really a "how to" book, but rather a meditation on things to keep in mind during the writing, submitting, and publishing process. ( )