This analogy holds for proposals of many kinds.

You want to say, I have a cooked chicken, leftover rice, and soy sauce in the fridge, but I need a pot to make some fried rice, which by the way will taste so good you'll want to come over and have some -- 100 of my friends always do.

You don't want to say, I'm hungry, and I know how to cook, so give me some money for a trip to the store and I'll figure out a meal -- trust me.

Publicizing Um on Wordsmith.org's author chat - read the transcript.

The writer's life today (or, why I want to write for video games):

Instead of accepting the industry’s turmoil as a given, then, some young writers and editors are just shrugging their shoulders and giving up on it before it gives up on them.

Like horses.

One of the books I love the most is Toolbox by a Mexican poet, Fabio Morábito, which was translated from Cajas de herramientas by Geoff Hargreaves. This is the first paragraph of chapter about "oil":

Oil is water that has lost its get up and go, its cheeky forward drive. Having exhausted all its routes, it's discovered treading over ground it trod before. It is water that has turned its back on the world. It is de trop. It has forfeited its old rights of way across the floor and now has to step to one side of favor of fluids younger and grander. It is luxury water, which after so much flowing has felt the weight of experience, maybe bitter experience. it's as if it had other water at its service; hence its sumptuousness, not far from prostration, for where there is sumptuousness, there's always somebody on his knees, tied with bonds.