After a year and a half of staying home to write, I’ve started venturing back out to a café to get some writing done. I’m again organizing a once-a-week Shut Up & Write session in Alameda and (mostly) I’m happy to get back to this practice.

But, I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that it feels a little like the way I imagine an astronaut might feel when she takes that first space walk. While I eventually got quite comfortable writing in cafés in the pre-pandemic days, it did take me a while to get there and I had to learn a few tricks to make it really workable and productive. Then the pandemic hit, the lockdown began, and I had to re-adjust to writing at home. Now, as I get back to café writing, it once again feels like a foreign environment that I’m not fully prepared to handle.

For one thing, I’ve had to re-assemble my go-bag. In the past, I was so well-prepared for café writing that I kept a backpack or canvas tote ready with all the things I considered essential to get my writing done. It included a paper notebook, a few pens of different types, any notes or  files I needed for my current project, and earphones so I could listen to music and block out ambient noise. All I needed to do was slip my laptop in the bag and I was ready to go.

But over the intervening months, my go-bag was disassembled, and a half-hour before I was supposed to leave for my first Shut Up & Write session, I realized that I had to first remember exactly what it was I needed to bring with me, and then scramble to pull it together.

OK, so go-bag in hand, I’ve been to four SU&W sessions now and I think I’m starting to get the hang of things. We are meeting at a new café, one that has outdoor seating available because in spite of being fully vaccinated, I’m still a bit leery of being indoors as long as the Delta variant of the COVID-19 virus is an issue. When the weather turns cooler, I’ll have to figure out what to do since the indoor seating in this café is limited. There’s also a lot of street noise at this place and my old earphones are not good enough to block it out, so I just invested in a new pair of noise-canceling headphones that I’ll be test-driving at the café later this week.

I’m also remembering what I’ve been missing this past year and a half: The energy you get from sitting with other writers striving to find the right words. The fun of meeting people and hearing a little about their works in progress. The reminder that writing doesn’t have to be an isolating slog. And the way a really good latte can make the words flow just a little bit easier.

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So, having made some successful pitches to book editors last week, I’m now in the position of having to put the final polish on two book proposals.

It. Is. Not. Fun.

And it makes me think that book proposals really do have a lot in common with marriage proposals. In both cases, you tend to go into it a little starry-eyed, thinking “Wow, if I can just get a ‘yes,’ I’ll be soooooo happy!”

But there are more similarities than that.

Let’s face it, both book proposals and marriage proposals are kind of a hard sell. You have to hit the highlights. You have to know how what you’re offering compares to similar options on the market. You have to promote yourself. And you have to do all of that while feigning confidence that you’ll be able to work through any bumps in the road and still deliver something good—probably on a much smaller budget than what you expected.

Probably the main difference between book proposals and marriage proposals is that there’s no way that a book proposal is going to get an immediate yes or no. Once you send it in, you need to prepare yourself to wait. And wait. And wait. Weeks will go by. Sometimes, months will go by. Earlier this year I got a rejection from a publisher that I had submitted a proposal to so many months earlier that I had completely forgotten I’d sent it to them. That did help take the sting out of it—at least a little bit.

There is one other important difference between book proposals and marriage proposals. With book proposals, it’s a good idea—a really good idea—to have more than one proposal to shop around. I have three proposals for three very different books. I would be happy to do any one of them and I hope eventually that I can write and publish all three books, even if it means self-publishing.

But for now, I’m focusing on making these two proposals as good as I can make them right now and sending them on their way. Because in the end, whether you’re proposing a book or a marriage, all you can do is give it your very best effort.
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And, for god’s sake, remember to spell-check!