Indecent Proposals

I have written three proposals in the last week. Together I think there are fewer than 15 pages, but it feels like I’ve been writing all day, every day just to get those few pages. Heck, two of them are linked and, therefore, repeat sentences with only minor changes–one for a book series and the other for the first book in the series.

I tried to convince myself that the proposal writing was harder than the actual writing. I mean, after all, you have to figure out the structure for the whole thing, project what will fall into each chapter, pretend that you actually know how long the end product will be. I was doing really well believing that till I just tried to write the sample chapters that I should turn in with the proposal. I figured that I’d follow the same kind of logic that my friends have used on their dissertations. They always made official title pages and wrote up acknowledgements long before the text was done.

I figured I’d knock off the Introduction. It’s only 2-3 pages in the model books. So far I think I have one finished paragraph, about 100 words. This brilliance followed by the start of a second paragraph that I don’t think I like and then two throw-away sentences that I’ve copied over and haven’t decided whether to delete yet. Whose idea was it to write a book?

At least I can claim that I figured out RSS feeds this last week too. Who knew how much easier an aggregator would make my life? Actually lots of people (cyberdash, Dr. B, rhetboi, culturecat….). I just wasn’t listening. Thank goodness I’m saving all this time now though. I’d probably have only 50 words in that first paragraph.