FOREWORD
I had always planned to quit the writing business as soon as that mortgage was paid off. I had never had any literary ambitions, no training for it, no interest in it — backed into it by accident and stuck with it to pay off debt, I being always firmly resolved to quit the silly business once I had my chart squared away.
At a meeting of the Mariana Literary Society — an amorphous disorganization having as its avowed purpose "to permit young writers to talk out their stories to each other in order to get them off their minds and thereby save themselves the trouble of writing them down" — at a gathering of this noble group I was expounding my determination to retire from writing once my bills were paid — in a few weeks, during 1940, if the tripe continued to sell.
William A. P. White ("Anthony Boucher") gave me a sour look. "Do you know any retired writers?"
"How could I? All the writers I've ever met are in this room."
"Irrelevant. You know retired school teachers, retired naval officers, retired policemen, retired farmers. Why don't you know at least one retired writer?"
"What are you driving at?"
"Robert, there are no retired writers. There are writers who have stopped selling… but they have not stopped writing."
I pooh-poohed Bill's remarks — possibly what he said applied to writers in general… but I wasn't really a writer; I was just a chap who needed money and happened to discover that pulp writing offered an easy way to grab some without stealing and without honest work. ("Honest work" — a euphemism for underpaid bodily exertion, done standing up or on your knees, often in bad weather or other nasty circumstances, and frequently involving shovels, picks, hoes, assembly lines, tractors, and unsympathetic supervisors. It has never appealed to me.Sitting at a typewriter in a nice warm room, with no boss, cannot possibly be described as "honest work.")
"Blowups Happen" sold and I gave a mortgage-burning party. But I did not quit writing at once (24 Feb. 1940) because, while I had the Old Man of the Sea (that damned mortgage) off my back, there were still some other items. I needed a new car; the house needed paint and some repairs; I wanted to make a trip to New York; and it would not hurt to have a couple of hundred extra in the bank as a cushion — and I had a dozen-odd stories in file, planned and ready to write.