I first met such a person a few years ago. I don’t know how he got my phone number but he did. He phoned me and said he had a manuscript and would be bringing it to me in Mahalapye so I could read it. I should give him my address. At the time, I was the vice chair person of the Writers Association of Botswana (WABO) and he assumed that meant this was part of my job. I explained to him that it was not and described how he should try to submit his manuscript to publishers. I also went on to explain how he might do it and gave him a few names of people he could contact. No, he said, all publishers were crooks. He’d already complained to the Office of the President about that situation.
Then he went on to insult me. When I stopped answering his phone calls, he emailed his insults. And then he went online and announced, in a public forum, that the reason I had so many published books was because I was hoarding all of the perks I got from being the vice chairperson of WABO. Little did he know, I’d have likely had more books published if I hadn’t put so much of my energy and money into that organisation, but that’s another story. I spent numerous days steaming about this man. Hours I could have been writing, I would spend drafting letters to him I would never send. This fed into a cycle in which I was now angry because the person made me so upset I could no longer concentrate, was no longer able to work, and so I lost even more time to him.
