Proposals

In the past week I have had four people ask me to review their book proposals, or help to design and contour the same. Actually, this is one of my life joys, and I like helping people find a publisher for their work.

The difficulty always comes on the other end, however, which is preparing people for the greater possibility that their proposal will be rejected or, at the minimum, that the entire process will take so long that they will wake up one morning and discover they have grandchildren long before a publisher ever offers an answer to their submission.

That's why I have learned that proposals need to be like fleas, or like cherry tomatoes. As soon as I write one proposal, I have two others that I am working on. Currently, I have no less than six proposals winging flight around the publishing world. Some of these proposals are just quickie ideas that I write up in a fortnight and email to editors I know (or think I know). Others are full-blown behemoths of sixty or seventy pages, with footnotes and explanatory sections, all designed to grab the attention of some unsuspecting publisher or editor.

But since I can't write better than most, I've learned that I have to out-produce the bulk of the writers out there. It's the scope of my imagination and interests that are important.

Toward that end, I am hoping to work all day today (another Friday at home) on a proposal of some magnificent scope that will eventually find a home . . . somewhere over the rainbow.