One Year, 50 Pages. Why Book Proposals Are Worth the Trouble.
Having just introduced this site in December, on the occasion of the publication of my last book, I've only been able to speak about writing in the past tense. But this past weekend, as I tweaked a proposal for a new collaboration, I thought it might be interesting to spend a little time in the future tense and share a bit about the great unknown for a writer like myself who primarily makes his living in the book world... the next project.
For about a year now, in addition to gearing up for my own next solo effort (more about that in a few weeks), I've been engaged in an ongoing dialogue with Paul Liebrandt, the wildly talented chef of Corton restaurant in TriBeCa, about writing a book together. Usually proposals come together much more quickly for me, but this was a unique relationship because unlike the other chefs I've worked with--most of whom I'd known pretty well socially before we became business partners--Paul and I had never met until a mutual friend took me to dinner at Corton for the purpose making a literary match and sending us off down the book path together. (It also took a while because we connected while I was barreling down the homestretch of penning Knives at Dawn, so meetings were few and far between at the outset.)
In the Dining Room at Corton with Paul Liebrandt
(photo copyright 2010 by Andrew Friedman)
Following that fateful evening, Paul and I began a series of get-togethers geared toward figuring out what the book might be. It's one of my favorite parts of my job, for reasons best explained by that classic line from Stephen Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George: "White, a blank page or canvas. His favorite. So many possibilities." When you first start brainstorming, there are no boundaries, no rules about where the process might take you. My personal MO is to encourage the chef I'm working with to get all the ideas he wants to examine, all the advice, opinions, and stories he has to offer, on the table and then devise a concept that will serve as the tree from which all those ideas can protrude like so many branches.
We started out by meeting in the food-book section of the Union Square Barnes and Noble, leafing through everything from picture-less memoirs to visually stunning coffee table tomes. It was a useful crash course in each other's likes and dislikes and a chance for me to begin to understand who Paul was, both as a chef and a person. Best of all, it was immediately apparent that the guy has the one thing I can't manufacture for a collaborator: A point of view, and not just about The Food (I cap it like that because that's the way he talks about it--as the focus of some sort of eternal, existential quest) but also about what it takes to succeed in the kitchen; Paul came up working in some of the best kitchens in London (L'Escargot, Marco Pierre White) and those experiences were intensely formative, as was the transformative year he spent working for Pierre Gagnaire in Paris.
We then sat down and engaged in a number of long, Inside the Actor's Studio-type interviews where Paul took me through his life from earliest childhood up through Corton. It might sound precious or artsy-fartsy, but I approach writing "in voice" the same way certain actors approach their roles--total immersion. My goal is to get to a point where I can sit down and get lost in the character of the chef, writing the way he or she might were they sitting at the computer. (Despite all the effort that goes into it, it's not always easy to get to that place. For some reason, I find it easiest when I'm closest to being unconscious--either just before turning in at night or--better--immediately after waking in the morning. For better or for worse, my best, longest stretches tend to come during bouts of insomnia.)
After that, periodically, Paul and I would sit down, often in the dining room of Corton at midday (they don't serve lunch) and brainstorm, eventually hitting on the concept and then interviewing further to really drill down into it. I can't flip all the cards and reveal exactly what that concept is just yet, but it might surprise you to know that although there will be recipes in the book, it is decidedly not a cookbook.
