C&C 84: Elmore Leonard’s Life Lessons

Turns out his advice applies to more than prose. Also, there’s Fresca.

Among the many facts gleaned from C. M. Kushins’ Cooler Than Cool: The Life and Work of Elmore Leonard (2025), the one that hit hardest was Leonard’s years-long practice of completing two pages of writing before he’d put on water for his morning coffee. I am familiar with the strategy—sometimes the necessity—of carving out time whenever possible for creative pursuits. But Dutch Leonard being able to do so without benefit of caffeine is evidence of true superhuman ability. (Second on the list: when Leonard broke through as a writer of westerns while working in advertising, his employer touted his success in their copy, essentially saying, “This hotshot scribe could come up with your slogan.” Times were different then.)

Biographies of writers can be tricky beasts, because an author’s lot is a dull one. Kushins doesn’t completely avoid the pitfall; Leonard gets an idea, he researches it, he writes it, he rewrites it, he publishes it, critics react to it, repeat several dozen times. What stands out amidst the nuts and bolts is Leonard’s relentless practicality. Early in his career, he would develop a piece of material as a book and a film simultaneously, aiming to write (and get paid for) both. In the 1970s, he spent considerable time on a project for Hollywood producer Howard Jaffe about fruit pickers inspired by labor leader Cesar Chavez. The project eventually collapsed, but Leonard never regretted the effort. He simply spun the research and what he’d written into four more screenplays including Mr. Majestyk (1974) and a novella called Picket Line which Kushins discovered in Leonard’s archive at the University of South Carolina. It was published for the first time earlier this year.

Leonard didn’t do sequels per se—Be Cool being the rare exception and, tellingly, a misfire—but he was savvy enough to bring characters back in different books, building the Elmore Leonard Literary Universe. The gambit carried over to the big screen when Michael Keaton played lunkheaded federal agent Ray Nicolette in both Jackie Brown (1997), adapted from Rum Punch (1992), and Out of Sight (1998). The name is spelled Nicolet in the novels, a distinction that would have mattered to Leonard; more than once in Cooler Than Cool, he spins his wheels on a book because a character “refuses to talk” until Leonard lands on their correct handle. I can confirm that this problem is real.

A pragmatic approach didn’t affect the breeziness of Leonard’s style. It diminishes his legacy to call Elmore Leonard a vibes writer, but there’s no denying that his books go down easy. You enjoy the mood and the company. What stands out upon reading this aptly titled biography is how cool Leonard is, not only as a writer but an individual. He embodied the sensibility conveyed in his fiction: curious, nonjudgmental, on the side of anybody going up against the system no matter what side of the law they’re on. He’s famous for his 10 Rules of Writing and there’s plenty more advice on the subject in the pages of Cooler Than Cool. Much of that counsel serves in good stead on other projects, including how to live your life.

I think the mistake most beginners make, they’re more concerned with creating something that sounds like writing, with clever images, descriptive passages, than they are with discovering their own basic attitude about putting words on paper. They want to have written before they know why they want to write or realize it’s going to take at least ten years to begin to learn how to realize that style comes out of attitude, not the clever arrangement of words.

I’m into my work now, all the way, and I’m not straining. I stop at six o’clock, but I’m giving it a full shot every day. I see that I can continue to get better at it. That’s an amazing thing, after thirty-two years, to know I can get better … From that, and from experience, I’ve concluded that you write most effectively when trying not to write.

The best time to begin writing a book is when you least expect to, always at some time before you think you’re ready to begin.

Cooler Than Cool prompted me to go back to early Leonard. I’d read Unknown Man No. 89 (1977) before because it’s Dutch rounding into crime fiction form and also because of its star-crossed Hollywood history. Alfred Hitchcock optioned the rights not long before he died and possibly approached Clint Eastwood about starring in it. It’s a fascinating potential collaboration, the most controlling of filmmakers taking on a book by the master of seat-of-your-pants plotting. But Eastwood, who’d already saddled up for the Leonard-scripted western Joe Kidd (1972), would have been a natural fit for the author’s rhythms, even in then-contemporary Detroit. Jack Ryan, who debuted in Leonard’s first crime novel The Big Bounce (1969), returns as a process server and finds himself enmeshed a scheme involving a missing stockholder and a repo man who not only knows what an étagère is but drops the word into conversation. There’s more solid existential advice here: “We’re all making the same trip, right? Trying to get along. Why should we fuck each other over and make life miserable?” Ryan is in recovery, just as Leonard was; Kushins covers the subject of Leonard’s alcoholism in detail, and Leonard wrote about it honestly.

The pain in withdrawal was the extreme feeling of anxiety that Ryan remembered well—a raw, hypersensitive feeling, like a sunburned nervous system—wanting to either take a drink or go out the window.

But Ryan still enjoys talking about his old habits.

I knew a guy who drank only Fresca and chartreuse. I took a sip one time, I said to him, ‘Jesus, this is the worst drink I ever tasted in my life.’ He said, ‘I know it is. It’s so bad you can’t drink very many of them.’

Trivia: Not long after revisiting Unknown Man I picked up Theater Kid (2025), the memoir by Rent and Hamilton producer Jeffrey Seller, and learned that Seller’s troubled father was one of the Detroit process servers Leonard interviewed before writing the novel.

Somehow I had never read LaBrava (1983), which won Leonard an Edgar Award. You’d think I would have, considering—once again—its status as a Hollywood also-ran. Protracted attempts to turn the book into a movie starring Dustin Hoffman led directly to Leonard writing Get Shorty (1990), one of his greatest successes.

It’s easy to speculate on why Hoffman dithered about the movie. He would have played Joe LaBrava, a former Secret Service agent whose knack for surveillance photography has led him to an unlikely career in the arts. LaBrava ends up entangled with Jean Shaw, an actress he crushed on as a youth when he saw her playing femme fatale to Robert Mitchum. Jean tries to play out a film noir plot in real life, with LaBrava pressed into service to clean up the mess. LaBrava has a meaningful, intensely physical relationship with an older woman, which is pretty much guaranteed to give any leading man pause even though LaBrava is simultaneously sleeping with a woman younger than him. Maybe it’s just as well the movie never got off the ground. Again, Leonard offers life lessons galore through his characters.

Well, you could be serious and still have fun. In fact, he believed it was the secret of a happy life, if anybody wanted to know a secret.

How did they get so sure of themselves, these guys, without knowing anything? Like people who have read one book.

She liked them because working with professionals brought out the best in you; you could count on them for cues, sometimes inspiration. Whereas amateurs could ruin your concentration and timing, make you look awkward.

“You know what I think of that particular kind of pride—from eighty-years experience, from knowing all kinds of successful people with all kinds of dough who are now dead or else in jail? I think it’s a bunch of shit. Money and success’ve got nothing to do with making it on a day to day basis, and that’s all that counts.”

Let us pause to admire the sterling work that “success’ve” is doing in the above. And Fresca makes a return appearance.

Pouring double bourbons with a splash of Fresca Joe Stella said, “First one today. What time is it? Almost ten-thirty, that’s not bad. Long as you had breakfast.” He handed a drink to LaBrava and sat down with the bottle close to him on the desk.

LaBrava took a good sip.

“Nice drink, huh?”

“Not bad.”

“Refreshing with a little bite to it.”

I have a weird relationship with Fresca. My father, who worked for TWA, would bring entire cases home from the airport; tastes had changed and people weren’t guzzling it on planes anymore. On the weeks when he prepared my school lunches, I’d open the bag and find a leftover inflight meal and a can of Fresca. I can’t touch the stuff anymore. When I want a grapefruit soda for a paloma, it’s Jarritos or Squirt.

What I’m Drinking

Rosemarie and I spent some time in Chicago last month. Our first stop after checking in was Gus’ Sip & Dip, recommended by multiple bartender friends. As the name implies, this first-rate joint serves classic cocktails and dip sandwiches, and I would have eaten every meal there but my personal physician indicated this might be a poor choice. The smoked ham dip with cheddar fondue will haunt me for the rest of my days. Accompanying it: a phenomenal Brandy Wisconsin Old Fashioned, made with cognac and 7-Up. Not a Fresca in sight.

How they drink ‘em in Racine

Another excellent drink came about because of a joke in The Music Man (1962), one of my favorite movies. Professor Harold Hill arrives in River City, Iowa and asks for a hotel recommendation. A shopkeeper replies, “Try the Palmer House in Chicago.” When I discovered the Palmer House was only blocks from where we were staying, I knew we’d be stopping in. We did so when I was in a particularly celebratory mood. We’d timed our trip to coincide with the penultimate series of baseball’s regular season. The Cubs were hosting the Mets, still in playoff contention. The game we attended was a back-and-forth affair with the Mets emerging triumphant—and, at that moment, in control of their own destiny. Of course, none of us are ever in control of our destinies, the illusion that we might be one of the saving graces of baseball.

The Mets were still alive on the season’s last day. Win game 162 and they’d be in. They were shut out instead and went home to stay. The Mariners, meanwhile, made it to game 7 of the American League Championship Series before losing to the Toronto Blue Jays. Which makes this the second consecutive year one of my teams has fallen in the league championship. A bitter blow, to be sure.

So I prefer to run the tape back to that late September night in Chicago, bounding onto the train at Wrigleyville full of optimism, stopping at the Palmer House for an excellent rye Manhattan, and toasting the possibilities. Because soon there’ll be no baseball at all.