February 4, 1969: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
(Speaking of the time burned up by overhead work such as that-poor Ginny! Fan mail has gotten utterly out of hand, and about a month ago, in a frantic attempt to get back to writing ms., I dumped it all on her. This morning in came about the 500th letter from still another young man who had read Stranger and wanted to discuss his soul with me. He had been “meditating” and taking courses in “sensativity” (sic). So I passed it over to Ginny, my surrogate chela in the guru business. She read it, looked tired, and said wistfully, “You know, I wish I had all the time to meditate that these kids seem to have.”)
June 4, 1969: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
What would be your opinion if I simply stopped answering mail from strangers?
I ask because the fan mail situation has gotten out of hand. In the past five years the volume has tripled, or more. Unless I keep it answered each day, the accumulation gets out of hand and it takes me forever to catch up. Yet I cannot answer it daily-even if I were never to write another story, there are still interruptions: trips out of town, houseguests, illnesses, etc.
This may seem trivial; it is not-unsolicited letters from strangers, fan mail plus endless requests for me to go here, speak there, donate mss., advise a beginning writer, these things add up to the major reason why I have not been able to turn out any pay copy in the period since we finished building. Secretarial help does not seem to be the answer. I can’t use a full-time secretary and I have never been able to find a satisfactory moonlighter-tried again just this past month and thought I had one, an ex-Navy yeoman. Result: It cost two dollars per letter in wages with the answers to those letters limited to postcards in most cases and never longer than one sheet of the small-size notepaper, plus postage and. materials — and did not save me one minute of time. In fact, it took more of my time than it would had I simply answered them myself.
Form letters won’t serve; there is simply too much variety in the incoming mail-I must either draft or dictate each answer. Either Ginny or I must write the answers. Ginny has offered to do all of it (and frequently has coped with a logjam). But I don’t want Ginny to do it as it is not fair to her to tie her to a typewriter when she wants and needs to spend every possible minute on landscaping this place (and I want her to landscape-no point in having a lovely place if it is allowed to look moth-eaten). Besides, she cooks, cleans, does all the shopping, and does the not-inconsiderable record keeping and tax work and bill paying and money handling.
So it is either do it myself-or quit answering mail from strangers.
I have been thinking about the following expedient: A form printed on a U.S. postal card reading something like this — “Thank you for your letter, which Mr. Heinlein has read and appreciated. We have no secretary and the volume of mail makes it impossible for me to answer each letter as it deserves. If your letter requires an answer other than this acknowledgment, please send a stamped and self-addressed envelope and refer to file number…In the meantime your letter will be held for thirty days in the pending file.
‘ ‘We regret having to use this expedient, but the alternative is for Mr. Heinlein to give up writing stories in favor of answering letters.
“Sincerely,
“Virginia Heinlein
“(Mrs. Robert A. Heinlein).”
The above, with the surplus words sweated out of it and printed in smaller type, would go on a postcard-and each letter could be acknowledged each day simply by cutting the address off the letter and scotch-taping it to a card. Plus using one of those automatic serial-number stampers.
But it strikes me as an almost certain way to lose friends and antagonize people. Despite the fact that well over half the letters contain the phrase ” — while I know you are a very busy man — ” the truth is that each writer-reader is so important in his own eyes that he feels sure that his letter is so different, so interesting, so important, that I will happily stop whatever I am doing and answer his letter in full. When he gets one of these printed forms, his reaction will be: “Why, that snotty son of a bitch!”