Follow-up

[ksmith]

Lots of vitriol posted in comments responding to Josh Olson's rant "I Will Not Read Your F------ Script" But then came this supportive post from David Gerrold:

Josh is being way too polite. The only proper response when an amateur attempts to hand you his manuscript, his screenplay, his unpublished novel, his short story, his treatment, his outline, his notes, is to take an axe to his laptop, follow him home, burn down his house, and salt the ground.

Short form: A friend of his almost lost a job as the result of the simple act of reading an email requesting his aid.

Comments

[editrx.livejournal.com]

It took me a long time to learn my lesson, and if I had a simple reading fee -- no less a real editing fee -- for all the ms., proposals, whatnot I had read/edited for "friends" for free over the years, I could have pretty much paid off half my mortgage by now.

The worst offender I can remember was a professor whose colleague was the partner of a woman who taught me acting back when I was a late teenager -- somehow she got it in her head that she could sic this professor/colleague on me based on shaky connections dating to the 1970s. When I was firm with the professor about not doing this for free, I got the usual umbrage. But worse was how the partner of my old acting teacher reacted -- as if I'd burned down her house and drowned her cat.

Entitlement. They haz it.

(When I say "friends" I don't mean friends, I mean people who think they're friends because they know someone who knows someone who knows me. Sort of knows me.)