You’re a better writer than I am, so I figured I needed the extra hour

From Thanks, Mr. L: Elmore Leonard’s life-changing advice by Robert Ferrigno.

He leaned forward in his chair and gave me the advice that changed my life. I’ve passed it on a lot of times since, always giving credit to the master. It’s easy advice to give, but hard to put into practice.

What time you get up? he asked me.

Seven, I told him. I have to be at the office by nine.

It was the same way at the agency, he said. You want to write a novel, you have to get up at 5. That way you have two hours every day to write before your normal day begins.

Five a.m.? I’m a night person, I said.

Mr. L. smiled again. Gave a little shrug.

Okay. I’ll get up at five.

You get up at five and you start work, said Mr. L., no messing around making coffee or buttering toast. You sit down and start writing. At 7 you stop, if you’re in the middle of a sentence, you stop, and then you make coffee, take a shower, have breakfast, whatever you normally do. You’re done working on the novel for the day. You do that every day and at the end of a year, you’ll have a novel. Then you send it out to an agent and you start on the next one.

I thanked him and apologized for being such a lousy interviewer, and he didn’t contradict me.

[snip]

A couple of years later I sent him the galley of The Horse Latitudes. He liked it. He blurbed it. My publisher levitated and put it on the jacket. The book made a splash. Time magazine called it “the fiction debut of the season,” although to be fair, it was only April. A few days after the major reviews, 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.