“DARE TO BE GREAT!” — by Steve Nadis
Yesterday, I had a long conversation with a “prominent New York literary agent” (is there any other kind?) about my book proposal. He let me know that the proposal was fine as that sort of thing goes, and even contained stretches of excellent writing, but he was looking for something bigger, grander, more inspired. “Dare to be great!” he implored.
That’s fine advice, and I really have no quarrel with it. But what if that’s not you? What if you’re not cut out for greatness? (My name, in case you haven’t noticed, is not Muhammad Ali.) What if you’re more of a middling, middle-of-the-road kind of person? What then? That is exactly the dilemma I face today as a pore over the shambles of my adequate, perfunctory, humdrum book synopsis.
Posted by
at
14:52:58
… you could always change your name to Muhammad Ali. But poltically, I don’t think that would help book sales.
A catchier book title… add ’sex’ in there… Sure-fire.
Excellent advice MP & GS. Maybe I’ll call it “Sex in the City.” Oh yeah, I think that’s taken. How about “Abstinence in the Suburbs”?
Ask him to define “great”. It means very different things to different people. Does he mean longer, more pictures, more controversy, less controversy, more chapters, shorter chapters, longer chapters, different viewpoint, different organization? He didn’t wave his arms around when he said “dare to be great” did he? Cuz that’s bad news. REAL bad news. Cuz then it’s like porn. He can’t define it, but he knows it when he sees it. Which still leaves you clueless.
You’ve hit it on the head, all right, OR. Clueless is the right word.
Is he a Republican?
I don’t know his politics. But he seems pretty smart, so I doubt it.