by Peter Leavell, @PeterLeavell
In 2011, I won Operation First Novel, which came with a publishing contract and $20,000. The PR firm hired to launch my career found so many opportunities for me I blogged daily. I wrote a few more novels, short stories, and articles.
Then I began writing for Novel Rocket, and later was taken over and rebranded Learn How to Write a Novel. I wrote a blog for the site monthly, sometimes twice a month. What have I learned over the past 12 years writing for the site?
- Being well-read is the most valuable tool in the writer’s arsenal. You’re able to draw from innumerable sources.
- Writing every day is as essential as Herb Albert playing his trumpet daily. Skills get rusty if you don’t use them.
- Edit the life into your work.
- Write to the senses. Period.
- Grow a weak spine and write your pain.
- Indecision destroys the project.
- Books and articles are consumables. Once readers devour the product, they want more. Give them more.
- Write drunk in the Spirit and edit sober in the Word.
- The first written story is Gilgamesh, written 4000 years ago. Welcome to a club with long-held traditions. You won’t change it. It changes you.
- Be kind. Unkindness has ruined writers, agents, and acquisition editors.
- A growth mindset is everything. Be the person you’re writing about. That’s Idealism.
- You will fail. And that’s okay. You learn. That’s Realism.
- Be an optimalist. That means you’re not perfect. You’re doing the best you can under the parameters given.
- Know your parameters.
- The market and social media readers do care. They love your work. And you. You ARE relevant, no matter how you feel about it.
- You are my friends. Even if I haven’t met you in person yet. And I care and pray for you. Thank you for praying for me.
- The rewards of writing aren’t money or fame. Instead, you’re adding to the verse, as in my favorite poem, which I’ll leave you with:
O Me! O Life!
Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?
Answer.
That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass (Public Domain)
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