My doctor brother and I had the same problem at parties. People would tell him their symptoms and want a free diagnoses, which is not what my brother was at a party to do. As a writer, I had an endless string of people asking me about this book idea they had. Usually an autobiography.

My brother’s standard reply was, “Call my office.”

I found one that was equally effective. I would say “Hundreds of people at parties have asked me about writing their book. I tell you what you do. You WRITE the explanation and SEND it to me, and I will give you the best advice I can.”

Out of hundreds of requests, in twenty years or so I got exactly ONE written piece of paper. I was impressed, gave him some really good advice, and never heard from him again.

I have been out here a long, long time. Every initiative of mine that has worked, there were a hundred that– you couldn’t even call it Failed — but went down without a ripple.

My BUGS approach asks a LOT of you. The Stormfront “Here’s a place to bitch, send money” is infinitely more practical.

Stormfront was hard. BUGS is impossible.

Getting people to send money either works or not, but it takes a lot of dedication and effort. The people who founded SF could have made a LOT more money elsewhere.

Getting people not to just send money, but actually to DO something is an effort that no one but a lunatic fanatic like me would stay with. A good TOO type could spend a week explaining why this can’t work.

I expected the present result. I got a lot of chatter about that article somebody is going to do. But they don’t want me to just publish it without looking at it.

Fat chance, dumbo!

What they mean is that writing it down exposes them. I know that. It takes a LOT of cajones to send anybody a DRAFT.

It’s is one hell of a lot easier, a hundred times easier, no matter how broke you say you are, to send in a twenty dollar check than it is to put one effort into cold print and put it in front of me.

It has to be WRITTEN, it has to be SENT and you have to face the music.

No one will remember this, but I am not interested in your grammar or spelling or sentence structure. I am a professional rewriter. If I find an idea in there I will help you express it.

If you want to really piss a professional writer off, take something he asks you to read over and explain the grammar and spelling you corrected. He is giving it to you to READ. He is in murderously competitive market and he wants to know if it WORKS.

So get up some guts, spend twenty minutes and get it down and TO me. Screw the spell check.

DO it.