Grumbles From the Grave

CHAPTER X

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.

March 4, 1949: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

This has been a bad twelve months without very much real literary success. I wasted months on two collaborations which did not pay off. I wasted three months on Red Planet and it has not paid off. I've done three stories meant for slicks and they have not paid off. Aside from some reprint stuff and a sale to Boys' Life it has been a long string of failures.

I think I have analyzed in part what the trouble has been: I've been doing hack work, writing what some one else wanted me to write rather than what I wanted to write. In any case, the next year can't be any worse if I write what I want to write and have some fun out of it. It might even be better; acceptances might start coming in instead of rejections. So-I plan to write my stories instead of editor's stories. I don't intend to do any more juveniles unless I happen to have a juvenile story that I want to write. I am not going to promise Scribner's, nor anybody else, one book a year. I am not going to work against deadlines. I am not going to slant stories for slick -- nor for pulp-I am going to write my stories, the very best stories I can, and then let them sell (or not sell) to whatever market fits them. I can't do any worse than I have been doing; I might do better. And I think you will see a lot more copy out of me. I'm a fast producer when I'm happy at it.

January 2, 1950: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

I want to get home awfully badly and I am worn out, but I need the money for house building.

Thanks for the SatRev of Lit-I am now a lit'rary man, entitled to wear a pipe, a spaniel, and baggy tweeds.

EDITOR 's NOTE: Robert did a review of The Conquest of Space by Chesley Bonestell and Willy Ley for the Saturday Review of Literature. It was titled (by the editors) "A Baedecker of the Solar System, " and ran as the lead article for the issue in which it appeared.

SALES

December 5, 1958: Robert A. Meinlein to Lurton Blassingame

I mailed the contract for "All You Zombies" to Bob Mills, unchanged. Certainly, I would have preferred Playboy's fancy rates, but it took me exactly one day to write it, so what the hell?...I hope that I have written in that story the Farthest South in time paradoxes.

...She [a romance writer] writes very well, and rather than have her run out of material, I would be glad to volunteer my services. I'm not as energetic as I was in the Coolidge administration, but I've learned a lot since then and that's what a writer needs: ideas.

FOREIGN SALES

February 19, 1959: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

...Is it really true that my foreign sales have been "fabulous"? You see, I have no experience whatever on which to form an opinion. I know that I take warm, special pride in these translations and we both enjoy the regularity with which the money rolls in. But are my foreign sales numerous in comparison with other writers of comparable domestic success? I just thought I had been damned lucky in being in the hands of an agent who had formed such excellent connections abroad and used them so well. I am sure that part of it is true.

February 26, 1959: Lurton Blassingame to Robert A. Heinlein

There are very few writers who sell in as many countries as you do. I try to line up with the agent in each country who is most respected for results and I check on this through visiting publishers to New York, and through them try to help our representatives in these publishers' countries; but in other countries, as here, the quality of the story is the deciding factor. It's the high quality of your stories that makes them so popular. Fortunately, you are writing about a subject that is of interest everywhere; we'd have great difficulty in selling your stories, even of this quality, if you were writing about baseball and football.

CHECKS

December 2, 1961: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

It seems certain that Ginny gets more fun out of these checks than I do. She always grabs a letter from you first and you should see her eyes light up when she sees one of those long yellow pieces enclosed. Cash has the same effect on her that Elvis Presley has on teenagers-for the past hour she has been sitting in the tub, talking dreamily about how she is going to spend the money that came in today-a new ball gown, setting some emeralds she just happens to have sitting in the bank vault getting rusty, etc. I am sure she regards you as the source of all blessings.

December 5, 1961: Lurton Blassingame to Robert A. Heinlein

The Scribner royalties roll on and on. Here is another nice check to help with your Christmas shopping. And we have received a big batch of marks for you from Germany, and the check for this will go to you before the end of the week.

Boxing Day 1961: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

...and also for a nice check from Germany to make our Christmas green. You will be pleased to hear that Ginny has already spent quite a chunk of it; she bought five dresses and a coat before I was out of bed this morning.

SHORT SHORT

May 9, 1962: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

Carson Roberts, Inc., the advertising firm which has been preparing these short-short science-fiction ads for Hofiiman Electronics (which you may have seen in Fortune, Scientific American, or elsewhere) have been bothering me for months to do a 1,200-word story for them. I have not bothered you with this because it is my usual policy to refer to you only such business as is really business-and I had no intention of writing 1,200 words of SF for anybody at any price. Such length is poorly suited to the genre.

But they kept raising the price, from $250 to $500 and then to $750 -- and I tried to shut them up by outlining in one paragraph how feeble a SF story would have to be to be told in 1,200 words...whereupon they accepted the outline and asked me to go ahead. I may possibly do so. If I do, I will submit it through you. Otherwise this is just for your information. It's a silly business at best -- sixty-two cents a word is more than it's worth, but 1,200 words is a silly length for science fiction.