I would like to hire an Editor

I am a 76-year-old African-American. I was born in Manhattan, New York in 1940 and I have lived in Richmond since 1969 except for approximately 3 years where I lived in Chicago Illinois from 1975 through 1978 after which I returned to Richmond where I am currently living. Suffice it to say that I have lived a very active life and I have been a highly visible person and personality during my over 40 years of living in Richmond. I have decided to write a memoir which covers many of these years and I have put together a rather hefty chronicle of my life primarily during the years 1957 through 1978. I am currently working to bring my life up to date, i.e. 1978 through the present. I will also have to go back and pick up the years 1940 through 1956 my formative and early teenage years where I lived in Manhattan, New York, Jamaica, New York and Freeport, Long Island New York. As my wife has often told me, I basically write like the trial lawyer that I have been for over 35 years. With this advice, I need to hire an editor to help me to rewrite that part of the memoir I have already completed in less legalistic prose. Also, because of the huge volume of information that I have compiled and have yet to compile, I will need some help in winnowing down this information. I was drawn to your add in Craig’s list primarily because you live as I do in the Richmond area which is important to me because I am interested in occasional face-to-face contact with the person who will be editing my work. I also have the feeling that you are a person who can help me, effectively express my passion were doing things my way which is my basic attitude in life and which some have told me has not always served me well although I feel fairly satisfied with my life even with all of its twists, turns and its ups and downs including my serving 3 years in federal prison for tax problems. This is perhaps my reason for selecting the title to my memoir, “Burned Bridges” because in my advocacy for various and sundry issues and events, I have not always been “warm and fuzzy”. To give you a feel for what I am doing, and if by this time you are still interested, I can send you several pages of outlines that I have developed as well as some of the more than 500 pages I have written in my attempt to put meat on the skeleton. This project may take several months to put it together and complete. Therefore I am interested in negotiating a flat rate rather than an hourly or page rate as is usually done. I should point out that I am not a man of unlimited means. However, I am looking for someone to commit themselves to the project and if we can negotiate a reasonable price for this project and when I mean reasonable one that I feel I can afford and which is fair to you. After you have had an opportunity to look at my very incomplete outline I hope that we can engage in meaningful negotiation to come up with a price that works for both of us. I feel that the book will have some commercial appeal primarily because of the varied and interesting events that I have experienced. If you have an interest, I will send you my outline so that you can get a feel for this project to determine whether you are interested and whether we can reach a price for your services. I look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.