Hi everyone! Below is what Roger wrote (in bold) on Elance as a new bid, nonetheless, after I sent him a link to read my response. I will also include my comments to him here.

Dear Tiffany: Thank you for reading my comments and for your rapid response. It is quite rare on these writing-for-hire sites that an employer responds so quickly. Many employers do not respond for weeks after the bid process closes, so your response was refreshing.

I’m so glad it met with your approval. I’m absolutely SHOCKED that more clients don’t respond to your extreme wisdom.

I am sincerely sorry your feelings were hurt. My intention was to get a response that would be focussed on what your intentions were and what you really wanted to do. It is not easy to write and attempt to publish anything, and I well understand how you must be frightened after reading the volumes of comments on your blog. If writing were as easy as blogging zippy one liners I doubt you would have posted a request for proposal at all.

That’s just it – I’m NOT frightened anymore at all. But I was in the past – and it was because of snobs like you. When I first read the above paragraph, I thought I was actually going to feel like a sincere apology had been given (I was unaware you didn’t know the meaning of the word), that maybe your attempt at being cute and cunning was just an accidental fail. Unfortunately, I read the rest of your reply.

Now all of that aside, you never did answer any of the questions that I asked. I did not ask them of you to “knock you down”, but to confirm for whom I might be writing. I assumed you were a very young person, and that much is now clear.

No you didn’t. You don’t ask someone how much time they spend on Facebook to get specs for the client unless it was a plot twist – you did it to sound superior, to let me know that you slave away at your craft instead of spending time on social networking (nice MySpace page by the way).  Nice additional jab about immaturity. I’d much rather be young at heart and full of possibilities than a shrivel-hearted, bitter man like you.

Your RFP stated in the second sentence that you “want to try something the way James Patterson tries it – outsource a draft of a fction story to a ghostwriter….” Now, that isn’t really writing is it? Truthfully, don’t you think outsourcing creativity and than laying claim to authorship is, well, something else again? You also claim to “hate thieves of words”, yet you want to be the chief architect of the heist?

Actually I said I wanted to outsource a 10 page story. And then I was going to take the starting point and turn it into a novel, so yes, Roger Snootybury, it is writing. But not to someone of such “high caliber” as you, oh no! A thief of words doesn’t pay for those words, now do they? No, they steal them. I would think as a prolific writer, even YOU would know the difference in that. Why do you bother having a profile as a freelance GHOSTWRITER when it irks you so bad that someone may actually want a freelance ghostwriter to do the job, get paid, and that’s it? Were you confused by the term? Do we need to educate you on what ghostwriting entails?

You know, your blog comments show you know how to write in at least the chatroom. I’ll bet you can write perfectly well on your own, and I’ll bet you can even write perfectly well in the first person. Be patient with yourself and just go ahead and do it.

I know how to write really well, actually – and I don’t need your condescending phony support to know this. The people here? Those who commented on the other post? Those are the people who lifted me up and helped me get there. You think you’ll ever mentor anyone? Who would want to go into any sort of dialogue with you? It would be like a horror movie unfolding to have any sort of conversation with you. I may have to sleep with a nightlight tonight just having this little interaction with you.

I had thought there might actually be a collaberation with you on this project. Unfortunately in attempting to get your attention early in the process, you chose to insist that I was picking on you and you decided to go very public in your own private arena, being the victim.

No you didn’t. You knew damn well you wouldn’t get hired. You chose that proposal to vent and rant about the injustices you see in the freelance world because you’re a writing snob. Someone wanted to pay for some content and then put their name on it (you ignored the fact that I did NOT ask you for an entire novel but simply a short start). I chose here to respond to you specifically Elance is NOT the correct place to take rants and arguments. You showed very poor character doing that. That’s a business exchange platform.

Since you did use the image of a “room full of rejection letters” (or words to that effect, I assume you know that the world is a tough place and we are never all things to all people. Your response to me was in your own little world where you control what you write, and what anyone else writes, too. You control the eraser on your own blackboard and if you don’t like someone else you can attack, reattack, and snipe, and most likely delete any comment you don’t care for, to your heart’s content.

I don’t have a room full of rejection letters. I also don’t see it as a badge of honor or a rite of passage like you do. It’s ironic that you think this is in my own little world. I put myself out there far more than you do, judging by what myself and the others found about you online. I share my successes, my failures, and my struggles so that they can help other people when they encounter an obstacle – like you – in their path. I don’t delete people’s comments that don’t agree with me – you could respond right here if you want to, but you won’t.

Perhaps it makes you feel good to do that. Empowered is the term, I guess.

I don’t need to feel empowered with a blog post. I feel empowered anyway.

But in the end it doesn’t get your fiction written either by you, or anyone else. Does it?

Sure doesn’t. But I already started writing my novel last night before you ever bid because I didn’t like what I was seeing in the bids. My goal in posting your idiotic comments was to show my loyal followers – who I help constantly – learn that there are complete assholes out there who think really highly of themselves but are nothing in the scheme of things – who will try to bring them down.

You are disgusting responding to anyone you don’t know like that online in a business proposal. If you had happened to post that to a fragile person, they may have given up. Wouldn’t you just be SO proud of yourself at that point? Oh the bragging you could do to colleagues, letting them know you prevented a world crisis by disarming a potentially creative writer.

I would still like to discuss your project with you. If you can have a conversation here, on THIS site, as a professional writer.

Roger M. Woodbury

Roger, there’s not one iota of professionalism in you. I promise you that.

Good luck – because with a mindset like yours, you will definitely need it.

Tiff

P.S. Thanks to my friend Vinnie for putting it so perfectly. Roger, this is you. Just a complete blowhard:

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