ABSTRACT
This chapter moves on from the narrative and provisional outline to writing specimen chapters. It also discusses the important business and personal relationships that one forge with editors and agents as one develop the proposal. Serious writing depends heavily on the quality of the relationships one forge in the process. Some of the closest friends are editors and others in the publishing business. Archaeology, for all its diversity, is still a comparative village in professional and social terms. Time was when editors stayed at the same house for most of their careers, cherished their authors, and edited every line of their manuscripts. Alas, such editors are a dying breed in both the text and trade business, partly because of the prevalence of agents in trade publishing, who now oversee their writer's careers, and also because of the sheer pressure of work thrust upon editorial shoulders.
