April 15, 1963: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
Re Playboy article: I have the material well worked out and am prepared to deliver it by 10 May.
But I shall not deliver it on the basis of a phone call. The last time I accepted a job from them based on a firm agreement by phone call there was a lot of nonsense afterwards about whether or not I was being paid for the work, or paid for an option, and I had to do two rewrite jobs.
…Just refer him to my letter of 2 April (of which you have a copy): “Just address a letter to me, or preferably to Mr. Blassingame, offering me a firm assignment for so many thousands of words for so many dollars on such and such a subject to be delivered by such and such a date-and with the explicit condition that the manuscript will be paid for whether used or not and that any rewriting lies outside the agreement and must be negotiated at an additional fee.”
I meant every word. The assignment must be in writing and the clause about rewriting must be spelled out, and all the terms must be explicit-and a phone call means nothing]
Otherwise I will not bother to come in out of my garden. It’s nice out there and I’m sick of this machine. I don’t need the money; I’ve already worked too much this year and will have too high a tax-and I am especially aware of it on income tax day.
Apparently — thinks I’m a nice accommodating guy. Please explain to him that I am a son of a bitch.
DEFAULT
January 27, 1961: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
Please tell — that I am a kindly old gentleman and that the “A.” in the middle of my name stands for ‘ ‘Ebe-nezer Scrooge” and that I am buying a new freezer with my ill-gotten wealth to make room for him.
CHAPTER X
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SALES AND REJECTIONS
November 24, 1947: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame
The last couple of rejection letters you have sent me are rather disturbing. Miss Helen Grey of Town and Country is mistaken in thinking that my sales tp the SEP [Saturday Evening Post] have gone to my head. It is simply that an idea as good as “The Green Hills of Earth” doesn’t come to me every week. I have been in a slump and am afraid that I am still in it. I continue to work and to work very hard indeed, but a lot of the stuff I turn out doesn’t seem too good to me. Stuart Rose’s rejection of “Broken Wings” is decidedly a disappointment, for I had believed that “Broken Wings” was up to standard. Still more disappointing is his statement “These space ship stories didn’t do too well, according to our readership surveys.” I interpret this as meaning that the Saturday Evening Post is no longer interested in my interplanetary stories unless they are utterly terrific, superior in every way to a story with a customary contemporary down-to-earth background…
I may turn out quite a number of second-rate stories before I recover completely from the effects of my domestic breakup. For the past several months I have been able to continue writing only by the exercise of grim self-discipline. It occurs to me that you might find it desirable to sell or attempt to sell stories written during this period to secondary markets under a pen name. What do you think? Would it be good business to protect my reputation, such as it is, by keeping my own name off material which in your opinion is not as good as my best?…
…From now on I must devote my time exclusively to preparing the second juvenile novel [Space Cadet] for Charles Scribner’s Sons. I have been working on this boys’ novel off and on for several months. I rather dread sitting down and turning out the first draft on it because I simply am not in the sanguine mood which should obtain in any book intended for the young. I could knock off half a dozen tragedies right now easier than I could write one cheerful story.