Toiling upward in the night

From Thanks, Mr. L: Elmore Leonard’s life-changing advice by Robert Ferrigno. During an interview, the author finds himself lamenting the challenge of writing a novel while working a job and raising a family. Elmore Leonard advised him to rise early, at 5am, in order to get in a couple of uninterrupted hours of writing. Later, after the publication of his first novel,

I got a call at home from Mr. L. He was genuinely happy for me. I thanked him, told him he had changed my life and the life of my family, and I would always be grateful. He said he gave that advice all the time and that most writers lasted about a week on the schedule before falling off the wagon. I told him I had lied to him when I said I would get up every day at five a.m. as he had suggested. Yeah? His voice on the line tense now. Yes sir, I told him, I got up at four a.m. every day for the last year and a half. You’re a better writer than I am, so I figured I needed the extra hour. It made him laugh, a dry cackle that kind of hung up at the back of his throat. A beautiful laugh.

The vignette reminded me of a stanza from Longfellow's The Ladder of St. Augustine.

The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night.