MY FATHER’S writing process was simple—he got an idea, brainstormed a few notes, then wrote the first chapter. Next he developed an outline from one to ten pages long. He followed the outline carefully, relying on it to dictate the narrative. He composed his first drafts longhand, wearing rubber thimbles on finger and thumb. Writing with a felt-tip pen, he produced thirty or forty pages in a sitting. Upon completion of a full draft, he transcribed the material with his typewriter, revising as he went. Most writers get more words per page as they go from longhand to a typed manuscript, but not Dad. His handwriting was small and he used abbreviations. His first drafts were often the same length as the final ones.
Manuscripts of science fiction and heroic fantasy received multiple revisions, but he had to work much faster on porn. After a handwritten first chapter, he typed the rest swiftly, made editorial changes, and passed that draft to my mother. She retyped it for final submission. Under financial pressure, Mom would be typing the beginning of the book while Dad was writing the end. His goal was a minimum of a book a month. To achieve that, he refined his methods further.
Industrial mass production is based on efficiency and speed. Faced with increasing demand, Dad invented a method that enabled him to maintain supply with a minimum of effort. He created batches of raw material in advance—phrases, sentences, descriptions, and entire scenes on hundreds of pages organized in three-ring binders. Tabbed index dividers separated the sections into topics.
Dad was like Henry Ford applying principles of assembly-line production with premade parts. The methodical technique proved highly efficient. Surrounded by his tabulated notebooks, he could quickly find the appropriate section and transcribe lines directly into his manuscript. Afterward, he blacked them out to prevent plagiarizing himself. Ford hired a team of workers to manufacture a Model T in six hours. Working alone, Dad could write a book in three days.
Eighty percent of the notebooks described aspects of women’s bodies. The longest section focused on their bosom. Here is a brief compendium.
BREASTS:
love-swollen little buds
nascent curves
quivering mound
gentle hillox of her acorn-shaped brsts tight hard mounds w/pointed crests
tender curve of her half-ripe breasts firm and tight-skinned as new pears dangling unpicked from sun-warmed trees gleamed w/the bloom of ripe peaches—w/same firmness thrusting artillery shells
cannister jutted
opulently jutting projections
slick-skinned titty curves
meaty pendants
cantilevered coneshapes
unnatural thrust of those conoid mounds bulging sides of her shapely creamballs loosely attached knockers swayed from her chest unbelieveable pulchritude of her overripe balls big hard bullets of brazenly firm flesh Another binder listed descriptions of individual actions, separated by labeling tabs that included: Mouth. Tongue. Face. Legs. Kiss. The heading of Orgasm had subdivisions of before, during, and after. The section called entry received the most precision, with subheadings of Virginal, Anal, Vaginal, Standing, Oral, and Kneeling. The thickest notebook, designed strictly for BDSM novels, listed of 150 synonyms for “pain.” Sections included spanking, whipping, degradation, pre-degradation, distress, screams, restraints, and tortures. These were further subdivided into specific categories followed by brief descriptions of each.
One long section gave me serious concern—a twenty page document titled Notes for a Book on Cruelty: Man’s Oldest Pleasure—a succinct list of tortures used throughout history in twelve countries. Examples included the partial flaying of people, insertion of bugs and rodents into fresh stomach wounds, nailing objects through flesh into bones, legs masoned into walls, the dislocation of arms, and cutting away various body parts. All were legal punishments mandated by the courts or society. The majority ended in slow, painful death. One source was a long diary recorded by a professional torturer of suspected witches in 1621.
1) Woman bound on rack,
2) Poured oil over head and burned,
3) Placed sulphur in armpits, burned it, 4) Hands tied behind, hauled up to ceiling, dropped, 5) Torturer went to lunch,
6) Placed spiked board on her back, pulled to ceiling, dropped, 7) Toes pressed in thumbscrews until blood squirted, 8) Pinched with red-hot irons,
9) Whipped and put in vise, gradually closed for six hours, 10) Hung by thumbs and flogged.