by Peter Leavell, @PeterLeavell
These ten tips helped me moonlight as a writer:
- Reflection. Who, on God’s beautiful, blue marble wants to grind through a long day at work, then toil late into the night as the lamp’s light poured over their manuscript? Me! First, I reflected on why I wanted to trade relaxation for pain, then made a mission statement, and finally clung to the reason like a teen girl needs her Twilight.
- Plan. I procured a planner. Do the same. Consider buying two because you will lose the first one within the first week, not that I know anything about that. Then plan a protected time to put words on the screen. (This website offers a fantastic planner specific to the writer’s life.)
- Support your family. Don’t quit your most important job—connection with your family. This means financially, emotionally, and spiritually. Show them that if you get protected writing time, you are happy as you spend time with them. And yes, this means you have a license to be rather testy if you don’t get time to write. It worked for me.
- Consistency. Two paragraphs do not make a book. Racing through the house with half a page of work impresses no one. You will need two paragraphs one day, and two the following day. I’m not a math wizard, but that makes around… five paragraphs. On day three, you can add two more. Day four, two more, and soon, in one week, you can have…ugh…math. You can have a chapter. Now, a chapter is something to be proud of.
- Expect to fail. Scheduling failure helps. I permitted myself to mess up. Frankly, you’ve got a couple of things going against you compared to those who are filthy rich with time. 1. You can’t research for hours on end. 2. You can’t think for days about whether you’ve found the right word for a sentence. 3. You can’t write two books in a year. And that’s okay.
- Failures are your keys to success. Point 5’s failures helped me to succeed. I became focused, sharp, and on a mission. Resilience and passion are habitual now. I’ve gotten a bunch of degrees now, grown as a human being, and kept writing through it all. I feel I have something interesting to say about the world I didn’t before. In other words, failure makes you more interesting.
- Get help. Please don’t do this alone. Reach out to other moonlighters. When I found my tribe, we grew into an aggressive group that reads and writes more than humanly possible. We consistently help each other stay on track, and focused. We also cry a lot on each others’ shoulders.
- Portfolio. I had to up my storage to 4 Terabytes, and here’s why. I built a file of all the things I wrote. Eventually, I had a growing portfolio from which to get blogs, social media posts, short stories, novels, and dad jokes. Do the same, and after a time, you’ll need another file for your published material.
- Math. How to write is one thing. What to write is quite another. Don’t use writing time to research. Study hard in life’s cracks. You may not be able to write while driving, but you can download a Great Course on writing fiction and listen at least one dozen times. Always carry a book, such as Sigmund Freud’s The Ego and the ID, and read when you can. When people notice your book, the conversation that follows will be interesting.
- Reflection Part 2. After over a decade of moonlighting, I reflect, and what I love most is the process. I pray that someday, as you reflect on your moonlighting journey, you too can say you enjoyed yourself. I look forward to hearing about your journey.
Philip Anderson keeps his past close to the vest. Haunted by the murder of his parents as they traveled West in their covered wagon, his many unanswered questions about that night still torment him.
His only desire is to live quietly on his homestead and raise horses. He meets Anna, a beautiful young woman with secrets of her own. Falling in love was not part of his plan. Can Philip tell her how he feels before it’s too late?
With Anna a pawn in the corrupt schemes brewing in the nearby Dakota town, Philip is forced to become a reluctant gunslinger. Will Philip’s uncannily trained horses and unsurpassed sharpshooting skills help him free Anna and find out what really happened to his family in the wilderness?
Peter Leavell, a 2007/2020 graduate of Boise State University with a degree in history and a MA in English Literature, was the 2011 winner of Christian Writers Guild’s Operation First Novel contest, and 2013 Christian Retailing’s Best award for First-Time Author, along with multiple other awards. An author, blogger, teacher, ghostwriter, jogger, biker, husband and father, Peter and his family live in Boise, Idaho. Learn more about Peter’s books, research, and family adventures at www.peterleavell.com