“Stella Parks on Writing Proposals” 
Town Branch p. 118
https://vimeo.com/103938666

STELLA PARKS: Yea, when, with the proposal I did, um, I started out with an outline, and, uh, the different components in the outline changed, but we just kind of worked through it one point at a time, um, and part of I think my difficulty initially writing the proposal is I didn’t really know what kind of book I wanted to write because I didn’t want to write a book. Um, it was like a homework assignment, you know, someone’s like “You should write a book, so you should write a proposal, so go do that for me real quick.” And then just realizing like, ok, so what is it, so once I figured out what I wanted the book to be, writing the proposal was a lot easier, so the first section, um, that I wrote was actually the introduction, but I was able to use that space and that time to really figure out what it was I wanted the book to be, uh, and work my way through that. 

And then once I understood that, then it was just kind of a matter of knocking out which components were necessary, like, well, someone’s gonna be reading this, and after they’re like “Oh this is a great idea for a book, who the hell’s this girl?” So I had to write a section about me, and like why I was interesting and why I was worth um, telling, being the author to tell this story, and that was really hard because you have to really blow yourself up, and I’m not good at that. Um I’ve gotten better because I’ve had to be, but it’s really hard telling someone, “I’m actually the most awesome person you’ll ever meet, and I am the most qualified human in the universe to write this book, and here’s why” uh, is really tough uh if you’re not that kind of personality to like pat yourself on the back. Um, and I went through several attempts of that where my agent’s like “This is so tepid, like you have to be really excited about yourself” and that was really hard to do, I’m not very excited about myself. I’m excited about baking, I’m excited about food, but it’s really hard to toot your own horn like that. 

Um, so I kind of had to figure out how to do that, and then, um, there’s another section in it about people that I might be able to get to do a blurb for the book, and so then realizing all the people I’m connected to that I might have to go knock on their door someday and ask them to say something nice about me, and so kind of like sorting through that, ok, like “Who can I go to, and who is worth going to, and um who are people that might be too obscure, like I respect them as a chef but the world doesn’t know who they are, people who, maybe they’re not super close to me, but I do know them, and I could ask, even if it would be awkward” and kind of sorting out those sorts of people. Like, a lot of it’s just planning instead of writing, and so that part was also very difficult for me because I’d rather just be writing instead of writing a business plan, which is really what it is, so.