One of my favorite true stories is about a famous writer who got crabby and got his comeupance. It happens to me here all the time.

He replied to a letter where a reader had a question by saying, “I am sick and tired of letters like this that are written just to get my signature.”

The recipient of this nasty note cut his signature out of the letter and sent it back to him.

Served the bastard right!

But answering letters does cost a writer his stock in trade: writing time and effort. It costs him money, but correspondence is also his life’s blood. He needs that feedback. It is worth money to him.

I talked below about discipline. People always ask a writer how to get published, but, like the centurion who has troops who forget to recite, “Throw the pilum first,” you know that the person who comes up to you to ask this is not listening.

You could do endless good by hitting your favorite writers with the Mantra. Take it from me, writers DO look at what you write to them, IF YOU DO IT RIGHT.

Once again, what I have to say is common sense, but few will really hear me.

First of all, writers –- or the assistants who are paid to cull out the obvious spam before it reaches the writer — take about five seconds to dismiss it. If it is long and preachy, out it goes. If it says what has been said, it goes into the “This is another letter about X.” This is not useless, because it goes into the X file, like congressional correspondence. But the writer or congressman is interested in your missive on a purely statistical basis, “One more letter protesting X.”

Enough of those and he will change his stance on X or not write a one-sided piece later. But he will not really READ what you say. You are an important statistic, but a statistic only.

A writer or an editor or the culler instantly recognizes whether your letter is written TO HIM. This is a DISCIPLINE. You have to have read and show interest in the writer’s WRITING or the editor’s MAGAZINE.

Once again, I have explained this obvious point to lots of people, and they promptly forget it when they do the writing. They send out a note about what they are thinking that could be written to anybody. That won’t make it past the culler.

You have to remember that you are writing to a person who PRACTICES writing discipline.

I see my concepts showing up in writers I have written to. More important, it joins the conversation among writers if you make it interesting. Publications remain politically correct, but most writers hate at least some of it. Make what you say interesting IN THEIR WORLD.

What I do is make a SHORT point about something HE wrote, quoting it. Then I might add, “I wish you wouldn’t be so politically correct on the racial stuff. I know it sounds paranoid, but all this “anti-racism seems to me to come down to “Asia for Asians, Africa for the Africans, and white countries for everybody.”

No, don’t explain WHY you said that. The most obvious sign of spam is hammering on how innocent it is.

It is point that bothers you, not spam. Keep it there.

After that short digression, I try to make another point ABOUT HIS WRITING, one that will interest him. This is professional level work. This is WORK and DISCIPLINE. It doesn’t look like spam because it ISN’T.

Don’t try to fool a pro. Any writer you are really INTERESTED in and THINK about can be reached with our message. If all you are really interested in is making that point, he will smell it. That why I specified, “your favorite writers” above.

No, it won’t lead to his getting on his knees and converting. But it has a HUGE effect torchlight parade types cannot see

.

Z is concentrating on my radio broadcasts, and is getting a lot out of them. He asks me to do more.

But it was also Z who EXPLAINED why I don’t:

“As Bob has pointed out, he can’t teach advanced calculus if you don’t know the multiplication tables. Maybe you should go learn the multiplication tables first, before you attend class here? Go to Stormfront and ask these questions, this will only distract us.”

One major reason I don’t do more is because I have to keep reteaching the basics. I am a teacher. I have to keep hammering away at the Mantra, but definitely not because if is fun for me to do so. You think YOU are bored hearing about it? Try it from my end!

It is like a priest who, after forty years of hearing confessions, secretly wishes that SOMEBODY would come up with one novel sin! Every time a lot of comments go by WITHOUT repeating and extending on the BASICS, I have to go back again. There is no way for me to know, by some psychic means, that you really mean to go from the basics.

I have a lifetime of experience fighting from the basic training, and teaching how to do it. I have spent hundreds of hours prepping congressmen and candidates and senators and the rest for critical debates and testimony in important hearings. I have heard, “Yes, Bob, PLEASE don’t say that again, I will REMEMBER that point.” I have then sat there watching C-Span as they missed the opportunity to make the point that would have cinched it. The perfect opportunity is lost.

You’ve been in that position. How many times has somebody said that they will remember something critical to the point where they asked you to stop repeating it, and then totally forgotten it when the crunch came?

The Mantra is just a good example of this. How many times, after ramming the point home, did a Roman centurion listen to a soldier list the steps for battle and forget throwing the pilum?

I am here because I am good at this. I am here because I got PAID for this.

There are a lot more basics than the Mantra. There is “Heresy!” But if you forget the Mantra, you will surely forget the follow-up. Most important, you cannot argue sticking to the LOGIC of the Mantra. When someone gets off on why white countries deserve immigration because of colonialism, you must not answer THAT. You must reply, “You are JUSTIFYING GENOCIDE.”

There is room for though and variation, but it must be VARIATION FROM THE BASICS.

I would LOVE to be able to go on into new things with new broadcasts, but every time you seem to be wandering, I have to go back again. This is not disrespect for you. I have had to do this with everybody right up to President Reagan and my hero and mentor John Ashbrook.

This is why, in Western Civilizations, fields of study are called DISCIPLINES. They are not disciplines in places where an “intellectual” is someone who dribbles nonsense that sounds good. Intellectualism is not free association. In a serious discussion, if you wander off into clichés the way they do in the East, you will be laughed at. That is why, as Back Bay Grouch pointed out, sociology is a joke.

Anyone I think is qualified to be here should be insulted if I let you off the hook.

Many, many times I am ready to write something that interests me and might interest you, but someone is back off a side dribble. So with a deep sigh I go off to bring the wandering sheep back into the fold.

What a good teacher teaches depends on the students. I cannot put in new stuff until you absorb the old and make this a DISCIPLINE.

Tighten it up, gang, and I can have more fun.