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.
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.)