Adeline Lubell Naiman, November 5, 1963: Difference between revisions

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::::::::::::::::::::142 Columbia Heights

::::::::::::::::::::Brooklyn 1, New York

Your letter came just as I finished dictating a long series of letters this morning. It was a pleasure to read, almost as if I’d been given a reward for working so hard at so dull a task through the morning. I’m in a curious situation now which makes me accumulate my mail for a month or more, then answer it in a day. I’ve always done this, but now it takes on the sterner forms of discipline, because I’m engaged in a break-neck venture. I got into trouble financially and was in debt, and decided the only way out of it which would give me some kind of modest luxury—like spending $20 on a dinner for two without thinking about it, or buying theatre tickets when I felt like it—was to write a novel in serial for ''Esquire'', eight installments of ten thousand words each, and then sold the book before a word was written to Dial and Dell for $125,000 bucks. It seems that I am finally hot again as a property. For this next year I’m in the soup because this novel’s got to be fairly good or I’ll be ambushed by more crossfire than anybody I can think of in recent years, and indeed will deserve to get the worst, so I am off and writing. I’ve finished the first installment which is sheer cliff-hanger, and the second installment, which is sheer cliff-hanger. Can I keep it up?