Chapter Four
Writing Samples
Excerpt from book proposal for a political memoir:
At the height of the Watergate impeachment hearings, I was practically knocked over, as I started to climb a White House stairwell, by an unshaven, wild-eyed Richard Nixon , who had bolted out of the Oval office and was
racing frantically - body hunched, fists clenched - to his secluded hideaway in the Executive Office Building.
Seconds later, a half-dozen athletic young men - his secret service
detail - leaped over me in frantic pursuit. I can still see the hollow stare
in Nixon's eyes as he lurched past me. It's one of the memories that came back
most vividly as I went over my notes for this book.
Excerpt from book proposal for a memoir:
Practically every player in the National Basketball Association today has fathered a child out of wedlock. The sports pages are filled with stories of mounting paternity suits and child support payments. Back in the old
days, before DNA testing, paternity could be denied by celebrity ball
players rich enough to pay for the best legal defense money could buy.
I know. My son's father - a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame and one
of the "National Basketball Association's 50 Greatest Players of All Time" -
has never acknowledged his paternity.
This book is the story of a 1971 romance that resulted in both the birth
of a child and a court ruling that the romance and the birth had nothing to
do with each other. It's the story of a basketball player who fought every
bit as hard in court as he did on the court, treating the mother of his
child much the way he would an opponent during playoffs - and winning just
as handily. It is the story of an emotionally and financially pressed woman
fighting to be heard in a judicial system drunk with the celebrity of a
famous professional athlete.
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Excerpt from self-help book proposal:
Retirement, it has been said, is the lifestyle change with the highest failure rate. That may be because life not only doesn't prepare us for retirement; it actually conditions us not to be able to adjust to it.
After decades of living with clearly defined goals and schedules, retirees are suddenly set loose in a situation in which time, space, and activity are not prescribed, and told they are now "free" to choose what they wish to do, where they wish to go, and what their new mission in life should be. Stereotypes about aging (sickness, dependency) intensify the anxiety engendered by this new found "freedom," as does the fact that it occurs at the end of a period usually referred to as "the productive years.”
Excerpt from a technical book proposal:
The oral dependency need, first seen in infancy, is the most important emotional need in our lives. It is the need to be cared for, to be valued, to be the center of favorable attention and to experience no displeasure. In
infancy, the need is gratified by being fed, being held, being comforted.
Small talk can fill that same need later in life. When someone talks and
someone else listens, the person talking is the center of attention, the
focus of concern. By listening attentively, the listener is conveying the
message: “I recognize your importance, care enough about you and value you
enough to make you the very center of my attention at this moment.”
Excerpt from critique of contemporary novel:
One of my guiding principles is: Beware the hero who travels. When a main character begins madly rushing around all over the place, here and there - in a helicopter even! – it’s usually a sign the author is not sure where he’s going.
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