Book proposal goes live! (Er, wait a minute!)

Updated Post (January 2025)!

Allow me to bitch. This is an update to the original, happier post below.

The vicissitudes are vicissitudin'.

I recently had to ask my wonderful agent, Leslie, to pull my book proposal from the handful of publishers to which she'd already submitted. Why? Because -- to my surprise and dismay -- my request for a writing sabbatical has been rejected by my university for the second year in a row.

A bit of context. As a prof at a small liberal arts university, I normally teach what's called a 4/4 course load: four classes in the fall, and four in the spring. Classes and family aside, the additional responsibilities of advising students, committee meetings, giving public talks, running a conservation fellowship program, serving on a non-profit board, and more, leave little time to research and write Potomac Creek (what my spouse once termed my "passion project"). The bulk of what I have managed to do to date therefore has been accomplished in summertime. So, from the start, I've baked a sabbatical -- an official release from regular duties to pursue a new project -- into all my plans to complete the manuscript. Absent this "time off," were a publisher to offer a contract, I would find it hard to promise a finished product within a reasonable amount of time -- say, one year. I didn't want to take that risk. I assumed I'd get the sabbatical. Then I got the rejection letter you see here.

No better news, again. (R. Singh)

The sabbatical approval process comprises a faculty review committee and a couple senior university administrators. In 2018, I had no problem getting a sabbatical for research on local private landowners attitudes towards conservation. That project was modest, easy to grasp, and very political science-y. In each of the last two years, however, my Potomac Creek sabbatical proposal has been dinged. (N.B. Some universities, especially large ones, guarantee sabbaticals for faculty every few years, but mine isn't one of them). The published guidelines for what makes a good sabbatical proposal are understandably vague, presumably to accommodate a variety of disciplines. But tangible feedback when one's proposal is turned down is hard to come by. None was provided in this rejection letter. I'm left to wonder why my request is twice denied.

To my mind, this frustrating situation highlights a couple features of the Potomac Creek manuscript

First, it doesn't fit into the rather neat categories we academics look for in each other's work. By design, Potomac Creek crosses many disciplinary boundaries: biology, history, anthropology, politics, music, and more. To me, that's the appeal of the thing. But it also means that there isn't a discrete methodology in a conventional sense, one that would incite head-nods of approval by scholars in a given field. Rather, the manuscript follows my curiosities and whims, often in hard-to-predict ways. Typically, I become interested in how disparate things around the creek are connected, read voraciously, talk to experts, and write about it.

Potomac Creek is also a book intended for a general, nature-friendly audience. Few such readers want the jargon, footnotes, literature reviews, and so on that characterize works academics write for each other. I don't know if by targeting a broader readership I'm hurting my sabbatical proposals. Again, useful feedback is scarce. (My bitter side suggests my next sabbatical proposal should read: "Like scholarly works, the envisioned end product -- a commercially-published book -- is designed to remain mostly unread.") But, in preparing to write my rejected proposals, I diligently read examples of proposals that had recently won approval from my university. In some cases, their work-to-date wasn't as far along as mine. One applicant, for example, received a sabbatical in order to write up the sample chapters necessary to acquire a literary agent, a goalpost I passed over a year ago. What stands out to me in retrospect is that this successful applicant is a humanities professor, someone who might normally be expected to pursue such literary work. A poli sci prof like me, nattering on about Native American history, evolution, birdsong, and the creek where he was raised, is an anomaly.

In any case, I'm now adjusting my spring work schedule to accommodate a new reality. A bit more inflexibility, with less time for students and classes, certainly. Continue research, draft more pages, and submit a better book proposal in the summer. Stay tuned.

______________________________

Here's the original post, published in the optimism of last September:

Summer was as busy as ever. Family visited from afar, teenagers grew tall, and music was played. No great photos of the creek to share, sadly. I barely had time to fish or kayak. But in terms of the Potomac Creek: Portraits of Life on a Southern Farm manuscript, tangible forward progress was made.

A moment to savor: This week, my literary agent will start circulating my book proposal, comprised of a 20-page proposal and three sample chapters, totaling 83 pages.  This may well be the most optimistic stage of the process (although acquiring an agent was rewarding, too). At this sunny pre-departure point, the fluffy white clouds of uncertainty looming over my head show no signs of rain. There are no rejections or disappointments, yet. Luckily, my mind is monopolized by work and entertainments: teaching undergrad courses, running a fellowship, playing and practicing for gigs, watching American football, and, of course, family, with its tae kwon do lessons and little emergencies. (On the latter front, we've had COVID and an emergency appendectomy just in the last week.)

Manuscript-wise, what comes next cannot be known, even by my wonderful agent. But here's a pic of what is -- and that's enough for right now. Steady, incremental progress. Here's hoping a clever publisher with discerning taste opens their email next week and fills in the blanks.

The weather is cooling, day by day. The woods are mostly quiet again. Wish me luck!

 

R. Singh