HOW TO WRITE BOOK PROPOSALS LIKE JEAN-PAUL SARTRE by William Cane

Biographers of Sartre have universally acknowledged that he was a multi-talented writer who wrote philosophy, fiction, nonfiction, and drama. They have also pointed out that he had two secrets which few other writers used in their career with such success. His first secret was an unlikely one. In a word it was Simone de Beauvoir, his long-time lover.

HOW TO USE A FRIEND AS A COLLABORATOR

Simone de Beauvoir constantly critiqued Sartre’s work. In fact she claimed she wrote large portions of Being and Nothingness. Sartre got all the credit, but there is no doubt that she helped him in many ways. According to biographer Annie Cohen-Solal, Beauvoir “provides Sartre with daily support; he never publishes a manuscript that has not first passed through her hands, that has not first been criticized and approved by her.” (Sartre: A Life, p. 378.)

You don’t have to rely so completely upon a collaborator as Sartre relied upon Beauvoir, but having someone to bounce ideas off of can certainly be helpful. It can make your book proposal easier to write because you’ll get immediate feedback. I recommend asking a friend or business associate to read over your work before you send it to a literary agent.

SARTRE’S SECOND SECRET

Sartre’s second secret can be even more helpful to a writer working on a book proposal. Remember that your book proposal will never be read by anyone except your literary agent, editor, and the in-house team at the publisher. It will never be published. Also, it is not your book, it is simply a description of your book and its market. For this reason, writers are not usually very enthusiastic about book proposals. They often feel ambivalent about them.

“It’s not my best work,” they say to themselves. “I feel like I’m wasting my time when I work on it. I wish I could just work on my book, not on this #@!^&* book proposal.”

That feeling is understandable and universal, but look what Sartre did. In many of his books he wrote horrid prose. It was his ideas that electrified the world. The prose he used in Being and Nothingness, for example, is often convoluted and turgid. It does not flow, it is awkward, and it sounds horrible when read aloud.

Sartre’s secret was that he wrote it anyway, as the ideas came into his head, putting them down on paper like a bricklayer constructing a wall. Brick by brick, word by word, with hardly a thought as to style, meter, music or beauty. The ideas were the beautiful thing. And that is his secret. Forget trying to write beautiful prose. Put aside your poetic nature. Roll up your sleeves and plunge right in, writing the ideas that you find meaningful and important.

SARTRE’S STYLE

Sartre would typically sit in cafes and write. Often he was distracted by chatter from other patrons and the noise of traffic. A lot of this crept into Being and Nothingness. Many of his anecdotes, for example, are set in a cafe, and he constantly writes about waiters. Because of these distractions, he often wrote sentences that would make a composition teacher cry -- really pitiful prose. But he always managed to come up with some brilliant ideas. And this should be your approach to the book proposal. Don’t focus on style, focus on ideas. That philosophy will set you free. Then when you finally do get a contract, you can slow down and take your time, making sure the book sounds much better than the book proposal.

SARTRE’S BOOK PROPOSAL

Sartre had a third secret for writing a book proposal, but it’s not one I would recommend. He was working on a proposal for a book about the human imagination, and he decided to investigate the hallucinating mind. In order to do this he wanted to try mescalin. Instead of smoking it like most people, he had a doctor inject it into his arm. He promptly had a bad trip and concluded that the experiment didn’t work for him. (Cohen-Solal, p. 102.)

It’s heartening, though, to think that Jean-Paul Sartre also worked on book proposals, isn’t it? And it’s good to know he used two techniques that helped him with the process: working with a collaborator or critic, and writing for the idea not for the style. By using these two secrets you’ll find that your work on a book proposal goes much faster and is completed in record time.