0:00 Today on the Mel Robbins Podcast, 0:03 legendary author John Grisham. 0:06 500 million books sold, nine feature films, 0:09 decades of global success. 0:12 But John Grisham's story began with rejection. 0:15 20 Submissions go to New York. They came right back. Rejection, rejection, 0:20 rejection. 0:20 He's sharing stories from his remarkable career. 0:24 You got to show up every day. 0:25 Every job you ever have is material for the rest of your life. 0:29 You learn lessons from all of them. 0:30 And how one golden moment can transform your entire life. 0:35 Stop talking about it. Don't tell folks what you're going to do. 0:38 Sit down and write a page every day. 0:47 Please help me welcome the one, the only, 0:50 the legendary John Grisham to the Mel Robbins Podcast. 0:54 Happy to be here, Mel. Good seeing you. 0:56 I am thrilled to meet you in person. 0:58 I'm thrilled to meet you in person. 0:59 And the reason why I'm so thrilled is because 35 years ago, 1:04 it was 1991, and I was here in Boston. 1:08 I was in my first year of law school at Boston College Law School. 1:12 I was absolutely miserable. 1:16 I had gone to law school because a bunch of my friends were starting to go off 1:21 to different schools and I had a part-time job as a paralegal, which I hated. 1:25 But for some reason I applied to law school because I didn't know what else to 1:29 do. I get there and I realize I have made a huge mistake. 1:33 I hated every aspect of it. I cried all the time. I drank a lot. 1:37 And somebody told me that there was this book that had come out 1:42 and I picked up a copy because I hated doing the academic work. 1:47 It was the firm. It was your book. 1:50 I bet I stayed up two nights in a row reading this thing. And 1:55 the reason why it changed my life is because when I found out that you were a 1:59 lawyer, 2:01 I couldn't believe that you were both a lawyer 2:06 and that you could write such an extraordinary fiction story. 2:11 And it gave me this epiphany. I though, oh, wait a minute. 2:14 I don't have to practice law. I could do something else. 2:19 And that was the beginning of me making a 2:24 huge pivot. I stayed in law school. 2:26 I actually did become a public defender in New York City for a couple of years, 2:30 and then I ultimately left the law a couple years later. 2:34 But I've always thought about that moment that you don't have 2:39 to stay who you are and what you are for the rest of your 2:43 life, 2:44 that at any moment you can decide that you want to do something different. 2:48 And I will tell you right now, 2:51 I would not be doing what I do today if it weren't for you. 2:57 So thank you. 3:00 That's very touching. And 3:05 I've heard similar stories over the years and still found them hard to believe 3:11 because when I started writing the firm almost 40 years ago, 3:16 I had no idea what I was doing. I had the story. I knew I could write. 3:22 I had no idea what was coming. I had no idea. We were so young and 3:29 still a lawyer and still having fun and having babies and life was good. 3:34 And it was a little serious part-time hobby, writing was. 3:39 I'd finished the first book in 87, trying to get it published, 3:44 and my wife had always loved the story of the firm. 3:49 I talked about it for years, not as a writer. 3:52 It's based on something that really happened in law school. 3:54 For the person who's listening, John, who hasn't read The Firm, 3:57 and I'm just going to warn you, 3:59 don't buy this book if you want to sleep tonight because if you pick this book 4:04 up, 4:04 there is no way you are going to go to bed because you will just keep turning 4:09 the page and turning the page and turning the page. 4:11 But put them at the scene of what the book is about and what inspired it. 4:16 It goes back to law school. 4:17 When I was in law school at Ole Miss in the early 80s, 4:22 I was not heavily recruited by law firms. 4:26 I knew I was going back to my hometown. 4:29 I was going to marry my sweetheart from my hometown. I did 45 years ago. 4:33 And I knew I was going to open up my own little shop and practice law. 4:37 I didn't like any of the law firms in town. 4:39 I didn't really want to go to work for them. And so I didn't interview. 4:43 I didn't really care. I also was not a top student, 4:47 so there was no great demand for my interviews. 4:51 A close friend was a top student and he would go off on the weekends during our 4:56 senior year in law school and he would go to visit a regional law firm in 5:00 Houston or Kansas City or Memphis or New Orleans, all in the south, 5:03 Memphis. And he would come back and we sort of vicariously 5:08 lived through him. What was the firm like? What are they offering? 5:12 How much money? What are the perks? What's the practice? 5:15 And he would tell us about these law firms. And he came back one weekend. 5:19 We were all sitting around probably drinking beer in our favorite bar, 5:22 and he said, "I visited a weird law firm last weekend." H said, 5:26 "I got the impression that once you join that firm, 5:29 you never really left like it was owned by the mafia or something, 5:33 a tax firm." And I just stuck. That was 1980. 5:39 I wasn't thinking about being a writer. I was trying to finish law school, 5:42 but the story was always there and I didn't like a lot of stories. 5:45 They hang around. 5:45 Most of them are based on something that really happened still today after all 5:49 these books. And 5:52 so I had the story and as I was writing A Time to Kill, my first novel, 5:58 which is a tough book to write, tough book to read, tough book to get through, 6:02 I wanted something that would be more fun to write and read. 6:07 And I'd always pitch the story to Renee and she's a sounding board and 6:12 she's always said, "I love that story. I love that story. 6:14 I love that story." And so that's how the firm got started. 6:17 And as soon as I finished A Time to Kill, writing A Time to Kill in early 1987, 6:23 I went straight to the firm and we used to laugh. 6:26 We thought the firm was just sort of a 6:30 simple title that would never stick, but funny to say that now, 6:34 but I started writing the firm right after I wrote the first book and 6:39 it took two years to write it. And then when it came out in 35 years ago, 6:45 well, it changed the world. I mean, 6:47 our world was upside down and has been ever since. 6:52 I want to hover in one detail of that story because I think it's really an 6:55 interesting thing to explore and I'd love to hear your perspective on it. 7:00 So it's 1980 and you have a friend in law school who 7:04 comes back and just says one sentence after being at that firm is 7:09 kind of weird, 7:10 kind of feels like it might be the kind of law firm that you never leave. 7:14 You never leave. Yeah. 7:17 Do you think about that moment and what's your opinion about 7:21 ideas and about the things in life that are sort of 7:26 planted in front of you and whether or not you're even 7:31 aware of them or if you think there's some sort of divine ordering to it? 7:35 You know what I mean? 7:36 Because it feels like one of these things that could have been a blip that 7:40 turned into nothing, 7:41 and I tend to be the kind of person that thinks that there are these signs all 7:45 around you if you're awake enough to see them or little threads 7:50 that you weave together throughout your life that make sense later. 7:56 I'm not sure. I'm not sure I buy that, 7:59 that there are things that are out there waiting for you to see. 8:04 I have a real 8:07 knack for a story and I grew up with storytellers. 8:12 My father, my grandfather, uncles were big storytellers. 8:17 These are farm people in rural Arkansas when I was a kid and would sit on the 8:22 front porch at night in the heat and listen to the Cardinals game on the radio 8:27 and listen to stories, all these stories that probably were all fiction, 8:31 but they sure were good. 8:32 They've been polished for years and worked on for years. 8:36 I just always enjoyed the wild stories or funny stories. 8:40 And as a kid, I was an avid reader. 8:45 My mother did not really like television even in 1960. 8:50 And so we went to the library all the time and got books and we read, 8:54 she read to us and I just grew up reading a lot and loving the idea 9:00 of a good story. And I guess 9:04 that's where the I comes from, 9:06 the talent to be able to spot something almost immediately and say, 9:10 and I do this almost weekly, you hear a story and say, 9:14 "That's got potential." And when I hear these great stories, 9:19 I'll make a note and the notebook is always full. 9:24 Most of them don't work for various reasons. 9:27 Most of them kind of go away with time. They're all brilliant initially, 9:32 but the brilliance kind of rubs off, but the good ones stick. 9:37 The good ones stick. 9:38 Well, what's super cool about stories, 9:41 when you think about the intersection of your work and the intersection of mine, 9:46 and my work is really about empowering people to see bigger 9:51 possibilities and giving them a sense of hope and encouragement that 9:55 they could do little things that could make their life or their 10:00 relationships feel better and that they could do better over time. 10:04 The power of stories is that it allows you to escape your current life 10:09 and actually imagine something else, 10:13 which is what you did for me in 1991, 10:16 that I could escape the misery of, "I hate this law school. 10:20 I've made a huge mistake. 10:21 I've now got these loans and I'm trapped here and I hate these people and 10:26 what the hell am I going to do?" And that story just opened up 10:31 a different possibility, 10:33 even though I wasn't thinking about being an associate that would go to a firm 10:36 where people never leave and then discover that the mafia actually is involved 10:39 and then have the FBI on my case as I'm running from them with my wife. 10:44 You got to love fiction. Oh. 10:44 My God. Well, I've never written fiction, 10:47 but I love fiction because you step 10:51 outside yourself. And so if someone who is listening right 10:56 now feels just like I did, 10:58 and I know you've probably felt a little bit this way in certain twists and 11:01 turns of your life, 11:03 where you are in a chapter of your life and you 11:08 feel trapped and you don't know what to do next, 11:12 what do you think they're going to learn from the various stories you're going 11:16 to tell us and the wisdom that we're going to talk about that you've learned 11:20 through your life and your work? 11:23 You got to keep working. 11:25 You can't be smothered with doubt or depression or fear or whatever. 11:31 You got to keep working. 11:33 I learned a very valuable lesson when I was writing A Time to Kill, 11:36 and this is back in the dark ages where I knew nothing about writing. 11:41 It was all written in hand on legal pads. And 11:48 I showed the first chapter to my wife one night and she had no idea what I was 11:51 doing. She knew I could write because she saved all of our love letters. 11:55 She still has them, but she knew I could write. 12:00 She knew I could tell stories, but I had never thought about being a writer. 12:03 I was 30 years old and she saw the first chapter and said, 12:08 "This is pretty good. I'd like to read some more." I said, "Okay, 12:12 I'll go write some more. 12:13 I don't have another chapter. Let me go write chapter two." And that went on for 12:17 a while, but back in those days, I did not know what I was doing. But 12:23 one of the first lessons I learned was that you have to do a little 12:28 bit every day or it's not going to get done. 12:32 I'd take a week off and I was losing sleep writing the book because I was up 12:37 at five in the morning. 12:38 Well, I lost sleep reading it, so we're even. 12:43 Yeah. Well, I'm not losing sleep now, but I did back then. 12:47 But I realized, and I probably read this somewhere, 12:52 write a page a day. I said it a thousand times. Write one page. 12:55 If you're serious about writing anything, stop talking about it. 13:00 Don't talk your book to death. Don't tell folks what you're going to do. 13:04 Sit down and write a page every day, at least a page. 13:08 And it may take you 15 minutes a day and an hour tomorrow, 13:12 but find that time of the day, 13:15 whether it's during lunch or whether it's late at night or whenever, 13:19 preferably the same time, same spot, same coffee, 13:22 like I still do after 50 something books. 13:26 I don't care what your task is or what you're thinking about doing, 13:32 you got to show up every day. You can't just talk about it, dream about it, 13:36 think about it. You got to show up. Again, 13:40 I don't care what you're doing. 13:41 I don't care what your dream is or what your goal is, 13:45 but you've got to do it every day. I learned that lesson the hard way. 13:49 And once I started practicing that years ago, 13:53 40 years ago as a rookie lawyer trying to write a novel, 13:57 I made myself get up at five o'clock every morning and have time to write. 14:02 And it took three years for the first one, took two years for the firm. 14:06 Over a five-year period, 14:07 I wrote them back to back at five o'clock in the morning. 14:12 I also was curious because you said, 14:14 "I learned it the hard way." I think it would be very helpful for the person 14:17 listening to hear how it wasn't working, 14:22 because I think you were about to tell us that I was trying to find a week off. 14:25 I was trying to do it in these big sweeps of time, 14:27 and then I realized I just have to do it a little a day. 14:29 So how did you find the hard way? What was the way you tried that was like, 14:32 "Well, this definitely does not work?". 14:34 The first time it happened, I had gone a couple of weeks and written nothing. 14:40 And my wife, I can remember more than once said, 14:44 "Where's the latest chapter?" And I said, "I haven't written it yet." She said, 14:49 "Why not?" And I said, "Okay, 14:52 I'll get busy," because she always loved the story. And 14:59 I'd learned, okay, to do this, you got to start somewhere. 15:04 You've got to blast off at some point. 15:06 And so I would get started again and I would make myself do it at least one page 15:10 a day, every day, every day. It got easier, it got easier, it got easier. 15:14 The thing about it, I wrote too much. The Time to Kill, once it was typed, 15:18 was almost a thousand pages. Oh my. 15:19 Gosh. 15:19 Yeah. And another lesson. I didn't know what I was doing. 15:24 I was not a writer. A thousand pages. 15:27 I sold the book eventually after a long struggle. My first editor, 15:30 who was a great editor, cut a third of it, and he was right. 15:36 There was just too much junk in it. And I though, that was a year of my life. 15:40 The book took three years to write. We just cut a third. 15:43 That's a year of my life. I am never going to do this again. 15:46 I'm not going to waste time like this again. When I start writing from now on, 15:50 I'm going to know where I'm going. I'm going to have it organized. 15:53 I'm going to have it outlined. 15:55 And I learned this lesson from something John Irving said one time. 15:58 He said he does not write the first sentence until he writes the last one. 16:04 I'm not that smart, 16:05 but I don't write the first scene until I know the last scene. 16:09 I know where I'm going. And if you always know where you're going, 16:12 it's hard to get lost. 16:13 And writers are notorious for having these brilliant ideas and 16:19 they can't wait to start writing. They'll write, write, write like crazy, 16:21 write 50,000 words and suddenly stop and they back themselves into a corner and 16:26 they can't get out of it. They toss it. They're famous for doing that, okay? 16:30 I know writers and they talk about doing it all the time now. 16:34 And every writer says, "Oh, I don't believe in outlining. 16:36 I just wait for inspiration to take over and blah, blah, blah." Well, okay, 16:39 that's one way to do it. I can't do it that way. 16:42 I've got to have it organized and outlined. 16:44 And you've got to be able to pitch your idea. We're 16:49 talking fiction here, okay? We're talking stories. 16:52 You have to refine the pitch to about 30 seconds max. 16:58 If you can't do it in 30 seconds, you're probably in trouble. 17:01 I pitch ideas to my wife all the time and I have to hog tie her now and handcuff 17:05 her, 17:06 make her sit down and listen to me because she's tired of it after all these 17:09 years. But I say, "I have a great idea." She said, "I've heard that before. 17:12 You listen to me, okay? 17:13 Here's the idea for a novel." And I get 30 seconds and 17:19 she's brutally honest. She usually shoots them down and says, 17:24 "No, it's not going to work." Or occasionally she'll like one. She'll like one. 17:27 Well, you say you're talking about stories, 17:30 but as I hear you tell us about some of the things that you've learned the hard 17:35 way, the way that you approach the work that you do, I hear life. 17:40 And let me tell you what I hear. 17:41 One page a day is a four word philosophy 17:47 for how to create anything in your life. And I think a lot of us, 17:51 whether you're trying to write the whole book in one day or one week and then 17:55 you get discouraged, 17:56 we do that in every aspect of our lives where we try to make the change so big 18:01 and happen so fast that you miss the obvious where one page a day 18:06 is the way to create momentum. It is the way to make something a habit. 18:11 It is the way to slowly start to write 18:16 your way into a new chapter of your life. And so that goes way beyond writing. 18:21 But the other thing that I thought was really interesting, 18:22 because you were talking about pitching, 18:24 you said you have to get the thing down to 30 seconds. 18:30 What you're talking about is clarity and alignment. 18:34 You have to pick a direction. That's true about life too. 18:36 I think so many people do not have what they want because they are not clear 18:41 about what they want. 18:42 And. 18:42 If you can't explain what you want in the next chapter of your life in less than 18:47 30 seconds, you're going to spin. You're. 18:49 Not going to get there. 18:50 No, you're not going to get there. 18:51 But then you said one other thing that I thought was so subtle, 18:54 but I kind of chuckled because it really does 18:59 metaphorically open up, I think, 19:04 what everybody struggles with at some point. 19:08 You had written chapter one of the firm, you gave it to Renee to read. 19:13 She loved it and she said, "Where's chapter two?" And you said, 19:17 "I haven't written it yet." She's like, "Well, 19:20 I guess you better go write it." And to me, 19:23 that is a beautiful story about the fact that if you ever feel stuck 19:28 because you are just in this chapter, even if it's ended, 19:32 all you got to do is go write the next one. It doesn't mean it's not coming. 19:37 It doesn't mean it's never going to get written. You just have to make the, oh, 19:40 okay. I haven't done that yet. I guess I better go do that. 19:43 And it's kind of obvious stuff, but when you put it in the metaphor of a book, 19:46 because I do believe that you can think a lot about the lifespan of your 19:51 life like a book. And if you're still here, 19:55 the story hasn't ended. 19:57 There's more to write. I see in your story, 20:00 there's so much overlap with some of the things that we've experienced. 20:04 A lot of people don't know. A lot of people know that you've sold, what, 20:07 500 million books? That's freaking cool, first of all. 20:11 Congratulations. 20:13 Thank you. 20:14 You're welcome. 20:14 Thank you. 20:16 But that we both have had a million jobs, 20:20 and I don't think a lot of people know, 20:22 especially when they see you now and they hear pelican breath. Oh, 20:24 I saw that movie. Time to kill. Matthew McConaughey was in that. Wait, the firm? 20:29 What? What? I've read all of his books. 20:32 A ton of the people that work here that are basically the ages of our kids were 20:36 like, "My mom has read everybody. Dad loves him. Oh my gosh. 20:40 We had to push people away from bringing their parents in and their siblings in 20:44 because you have so many fans here. 20:46 But most people don't know that you have laid asphalt, 20:51 you've sold underwear, you've transferred colleges, 20:55 on and on and on. 20:56 So what are some of the odd jobs that you've had that in a weird way 21:01 still inform you? 21:03 All of them. Every job. 21:05 Every job you ever have is material for the rest of your 21:09 life. You learn lessons from all of them. 21:12 What'd you learn from selling underwear? 21:16 Well, I almost got fired for that. 21:21 The customer, it's a Sears Roebucks store in a mall in Memphis, 21:27 and I was a very reluctant employee. 21:30 I was trying to go to college and commuting and not going anywhere, 21:33 18 years old, drifting. And this customer, 21:38 with Sears, the customer's always right. 21:42 This guy brought back a three pack of white boxer briefs, white briefs, 21:46 not boxers, and wanted to return them. 21:50 And the package looked suspicious. 21:53 And I just said, 21:56 I'm not going to take those back." And he said, "Well, you have to." And I said, 22:00 "Well, they look used." He said, "Well, maybe." I said, "Look, sir, 22:04 I'm not going to touch the underwear, okay?" And we got kind of loud. I said, 22:10 "I will leave now. Fire me now. 22:11 I'm not going to take his underwear back." And so he got loud and my boss came 22:15 over and worked out a compromise, 22:19 and I thought I was going to be leaving. I was kind of hoping he'd fire me 22:22 because I'd had enough of the underwear. It didn't last long. 22:25 That wasn't much of a job, but even the tough construction jobs, 22:30 summertime work that I had, 22:32 laying asphalt or driving a bulldozer or digging ditches or working for a 22:36 plumbing company, that's all just what you need as a kid. I was 16, 22:41 17, 18 years old because it makes you appreciate college. 22:45 It makes you realize what you don't want in life. 22:48 And I've got high school friends from way back who didn't see the 22:53 opportunity and didn't go very far, 22:55 but I just knew I wasn't going to do that kind of work for the rest of my life. 22:58 I was determined. And my parents were not college graduates. 23:02 They did not have the opportunity, but their dream was for us to go, 23:05 but I was determined to get there. It took a while to find the right one. 23:10 But yeah, I think those jobs are crucial to develop. 23:14 I tell people writers have got to, you got to try different jobs. 23:17 You got to live different places, travel. 23:19 You've got to have success and failure and love and hate and all the different 23:23 things we go through in life, broken hearts and whatever, 23:26 to have something to write about. 23:28 You got to experience life and the more varied you 23:33 can make it, the better. 23:37 I didn't enjoy practicing law for 10 years. I hung in there, 23:41 but I'm so glad I did because I would not be a writer if I hadn't been a lawyer. 23:46 Talk to me about writing. 23:49 Is it true that you failed a English class in community college? 23:54 No, I didn't fail. I got a D minus. I didn't fail. 23:57 Hanging. 23:58 On. Well, listen, 24:00 I had an A plus average all year. 24:03 It was my freshman year of college, 24:07 freshman comp and freshman literature. 24:10 And I had a really strong high school English teacher, 24:14 and I was prepared for college as far as English is concerned. 24:18 And so the course was fairly easy and I had straight A's 24:24 and I was never a top student, but I enjoyed literature. 24:29 And 24:32 the final exam came down to, it was one third of our grade. 24:37 Our term paper, which was a big deal back then, with sources and all that, 24:42 was one third of the grade, 24:45 and then the other tests in class participation. 24:48 And so we're taking the final exam and 24:53 we just started. And the teacher said, "John, 24:57 would you step out in the hallway?" And I said, "Well, 25:02 sure." And we stepped out in the hallway. She had a copy of my term paper 25:07 and she said, 25:09 "You have a very efficient way of words for a 19-year-old student." 25:15 I didn't know what she was talking about. And I said, "Well, okay, 25:19 thank you." She said, "No, 25:23 I haven't had many students who could write like this." And 25:28 I said, "Okay." And she said, 25:29 "I think you plagiarized this." And I said, "Oh, 25:34 no." I said, "No, no, no. I don't have to plagiarize. No, that's not true. 25:39 I didn't." And she very dramatically turned the paper around on the back of it. 25:43 She had a big F and she gave it to me. 25:48 And I though, "This is not fair." 25:56 She went back in the classroom. I went down to the men's restroom down the hall, 26:01 and I walked in, it was empty, and I got very emotional. 26:04 And I was crying, 26:07 and I was really upset by it because it wasn't true. 26:12 And once I pulled myself together, 26:16 I looked in the mirror, my face was red, my eyes were red. I said, 26:21 "I can't go back in the classroom like this." 26:24 And so I waited and waited and waited, and finally 26:30 when the class was over, 26:32 I went back into the class and picked up my test paper and gave it to her. And 26:38 so I made an F on the final exam, F on the term paper, F on the final exam, 26:43 and I got a D minus for the course. And 26:50 I left that school. I left it behind. I went somewhere else. 26:54 I was transferring a lot anyway, by the way, 26:55 but I didn't want to stay there any longer. 26:58 But it was also being falsely accused. I didn't think about this at the time, 27:02 but 27:04 years went by before I started writing about people who are 27:10 falsely accused and wrongfully convicted of serious crimes. 27:15 It's very traumatic to be accused of something when you know you're innocent. 27:20 And I still think about that episode. 27:25 I'm lucky it's the only time it's happened in life and it wasn't that serious, 27:29 I guess, in the scheme of things, but 27:32 it was pretty traumatic. 27:35 Well, it also reveals one of your core values clearly, 27:40 which is justice and fairness. And 27:46 I think that there was probably a lot about that searing experience of standing 27:49 in that hallway And feeling completely powerless and 27:54 having no way to prove your innocence, 27:56 no way to convince this woman in believing in you, 28:00 and just how utterly unfair that is. 28:02 And there's that kind of moral grappling in almost all 28:07 of your stories 28:09 and these characters needing to dig deep, 28:12 which we all need to do in moments where you have to believe in yourself 28:18 in a moment when somebody else doesn't, 28:20 or you have to know the truth when somebody else is saying lies about you. 28:25 One of the other things that you said that I really related to was this sense of 28:30 you were 18 and drifting. 28:33 And I have a feeling this is going to be a conversation a lot of parents send to 28:37 their adult kids, especially ones that might be drifting right now. 28:42 So if somebody's in that phase where I think a lot of people 18 28:47 to 26 are feeling that acutely right now. 28:52 It was a different era. Yes. It was just after. 28:55 There were two major factors I think that 29:00 sent me drifting. 29:03 One was the fact I was raised in a very strict Southern Baptist environment, 29:06 very conservative, 29:07 and I couldn't wait to leave home to get away, 29:12 to drink beer and chase girls and have some fun in college. 29:16 And that was a huge factor. Also, it was 1973. 29:22 We grew up in a suburb of Memphis and it was a middle class suburb, 29:25 a working class suburb, and Vietnam hung over us all through high school. 29:31 We knew boys who had gone and come back, not in one piece. 29:35 We knew there was always an effort to join the National Guard, 29:40 to flunk a medical exam, all these schemes to avoid Vietnam. By 1970, 29:45 I was 15 years old, but I was aware of what was going on, 29:48 and it was a really a dark time in American history, 29:52 especially for kids who were facing the draft, 29:55 and we were all staring at the draft. And 29:59 so Sort of a depressing... I knew I wanted to go to college, 30:04 but I didn't know when, and I didn't know how to get there. 30:06 And my parents wanted us to go, 30:08 but there was no plan to get us there because they didn't know any better. 30:14 After I finished high school, I just sort of wasn't sure what to do. 30:20 I went to two different colleges. Then when I was a sophomore, 30:25 I transferred to Mississippi State because my buddies had transferred to 30:28 Mississippi State. 30:31 There was this one golden moment when the light goes off in your life and 30:34 something happens that you don't know really what it is. 30:39 It has happened at least twice in my life. 30:42 I was in a classroom one day in 1975 30:46 at Mississippi State, and it was a finance course, big class, 30:51 and the war was over. 30:54 Saigon was falling and the communists were rampaging about to take over Saigon. 30:59 We were trying to evacuate all of our personnel from the embassy there, 31:03 and it was a chaotic time. 31:05 More of the Vietnam War was still troubling our nation. 31:11 We had this conservative professor, 31:15 a bomb thrower who though war is great as long as somebody else is fighting it. 31:19 He was complaining about the fact that we should still be there fighting 31:24 and we weren't spending enough money to... We could have won the war, blah, 31:27 blah. And he made the mistake. 31:31 There was a guy in our class who had been to Vietnam, 31:35 and he was about three years older than we were, 31:37 and he had been wounded in Vietnam. Nothing really severe, 31:41 but he'd seen combat and he challenged the professor 31:47 in a big way. 31:49 And you didn't do that back then in 1975 at a conservative 31:54 place like Mississippi State, you didn't challenge a professor. 31:58 This guy was fearless and he went after him. 32:02 They locked up and the student just absolutely ripped the guy to 32:07 shreds. We thought it was wonderful. It scared us. 32:12 I thought it was wonderful. I later talked to the guy and he was a great guy and 32:19 he said, "What are you studying?" I said, "General business." They said, 32:22 "That's crap, man. You don't want to study that." He said, "Study accounting. 32:26 It's the toughest business major. 32:27 It'll prepare you for law school. I'm going to law school and I'm going to do 32:30 this and I'm going to do that." They said, "That's the route to go." I said, 32:34 "Okay." Just like that. I thought that makes perfect sense. 32:39 Law school is something I should think about. And that's when the light came on. 32:42 At the age of 20, suddenly I stopped drifting. 32:46 I found my place on campus. I found my place in the major, 32:50 started thinking about law school, and 32:54 I was a different person that one moment. 32:56 What's interesting about that one moment is that it has the same 33:01 core value, justice. 33:05 You were rooting for the Vietnam vet because of your deep sense of 33:09 justice. 33:11 The same thing was true when you got the backhanded weird compliment about what 33:16 a gifted writer you were in a way that was very unjust. 33:21 The dots are there. 33:23 I think when I was talking earlier about that kind of idea in 33:28 1980 that came to you through the friend for the firm about the firm that nobody 33:33 leaves, that's kind of what I meant, 33:35 that there are these little things when you look in reverse, oh, 33:40 even though the path was really screwed up, 33:43 I kind of see how all this connects. I often think about that because in moments 33:47 in my life, 33:48 even today where I feel just overwhelmed or challenged or I'm not 33:53 quite sure what move to make next, I typically remind myself, well, 33:57 I don't need to know. I just need to look backwards and say, 34:01 they've always led somewhere so I can trust that where I'm standing right now 34:06 is going to connect to something in the future and I don't need to know 34:11 what that is to know that it will happen. And then your advice, 34:16 you write one page, you take one step, 34:18 you start chapter two. What was the second golden moment? 34:25 Far more important. 34:28 I was a 30-year-old lawyer dreaming of being a big 34:33 time courtroom lawyer. That was my goal, to be a big trial lawyer. 34:37 And because of that, I was always hanging around the courtroom. 34:42 In our local courthouse, 34:43 we had beautiful courthouse and beautiful courtroom and good lawyers and good 34:46 judges, and that was my turf. I was always there. 34:53 I volunteered for a lot of court appointed criminal cases and trials. 34:58 By the age of 30, 34:59 I had been through a lot of trials and I was sort of on the path. 35:03 It's hard to make a lot of money in a small town practice. 35:07 That was the frustrating part, 35:08 but I also had the dream of being a big trial lawyer and getting bigger cases. 35:13 That was where I was headed. 35:15 Like that guy in Jackson Hole, what's his name, that legendary -. 35:17 Jerry Spence. Yeah, Jerry Spence. I think he passed away last year. Yeah. 35:20 He was a hero 40 years ago. He was a big hero, a famous lawyer. 35:26 I was hanging around the courtroom one day when I saw something that 35:32 changed everything. It was a trial 35:36 that I knew about. We all knew about it because it was a horrible case. 35:40 Young little girl had been raped and they caught the guy and he wanted to go 35:45 to trial. He was a bad actor, terrible guy. 35:49 They brought the little girl in to testify. She was, I don't know, 10 or 12. 35:54 The judge, my judge, great judge, 35:58 he knew that it was going to be very, very difficult. 36:01 He did something I had never seen before. He cleared the courtroom, 36:05 everybody out. Security was tight. Security was very tight. 36:10 So everybody left the courtroom and he put a deputy at the back door, 36:13 the front door, said no one can be admitted for the next hour or so. 36:19 There were deputies all over the place. 36:21 Being a lawyer, 36:25 I was an officer of the court so I could hang around and I did. 36:32 Little girl testified and 36:37 at times she was very brave. At times she was very frail. 36:43 She told what happened. It was horrible. It was horrible. 36:48 For an hour or so, 36:50 she took us through every emotion known to the human soul, 36:53 from love to hate to retribution to what you name it. 36:58 We went through a roller coaster and I kept 37:03 asking, I said, "What am I doing here? 37:05 I don't have to be here." I knew three people on the jury, small county, 37:11 and I was across the courtroom looking at them and it's really bizarre to see 37:15 all 12 jurors wiping their eyes. The judge was hiding his face. 37:20 The lawyers were... It was just horrible. 37:23 And the only person who didn't show any emotion was a defendant who was a 37:28 hardened criminal. And finally, she could not continue. 37:34 And the judge said, "Let's take a recess." 37:40 Thank God. I raced out of the courtroom, side door, 37:43 went down the back steps and raced to my car. When I got to my car, 37:47 I realized I'd forgotten my briefcase. I had to go back in the courtroom, 37:52 up the back stairs to the side door, 37:54 and the defendant was sitting in the same chair. He hadn't moved. 38:00 There was nobody else in the courtroom but a deputy who was kind of guarding 38:03 him, but he wasn't going anywhere. I walked by the defendant 38:10 and I just had this thought. I said, 38:14 "Had that been my daughter and I could get this close and I had a 38:19 gun, 38:21 I would happily blow your brains out and I would look at the same jury and say, 38:25 Now, 38:25 what are you going to do to me for doing something that you all want to do? That 38:28 was raw, intense and filled with hatred. It was awful, 38:34 but it was real. It was such an emotional moment. 38:42 I got through it. 38:42 I got my briefcase and took off and I had this idea of this 38:47 story in a courtroom, my courtroom, 38:50 a fictional story is seen through the eyes of this idealistic young attorney who 38:55 gets appointed to represent this guy and here we go. 39:00 That was the origin of A Time to Kill. 39:04 I though about it for days and weeks and finally I said, 39:10 "I'm going to start with chapter one and tell this story." I had 39:15 never written before, fiction, and that's how it got started. 39:20 But if I had not been in that courtroom, 39:23 I'm not sure I would've been inspired or motivated enough or 39:28 ambitious enough to try something like that, and that's how it got started. 39:33 And you ultimately wrote it, but 39:37 when you went to go get a publisher, what happened? 39:41 Oh, boy. Talk about rejection. Well, 39:46 about halfway through, after a year or so, 39:49 there was a lot of stuff written, still untyped, 39:54 handwritten, and I began thinking about getting published. 39:59 I had the big dream, the dream of writing for a living. 40:03 That was the big dream. I could not shake it. Didn't want to shake it. 40:09 And that's what motivated me to keep writing and reading. 40:13 Reading was crucial because I read so many great 40:20 mystery writers, suspense writers, all the guys who were big in the 80s, 70s, 40:24 80s, and 90s. So when I finally finished the book, 40:29 I sent the book off to New York the way you're supposed to do it. 40:32 Three sample chapters, a cover letter, a pitch, and you sent it off to... 40:36 I had a list of 10 agents and 10 publishers. Back then, 40:39 you could send it to an editor. 40:40 You can't do that now. It has to come to an agent today. 40:44 I had 10 and 10, two lists. And my secretary, 40:48 because I was offered the state legislature, 40:51 she would send off 10 and 10, 20 submissions, go to New York. 40:55 They came right back, rejection, rejection, rejection. 41:00 I would come in on Friday afternoon from the state capital, 41:04 run by the office and check the mail, check my rejection letters, 41:09 and that's how it went. There were a lot of them, 41:15 but that's kind of the way you did it back then. 41:18 Rejection was so much a part of it. 41:19 Well, I think that's kind of the way you do it now too. 41:21 Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. 41:22 Anything has a lot of rejection. I want to compliment you about something. 41:26 I want to make sure the person listening or watching really gets the 41:31 profound importance of something that you allowed yourself to do. 41:36 You 41:38 started writing just because you wanted to and you enjoyed it. 41:44 So much of your story, which I find to be so inspiring, 41:49 is that the dream didn't happen first. 41:54 You were just interested. 41:57 You had something you enjoyed doing just for the sake of doing it. 42:01 And we've all had those moments where you get lost in 42:06 something. 42:07 And I think it's so important that we all have something for ourselves. 42:11 And as I was listening to your story, you said very early on, 42:16 I've always loved stories and I grew up with storytellers and I grew up 42:21 with grandparents and parents telling stories on the porch and allowing yourself 42:26 and giving yourself permission and creating space in your life to have something 42:30 that is just for you simply because you enjoy it, 42:35 that to me is the fundamental lesson because even if you never published, 42:40 even if you never wrote the 70 books or however many you've written, 42:45 all of which become number one, even if none of that never happened, 42:48 having that space for yourself to do something that really is for you that you 42:53 enjoy doing, 42:55 it brings so much meaning to your life. And so I think it's really important. 42:58 I want to make sure as you're listening, 43:00 you heard the brilliance in that because the dream came after you created 43:05 space for something that you actually just enjoyed doing. 43:08 Yeah. Still enjoy it. Still therapy. 43:11 One of the things that I'm really picking up on your story, 43:16 because so many people get either derailed 43:21 before they even start 43:23 or they get derailed because of the rejections that start coming 43:29 in. 43:30 And what's interesting about your story is that if you're really paying 43:34 attention, listening as John's talking, 43:38 that the getting started for you in terms of writing as a habit 43:43 and just kind of leaning in felt like more of something that just brought a lot 43:47 of meaning and joy to your life and that was the why. 43:51 But I'm curious, 43:52 how did you deal with the rejections and how did you deal with the fact that 43:57 the Time to Kill, you get published, 44:01 it's now out there and nothing's happening and yet you're still 44:06 writing. 44:06 So what is the lesson that the person listening can take 44:11 about processing rejection or putting yourself out there and it's 44:16 not successful because it wasn't? 44:18 Well, the submission rejection routine that I went through was fairly typical 44:24 for writers. 44:26 The first novel that was a flop is not unusual in this profession, 44:32 but there are a lot of stories, 44:33 a lot of great stories about famous writers who were turned down repeatedly 44:38 time and time again. Nobody wanted to publish their stories and they kept on, 44:41 they kept on, they kept... 44:43 And finally they got a break somewhere and those are the great stories in 44:47 publishing. 44:48 Some of the great books we've read and enjoyed over the years were totally 44:52 rejected. And I tell aspiring writers 44:58 that some of these stories, they're fun stories to talk about, my story's fun, 45:03 but almost every successful writer got 45:07 rejected. 45:08 I think every successful person. 45:10 Yeah, sure. Yeah. 45:11 What's in your story is that you didn't stop. 45:14 And. 45:15 It goes back to one page a day. Whether the rejections come in, 45:19 whether the book does well, you just didn't stop. And to me, 45:24 time and time again, 45:25 that always seems to be the unifying thing that happens 45:30 in successful people's story. And again, if I use a writing metaphor, 45:35 if you're still here, the story hasn't ended. 45:39 And the person that has control over where the story goes next, 45:42 whether you keep writing or you keep showing up, is you. 45:45 And because you loved what you did and you were doing it for you, 45:50 it didn't matter if you got rejected, you were going to keep writing. 45:52 I don't know how long I would've done it had I not had the success with the 45:57 firm. 45:58 Really? 45:58 I didn't have a story for the third book at the time, 46:03 and I don't know... I'd spent five years, 46:07 three years for Time to Kill, two years for the firm back to back, 46:12 and I was getting kind of tired of the 5:30 routine. 46:18 I was spending a lot of time there and I kept thinking, "Well, 46:24 you could be spending more time with your cases as a 46:29 lawyer." I was letting some things slide, 46:32 and the practice was not going anywhere because I was distracted. 46:38 At some point, 46:39 I had to make a decision because I wasn't making any money as a writer. 46:44 I think at some point fairly soon after that, I would've had to have said, 46:48 "Okay, I've tried twice. I can't keep doing this, 46:53 but I've got a great fallback position. 46:54 I've got the bread and butter right here. 46:56 It's my law office and I can make that more successful and I can forget about 47:00 writing and I can pursue my original dream of being a really 47:05 successful trial lawyer." I had some heroes, 47:10 some lawyers I knew in Mississippi who were very fine trial lawyers who I 47:15 tried to pattern myself after as a very young lawyer. I think that's probably 47:20 what would've happened. Thank God it didn't come to that. 47:24 Thank God it didn't happen. Again, 47:27 I feel I got a huge lucky break. I know you make your own luck, okay? 47:32 But I got a huge lucky break with the firm. 47:37 The book went to New York in the fall of 89, 47:40 and my agent who had read the summary and loved the idea, 47:47 he wasn't too thrilled with it. He wanted some changes made, and I said, "No, 47:51 I'm not going to make those changes." We were sort of at a stalemate for several 47:56 months. He showed the book to some editors. 48:01 There was no rush to publish the firm, 48:05 and he called me around Christmas of 89 and said, 48:11 "Look, nothing's happening. It's the holidays. 48:14 I'll sell the book in January." I said, "Okay, great. 48:17 I've heard that before." And 48:21 this is where the fun starts. Unknown to him and unknown to me, 48:27 a scout. Back then, 48:30 the major studios had scouts in New York who would hang around the publishing 48:34 companies and pick up the gossip for a big book or a good book, 48:38 a good manuscript. But a bootleg copy of 48:43 the firm popped up in Hollywood over the 48:48 Christmas break, and a guy got it out there. 48:56 I'm not sure what he did, but he pretended though he was my agent, 48:59 and he ran 25 copies of it and sent it off to all the studios and 49:05 production companies. They started getting offers 49:11 and it got - And you. 49:11 Didn't know any of this was. 49:12 Going on? Not a word, not a word. My agent didn't know about it. 49:16 Nobody knew about it except for the guys in Hollywood. 49:18 And so the offers got more and more intense. The bidding started, 49:22 and at some point, somebody said, "What about Grisham? 49:28 Have we talked to him?" Well, nobody had. 49:31 Somebody called my agent. They had a huge fight. 49:35 They threatened lawsuits and all this kind of stuff, 49:38 and I didn't know about that. 49:39 It was obvious a big deal was about to go down, 49:44 so they kissed and made up and had a deal, 49:47 and they were ready for the final round of 49:52 bidding when he finally called me on a Sunday morning and he said, "Hey, 49:55 I need your authority to take the highest offer from 50:00 Paramount, Universal, 50:01 or Disney Touchstone for the film rights to the firm." I said, 50:07 "Film rights? What about the book?" And he said, 50:11 "We'll talk about it later." I said, "Whoa, wait a minute." He said, no, 50:15 this is urgent. He said, 50:16 "They're sitting by their phones for the final round of bidding." 50:21 The word bidding had a nice ring to it. I thought, "Okay. Yeah, sure. 50:26 Go ahead and sell the film rights." He called back about an hour later and said, 50:30 "We have just sold the film rights." No, I said, "Okay, 50:35 just for fun, how much money are we talking about?" He said, 50:39 "I'm asking for 500,000. 50:42 I hope to get 400,000," or something like that. I said, 50:46 "You want my authority to go do that?" And he said, "Yeah, 50:49 so you have my authority." He called back and he said, 50:52 "We just sold the film rights to the firm to Paramount Pictures 50:57 for $600,000," which was more money than I'd made in 10 years of 51:02 practicing law. I said, 51:07 "Okay, look, 51:08 let me call you back." Renee and I sat down at the kitchen table. 51:13 We were late for lunch at my mom's house, and we said, 51:16 "You got to be kidding." One phone call just dropped in like that out of 51:21 nowhere, totally unexpected, and that's when everything changed. 51:26 One thing I want to just tease out, 51:29 especially as you've been listening to John's story, 51:31 because you said you got lucky and then you, "Well, you make your own luck." 51:37 The fact is, 51:39 you had been working toward that moment since you were 18 years old, 51:46 and we recently had this extraordinary professor who researches the science of 51:51 luck, 51:52 and luck is this largely misunderstood thing because it's really about 51:57 the actions that you take that put you in the current to have those kinds 52:02 of things happen. The five years of writing, 52:07 the walking past the 28 rejections, 52:11 the shrugging off the flop of the time to kill book, 52:16 the continuing to write, the sending it all off, 52:21 all of that are examples of your philosophy of one page a day, 52:26 move it down the field, write another page, keep moving it forward, 52:30 that put you in the current to have all of that 52:35 happen. It's important for the person to hear that because it'd be easy to say, 52:40 "Oh gosh, timing, 52:41 all this stuff," but none of that happens without everything that 52:45 came before. 52:47 Right. I don't downplay it. I tend to downplay it for -. 52:51 Yeah, I've noticed. 52:53 To get a laugh. I love humor. I love to poke fun at myself. 52:57 I don't downplay what happened, but you're right, 53:00 it was a five-year journey to get to that point. 53:03 I didn't realize it, But everything I had done, 53:06 and also sort of honing the craft, learning how to write, 53:10 learning the mistakes from a time to kill, 53:12 learning how to keep the story lean and fast. That was all stuff I 53:17 just picked up. I learned over time, and so 53:22 the timing was very fortunate when it happened. The book came out 53:27 when you saw it, May of 91, March of 91, 53:31 and there was a lot of buzz behind the book when it came out, 53:34 and it hit the New York Times list. 53:38 Back in those days, a new writer on the list got a lot of attention. 53:43 Doubleday said, "Can you come to New York for the victory lap?" I said, "Sure." 53:50 Went to New York and had a bunch of interviews. 53:54 I did Brian Gumbel Today Show, which was a big deal back then. 53:58 He was very good to me, and we got a lot of... We were having lunch, 54:02 a bunch of publishers in the room and booksellers, 54:06 and I sat next to a very young executive from the old Walden Bookchains. 54:11 Oh, I remember Walden. Yeah. Every model had a B. Dalton on one end, 54:14 but Walton on the other, and those are the bookstores I grew up with. 54:19 And this guy, very young guy, probably my age, and he said, 54:22 we just make an idle conversation. He said something that just stuck. 54:25 I'll never forget it. He said, 54:28 we're talking about writers and he said, "Oh, 54:32 the big guys come out every year." I had never 54:38 thought about that. He said, "Yeah, look, Stephen King, Michael Crighton, 54:43 Robert Lovelam, Ken Fowler, they come out every year. 54:48 The big guys come out every year, Elmore Leonard." And I thought, "Okay, 54:52 I want to be a big guy." So I hustled back to Oxford, 54:57 Mississippi, where we lived at the time, and 55:02 wrote around the clock to finish the Peloton Brief, 55:06 to have it out in time to publish in 92, a year later. And 55:12 that's how it all kept going. That's where the book a year came from. 55:17 That's been a book of years for 35 years now. 55:20 Page a day, a book a year. 55:22 Again, keep your butt in the seat. 55:24 Keep your butt in the seat. Talk to me about that. 55:27 Yeah, you got to do it. You got to show up. You got to show up. 55:33 There was some real gold in something that you've said, 55:37 and I want to combine the two and then pull it out for the person listening. 55:41 You used this term where you patterned other trial lawyers, 55:46 and that was kind of your backup plan, 55:49 you're following the actions of people that inspired you, 55:52 and then you said the big guys come out every year, which is another pattern. 55:59 Can you talk just a little bit about how some of the secrets 56:04 to success are literally right in front of you based on the patterns 56:09 of people that you admire? 56:11 Yeah. When I was in law school, my third year... 56:14 Third year law school is pretty easy compared to the first two. 56:17 I didn't like law school either. I didn't like law school at all. 56:19 I'm not sure any law school. We have so. 56:20 Much. 56:21 In common. Oh God, couldn't stand law school. I couldn't wait to get out of it. 56:26 But my senior year, there was a federal courthouse across town, 56:31 and I would watch the dockets, 56:35 and I knew when the good lawyers were in court trying cases, 56:39 I would cut classes, which is no big deal when you're a third year student, 56:43 to go watch the lawyers, the good lawyers. 56:47 I was in court one day watching a civil trial and two heavyweights were 56:52 going at it in front of a jury, and it was magic. 56:57 I was sitting there, and civil trials don't draw big crowds. I was sitting, 57:02 I looked around, I said, there are no other law students here, 57:05 which was no big deal. Who wants to watch trials? But I did. 57:10 I wanted to watch the lawyers. 57:14 I tried to pattern my practice after those guys, 57:19 and a lot of it is being able to discover cases, 57:25 not chase them, but get them, which is probably the most difficult part. 57:30 Then when I was writing, 57:32 when I started writing Time to Kill and the firm, 57:36 that five-year period, I read a lot of popular fiction, and 57:43 it was really kind of odd because I would read a book 57:48 and I would say, "This is crap, okay? This guy, this is terrible. 57:54 I can beat this." I knew I could. I mean, I knew I could tell a better story. 57:57 I could certainly write better than a lot of popular fiction, 58:00 a lot of really popular fiction, and that was inspirational. 58:04 I was also very honest, and I would read a book and say, 58:08 "I'll never be that good." Still do that. But it's 58:13 always something better. You got something to aspire for. 58:17 I want every book to be my best book, and you're getting better and get better. 58:21 I'm an honest judge in my own work, 58:23 but I knew there was room for me on the bestseller list, 58:27 and it was often the bad books that inspired me to keep going. 58:30 Or I'd walk in a Walden bookstore or B. Dalton, 58:33 and they have the big wall of all the New York Times bestsellers and big, 58:37 beautiful books, and I knew a lot of them, 58:40 and I would get so sad thinking, "Who wants to hear from me? 58:45 Look at all those books up there. Look at all those books." 58:51 I'd worry about that for a while, but I wouldn't slow down. 58:54 I tell writers all the time, "Look, 58:57 publishing needs new talent every year. 59:01 If you want to get inspired to write, 59:03 read debut novels. These are first-time writers, and they're celebrated, 59:09 and we celebrate them. 59:10 We need new writers. Somebody's going to get published every year. 59:14 I love that moment where you're saying," Who's going to read what I write? 59:19 Who's going to read me? "For the person who 59:23 knows what they want but is in that swirl, 59:26 because I did that with this podcast for many, many years. 59:30 There's so many of them. Who wants to hear from me? 59:33 Lots of people have already done it. 59:35 For the person that's saying that to themselves, 59:37 like you used to in the bookstore, what would you tell them? 59:42 You can't control all that. You can't control what somebody else writes. 59:46 You can't control what the publishers publish. 59:48 You can't control what the stores sell. Work with what you can control, 59:53 which is your own fiction, and you can make it better. 59:57 If you have a great story, something new, 59:59 write Write it and don't quit. I tell writers, 1:00:04 when are you going to stop writing when I run out of stories? Or writers say, 1:00:08 I've written five novels and I've had them all rejected. 1:00:13 What would you advise me to do? And I will say, well, 1:00:15 keep writing if you have a story. Now, 1:00:20 a lot of the great writing is God-given talent. 1:00:23 There's some writers in any field, 1:00:26 you have people who just have so much talent 1:00:31 that comes through DNA or write education or whatever experiences they have. 1:00:36 But you can also improve your own writing by 1:00:40 watching those people, by trying to be like them, 1:00:43 trying to be great like they are. And also technical skills that 1:00:48 you can master yourself. Vocabulary and grammar and reading. 1:00:53 Reading, reading, reading is the most important. I don't know a single writer, 1:00:57 successful writer who is not an avid reader. 1:01:01 You gave some really, I think, cool advice, 1:01:04 and I don't even know if you realize this. 1:01:06 So as you're standing in the bookstore and you're looking at all the greats and 1:01:10 you're thinking, there's no room for me, I'm never going to be that good. 1:01:17 We don't look at the books that are crap and use it as motivation 1:01:22 to go, if this garbage can get published, why not me? 1:01:26 You know what I mean? If this person could do it, why not me? 1:01:31 And so I think there's patterns of both ends to not just look up. 1:01:35 Look up for the actual skills of success 1:01:41 and the technique and talent. 1:01:42 Look down to remind yourself that there are people who are far less talented 1:01:47 than you That are putting themselves out there, 1:01:50 that are writing one page at a time. The reason, 1:01:55 John, 1:01:57 that I release two episodes a week is because 1:02:02 the big guys have two a week. 1:02:07 And so the patterning that you're talking about is all around you. 1:02:11 And when you were sitting in that courtroom as a third year law student watching 1:02:15 the two big dogs go at it in a civil case and you look around going, 1:02:18 why is nobody else here? Who wants to watch a civil trial? 1:02:21 A person who wants to be amazing at it studies the greats. 1:02:26 You're a student before you're a great, 1:02:28 and that's everywhere in your story that you're looking around, 1:02:32 you're looking for great stories, you're looking for inspiration, 1:02:34 you're looking for patterns, you're looking for what the great writers do. 1:02:38 And I even think that one of the reasons why I was so excited to have you on and 1:02:43 talk to you about your story is because I know every single 1:02:48 person, the person who's listening right now, 1:02:50 they listen because they want the patterns from your life. They want to know 1:02:54 what they can learn from you. 1:02:56 And even though a lot of what you're sharing is about the way you think about 1:03:00 writing, it is 1000% the exact same way that you do anything in life, 1:03:05 anything. 1:03:09 I would love to hear more about the Innocence Project and what you learned from 1:03:13 this work. 1:03:15 When I was a young lawyer, 1:03:16 I saw this obituary one day in the New York Times about this guy who had 1:03:20 obviously just died and he was very much like me, 1:03:26 same age, same neck of the woods, same region, 1:03:29 and he came within five days of being executed in Oklahoma. And I though, 1:03:34 how could this guy go to death row and be innocent? 1:03:41 And I was just stunned by the story. 1:03:45 I took off to Oklahoma. I took off and I met with his family and I said, 1:03:50 I'm going to write this book. And they said, great. 1:03:55 They were still mourning his death. 1:03:57 Writing that book took me into the world of wrongful convictions. 1:04:00 And once I realized there are thousands of innocent people in prison, 1:04:03 it was a big wake-up call for me. And that was 20 years ago. 1:04:08 And so I'm still writing about them, 1:04:10 still published a book two years ago about wrongful convictions, 1:04:14 still angry at how they happened, 1:04:17 still advocate for criminal justice reform, 1:04:22 still frustrated by the lack of reform. So it's something I'm 1:04:27 caught up in. 1:04:30 I admire that in you, 1:04:33 especially having been a public defender and having Brian Stevenson as one of my 1:04:38 most inspiring mentors for sure. We've had him here on the show. 1:04:43 His work's. 1:04:45 Incredible. He's one of a kind. 1:04:48 What he has accomplished is truly amazing and his book was very 1:04:53 inspirational. We visited his museums in Montgomery and were just 1:04:59 really overcome. 1:05:02 How do you stay hopeful when the world is overwhelming and when you're 1:05:07 in these cases and grappling with issues of 1:05:12 justice in your work? How do you stay hopeful? 1:05:15 I tell myself, okay, go back to the basics. 1:05:19 Worry about the things you can control. 1:05:25 You can wake up each morning and see the news and just fret 1:05:30 and worry yourself into a deep funk and stay there all day. 1:05:35 Or you can say, okay, the world's a mess. Okay. 1:05:40 What can I do today to make it a little bit better? 1:05:44 How can I help someone today to make it a little bit better? 1:05:48 And that's what I do. That's almost every day. Obviously, 1:05:55 I can escape in my own world and go write some fiction, which is what I do, 1:06:00 still do. 1:06:01 And I can also work with a lot of nonprofits and things like that to 1:06:07 try to make the world better and get a lot of gratification from that. 1:06:11 My wife and I are active with childhood hunger issues, 1:06:15 homelessness and wrongful convictions. We stay pretty busy 1:06:21 working with nonprofits and that's extremely gratifying. So 1:06:27 that gives us hope. We hope we're providing hope for someone else. 1:06:33 Baby steps, small steps, little something every day. 1:06:37 One page a day. 1:06:38 Yeah, one page a day. 1:06:40 I often think about this too because it is very overwhelming and 1:06:45 there's a lot to feel despair about. And on one hand, 1:06:49 I think the fact that you feel heartbroken about some of the things that you see 1:06:53 is a good thing because it means that you still have a heart to 1:06:57 break and you still care about goodness and justice and kindness and the 1:07:02 dignity of how people are treated. And I agree with you, 1:07:07 I feel hopeless when I look out there, 1:07:10 but I feel very empowered when I just look in my community and I look around me 1:07:15 and I say, 1:07:16 "What is one thing I can do today that really 1:07:21 is part of a positive shift, whether it's in my home, 1:07:25 in my marriage, in my friendships, in my community, 1:07:29 in the world at large?" And I truly think if enough of us just 1:07:34 start doing that, everything is going to start to change for the better. 1:07:39 And there are so many people doing that. 1:07:40 Yes. 1:07:41 The good outnumber the bad. 1:07:43 That's true. I agree with you. John Grisham, 1:07:47 you are just an absolute amazing, 1:07:52 amazing, generous, and very talented person. Thank you for -. 1:07:56 You're being very generous. Thank you. 1:07:57 You're. 1:07:58 Welcome. You're very welcome. 1:07:59 You're welcome. 1:08:00 Thanks for having me on your show. 1:08:01 Oh, of course. And give Renee my best. 1:08:03 I can't wait to meet her one of these days. 1:08:05 She would love that. 1:08:06 I would love that too. And I also want to thank you. 1:08:08 Thank you for making the time to spend it here with me and John Grisham. 1:08:13 And I hope that you feel so inspired and you are 1:08:17 just going to go put your butt in the chair, 1:08:20 turn the page and start writing that new chapter. 1:08:23 And in case no one else tells you, as your friend, I wanted to be sure to say, 1:08:26 I love you and I believe in you and your ability to create a better life. 1:08:30 And you got so many amazing pieces of wisdom and tools 1:08:35 from John Grisham today, so freaking use them. Alrighty, 1:08:39 I'll see you in the next episode. I'll welcome you in the moment you hit play. 1:08:42 And thank you for watching all the way to the end. 1:08:45 Didn't you love hearing all of this from John Grisham? 1:08:49 I know I did. And thank you also for sharing this with people in your life who 1:08:53 need a little inspiration to start writing their next chapter. Alrighty, 1:08:57 I know you want to watch another episode of the Mel Robbins podcast. 1:09:01 You're going to love this one, 1:09:02 and I will welcome you in the moment you hit play.