Elmore Leonard’s long road to literary dominance should be read by every author and creator:
The man had 20+ books turned into movies or TV shows & dozens of bestsellers spanning 50 years.
And it all came down to one last-ditch creative decision early in his career.
This is the story of how Elmore Leonard clawed his way out of an ad agency cubicle…
To the top of publishing & Hollywood:
1/ It’s 1946. Elmore “Dutch” Leonard returns home from serving in the South Pacific in WWII.
Knows he wants to be a writer.
Enrolls in the University of Detroit & starts writing.
Plants his flag in the Western genre. Super popular in the 50s.
Submits. Gets rejected, but…
2/ The editor at the pulp magazine Argosy says, “keep’em coming”
Meantime, Elmore’s gotta eat. He takes a job at an ad agency as a copywriter.
Writes copy pitching brakes & cars all day.
Squeezes in Westerns.
He sells his 3rd pitch, Trail of the Apache, but gets a warning…
3/ …The editor tells Leonard to not give up his day job, saying:
“You ought to know right at the beginning that writing for a living is a most hazardous occupation.”
Elmore is undeterred.
He becomes a machine…
4/ 1955: Elmore Leonard is 30.
He’s got a wife. Kids. Day job. Side hustle.
He wakes 2 hours before sunrise to write.
Then gets his kids breakfast.
“I had a rule that I had to write a page before I put the water on for the coffee,” he told the Library of America….
5/ The ad agency Leonard works for is impressed.
They want to leverage his writing career to attract clients.
They even ran this ad on him called, “Meanwhile, back at the agency…”
He keeps writing…
6/ Late 1950s & Leonard is firing on both cylinders.
Auto writing & Westerns.
But there’s a problem. The entire Western genre is dying. Readers have moved on.
Suddenly, nobody wants what Elmore is selling.
His agent says, “Time to change genres.”…
7) Early 60s… the great Elmore Leonard…
…one of the most prolific writers of our time…
Goes FIVE YEARS without publishing a work of fiction.
He’s trying to transition from Westerns to…well…anything.
He gets to work on a crime novel called The Big Bounce…
8) He submits the novel to H.N. Swanson.
The man who repped Hemingway & Faulkner.
He waits & waits.
Then gets a call:
Swanson: “Did you write this book?”
Leonard: “Of course I did. My name’s on it, isn’t it? I wrote the book.”
Swanson: “Kiddo, I’m going to make you rich.”
9/ And he does.
Not right away, but it happens.
By 1972, five of Elmore Leonard’s westerns had been turned into Hollywood movies starring A-listers…
Clint Eastwood, Paul Newman, Burt Lancaster…
10/ By the 1980s, Elmore Leonard was one of the best-selling, most prolific authors in the world…
Manuscripts became bestselling books.
Bestselling books became movies.
Like clockwork.
This lasts for the next 40 years…
11/ Out of Sight. Jackie Brown. Get Shorty. 3:10 to Yuma. Killshot. Stick. Hombre.
The hit TV show Justified…
Leonard is a publishing & Hollywood juggernaut…
All because he had the creative guts to ditch Westerns and write what the audience would read.
[newsletter_beehiiv}
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