Harlan Coben: It's Never Too Late to Start Your Creative Life

Harlan Coben spent decades insisting his novels had nothing to do with his life. Then he went looking, and found his life inside every single one of them. With over 100 million books sold in forty-six languages and a run of number one Netflix hits including Fool Me Once, Missing You and I Will Find You, Harlan Coben is one of the most widely read storytellers on the planet. His new book, Plot Twist: Life, Craft, and the Messy First Draft https://link.amazon/B00ZKRLiN, is both a memoir and a writing guide, because he can no longer separate the two. He is also, at this point, one of the most credible voices arguing that the creative work you keep postponing does not require a bigger life than the one you already have. In this conversation, you'll explore: The two-word question he has been asking since he was a kid, and how it turned a boring family hike into a global hitWhy he wrote three complete novels that nobody published, and flatly refuses to count them as failuresWhat incremental ambition means in practice, and the modest first goal he set that most writers today would be embarrassed to admit toThe two things fear does to people who want to make something, and the daily choice that decides which one you getWhy he tells every aspiring writer to stop talking about the book they're working on If you've been waiting for more time, more proof, or more permission before you start the thing you keep circling, this one is likely to shorten the wait. You can find Harlan at: Website https://www.harlancoben.com/ | Instagram https://www.instagram.com/harlancoben/ | Episode Transcript https://www.goodlifeproject.com/podcast/is-it-too-late-to-start-writing-a-novel-harlan-coben Check out our sponsors and resources: Visit Our Sponsor Page https://www.goodlifeproject.com/sponsors/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jonathan Fields?

  So the author Harlan Coben has something like 100 million books in print, and almost every one of them started the same way, with something ordinary from his own life and two words, "What if?" A hike he hated in the stick in New Jersey, he became the boy from the woods. A grandfather who vanished when Harlan was 10, a Teamster boss fleeing an indictment, became a career built on people who go missing. I spent 14 years asking people how they create, and very few pull the whole thing down out of the clouds like Harlan does. His new book Plot Twist is part memoir, it's part writing guide, part creative guide, and its message is simple. You don't need a big, dramatic life

• 0:42Jonathan Fields?

  to make something worth reading, or watching, or experience, or creating. You've just got to pay attention to the one that you have. So we dig in, why hope makes better suspense than murder, why he wrote three novels nobody published and didn't hit the bestseller list until book number 10, why boredom is a creative superpower, and why your phone is kind of stealing it away from you. We talk about why you should never, ever talk about the book or the project that you're writing while you're in the middle of it, and why if this dream still beats in your heart to do something creative, it is not too late, not at 40, not at 50, not at 70 or 80. And also, why this isn't just about books. It's about unlocking your creativity in any domain.

• 1:25Jonathan Fields?

  But the moment that I really can't stop thinking about comes at the very end, when Harlan was just 27. His dad calls him from a hotel room in Tampa and says he's not feeling well. And before the ambulance arrives, he kept repeating one thing. And by morning, his dad was gone. And his last message to his son was, "Check my pockets." What Harlan found there and what it taught him about just how the smallest detail can carry the biggest emotion and the biggest story is where we'll land today. So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. And we'll jump right in after this short break.

• 2:08Jonathan Fields?

  Good Life Project is supported by Peloton. So full honesty here, I am not a runner, never really have been. I'm a hiker. Give me a trail, some elevation, and a few hours, and I am genuinely happy. But here's the thing about the Peloton Tread Flex that really got my attention. It's not really pitched at runner so much as it is at people who just want to move, walk, hike in place, or let a walk turn into a jog if the day feels right. No pressure to perform, just movement on your terms. An incredibly convenient, no matter what life or the weather brings you. The new Peloton Tread Flex is built for this. It's foldable and movable. It fits into an actual home, not the home gym that most people don't actually have. Everybody's got a corner. Just roll it out, walk, hike, jog if you're feeling it,

• 2:52Jonathan Fields?

  and then roll it right back where it came from. And once you're on it, you've got instructors who feel more like friends than drill sergeants, with programs for wherever you're starting, from call yourself a runner if you're just getting into it, all the way to full race training if that's your world. Let yourself run. Explore the new Peloton Tread Flex at onepeloton.com. This episode is brought to you by Choiceology, an original podcast from Charles Schwab, hosted by Katie Milkman, an award-winning behavioral scientist and author of the bestselling book, How to Change. Choiceology is a show about the psychology and economics behind our decisions. Hear true stories from Nobel laureates, authors, athletes,

• 3:34Jonathan Fields?

  and everyday people about why we do the things we do. Listen to Choiceology at schwab.com/podcast or wherever you listen. Good Life Project is sponsored by Talkiiatry. So here's something that comes up a lot in midlife. You've done the inner work, maybe years of therapy, and there's still a weight that won't lift. Is it just a rough patch, or maybe something more? That's where psychiatry can help. Talkiiatry is a 100% online psychiatry practice, offering comprehensive evaluations, diagnoses, and ongoing medication management for conditions like ADHD, anxiety, depression, and more. And finding a psychiatrist who takes your insurance, all 800-plus Talkiiatry clinicians are in-network with major insurers.

• 4:19Jonathan Fields?

  Take a short online assessment, get matched, and see someone in days, not months. You stay with the same provider, so your care evolves with you. Over 300,000 patients have found care this way. Head to talkiatry.com/goodlife to complete the short assessment and get matched with an in-network psychiatrist in just a few minutes. That's T-A-L-K-I-A-T-R-Y.com/goodlife to get matched in minutes. Talkiiatry.com/goodlife. As we're having this conversation, I'm in Boulder, Colorado, you are in New Jersey, and we share a deep love of something, hiking.

• 4:57Speaker 01

  Well, I don't know about it. My hatred of hiking, as you know, has produced ideas for me. So I use everything, even things I don't quite get.

• 5:07Jonathan Fields?

  Absolutely. No, I love that. I remember reading that, and I was just sitting there. I'm like, I'm a guy who voluntarily goes out into the woods four days a week for two hours, and it's my favorite place. And I see you write the word, "I hate hiking."

• 5:21Speaker 01

  I thought it's a catchy way of opening up a chapter in the memoir.

• 5:25Jonathan Fields?

  100%.

• 5:26Speaker 01

  My brother's the same. He goes all over the world and does these exotic hikes, and he sends me all these videos and stuff like that. And I'm like, "Why, man, why?" But hey, to each his own, to each his own.

• 5:37Jonathan Fields?

  Like you just mentioned, though, you know, for you, as much as it's not something where you look for, you wake up and you pop out of bed and you're like, "Ooh, I can't wait to hit the trails." It's been a really interesting source of creativity.

• 5:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, so in the case of this, I was hiking with my family once in the Ramapo Mountains of New Jersey. Okay, so it's New Jersey, it's boiling hot, it's like July, August day, and I'm whining. It's a dirt trail, it's the dirt's kicking up like I'm pigpen. It's hot, I'm sweaty, I'm thirsty. I'm like, "What are we doing out here?" And there's like a, "Oh, there's a tree." "Oh, there's another tree." "Oh, look, what's up?" "Wow, a tree." And I'm getting bored, and I'm whining, like I'm whining to you right now. And then I see on a parallel path, a little boy walking. And I start to ask myself, because this is what I do all day, and this is part of what I'm trying to teach people to sort of do, not whine, that's not the part. But I always am asking myself, "What if?" I'm always trying to invent stories. And I'm like, "Well, what if that little boy

• 6:34Speaker 01

  just came out of the woods right now and said, 'I've always lived in the woods. I don't remember any life before that. I don't remember any parents. I kind of broke into cabins.'" It's like a modern-day Mowgli. And what if they still can't figure it out? And what if 30 years pass, and he still doesn't know how he ended up in those woods? And as we start, my book called The Boy from the Woods and matched the two that he's in, he's standing right across the street after getting one of those DNA tests, across the street from his biological father. So here, I took something that I was not enjoying, and I turned it into a story idea.

• 7:10Jonathan Fields?

  That phrase, "What if?" Take me deeper into this, because it repeats a lot for you.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, sort of. I mean, part of what I want to do in Plot Twist is not just teach you to write, and I hope it does. And I hope it teaches you how to do story and all the things that I've spent my life doing. But more than that, I'm trying to instill in you maybe a little bit of the writer's mind frame. So the writer's mind frame, people have terms, I'm sure you've had on this show many times, terms like meditation or mindfulness. It's a very different version of that. It's a much more active version. So when I see somebody in the street, and I've taught my children this, I have four kids. Of course, I say children, they're all adults now. But what I taught them is every single person you see, the richest man, the poorest man, the ugliest, the most beautiful, whatever, every person has hopes and dreams. It's such a simple thought.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  When you're walking down the street, every person has hopes and dreams. And then the writer's mind frame takes it a step further. Well, what are those hopes and dreams? Did they come true? Do they still dream that? Do they have it packed up and somewhere stored in the back of their mind? Did the dream come true, and it was worse than they thought? Did it not come true? All these things, I think it gives you empathy, just as a human being. As a storyteller, it's a rich way of starting, getting my day going, getting my brain active.

• 8:31Jonathan Fields?

  I mean, I love that. And I'm glad you brought up the idea of empathy, too, because as you're describing that, I'm thinking, "Oh, this is a great way to just start to plant seeds of an idea if you're somebody who thinks you're, if your book curious, or just thinking about writing something." But yeah, the empathy part of it, I think, is really powerful, too. Because you can literally walk down the street, and we make so many assumptions about people, who they are, who they aren't, what's going on for them, what's not. Like, are they in a better place than us, a worse place than us? And the "what if," the "what-if-ing," it changes that. It puts you in a place of curiosity rather than assumption, which I think is a place that we all could use being more.

• 9:08Speaker 01

  Well, I agree with you 100%. I mean, part of, the other reason I wrote this book, or it's a lot of reasons, but we humans, as an expression, that we humans are meant not just to consume, but to create. And even if you don't create well, or you don't want to create, just trying, or having the mind frame, or understanding what makes somebody create. I don't really like words like, I thought the word "art" to be sort of hoity-toity and a little pretentious. "Oh, this is my art." I'm a storyteller. I'm creating and building stories and things like that. But if your thing is writing music, if your thing is sculpting, painting, or even just inventing, or being an entrepreneur, coming up with ideas for new drugs, whatever it is, it almost always starts with a "what if?"

• 9:52Speaker 01

  And curiosity. I mean, I think, Jonathan, that's the sort of key thing. Don't you think, like, you've met a lot of successful people. You and I have met a lot of successful people. And one of the things I do notice that most people who seem to be on the right track is they sort of have childlike curiosity for what's going on around them. Do you find that?

• 10:14Jonathan Fields?

  A hundred percent. You know, as you're describing that, as Lindsay, who you've met, the executive producer on the show, has reminded me that the guest I've often cited over 14 years of doing this, Milton Glazer, who was this iconic designer, you know, he's designed I Heart NY, he's co-founder of New York Magazine, and he's since passed, but years ago, I had the opportunity to sit down with him, he was 86 years old, and he dropped a line that I literally keep coming back to, probably on a monthly basis, and what he said was certainty is a closing of the mind.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:46Jonathan Fields?

  You know, and he looked at it, and because we spend so much of our waking hours chasing this thing, certainty, quote, or security, however you want to define it, thinking that that is the endpoint, that is what we're here to achieve, and he really flipped it around and said, you know, like, the minute you're there, there's nothing left.

• 11:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:03Jonathan Fields?

  So, so why bother?

• 11:04Speaker 01

  And I think it's a state of nirvana, frankly, that we can't reach. I think that's actually part of, of novel writing. So every novel that I start, I think I'm going to reach a certain height. I think it's going, and it never does. It's always just a little bit not quite there. Every TV show I do, whatever it is, and so you try again. You know, you climb the next mountain. If you ever would hit that, and people in their minds who maybe think this is it, it can't get better, or I know it all, A, very, very dangerous, as we know, and B, that's where you stop kind of moving. You know, I think it's, you have to, it's more an imaginary place, that spot that he's talking about, certainty is a very big danger. I agree.

• 11:46Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah. It's so interesting to hear you in particular say that, right? Because somebody might look at you from the outside and say, okay, so, we're talking about Harlan Coben here. The guy's got something like a hundred million books in print, he's got, you know, like, movie versions, TV versions of all these different things, and yet, as we have this conversation, you're saying, like, every time I finish one of these things, there's still a taste of discontent, and maybe that's actually not a bad thing.

• 12:14Speaker 01

  Oh, it's definitely, no, it's not a bad thing, it's a good thing. I mean, the harsher version of that calls it imposter syndrome, or, you know, we all are very insecure as writers, we all think we suck. It's a weird dichotomy, because on the one hand, it's paradox, really. On the one hand, you're saying, and I do this all the time, I suck, I'm terrible, no one's ever gonna read this, while at the same time saying, someone's going to pick up this book, or invest eight hours in the TV show, or whatever, and they're gonna be better for it. And that seems like a complete contradiction, but it's not. And while I'm writing, there'll be moments I'm writing, every day this happens, and I'll be sitting there going, oh my God, this book sucks. I used to be so good, what happened

• 12:59Speaker 01

  to me? When did I lose it? And then five minutes later, I'll be, oh my God, this thing I'm writing is genius, and the old thing's no good. That sort of insecurity, I think, comes with the territory, and I think when you stop that, that's when you become maybe that, that creator that's starting a little bit to phone it in. I think that that doubt is one of the things that, that fuels you.

• 13:22Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, that definitely lands. When you use words like, you know, like, I think it sucks, or, you know, you're not succeeding at a particular thing, I wonder what the metric is, because part of what, what I've seen you write about also and speak about is this notion that it's not necessarily the quote, craft, the words on the page, there's something else, there's, there's a, there's a transformation, there's a feeling that you want people to have, which is not just surprise, it's not just twist, it's not just like, there's something else, and that you're measuring, like, have I showed up? Have I done what I came to do by?

• 13:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think, boy, every time I'm trying to give you all the feels, it's, you know, there's a, an old joke by Salma Diamond, I think it was, the actress who was on Night Court, where she says, um, you know,

• 14:11Jonathan Fields?

  Awesome show, by the way.

• 14:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, what'd you think of the case? And she said, I laughed, I cried, it became a part of me.

• 14:17Jonathan Fields?

  Right.

• 14:18Speaker 01

  And that's sort of what I want with every book. I mean, I think with a thriller, or the ones that I have on TV or, or in book form, it's not just enough to stir your mind or stir your pulse. If it doesn't stir your heart, I don't think it works. It's like having, you know, you have the most expensive car in the world, but if you don't have gasoline in it, or like, charge up electricity, it's not going anyplace. And so the heart and that emotion has to be there. So that's the part of it that has to sort of separate from craft and become, you know, Frankenstein's monster becomes alive on its own. My job almost is to entertain you and to let you escape for a while. I want to be the book

• 14:59Speaker 01

  or the TV show that you, you know, you start at 11 o'clock at night saying, I'm only gonna read for 10 or 15 minutes, next thing you know, it's four in the morning and you're cursing me out. I want to be that, that book that you take on vacation to Saint-Tropez, but you don't even want to leave your hotel room, because you have to know how it's gonna, I love that feeling. And I think that feeling is healthy.

• 15:18Jonathan Fields?

  So much of your writing, and I want to get into this also, is drawn from your life, is drawn, you know, from your experiences, from your own stories, but until fairly recently, you would have fought that, you know, you would have said that your writing had kind of nothing to do with your life. What changed?

• 15:37Speaker 01

  I think, that's the revelation I recently came up with when I started to decide I was gonna write or teach these things. I always sort of jokingly would say, you know, what do I know about missing people, or kidnappings, or murders? I just, I just make it up, which is also still true, in the sense that, you know, everybody thinks everything has to be researched or come from something actual. No. A lot of writing is your imagination, sitting there making stuff up. That's the greatest tradition of storytelling, and it should continue. But what I realized when I started to deep dive in, and what I'm trying to do in Plot Twist is really show people where I came up with the ideas. Not just say, oh, you can cut ideas by what ifs, but very specifically, how I came up with ideas. And I realized, well, every one of them almost involved my real life. Every one of them

• 16:22Speaker 01

  is something that happened, then I asked what if, from the time of childhood until now. And so I couldn't separate my life from the book, and that's why Plot Twist is both a memoir and a writing guide, because you, I, I literally cannot separate those anymore.

• 16:39Jonathan Fields?

  Let's dive into one of those particular plots in your life, Plot Twist in your life.

• 16:46Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 16:47Jonathan Fields?

  That I feel like informs so many things. You're, if I remember correctly, somewhere around 10 years old, your grandfather, who was close with you, who the whole family would go to on a weekly basis for dinner, up and disappears one day, just gone, for you, you have no idea how long, because your parents are kind of like, yeah, like, telling you different stories, he's in Europe, he's in, um, some two years later, like, this whole thing comes full circle. Take me into this story.

• 17:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, I grew up in New Jersey, and my grandfather was president of a Teamsters Union, Liquor Salesman Union, after, started after prohibition. So you probably can guess from that, and knowing some of the organized crimes he did, that my grandfather, as a 10-year-old, I didn't kind of realize this, was somehow mob-connected. And suddenly, our weekly dinners at the Golden Shiner Restaurant in West Orange, New Jersey, stopped. And I was like, you know, where's Pops? And I kept asking and kept getting blown off. And I remember one day, I found my mother, I was, like, been gone for a while, and just sort of sitting there by herself, smoking a cigarette, licking out, and she only smoked

• 17:58Speaker 01

  when she was stressed. And I'm like, what's going on? Where's Pops? I'm 10 years old, and my mother says, if anybody ever asks you, just say he got sick when he was in Paris and decided to stay there. I'm like, what? Is that why he got sick? Is that why he's gone? Just, just, you know, say that. I'm like, like, somebody asks you, I'm like, who's gonna ask me? Because maybe one of your friends. I'm 10 years old, what friend of mine's gonna ask me where my grandfather is? Or, you know, maybe a policeman. Why would a policeman ask me where my grandfather is? And she brought out an article that had been in the paper recently, saying, you know, a union boss indicted, and he had been indicted for, you know, they never caught them on the big stuff, he had been indicted for illegal

• 18:38Speaker 01

  use of, um, uh, union funds, and he took off. And then, like, we took a, like, a family vacation to Canada, without telling me, we just one day packed up and we went to Canada, turned around twice, went, finally got there, and that was the first time in a year and a half or so I had seen my grandfather. And then, the end of the story is kind of boring, because they changed administrations, they dropped all the charges, and he came back home. So, yeah, that was one of those things that probably influenced what I do in some degree.

• 19:10Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, I mean, so much of what you write about is under the genre of thriller. And I don't know whether you even categorize your writing as thriller, because I feel like it shifts around in interesting ways. But so often, a story starts with a murder, with a death. You know, and then the whole thing is about, but it's the who done it or why done it.

• 19:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 19:29Jonathan Fields?

  So many of your stories start with somebody just gone, missing. You have no idea. And I wonder if it ties back to your own personal stories like that. What happened with your grandfather?

• 19:39Speaker 01

  Well, I think it certainly does. Also, when I was sort of coming of age, I lost both my parents. My, my parents were both dead by the time they were my age. My dad was 59, my mom was 60. One died suddenly of a heart attack and, and one died slowly of cancer. I recommend neither, by the way. But a lot of it also starts with that wish. What if they were still here? What if they could meet their grandchildren? The same way, it's not unusual. We all sort of have this wish. I've used that wish in my novels. So if you write a story where somebody is murdered, dead, the person's dead. So you may be solving a crime, you may be getting justice or retribution, but that person's not coming back. But if somebody's missing, you could be made entirely whole.

• 20:22Speaker 01

  And if you did, by some chance, watch I Will Find You, for example, on Netflix. It's a story of a man who's in jail for the murder of his own son. If you're just trying to prove he's innocent, well, we've seen that story before. Okay, big deal. I got it. But now he finds out his child may not have actually died that night. His child, who was three at the time, may be an eight year old now, and absolutely can find him. That, that's much more powerful for me. That's writing about hope. And when you write about hope, it just changes the stakes and makes them so high. A lot of creation, the best creation, when you think about it, is about hope. That idea that he could be, not just prove he's innocent. If he proves his innocence, his son, his son's still dead. It's a big deal. But if he can both prove he's innocent, but the bigger question is, is his son still alive?

• 21:07Speaker 01

  I think that's the engine that got so many people to tune in on Netflix to I Will Find You. That's, so that's what I write about. I try to write about hope. It just adds stakes. I think it makes it more suspenseful and gives it more heart. And it's what I am. It's what interests me. All of the people that I've lost in my life, I do have sort of, the same way we all do. It's not unusual, have fantasies about them still being alive. And so one of the things I'm trying to encourage in this book is to look at your own life. Look at your own bio, your own memoir. And what is in there that's important to you that you can now use to make story or make a paint or sculpt or invent? And that's what I'm hoping Plot Twist will do for you.

• 21:48Jonathan Fields?

  Sat down with the wonderful children's book author Katie Camillo a number of years back. And I remember this line, she said, you know, and she's known for writing these kids books where there's, there's really deep personal loss. And she said, she learned early on, she said, when, when talking to kids in particular, always be honest, don't show your, always be honest, but leave them with hope. Always leave them with hope. And that, that's always stayed with me. And I think like, when you can be brutally honest, if you also have this under, like thread of hope that goes along with it.

• 22:24Speaker 01

  I agree a hundred percent. And hope, you know, hope is also suspenseful. I mean, hope is, hope is great to write about. And one of the examples I give, which is a simple example that everybody remembers, the first time you read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Do you remember how badly you wanted Charlie to find that golden ticket? When he opened it, and he didn't, that's hope, right? And that was suspense. You just kept turning pages because you so badly wanted Charlie to get that. So you're combining realistic thing of hope, but also the sort of technical aspect of storytelling suspense. And so those were those two married. That's, that's, that's just beautiful stuff right there.

• 23:02Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, I love that.

• 23:05Jonathan Fields?

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• 24:34Jonathan Fields?

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• 25:56Jonathan Fields?

  You've really interesting just personal journey into writing. You know, you are not the kid who at five years old said, oh, I'm gonna be a writer. I'm, I'm reading everything I can and I'm writing every day. I'm like journaling every day. You're a basketball player, you are an athlete. Like you were the kid and you get into college by yours largely on a basketball scholarship. And don't take writing classes in college. And you end up helping out in the family business, you know, Costa del Sol in Spain. And something just clicks in your brain and says, I think I'm gonna write.

• 26:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's great to have dreams and hopes. But you know, most people you talk to, and again, you've spoken to more people than I have, so you can back me up on this or disagree. This singular focus is great, but often it's what you see in the periphery that sort of snags your vision and becomes, I can't tell you how many times I've spoken to somebody who has become super successful or super wealthy. And you ask them sort of what they did or how they did it. And yeah, they, they might've been focused on something, but probably not what happened. And while they were going, they saw an opportunity on their, just out of the peripheral vision. That's kind of what happened to me where I, where I was in the Costa del Sol of Spain, working for this travel company. I have never written really a word of fiction, but I always loved story.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  I always loved thinking about story, creating stories in my own head, making stuff up in my own mind. And I thought, wow, I should just write like a little book about what this experience is. And once I started that, once I started down the road of writing, I realized, man, this is for me. As much as I loved basketball or loved the other things I was doing, there was nothing I felt this passionate about and wanted to do or realized this is a part of me that I want to continue to explore like that. But it wasn't like, again, didn't realize it early. I didn't see it young. I, I always find that, you know, you were talking about before, the sort of the precious artist, writer who has to always say, oh, I always knew I'd be a writer. When I was a four month old fetus, a pen formed in my hand

• 28:00Speaker 01

  and I started to write sonatas in my mother's womb. And when I was three years old, children, they gathered around me in the playground. Oh, stop that nonsense. That's nonsense.

• 28:09Speaker 01

  But sometimes, a lot of times we say those things to be fair to people. We say them because we don't really know the answer. We don't really know how we write a book or how we create any kind of art or how we build something. And so we say what sounds good and sounds a little highfalutin, a little magical. And that's not good, I don't think, for, for regular people who are regular. But I say regular people, the people who have not yet experienced that yet and hopefully will one day will. If I could just add one more thing to this, because it's important. It's important for whatever, you know, whatever people are out there. When I was young, I wanted to be a pro basketball player. That dream is over. I'm never gonna be a pro basketball player. But if your dream is to be a writer, or a painter, or a sculptor, I don't care how old you are. I don't care what condition you're in. That dream, as long as you don't quit, is still alive.

• 28:54Speaker 01

  Delia Owens, who wrote When the Crawdads Sings, was 70 when that book came out. This year, people are talking Matthew of Golden by Allen Levi. He's 70. I know writers whose first star is 75, 80. So if this is a dream that beats in your heart, just know you only fail when you quit. So there's a little pep talk, I guess, part of the portion there.

• 29:13Jonathan Fields?

  I love this notion of sort of paying attention to what's in your peripheral vision also. You know, you're allowing yourself to just scan the horizon and play with things as they come up. And ask yourself, not just what if I'm really good at this one job that I'm here to do? But what if this thing that's just popping up on the side? What if that's something? And you're like, you gave yourself the gift of saying, I don't know if it is or it isn't. But I'm gonna play with it. Like, I'm gonna spend a little bit of time writing and just follow the thread, which I feel like so many of us don't allow ourselves to do.

• 29:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do think play is important. Leisure is important. I mean, in a sense, like, I write a lot by hand. And I think something childlike and freeing and almost like if your writing life is a day at school, your little notebook and handwriting is the sandbox at recess where you can just kind of create and destroy and knock over and try again. That's important. Not to be, you know, I'm older than certainly most of your listeners and not to be one of those in my day. But I think this is the problem and why you have to make sure you really stay as much as you can off the internet. When I was young, like if I, when I was in Spain that summer, if I had had my phone with me and I could have scrolled through,

• 30:30Speaker 01

  you know, when I was, part of it was I was bored out of my mind. I was in Spain. They have like two stations that work there that are both in Spanish. I don't really speak great Spanish. I didn't really know anybody there. I did my work with my clients. I read a ton, but there's only so many hours you can fill in the day. Now, today, I think I would have probably taken out my phone and scrolled like I do now. Like, I'm not putting myself above this. Don't give your mind time to just wander, time to get bored, time to make up stories in your own head. We don't really have leisure time, to think about it. We use our leisure time to scroll. You have to fight for your time to just sit alone and be creative. And man, that, we all know it's good for us, right?

• 31:11Speaker 01

  We all know if we put our phones away and we read a book, a novel especially, I'm slightly biased, before we go to bed at night, we know we're happier. We know it's good for us. We know we're less depressed. There's been brainwave studies done by the Queen's Reading Room in England that absolutely proves it scientifically, that reading a book with print is better for us and will improve our mind. It will improve our mental health. It will make us less depressed. We know this scientifically and we all know it intuitively. And yet, it's hard to make ourselves do it.

• 31:45Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, and I'm raising my hand right alongside you. I think we're all just, we're still locked into this pattern of the minute there's a little bit of downtime. Where is my device? Like, where is the thing that I can scroll? It also brings up this notion that there is a very, very direct connection between boredom and creativity, which sounds like it would be the opposite, but it's often, you know, like, that's where the magic happens. When you talk about the process of writing, you argue that there are these sort of like three elements, three macro elements. One of them that really nobody likes to talk about, but you also probably argue it's the most important desperation.

• 32:23Speaker 01

  Well, desperation is the fact that, you know, if you don't have to do it, you won't do it. I mean, it's just, you have to do it. You have to want to tell a story. You know, there's a, by desperation, I mean, I'm not fit anymore to do anything else, like hold a real job. I have no other marketable skills. I'm disorganized, I'm forgetful. My assistant, you know, when I'm doing a podcast like yours, my assistant has to call me 10 minutes beforehand, like a child saying, did you set your alarm? Do you remember you have to do this? Yeah, it's gonna be on video, wear a shirt, you know, the whole thing. Cause I'm not good at anything else. And so that desperation, the fact that I can't do anything else, leads me to do that. But part of being a writer is you have to want it badly.

• 33:06Speaker 01

  Like, there's always a voice in my head that says I should be writing. Even when I'm driving, a kid's in the carpool, when I'm doing something I enjoy, there's always a little voice that says, maybe, maybe you should be home and writing. And that's just something you live with. It doesn't, it sounds really weird. It's really kind of not, but it's just, and I enjoy it. I mean, I welcome it. I'm a writer and this is my world. I fight for time to write. You have to fight for time to write. I live my life under the credo, which I talk about in the book of, does it help me produce pages? Good. Doesn't help me produce pages, bad. And yeah, so I think that's, those are sort of useful things to just think about if you wanna. And again, I use it for writing in this book, but it could be painting, sculpting,

• 33:47Speaker 01

  and it could be whatever entrepreneur idea that you have, whatever business that you're creating. There's a certain obsession that's good for you, I think, in these things. So when I say obsessive, I think it's important that I don't mean something that feels like a sacrifice. So I've spent the majority of my life, my days, alone in a room. And I've not regretted one of them. Think about that for a second. Like, I've spent most of my days alone in a room and I've not regretted any of them. It's life balance in a certain sort of way. So I've made writing part of my life balance. Now, I really have two things mostly in my life, and that's my family and my writing. I'm not, I'm not very, you know, I'm not a very diverse guy. I'm not a Renaissance man.

• 34:32Speaker 01

  I don't like to collect things. I don't get hobbies. I don't hike, as you pointed out earlier. But so if I'm, if, you know, if things are great with my, with my partner, spouse, if things are great with my kids, if things are, I'm eating right, I'm exercising, all of those things, I have good relations with my friends, all those things that I need to keep in balance. If I'm not writing well, those things are gonna get out of balance and vice versa. And so I, it almost encourages me in a positive way. I stress that, I find this a positive. So like, when we're on vacations as a family, and I have four kids, and we go on vacation for, as a family, I wake up usually an hour or two before everybody else, which when my kids are teenagers, it was not a problem.

• 35:15Speaker 01

  It meant we can get up at 11:00 AM, but, and I write a little bit. And I don't write because I'm obsessive or because I'm a workaholic. No, I write because that's part of my life balance. And after I write, I can now be more free to be with my children and my family and do things. So I've made it part of my life balance. At the same time, it works the other way too. If, you know, things are all going out of whack, I'm not writing well. I normally will not write well. There's a quote from Flaubert where he says something very, something somewhat similar. Be orderly and normal in your real life, like bourgeois, so you can be violent and original in your work. And so I need that. I need that sort of space in order to create.

• 36:00Speaker 01

  I need that sort of peace of mind.

• 36:04Jonathan Fields?

  I mean, it brings up another interesting question, which is oftentimes when we are thinking about stepping into some significant creative pursuit, or maybe just allocating a part of our life, you know, and again, like you said, maybe it's writing, maybe it's painting, maybe it's sculpting, maybe it's, whatever it may be, right? We feel like we need, we need the raw material. We need to have lived hard. We need to have suffered. We need to have, there have to be big, momentous things for us to, to either tell the stories about or paint about, or give us the, the level and depth of awakening or suffering to quote, go there and create something worth being experienced by somebody else.

• 36:49Jonathan Fields?

  So much of what you write about, it's everyday life. You know, it's, it's, it's, it's not the big titan. It's you, which feels like an imitation to me for anyone to kind of say like, you don't need all that. You just have to pay attention.

• 37:07Speaker 01

  I think, I mean, I agree with, that's my philosophy. Yeah, look, it sounds very romantic and there has been those sort of quotes that the happy childhood's not worth living, or you know, you have to have suffered for your art or any of that. And I actually just mentioned that how, you know, the influence that my own life tragedies have had on me. But every life has tragedies and every life has stumbling blocks. And small stories make big stories. You know, I write a bit about my mom and her, and her death in this book and just how somebody seemingly so ordinary has inspired so much of what I do. And so that's, that's, I think hugely important.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  There's no, you know, there's no reason, it's more about your desire and, and getting rid of the excuses. It's more about, you know, we look, we all fear that we suck. I mentioned this before, we all write with fear. Fear can do one of two things to you. It can, what happens to 90% of people, paralyze you. I suck, I'm afraid to put my pen to paper. I'm not gonna even write one word, which is most of you that are listening right now. Or fear can fuel you. Screw that, I'm gonna show fear. I'm gonna dive right into that fear and I'm gonna write and I'm gonna show it that I don't care what it says. I'll prove it in the next round. And that's usually the difference between somebody who is successfully producing pages or canvases or whatever,

• 38:29Speaker 01

  and those who think about it, but don't quite make the step there.

• 38:36Jonathan Fields?

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• 39:20Jonathan Fields?

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• 40:04Jonathan Fields?

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• 41:08Jonathan Fields?

  So if we take a step back in time, then you come back from The Costa del Sol. You're into writing your first novel, kind of figuring out, like in the beginning, you've never done this before. Was this a summer break? Because you're back in Amherst after that, right?

• 41:24Speaker 01

  Between my junior, senior year, yeah.

• 41:26Jonathan Fields?

  Right. So this is something you've never done before. Nobody knows you, you know, like as, you know, Harlan Coben, the novelist, or the aspiring writer. You drop back into your friends. I'm sure you're questioning yourself at this point. It's early on. You haven't actually shown that you can do this thing yet. In the very, very early days, how do you keep working? How do you just keep going when I've got to imagine that voice is in your head, too?

• 41:54Speaker 01

  I just found my thing. I can't describe it better than that. I knew this was, like, I shouldn't say knew, because a lot of life is also fate. We all know that, too. I could have gone another way and never been a successful writer. I almost went to University of Chicago Law School between after my senior year. I'd graduated. I had been accepted to University of Chicago Law School, and I was going to go out there. And if I'd done that, chances are, very good chances, I would not be sitting here talking with you today. I'd be preparing a legal brief or something like that. So life is a lot about sliding doors and fate. And when people pretend it's not, that's also unfair to people, that I wasn't destined, or it couldn't have gone any other way. But that said, I really found the passion in this. And I had a really interesting and good attitude about it. And I don't exactly know

• 42:39Speaker 01

  why I did, because I didn't have a very good attitude about a lot of other things. But first of all, for some reason, you know, I wrote three novels that remained unpublished before my first was published. And when I was 26, I got my first novel published. But I wrote three complete novels. And there's a couple of things that are important about that. One is, I understood that there's no reason why I should think I should be great at it right away. I can have the basketball skills of LeBron James. If I step on the basketball court and I've never played basketball before, I'm gonna suck. Why would novel writing be different? We writers have this sort of joke where we say, we go to a party, and we meet an eye surgeon. And the eye surgeon goes, oh, you're a writer? I'm thinking of

• 43:22Speaker 01

  writing a book. And we say, oh, you're an eye surgeon? I'm thinking of doing eye surgery. Now, it's a little facetious, because we know we can all write. We can't all do eye surgery. But there is something to that. There's no reason. Everybody today thinks you should be good right away. My first New York Times bestseller was my 10th, I'll say it again, 10th published novel. If you count the three I wrote before it, it's my 13th novel that I wrote, was my first New York Times bestseller list. It wasn't an overnight success. But I loved it. Two, a couple of things. One thing is, I loved it. Two is, back in those days, again, we didn't have the internet. So I didn't know really what a pimple on the ass of publishing I was. I thought I was doing great. Now, today, I would look up Amazon. I'd see I'm ranked number 3,287,000, and say, oh, I'm going to give

• 44:05Speaker 01

  this up because I stink. But I didn't know that. I was happily naive. So maybe be a little bit happily naive and just keep doing it. I don't know. I kind of also saw no point in giving up. As I said before, you only fail when you quit. Why, if I liked it and thought I had a chance to get better at it and be good at it, would I quit? I get it, but I don't get it. It's one of the reasons I always tell writers something that sounds wrong. Like, a lot of right people say, tell people what your goal is, and that way you have to sort of do it. But if you're writing a book, I never talk about the book I'm writing now. And I tell writers who are trying, never talk about the book you're writing now. And the reason is, you get some sense of satisfaction. Like, I'm dying right now, Jonathan, to tell you about the story I'm telling now. But as I start to tell you, okay, the guy goes,

• 44:49Speaker 01

  I can almost feel like the balloon's going, and the air's coming out of it. I'm dying to tell you what this story's about. The only way I'll give myself that satisfaction is to write the whole book and have you read it. I can't tell you how many people have contacted me, and how many people right now are listening to us, who are saying, I'm a writer. You know, I'm a novelist. I'm writing a, have you finished it? No. That's like saying, I'm a marathon runner, but I've never run more than two or three miles. All right, I ran five ones. No, I didn't. I bought a hydration belt and new sneakers, and I plan on running next week. No. I wrote three failed novels. They were not failures, because I actually completed them. My first time out, I completed an entire novel. That's an accomplishment.

• 45:34Speaker 01

  That's a start. So that's the other thing. Don't talk about it so much. Just do it if you enjoy it. And when it happens, then it will happen.

• 45:44Jonathan Fields?

  I love that. I feel like it also, it's interesting, you know, you talk about this other thing. I think you described it as, tell me if I'm getting the language right, incremental ambition.

• 45:54Speaker 01

  Yes, incremental ambition.

• 45:55Jonathan Fields?

  And this is kind of like speaking to that to a certain extent.

• 45:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, again, in today's world, it's so hard to have incremental ambition, because everybody's looking online. And I think so much of our society, again, I'm whining about the, about social media, but it's now resentment and believing people have these terrific lives and getting angry about it, which wasn't the case when I was younger. My first goal, when I first started to write in the Costa del Sol of Spain, this is in the days before self-publishing and things like that, where it was only, you know, publishers that had to accept you, whatever you want to call them nowadays, traditional publishing. My goal was to have somebody publish me, you know, a real publisher, quote unquote, I'll put the quote in real back in those days, and walk past one bookstore

• 46:39Speaker 01

  and see my book there. I don't care if it's sold. I just wanted to say, I was a novelist. And once I achieved that goal, it was like, okay, two books. Just because I want to show that it wasn't a fluke. So I got the second book, and I enjoyed each step of the way. And I loved it. And I go, okay, if I can make a little bit of a living, not so I don't embarrass you. Right now, I was making embarrassingly small money on it, small advances. If I could just get, so it's not embarrassing. Okay, if I could just hit number 15 on a list of 1 through 15 on New York Times list, just for an hour. And I enjoyed each time I achieved that goal while looking for the next one. And so I always found something. Nowadays, I will get an email from somebody who goes, I just wrote my first book. I self-published

• 47:23Speaker 01

  it. How come I'm not selling like James Patterson yet? You know, like, these unrealistic goals. No, enjoy every moment of it. I'm so happy the way I ended up coming up, step by step and slowly. Would I, you know, if I'd have gotten the success earlier, probably would not have been as sweet as it is now. So just go through your own pace. Everybody's got their own journey on that.

• 47:42Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, I love this idea of just like one little step at a time. And also, it feels like it, it takes the pressure off. Like, hey, I'm not gonna, like, I'm writing my first ever novel, and I'm quite sure, like, my, my only goal here is to be a number one New York Times bestseller in Salt Lake City. It's like, that, that's the thing that's going to make you never write past page one or two.

• 48:03Speaker 01

  It will paralyze you. And also, celebrate. And not just celebrate, celebrate your friends' achievements. I love doing that. Like, anytime any of my friends have anything good going on, I love to celebrate it. And it's just, it's, you know, it's just fun and good, and nothing bad comes from it. No one has to fail so that I can succeed, is one of my writing mottos that we've been going through for years and years in the writing world. And yeah, a lot of my, a lot of my close friends are writers because of that. And so that, I just think that's a, it's a healthier way to live anyway. Even if you fail, quote unquote, and not, don't get published, or you don't have the career you want, it's still good for you. Still enjoyable.

• 48:42Jonathan Fields?

  You, you've brought up your mom a number of times, who you write about, Corky. Sounds like everyone called her Corky, including you. Tell me more.

• 48:54Speaker 01

  Well, she was a very early feminist. So in the 70s, we had a bumper sticker on our car that said, women who seek to be equal to men lack ambition. You know, we had all those women's in the house and Senate T-shirts and bumper stickers. And she and a friend actually sold them. She marched with Gloria Steinem and did all those things. She was wacky and kooky and she was the first female umpire in Little League as soon as Little League became coed. And she realized no one had, there wasn't any female umpires yet. My mother, who would never, who'd always take on a controversy rather than ducking, ended up doing that. And the only problem was she was a terrible umpire because she couldn't see. And so that was sort of her, her thing. She was, you know,

• 49:39Speaker 01

  and she was just great. She was, you know, some people think because my parents died fairly young, that I have raised them to some sort of artificial sainthood or fictional sainthood. I don't think so. I have a pretty good idea of who they were and what they were. And they were pretty magical. It's one of the things I like to write about because too many, when I wrote Myron Bolitar series, for example, too many detective series have, the detective has a terrible relationship with their parents, or the parents abused them, or they have, or absent, which is better, I guess, in terms of drama. But I gave Myron two wonderful parents. And he lives in their basement when he first starts out, as I did up until the age of 27, where my dad died. I was living in the basement of my childhood

• 50:20Speaker 01

  home. And so I thought that'd be interesting to reflect because a lot of us do have, did have wonderful parents, or parents that we understand now are trying their best. Doesn't mean they always got it right. My mom made a lot of mistakes. She used to, for example, because she was so flighty, she would just drop me off at the orthodontist's office on days I didn't have an appointment and drive off. So the orthodontist would have to see me that day. Like, I would come in, be like, you know, 10 years old or whatever, 11 years old. They're like, what are you doing here? Did I have an appointment? I'm like, oh, my mom dropped me. Like, and she would drop, be gone. I mean, our phones back then.

• 50:53Jonathan Fields?

  Right.

• 50:53Speaker 01

  So, you know, it's, it's a lot of interesting kind of stuff. But I think all that mixes into your life. And each, each of you has this. Each of you has this. And that's what I kind of hope the book will teach us, like, to look at your own life and figure out where those things are that you can then change around and make into stories. So I gave Myron Bolitar my parents. In fiction, my parents get to live. They've gotten to age and Myron has had the relationship with his parents that I wish I could have had, had they survived. So that's also part of writing is wishful from it.

• 51:23Jonathan Fields?

  You also, really towards the end of the book, you write about your dad. And as you mentioned, both your parents passed fairly young, your dad at only 59. Your mom, in a much more drawn out way, with cancer, but your dad in the blink of an eye, in a profoundly different way, that really rattled you differently.

• 51:45Speaker 01

  It was also the first, the first cut is the deepest. So it was sort of like there was a, I think all lives realize that we have a fragile bubble around it, you know, and we go, you know, happily, not paying attention to that. And that just shattered everything. That was the, the move that told me, nothing's off the table in, in life. That's good or bad, or whatever else, that things could just change in a snap. I dropped him off at the airport that morning and I probably ran to his plane, which I still, part of me doesn't forgive me for, if I just maybe left 10 minutes earlier, though it wasn't my timing or anything. You know, you just start asking yourself all those kind of what if questions. And it was, so it was the first cut. It was just devastating. And he was, I know, I, again, I raise him to sainthood, but when I became a father, I sort of tried

• 52:29Speaker 01

  to study how he did it. Like, almost like I was an apprentice studying the master of magician. How did he teach his children to, you know, excel and succeed without pushing? You know, how did he do all those kinds of things? And so, yeah, he was, I think about him all the time. Still to this day, I think about my parents quite often. And I think I get a lot of that out. You know, part, part of the sorry, guys, is my, is my therapy when I write these books. But I hope it makes some better books.

• 52:56Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah.

• 52:57Speaker 01

  And better TV shows. Yeah, I hope.

• 53:00Jonathan Fields?

  There's a moment when you're, when you tell that story in the book, where there's something so innocuous that is just so powerful. And it revolves around a simple room key for a hotel.

• 53:12Speaker 01

  So when my father called the, he called us, so I dropped my father off at the airport and I went back to work. And he flew down to Tampa and he called from his hotel room in Tampa. He called my mom and I was in the room. And he said, I'm not feeling well, which my father, of course, is one of those guys from that generation. They never, didn't feel well or tell you. And I remember calling him back, saying, you know, I went, I called the front desk, they're going to send an ambulance up. And he said the scariest word I ever heard him say, which was, okay. Didn't say, no, I don't need it. I'm fine. So I knew it was bad. And he says, but before they get here, I got to find the key. Like, what are you talking about? Because I got to find the key of the room. I got to go, I got to go, I got to find the key of the room. Before they get here, I got to find the key of the room. He keeps saying this over and over. Meanwhile, my mom and I fly

• 53:53Speaker 01

  down, we try, we get down to, to make a long story short, we get down to Tampa, and he dies around three or four in the morning on the table. And we, I get his stuff, we go back home. And I was just so angry at the whole world and everybody. I remember calling his doctor and saying, did you tell him we were coming down? Because you didn't let me talk to him on the phone? Did you tell him? He says, yeah, I told him you're coming down. I go, I don't believe you. I said, what did he say? He said, to tell you to check his pockets. And I said, what? He said, check his pockets. Like, are you trying to tell me my dad's last words were, tell my son to check my pockets? And he says, yeah. So I went to his stuff and I grabbed his pants out and I checked his pocket. And there, in his pocket was his hotel key. He wanted us to have a place to stay that night.

• 54:34Speaker 01

  He figured we'd, we'd need a place to stay. So his last thoughts, his last worry was to find the hotel key so that his family would have a place to stay that night.

• 54:44Jonathan Fields?

  Hmm. Says so much, says so much about him as a man. And the story you just told in that little moment also says so much just about the small things.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  Well, that's exactly.

• 54:57Jonathan Fields?

  That are the big things.

• 54:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's, and it's, and that's, and that's part of storytelling, Jonathan. It's, you know, like, it's the key, right? I mean, I could tell you a story about my father dying, but you probably won't remember that story as much as you remember the hotel key. You'll see the hotel key. And that's why sometimes your gaze has to be really narrow in order to make your story bigger.

• 55:15Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, beautiful. It feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well. So in this container of Good Life Project, if I offer up the phrase, to live a good life, what comes up?

• 55:25Speaker 01

  Oh, I think that, that balance thing that I was talking about. Here's the thing, I remember talking about, first and foremost, I have four, like, unbelievable kids. I just every day wonder what my wife and I did right to have these, it's just like, they're just, you know, we all have blinders with them. And so everything always revolves around family. And there's probably the reason why all my stories that some way do also, that's what we all, and that's the thing we all have in common. There's nothing special about that, kind of put special in quotes, because it's all special. You know, it's not, the one piece of advice I'll tell you is, it's, yeah, on the one hand, Raymond, Raymond Bradbury put it like, live, before it's, live your life like you only have 10 minutes left, what

• 56:06Speaker 01

  would you do? That's both okay, but it's mostly nonsense. Life is lived in the moments that are quieter, moments that are with your family, moments with people you care about, in the quiet moments. If you're always trying to seek that next high, if you're always trying to live like you're going to die tomorrow, you're not going to live a very happy life. So I'm going to tell you to go against that routine. Yes, have experiences. Yes, all the things we talked about. But really understand that life is lived in the moments between them. And those are the moments of real, of true poignancy and joy. And I hope that you find that in them.

• 56:39Jonathan Fields?

  Hmm. Thank you.

• 56:40Speaker 01

  Thank you, Jonathan.

• 56:42Jonathan Fields?

  So let's talk about some of today's big takeaways from the conversation. One thing I keep thinking about is, it's that hotel key, right? Harlan could have told us his, his dad passed in a Tampa hotel room at three in the morning and we'd have nodded and felt really bad and offered condolences and moved on. Instead, he told us about a man too stiff to stand, worrying about where his wife and son would sleep that night. That's the whole craft in one image. It's also the whole argument. Because the invitation here is to look at your own life, your own bio, the actual one, and ask, what if? Not the dramatic parts, the ordinary day to day parts. Is there something deeper in there? A story that wants to emerge?

• 57:26Jonathan Fields?

  There's also this term incremental ambition that Harlan shared. His first goal, it wasn't, you know, a bestseller list. It was to walk past one bookstore and see the book on a shelf. 10 published novels later, he never gave up. The list finally showed up and kept showing up. And fear does one of two things to you. It paralyzes you, which is what happens to most people, or it fuels you. That's not personality. That's a choice that we can make on any given day. How do we want it to land? What will we do with the energy of it? So here's maybe one thing to think about today, and maybe actually do this week. Pick one ordinary moment from your own life, something small enough, you never even told anyone

• 58:06Jonathan Fields?

  about it, and ask, what if? Is there a story? Is there creative juice in here? And see where it goes. That's a simple practice. The whole thing right there. And hey, before you go, do me a quick favor, seven second favor. Think of one person in your life who's been maybe talking about a thing that they want to make and send them this episode, especially if it's a writer, but it doesn't have to be. And while you're at it, go ahead and leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. It helps us get discovered and brings more people into these conversations. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers, Lindsay Fox and me, Jonathan Fields, editing help by Troy Young and Alejandro Ramirez. Chris Carter crafted our theme music. And of course, if you haven't

• 58:49Jonathan Fields?

  already, please go ahead and follow us wherever you get your podcasts, so you never miss a conversation. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.

• 58:59Speaker 02

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• 59:42Speaker 02

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• 1:00:06Speaker 03

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of the best one yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithgemini. That's goo.gle/workspacewithgemini.

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