“So what took so long to write your first book?” Authors Over 50 podcast host Julia Brewer asked my writing coach client Jeff Hutcheson, author of Going Barefoot: A Lost Key Mystery.
That’s how she starts every interview she does with the authors over 50 she features.
“I was just busy working,” replied Jeff.
Isn’t that the truth for so many of us?
Jeff was still entrenched in his career as a Presbyterian minister, pastoring churches and serving regional presbyteries when he began to noodle his first book and asked me to be his writing coach. While he had always written as part of his career, he’d also had a lifelong love of stories. “I’d always wanted to write something like this,” he said.
So, after collecting more than 60 books about writing, he decided to do more than just reading about his passion. His first novel certainly didn’t materialize overnight, especially since Jeff was still committing so much time and energy to his job. But over time the novel and its characters took shape, to the point where Jeff is now working on the second of what will eventually be his three-book Lost Key Mystery series.
This time around, his cozy mystery is coming together much more efficiently. That’s partly because Jeff learned a lot about how to write a book the first time around. It’s also because last year he decided to step back from full-time service to the churches and the presbytery so he could delve into writing books and creating films more seriously and “give Creative Jeff more time to play.”
You can hear Jeff talking about how he has gone about his “encore career” as he calls it below. It’s a terrific interview. He also discusses how he and I worked together, and how that process helped him get his book published, as well as how his work with book marketing consultant Keri-Rae Barnum, who’s part of my Incubation Press team, helped him figure out how to start marketing his novel.
I most love Jeff’s advice for would-be authors over 50: “Now is your best time. You’ve lived a lot of life. You have something to say. That’s what writing is about–your voice, your words, your story, your perception. So go for it. Enjoy the process. And have fun with it. Let yourself run with it. It’s been good.”
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