Several years ago, in the early stages of my editorial staffing business, I answered a call for proposals from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the New York City region's public transportation system. They needed freelance writers who could work on call. Right up our alley, right?

I didn't keep close track (sorry for the pun) of the time we put into it, but it must have taken two weeks to line up and interview writers, get samples from them, and put together a two-inch-thick binder for the MTA's perusal.

Most of the time was spent making sure that every state form was filled out properly — in triplicate. We finished the thing the morning it was supposed to be in and even rode one of their train lines, the Long Island Railroad, to get it there by the 3 p.m. deadline. As we knew to allow for train delays, we made it by 2:45. Three years later, we're still waiting for an answer.

I figure they have long since awarded this contract, but I'd sure like the book back. It was a very nice presentation.

Several weeks ago, I answered a New York State proposal call. This time they needed a writer for a special report on library services. Though the finished product was not as ample as our MTA proposal, it took us a week or so to put it together. We overnighted it: As far as we could determine, it got there in time for the bid opening. I guess we botched that one also, because we're still waiting for an answer.

There's something about bidding I don't understand. It's a heck of a lot of work — and information — for free. This is especially onerous if you prepare large proposals for corporations. I've stopped counting how many went nowhere, while giving a great deal of information to the parties.

When someone asks us for a proposal outlining a marketing strategy for the next six months, we can't exactly say: "You'll see...we'll be great at it." We have to describe a real campaign. Who's to say that the prospective client's marketing person doesn't take this 20-page document and use it as the basis for his or her brilliant scheme? We have no proof, but we have our suspicions. At one prospective client, the marketing person was such a novice we didn't see how he could have done otherwise. How could we tell? He held up an "Introduction to Marketing" book during the meeting and announced that he was almost done with it. We nodded sagely. We never got the gig.

This week we're preparing a proposal for a large company that's looking for an editor/writer for a big writing project — revising 600 pages of technical material. There, the challenge was to come up with the number of hours it would take. We had to guess. Getting a draft out isn't the problem. It's the revisions that triple or quadruple the time.

Proposals are a fact of life when you run your own business. After a while, you get quite good at them, but once in a while you long to just sell something and get paid for it on the spot. Guess I should have been in the hot dog vending business. It's a cash business. You don't have to propose the sauerkraut — they either want it or they don't. Oh, by the way. We got the technical writing project. They wanted the sauerkraut, it turns out.

George Giokas is the president and CEO of StaffWriters Plus, a specialty agency that places writers in temporary and permanent positions with corporate and other employers. It also provides editorial consulting work. His database includes 2,500 writers and editors specializing in more than 60 categories. His Web site is located at www.staffwriters.com, and you can E-mail him at george@staffwriters.com.