Grumbles from the Grave (18 page)

(95)

Robert and Virginia on the set of "Destination Moon," 1949. Heinlein wrote the script based on his story in
ShortStories
magazine, September 1950.

September 3, 1957: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

I want to hold up for a little while in changing Hollywood agents. I still think that MCA is not the place for me to get personal attention but a recent incident makes it polite, at least, to delay: at 1200 26 August, Hal Flanders of Ned Brown's office phoned me and offered me a Hollywood writing job doing a screen treatment of Herman Wouk's
The Lomokome Papers.
I turned down the job—I don't really want to write screen stories of anyone's work but my own, and this particular story
cannot
be repaired into an honest science fiction story anyhow; it is a philosophical tract packaged as a fantasy. Furthermore, I hope my decision will not disappoint you when I point out that the source of the work is such that we could hardly expect MCA to split the fee—and I prefer to stay under your management and writing for the New York market rather than become a Hollywood trained seal. In any case, I could not finish the novel, do this job, and sail on 26 November. But I did find the offer pleasing. . . .

November 16, 1961: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

There will be a veritable spate of new Heinlein stories before this winter is over. Our bomb shelter is completed and stocked—and the durn thing was enormously more expensive than I had figured on when I started it. Now I have a couple of weeks of chores to clean up, including a big backlog of correspondence, filing, record keeping, etc.; then I shall apply the nose to this grindstone and keep it there all winter.

August 10, 1963: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

This fall I might do about 10,000 words for
Boys' Life
(query them if you like), or write the last story of the Future History [see
The Past Through Tomorrow
in Chapter XI, "Adult Novels"],
Da Capo
(piles of notes on it but it has never quite jelled)—or possibly a new novel. Or perhaps all three in the order named. But that is a good many weeks away.

Re Scribner's: We might offer ---- something someday—but only if Putnam's turns down a book.

April 17, 1964: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

I have spent the past month on (a) flu, (b) reading several hundred pounds of accumulated magazines and technical reports, and (c) correspondence. The latter two are things I am endlessly behind on, always. There is no solution to the problem of trying to keep up with the ever-expanding frontier of science and technology, plus the world in general; I simply do the best I can, falling further behind each year, especially in electronics, biochemistry, and space travel technology. But I have made, implemented, and am keeping a good resolution concerning correspondence: I now answer almost all letters simply with postcards—a letter has to be really important
to me
to cause me to answer it by a real letter. The saving in time is very marked.

I will probably not write another story or book until after I learn whether or not I will have to go back to Hollywood this summer. And there is endless maintenance work to be done around this place. Today I got back to pick and shovel for the first time: cleaning some tons of silt out of my middle irrigation pool . . . silt from a flood clear back in September or earlier. Monday I expect to start on concrete work, repairing the lowest dam, if the weather holds. This has been a cold, very late spring. Ginny has just started on her garden work; it has been too cold up to now. There is still some snow on the mountain above us and it snowed down here only eight days ago.

June 23, 1967: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

I am very anxious to get back to writing, including new copy for the proposed boy scout book—and I've just had a very pleasant, long letter from ---- telling me that ---- has again raised their rates . . . and that he would expect to pay me a still higher bonus rate if I'll ever come through with copy. But, Lurton, I've never worked any harder in my life than right now and it is utterly impossible for me to turn out fiction until I get this [Santa Cruz] house finished. Every time I turn my back something goes wrong. The cabinet and finish work is slowly (and very expensively) being finished. After that we still have the floors, ceilings, and fireplaces to do, plus the driveway, the front steps, and some exterior painting. It feels like an endless nightmare and the costs are utterly unbelievable. But there is no way to stop—short of being forced to stop by running out of money. Which is possible, despite the way you have been digging gold for us.

Sorry—I'm simply very tired tonight, up to midnight last night on the drawing board, on it again today under pressure so that the cabinetmakers could take a bunch of detail drawings home over the weekend . . . and now writing this under pressure so as not to miss the next mail dispatch. But we
are
getting a beautiful house just the way Ginny wants it.

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Heinlein working at his desk, at "Bonny Doon," the Santa Cruz house.

September 16, 1973: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

. . . In the meantime, I am hotter than a $2 pistol on
three
books. One is fiction and will be a long time in writing, as I must do much research on the history and culture and manners of speech of several periods I do not as yet know enough about. It will be an episodic time-travel fantasy (with a new gimmick for time travel), each episode independent and available for sale as a short story as it is written, but the whole thing linked together by an overall plot which will make it a novel of book length—somewhat the way [Paul] Gallico's "Adventures of Hiram Holiday" make one book—but nothing at all like Gallico's fine job save in its episodic structure. (I am going to reread his in order to stay as far away from his ideas as possible in all ways.) I have several episodes well worked out but each needs careful research—probably after a draft on each, then a final form after research; this will take lots of work. (I may turn out a juvenile sci fi adventure of the sort I used to do long before this episodic fantasy is completed.)

The second book is a memoirs-autobiography job to be published posthumously—and left uncopyrighted till then (hence of zero cash value in probate)—as a little bonus to Ginny for all the years she has put up with my cantankerous ways. If published about a year after my death it should bring her some return . . . if I am still writing and my works are still known at the time of my death. If I get it in fair shape, you may possibly see a draft of it later—depends on events. I have been gathering notes for such a book for many years and have recently started shaping them up . . . especially since 1969, which caused me to realize that I didn't have forever if it were to be a vendable property. Working title:
Grumbles from the Grave by Robert A. Heinlein (deceased).
(It's amazing how frank and how acidly funny one can be when one is certain it will never see print until the writer is safely out of reach. I'll name names—then Ginny will have to edit it with the advice of a good lawyer to insure that she is safe, too—then no doubt the publisher's lawyers will want some names deleted or changed, too. But I am going to write it as if with a Ouija board. It will be easy to write—lots of notes, lots of pack-rat-saved souvenirs, more than fifty years of letters, many things I have never discussed—e.g., the frontline seat I had in the crisis many years back with Japan, before World War II—a crisis involving a war ultimatum that never got into the news . . . plus a Secret Life of (Walter Mitty) Heinlein, etc. I'm working on it.

But the third book will be written and finished for publication as soon as I am free of taking care of Ginny through this long, long siege of oral surgery. I have it in shape to start writing this very minute but will have many, many more card notes by that time—shortly after the first of the year. Working title:
Writing for a Living (and How to Live Through It)—Being the Ungarnished Facts about the Writing Racket for People Too Lazy to Dig Ditches.
The first part—
Writing for a Living
—is for the cover and the half-title page, the entire title being for the full-title page—although the book jacket might read
Writing for a Living
in large letters, plus
The Ungarnished Facts
in much smaller letters, plus my name in quite large letters—same size as the short title, or even larger, if publisher's judgment in dust jackets of my last several books is a guide. Besides that, for use on the inner flap and on the back of the dust jacket, and as title of the preface Ginny has suggested and is preparing a Latin fake quotation: "De Natura Scribendi etc.," a free translation being "Concerning the Nature of the Writing Business and How Not to Get Screwed in It." Ginny's command of Latin grammar is good and she knows many Latin bawdy idioms . . . but she will write it, then enlist the help of a professor of Latin here at the campus to insure perfect grammar and exact idiom—and a choice of words as nearly self-translating as possible by selection of proper cognates of English. I'm probably attribute it to Juvenal or Ovid, as interpreted by Lazarus Long.

(It could have a How to Write for Money title—but I think that "How to—" has been overworked of late years.)

A somewhat-laundered translation could be used in the dust jacket blurb (and possibly an exact translation supplied to reviewers), but the Latin itself must be idiomatically perfect. In truth it will be a most practical guide for inexperienced aspirants who are wild to do the—comparatively mild—and rather fun work that writing entails. I am going to make it extremely practical—more practical than Jack Woodford's
How to Write and Sell
(his only good book, his only bestseller, and the basis for 90%+ of his reputation)—but I intend to make it lively, hard to put down as a good novel by any of the millions of aspirant-writers-who-never-will-actually-write, plus the thousands who do write and could make a living at it if they knew certain rules of the game—rules that are not taught in so-called creative writing classes, nor in any book on how to write that I have ever seen.

I intend to lace it with illustrative true anecdotes, changing names and dates and places only when necessary to avoid being sued—and will say so. It will have many a chuckle in it, plus a few belly laughs. I
know
I can do it. This will be a timeless book and should make money for many years. It just might be a smash hit, like Helen Gurley's
Sex and the Single Girl
—as everyone wants to know how to make money with least effort and almost as many have at least a secret hope of seeing their names in print as "Authors"—much like the great curiosity that most respectable women have about prostitution . . . and a secret wonder as to whether or not they could have made the grade in the Oldest Profession—only of course they never actually
would
, perish the thought! Almost as many feel that way about the Second Oldest Profession, the Teller of Tales—I know, from endless direct experience, that a person who actually
writes
for a living . . . and clearly does well financially at it . . . is an object of curiosity to many—an exotic creature, not quite respectable, but very interesting. I'm buttonholed about it every time I appear in public—which used to be fun but has grown to be a nuisance. So I might as well turn this nuisance into cash.

Editor's Note: None of the three hooks outlined here were ever written; some notes were collected, but nothing ever went on paper.

Lurton telephoned one day, saying that Robert had been asked to give one of the Forrestal Lectures at the Naval Academy. Normally, Lurton would have regretted the invitation, but this was from Robert's alma mater. So it was accepted, and many months went into preparation for the talk.

Then along came a request from the
Britannica
editors for Robert to do an article on Paul Dirac and antimatter for the
Compton Yearbook
. Robert viewed that as an opportunity to review the entire field of modern physics, and sciences in general. So, doing that article took one year. And it was followed by a request for another article on blood—another year consumed in the study of biological sciences, with one article to show for that year's work.

Then came the invitation to be Guest of Honor at MidAmeriCon, which took up most of the year of 1976, what with all the arrangements to be made.

The year 1977 was passed in getting blood drives going among science fiction fans—and I must heartily recommend them for their cooperation in this project. Donors still send me copies of their ten-gallon certificates . . .

Thus did time pass, and those books Robert was so hot to do were never written.

Robert never did tell me just what the crisis with Japan was, when his ship steamed full speed toward the Orient.

SLUMP

March 31, 1959: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

If the market is in this bad shape, I had better do one of two things; either quit writing for the pulp SF magazines and concentrate on television and possible slick sales, or simply retire and do what I want to do with my time. I could retire very easily now, and Ginny and I could live very comfortably, simply by dispensing with foreign travel, emeralds, and similar unnecessary luxuries—and I certainly do not fancy knocking myself out, breeding insomnia, etc., for the privilege of receiving word rates that are actually less, after taxes, than those I got twenty years ago—and are effectively less than half that when I spend the money. It doesn't make sense.