How One “Golden Moment” Can Transform Your Entire Life

What if the life you’re living in now isn't the life you’re meant to stay in? What if you could start writing a new chapter today? In this unforgettable conversation, Mel sits down with one of her favorite authors, John Grisham, whose books have sold nearly half a billion copies worldwide. But this isn't a typical interview about having a legendary career. This is a deeply personal conversation about reinvention, rejection, purpose, and the “golden moments” that change the entire direction of your life. 35 years ago, Mel was starting her first year of law school when she picked up John Grisham’s The Firm, and it opened up a whole new world of possibilities for her life. John would call that a “golden moment”. A moment that becomes the catalyst for a whole new chapter of your life. You are going to hear why that moment was so special for Mel as well as John sharing his own “golden moments.” He tells the story behind his own unexpected path: failing English, drifting through college, practicing law, and being rejected as a writer over and over again before writing the book that changed his life forever. You’ll learn: -How to stop treating rejection as proof that you should quit -Why your current path is not your final path -What to do when you feel trapped in a job, career, or identity that no longer fits -Why “one page a day” is a powerful strategy for changing your life -How to create space for a dream, even when your life is busy -What to do when you feel like you’re drifting and don’t know your next move -How to recognize the “golden moments” that can change the direction of your life -Why discipline and consistency matter more than waiting to feel inspired -How to use the stories, setbacks, and detours in your life as material for reinvention -Why it’s never too late to start writing your next chapter This episode is for anyone who feels stuck, discouraged, or unsure what comes next. Because your current path is not your final path, and as John Grisham proves, there is always more of your story left to write. For more resources related to today’s episode, click here for the podcast episode page. If you liked the episode, check out this one next: This Conversation Will Change How You Think About Your Entire Life Connect with Mel: Order Mel’s product, Pure Genius Protein Get Mel’s newsletter, packed with tools, coaching, and inspiration. Get Mel’s #1 bestselling book, The Let Them Theory Watch the episodes on YouTube Follow Mel on Instagram The Mel Robbins Podcast Instagram Mel's TikTok Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes ad-free Disclaimer

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hey, it's your friend Mel and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast.

• 0:08Speaker 00

  I am just so excited for what's about to happen because this episode is a full circle moment for me, and I am so thrilled to invite you to take a seat at the table as it happens. Today, I am finally sitting down with a man that changed my life 35 years ago without having any idea that he did it. His name, John Grisham. Yes, that John Grisham, one of the most successful writers of our time. He's sold 500 million copies of his books. And today, John Grisham is here in our Boston studios to share his most personal story,

• 0:50Speaker 00

  yet his own. John says, there are these things called golden moments in your life that just change everything. These are moments you don't see coming. It's as if a light goes off in your mind and it transforms your entire life. Today, he'll share two golden moments with you that changed his and teach you how you can create them in your own life. Plus, John Grisham shares takeaway after takeaway after takeaway on so many topics from dealing with rejection, defining your dreams, exactly what to do when you feel like you're drifting through life. He'll teach you his exact morning routine that he has followed for 30 years,

• 1:31Speaker 00

  the one that led to 52 bestsellers. He still follows this routine today, and how to create space for your dreams in the middle of your busy life. What you're about to hear is just so incredible that his publicist and publisher told me that they've worked with John Grisham for decades. He hasn't shared half the things he's about to tell you. Honestly, I feel so inspired right now. I gotta stop talking because I gotta start writing my next chapter. And after you listen today, so will you.

• 2:04Speaker 00

  I have an invitation. I want you to come with me to Vegas to experience something extraordinary with Oprah Winfrey.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  Yes, it's the ultimate aha moment.

• 2:13Speaker 00

  This is at Sphere.

• 2:15Speaker 01

  I want people to come along and experience consistent aha moments of awe, wonder, and joy.

• 2:21Speaker 00

  Aha, April 2nd through the 4th, live at Sphere, a call to wonder, to joy, and the ultimate aha. Visit aha live.com for pre-sale signup and travel packages. Your mind is gonna be blown.

• 2:37Speaker 00

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• 3:22Speaker 00

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• 3:44Speaker 00

  Hey, it's your friend Mel and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I am ecstatic that you are here with me today. It's such an honor to be together and to spend this time with you. If you're new here or somebody sent this episode to you, I just want to take a moment and personally welcome you to the Mel Robbins Podcast family. Today, in our Boston studios, you and I get to spend time with the one and only John Grisham. John Grisham is one of the most successful authors of all time. He's sold almost 500 million books around the world. He has written some of the most iconic and award-winning legal thrillers ever. The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client, The Rainmaker, Runaway Jury, and A Time to

• 4:27Speaker 00

  Kill. All 52 of his books have been number one bestsellers. And I personally cannot wait for John's newest book. I've been looking for a page turner and John says, "Oh, Mel, this is the fastest page turner I've ever written, The French Illusion." Now, you may know these titles, but I bet you don't know his backstory. The rejections, the twists, the turns, the doubt that he struggled with, and how, one page at a time, John Grisham rode his way into an entirely new life. This conversation means a lot to me because 35 years ago, John Grisham changed my life, and he didn't even know it. And there's no doubt

• 5:10Speaker 00

  that if I hadn't picked up a book called The Firm and read it while I was miserable in law school, I wouldn't be sitting here right now in the career that I have. So please help me welcome the one, the only, the legendary John Grisham to the Mel Robbins Podcast.

• 5:27Speaker 02

  Happy to be here, Mel. Good seeing you.

• 5:29Speaker 00

  I am thrilled to meet you in person.

• 5:31Speaker 02

  I'm thrilled to meet you in person.

• 5:32Speaker 00

  And the reason why I'm so thrilled is because 35 years ago, it was 1991, and I was here in Boston. I was in my first year of law school at Boston College Law School. I was absolutely miserable. I had gone to law school because a bunch of my friends, you know, were starting to go off to different schools, and I had a part-time job as a paralegal, which I hated. But for some reason, I applied to law school because I didn't know what else to do. I get there and I realize I have made a huge mistake. I hated every aspect of it. I cried all the time. I drank a lot. And somebody told me that there was this book

• 6:13Speaker 00

  that had come out, and I picked up a copy because I hated doing the academic work. It was The Firm. It was your book. I bet I stayed up two nights in a row reading this thing. And the reason why it changed my life is because when I found out that you were a lawyer, I couldn't believe that you were both a lawyer and that you could write such an extraordinary fiction story. And it gave me this epiphany. I thought, oh, wait a minute. I don't have to practice law. I could do something else. And that was the beginning

• 6:54Speaker 00

  of me making a huge pivot. I stayed in law school. I actually did become a public defender in New York City for a couple of years. And then I ultimately left the law a couple of years later. But I've always thought about that moment, that you don't have to stay who you are and what you are for the rest of your life, that at any moment, you can decide that you want to do something different. And I, I will tell you right now, I would not be doing what I do today if it weren't for you. So, thank you.

• 7:29Speaker 02

  That's very touching. I've heard similar stories over the years and still find them hard to believe. Because when I started writing The Firm almost 40 years ago, I had no idea what I was doing. I had the story. I knew I could write. But I had no idea what was coming. We were so young and, and still a lawyer and still having fun and having babies. Life was good. And it was a little serious part-time hobby, writing was. I'd finished the first book in 87, trying to get it published. And my wife had always loved the story of The Firm. I talked about it for years, not as a writer. It's based on something that

• 8:14Speaker 02

  really happened in law school.

• 8:16Speaker 00

  For the person who's listening, John, who hasn't read The Firm, and you know, I'm just gonna warn you, don't buy this book if you want to sleep tonight. Because if you pick this book up, there is no way you are gonna go to bed because you will just keep turning the page and turning the page and turning the page. But put them at the scene of kind of what the book is about and what inspired it.

• 8:37Speaker 02

  Goes back to law school. When I was in law school at Ole Miss in the early 80s, I was not heavily recruited by law firms. I knew I was going back to my hometown. I was gonna marry my sweetheart from my hometown. I did 45 years ago. And I knew I was gonna open up my own little shop and practice law. I didn't like any of the law firms in town. I didn't really want to go to work for them. And so I didn't interview. I didn't really care. Also, was not a top student. There was no great demand for my interviews. A close friend was a top student. And he would go off on the weekends during our senior year in law school, and he would go to visit regional law firm in Houston, or Kansas City, or Memphis,

• 9:19Speaker 02

  or New Orleans, all the way to the south, Memphis. And he'd come back, and we sort of vicariously lived through him. What was the firm like? What were they offering? How much money? What are the perks? What's the practice? And he would tell us about these law firms. And he came back one weekend. We were all sitting around, probably drinking beer in our favorite bar. And he said, "I visited a weird law firm last weekend." He said, "I got the impression that once you join that firm, you never really left, like it was owned by the mafia or something, a tax firm." That stuck. That was 1980. I wasn't thinking about being a writer. I was trying to finish law school. But the story was always there. Like a lot of stories, they hang around. Most of them are based

• 10:00Speaker 02

  on something that really happened, still today, after all these books. And so I had the story. And as I was writing A Time to Kill, my first novel, which is a tough book to write, tough book to read, tough book to get through, I wanted something that would be more fun to write and read. And I'd always pitched the story to Renee, and she's a sounding board. And she's always said, "I love that story. I love that story. I love that story." And so that's how the firm got started. And as soon as I finished A Time to Kill, writing A Time to Kill, in early 1987, I went straight to The Firm. And we used to laugh. We thought The Firm was just sort of a, you know, a simple title that would never stick. Funny

• 10:42Speaker 02

  to say that now. But I started writing The Firm right after I wrote the first book. And I took two years to write it. And then when it came out in 35 years ago, Mel, it changed the world. I mean, our world was upside down and has been ever since.

• 10:59Speaker 00

  You know, I want to hover on one detail of that story because I think it's really an interesting thing to explore and I'd love to hear your perspective on it. So it's 1980 and you have a friend in law school who comes back and just says one sentence. After being at that firm, it was kind of weird, kind of feels like it might, you know, be the kind of law firm that you never leave.

• 11:21Speaker 02

  You never leave, yeah.

• 11:23Speaker 00

  Do you think about that moment and what's your opinion about ideas? And about the things in life that are sort of planted in front of you? And whether or not you're even aware of them, or if you think there's some sort of divine ordering to it, you know what I mean? Because it feels like one of these things that could have been a blip that turned into nothing. And I tend to be the kind of person that thinks that there are these signs all around you, if you're awake enough to see them, or little threads that you weave together throughout your life that make sense later.

• 11:59Speaker 02

  I'm not sure I buy that, that there are things that are out there waiting for you to see. I have a real knack for a story. And I grew up with storytellers. My father, my grandfather, uncles were big storytellers. These are foreign people in rural Arkansas when I was a kid. And would sit on the front porch at night in the heat and listen to the Cardinals game on the radio and listen to stories. All these stories that probably were all fiction, but they were sure were good. They'd been polished for years and worked on for years. And I just always enjoyed the wild stories or funny stories. And as a kid, I was an avid reader.

• 12:41Speaker 02

  My mother did not really like television, even in 1960. So we went to the library all the time and got books and we read, she read to us. And I just grew up reading a lot and loving the idea of a good story. And I guess that's where the eye comes from, the talent to be able to spot something almost immediately and say, and I do this almost weekly, you hear a story and say, that's got potential. And when I hear these great stories, I'll make a note and the notebook is always full. Most of them don't work for various reasons. Most of them kind of go away with time. They're all brilliant initially, but the brilliance kind of rubs off, but the good ones stick.

• 13:26Speaker 02

  The good ones stick.

• 13:27Speaker 00

  Well, what's super cool about stories? When you think about the intersection of your work and the intersection of mine, and my work is really about empowering people to see bigger possibilities and giving them a sense of hope and encouragement that they could do little things that could make their life or their relationships feel better and that they could do better over time. The power of stories is that it allows you to escape your current life and actually imagine something else, which is what you did for me in 1991. That I could escape the misery of, I hate this law school, I've made a huge mistake,

• 14:10Speaker 00

  I've now got these loans and I'm trapped here and I hate these people and what the hell am I going to do? And that story just opened up a different possibility, even though I wasn't thinking about being an associate that would go to a firm where people never leave and then discover that the mafia actually is involved and then have the FBI on my case as I'm running, you know, from them with my wife.

• 14:32Speaker 02

  You gotta love fiction.

• 14:33Speaker 00

  Oh my God. Well, I've never written fiction, but I love fiction because you step outside yourself. And so if someone who is listening right now feels just like I did, and I know you've probably felt a little bit this way in certain twists and turns of your life, where you are in a chapter of your life and you feel trapped and you don't know what to do next. What do you think they're going to learn from the various stories you're going to tell us and the wisdom that we're going to talk about that you've learned through your life and your work?

• 15:09Speaker 02

  You gotta keep working. You can't be smothered with doubt or depression or fear or whatever. You gotta keep working. I learned a very valuable lesson when I was writing A Time to Kill. And this is back in the dark ages where I knew nothing about writing. I started, it was all written in hand on legal pads. And I showed the first chapter to my wife one night and she had no idea what I was doing. She knew I could write because she saved all of our love letters, she still has them. But she always, you know, she knew I could write. She knew I could tell stories, but I had never thought about being a writer. I was 30 years old. And she saw the first chapter and said, this is pretty good. I'd like to read some more. I said, okay, I'll go write some more. I don't have another chapter.

• 15:53Speaker 02

  Let me go write chapter two. And that went on for a while, but it was, um, back in those days, I did not know what I was doing. But one of the first lessons I learned was that you have to do a little bit every day or it's not going to get done. I'd take a week off and I was losing sleep writing the book because I was up at five in the morning.

• 16:15Speaker 00

  Well, I lost sleep reading it, so we're even.

• 16:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, I did, I'm not losing sleep now, but I did back then. But I realized, and I probably read this somewhere, write a page a day. I told, I said it a thousand times, write one page. If you're serious about writing anything, stop talking about it. Don't talk your book to death. Don't tell folks what you're going to do. Sit down and write a page every day, at least a page. And it may take you 15 minutes a day and an hour tomorrow, but find that time of the day, whether it's during lunch or whether it's late at night or early, whenever, preferably the same time, same spot, same coffee, like I still do after 50 something books.

• 17:00Speaker 02

  I don't care what your task is or what you're thinking about doing, you gotta show up every day. You can't just talk about it, dream about it, think about it. You gotta show up. I don't, again, I don't care what you're doing, like what your dream is or what your goal is, but you've got to do it every day. I learned that lesson the hard way. And once I started practicing that, 40 years ago, as a, you know, rookie lawyer trying to write a novel, I made myself get up at five o'clock every morning and have time to write. And it took three years for the first one, took two years for the firm, over a five year period. I wrote them back to back at five o'clock in the morning.

• 17:40Speaker 00

  I also was curious because you said, I learned it the hard way. I think it would be very helpful for the person listening to hear how it wasn't working. You know, because I think you were about to tell us that I was trying to find a week off, I was trying to do it in these big sweeps of time, and then I realized I just have to do it a little a day. So how did you find the hard way? Like, what was the way you tried that was like, well, this definitely does not work?

• 18:01Speaker 02

  The first time it happened, I'd gone a couple of weeks and written nothing. And my wife, I can remember more than once, said, what's the latest chapter? And I said, I haven't written it yet. She, she said, why not? And I said, okay, I'll get busy. Because she, she always loved the story. And I'd learned, okay, to do this, you gotta start somewhere. You've got to blast off at some point. And so I would get started again and I would make myself do it at least one page a day, every day, every day. It got easier and it got easier, it got easier. The thing about, I wrote too much. The Time to Kill, once it was typed, was almost a thousand pages.

• 18:41Speaker 00

  Oh my gosh.

• 18:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. And another lesson, okay? I didn't know what I was doing. I was not a writer. Thousand pages. I sold the book eventually, after a long struggle. My first editor, who was a great editor, cut a third of it. And he was right. There was just too much junk in it. And I thought, that was a year of my life. The book took three years to write. We just cut a third. That's a year of my life. I am never going to do this again. I'm not going to waste time like this again. When I start writing from now on, I'm going to know where I'm going. I'm going to have it organized, I'm going to have it outlined. And I learned this lesson from something John Irving said one time. He said, he does not write the first sentence until he writes the last one.

• 19:21Speaker 00

  Ooh.

• 19:22Speaker 02

  I'm not that smart, but I don't, I don't write the first scene until I know the last scene. I know where I'm going. And if you always know where you're going, it's hard to get lost. And writers are notorious for having these brilliant ideas and they can't wait to start writing, they'll write, write, write like crazy, write 50,000 words and suddenly stop. And they back themselves into a corner and they can't get out of it. They toss it. Famous for doing that, okay? I know writers and they talk about doing it all the time. Now, every writer says, oh, I don't believe in outlining. I just wait for inspiration to take over and blah, blah, blah. Well, that's, okay, that's one way to do it. I can't do it that way. I've got to have it organized and outlined and you've got to be able to pitch your idea.

• 20:06Speaker 02

  You know, we're talking fiction here, okay? We're talking stories. You have to refine the pitch to about 30 seconds, max. If you can't do it in 30 seconds, you're probably in trouble. I pitch ideas to my wife all the time. And I have to hog tire now and handcuff her, make her sit down and listen to me because she's tired of it after all these years. But I say, I have a great idea. She says, I've heard that before. He listened to me, okay? Here's the idea for a novel. And I get 30 seconds and she's brutally honest. You know, she's, she usually shoots them down and says, no, it's not going to work. Or occasionally she'll like one, she'll like one.

• 20:43Speaker 00

  Well, you say you're talking about stories, but as I hear you tell us... About some of the things that you've learned the hard way, the way that you approach the work that you do, I hear life. And let me tell you what I hear. One page a day is a four-word philosophy for how to create anything in your life. And I think a lot of us, whether you're trying to write the whole book in one day or one week, and then you get discouraged, we do that in every aspect of our lives, where we try to make the change so big and happen so fast that you miss the obvious, where one page a day is the way to create momentum. It is the way to make something a habit. It is the

• 21:27Speaker 00

  way to slowly start to write your way into a new chapter of your life. And so, that goes way beyond writing. But the other thing that I thought was really interesting, because you were talking about pitching, you said you have to get the thing down to 30 seconds. What you're talking about is clarity and alignment. You have to pick a direction. That's true about life, too. Like, I think so many people do not have what they want, because they are not clear about what they want. And if you can't explain what you want in the next chapter of your life in less than 30 seconds, you're gonna spin.

• 22:05Speaker 02

  You're not gonna get there.

• 22:06Speaker 00

  No, you're not gonna get there. But then you said one other thing that I thought was so subtle, but I kind of chuckled, because it really does metaphorically open up, I think, what everybody struggles with at some point. You had written Chapter One of The Firm. You gave it to Renee to read. She loved it. And she said, where's Chapter Two? And you said, uh, I haven't written it yet. She's like, well, I guess you better go write it. And to me, that is a beautiful story about the fact that if you ever feel stuck because you are just in this chapter, even if it's ended, all you gotta do is go write

• 22:47Speaker 00

  the next one. It doesn't mean it's not coming. It doesn't mean it's never gonna get written. You just have to make the, oh, okay, I haven't done that yet. I guess I better go do that. And it's kind of obvious stuff, but when you put it in the metaphor of a book, because I do believe that you can think a lot about the lifespan of your life like a book. And if you're still here, the story hasn't ended. There's more to write. There are so many more questions I have, but I gotta hit the pause button so we can let our sponsors share a few amazing words. But don't you dare go anywhere. John Grisham is just beginning. We have so much more to cover, and trust me, you do not want to miss a thing. So stay

• 23:29Speaker 00

  with me. I have an invitation. I want you to come with me to Vegas to experience something extraordinary with Oprah Winfrey.

• 23:41Speaker 01

  Yes, it's the ultimate aha moment.

• 23:44Speaker 00

  This is at Sphere.

• 23:46Speaker 01

  I want people to come along and experience consistent aha moments of awe, wonder, and joy.

• 23:51Speaker 00

  Aha, April 2nd through the 4th, live at Sphere. A call to wonder, to joy, and the ultimate aha. Visit aha live dot com for pre-sale signup and travel packages. Your mind is gonna be blown. This is your life. If you want to reinvent yourself, it's time. Southern New Hampshire University offers over 200 degree programs to help you take the next step. Courses are available online 24/7, so you can balance work, family, and everything in between. And with low online tuition rates, Southern New Hampshire University makes it easier

• 24:28Speaker 00

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• 26:23Speaker 02

  One of the first lessons I learned was that you have to do a little bit every day, or it's not gonna get done.

• 26:35Speaker 00

  Welcome back. It's your friend Mel Robbins. Today, you and I are here with the legendary John Grisham, and he's unpacking some of the details and taking us behind the scenes of his most personal story ever, his own. So, John, I see in your story, there's so much overlap with some of the things that we've experienced. Like, a lot of people don't know. A lot of people know that you've sold, what, 500 million books? Like, that's freaking cool, first of all. Congratulations.

• 27:01Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 27:02Speaker 00

  You're welcome.

• 27:03Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 27:04Speaker 00

  But that we both have had a million jobs. And I don't think a lot of people know, especially when they see you now and they hear Pelican Brief. Oh, I saw that movie. Time to Kill. Matthew McConaughey was in that. Wait, The Firm? What? What? Like, I know, I've read all of his books. A ton of the people that work here that are basically the ages of our kids were like, my mom has read every, my dad loves him. Oh, my gosh. We had to push people away from bringing their parents in and their siblings in, because you have so many fans here. But most people don't know that you have laid asphalt, you've sold underwear, you've transferred colleges, on and on and on. So what are some of the

• 27:45Speaker 00

  odd jobs that you've had that, in a weird way, still inform you?

• 27:51Speaker 02

  All of them. Every job. Every job you ever have is material for the rest of your life.

• 27:57Speaker 00

  What'd you learn from selling underwear?

• 28:01Speaker 02

  Well, I almost got fired for that. The customer is a Sears Roebuck store in a mall in Memphis, and I was a very reluctant employee. I was trying to go to college and commuting and not going anywhere. 18 years old, drifting. And this customer with Sears, a customer's always right. Okay. This guy brought back a three-pack of white boxer briefs, white briefs, not boxers, and wanted to return them. And the package looked suspicious. And I said, I just, I'm not gonna take those back. He said, well, you have to. And I said, well, they look used. He said, well, maybe. I said, look, sir, I'm not gonna touch the

• 28:45Speaker 02

  underwear, okay? And we got kind of loud. I said, I will leave now. Fire me now. I'm not gonna take this underwear back. And so, he got loud, and my boss came over and worked out a compromise. And I thought I was gonna be leaving. I was kind of hoping he'd fire me, because I'd had enough of the underwear. It didn't last long. That wasn't much of a job. But, you know, even the tough construction jobs, summertime work that I had, laying asphalt, or driving a bulldozer, or digging ditches, or working for a plumbing company, that's all just what you need as a kid. You know, I was 16, 17, 18 years old, because it makes you appreciate college. It makes you realize what you don't want in life.

• 29:26Speaker 02

  And, you know, I've got high school friends from way back who didn't see the opportunity and didn't go very far, but I just knew I wasn't gonna do that kind of work for the rest of my life. I was determined. And my parents were not college graduates. They did not have the opportunity. But their dream was for us to go. But I was determined to get there. It took a while to find the right one. But yeah, I think those jobs are crucial to develop. I tell people, writers have got to, you gotta try different jobs. You gotta live different places, travel. You've gotta have success and failure and love and hate and all the different things we go through in life, broken hearts and whatever, to have something to write about. You've gotta, you gotta experience life. And the more varied

• 30:08Speaker 02

  you can make it, the better. I didn't enjoy practicing law for 10 years. I hung in there. But I'm, I'm so glad I did, because I would not be a writer if I hadn't been a lawyer.

• 30:19Speaker 00

  Talk to me about writing. Is it true that you failed an English class in community college?

• 30:26Speaker 02

  No, I didn't fail. I got a D minus.

• 30:27Speaker 00

  You were hanging on.

• 30:30Speaker 02

  Well, I had an A, listen, I had an A-plus average all year. It was my freshman year of college, freshman comp and freshman literature. And I had a really strong high school English teacher. And I was prepared for college, as far as English is concerned. And so, the course was fairly easy. And I had straight A's. And I was not a, never a top student, but I enjoyed literature. The final exam came down to, it was one-third of our grade. Our term paper, which was a big deal back then, with sources and all that, was one-third of the grade. And then the other test and class participation. And so, we're taking

• 31:15Speaker 02

  the final exam, and we just started. And the teacher said, John, would you step out in the hallway? And I said, well, sure. And we stepped out in the hallway. She had a copy of my term paper. And she said, you have a very efficient way of words for a 19-year-old student. I didn't know what she was talking about. And I said, well, okay, thank you. She said, no, I mean, this is, this is very, I haven't had many students who could write like this. I said, okay. And she said, I think you plagiarized this.

• 31:52Speaker 02

  And I said, oh, no, I said, no, no, no, I don't have to plagiarize. That's no, that's not true. I didn't. And she very dramatically turned the paper around on the back of it. She had a big F. And she gave it to me. And I thought, this is not fair. I mean, I didn't. And I couldn't. She went back in the classroom. I went down to the boys, the men's restroom down the hall. And I walked in, it was empty, and I got very emotional. And I was, I was crying. And it was, I was really upset by it because it wasn't true. And once I pulled myself together, I looked in the mirror. My face is red, my eyes are red.

• 32:35Speaker 02

  I said, I can't go back in the classroom like this. And so I waited and waited and waited. And finally, when the class was over, I went back into the class and picked up my test paper and gave it to her. And so I made an F on the final exam. F on the term paper, F on the final exam, and I got a D minus for the course. I left that school. I left it behind. I went somewhere else. I was transferring a lot anyway, by the way, but I didn't want to stay there any longer. But it's also, it's also being falsely accused. I didn't, I didn't think about this at the time, but years went by before I started

• 33:17Speaker 02

  writing about people who are falsely accused and wrongfully convicted of serious crimes. It's very traumatic to be accused of something when you know you're innocent. And I still think about that episode. I'm lucky it's the only time it's happened in life. And it wasn't that serious, I guess, in the scheme of things. But it was pretty, pretty traumatic.

• 33:41Speaker 00

  Well, it also reveals one of your core values, clearly, which is justice and fairness. And I think that there is probably a lot about that searing experience of standing in that hallway and feeling completely powerless and having no way to prove your innocence, no way to convince this woman in believing in you, and just how utterly unfair that is. And there's kind of moral grappling in almost all of your stories. And these characters needing to dig deep, which we all need to do in moments where you have to believe in yourself in a moment when somebody else doesn't, or you have to know the truth when somebody else is saying lies about you.

• 34:26Speaker 00

  You know, one of the other things that you said that I related to was this sense of you were 18 and drifting. And I have a feeling there's going to be a conversation a lot of parents send to their adult kids, especially ones that might be drifting right now. So, you know, if somebody's in that phase where I think a lot of people 18 to kind of 26 are feeling that acutely right now.

• 34:50Speaker 02

  It was a different era. It was, it was just after, there were two, two major factors, I think, that sent me drifting. One was the fact I was raised in a very strict Southern Baptist environment, very conservative, and I couldn't wait to leave home, to get away, to drink beer and chase girls and have some fun in college. And that was a huge factor. Also, it was 1973. We grew up in a suburb of Memphis, and it was a middle-class suburb, a working-class suburb. And Vietnam hung over us all through high school. We knew boys who had gone and come back, not in one piece. We knew there was always an effort to, to join the National Guard, to flunk a medical

• 35:35Speaker 02

  exam, all these schemes to avoid Vietnam. By 1970, I was 15 years old, but I was aware of what was going on. And it was, it was really a dark time in, in American history, especially for kids who were facing the draft. And we were all staring at the draft. And so it was sort of a depressing, I knew I wanted to go to college, but I didn't know when, and I didn't know how to get there. And my parents wanted us to go, but there was no plan to get us there because they didn't know any better. And so I was just kind of, after I finished high school, I just sort of wasn't sure what to do. And I went to two different colleges. And then when I was a sophomore, I went to, I transferred to Mississippi State because my buddies had transferred to Mississippi State.

• 36:17Speaker 02

  And there was this one golden moment when the light goes off in your life and something happens that you don't know really what it is. It's happened at least twice in my life. I was in a classroom one day in 1975 at Mississippi State, and it was a finance course, big class. And the war was over, Saigon was falling, and the communists were rampaging, about to take over Saigon. We were trying to evacuate all of our personnel from the, from the embassy there, and it was a chaotic time, more of the Vietnam War still troubling our nation. And we had this conservative professor, a bomb thrower, who thought, you know, war is great as long as somebody else is fighting it.

• 37:02Speaker 02

  And he was complaining about the fact that we should still be there fighting. And we weren't spending enough money to, we could have won the war, blah, blah. And he made the mistake. There was a guy in our class who had been to Vietnam. And he was about three years older than we were. And he'd been wounded in Vietnam, nothing really severe, but he'd seen combat. And he challenged the professor in a big way. And it got, and you didn't do that back then in 1975, at a conservative place like Mississippi State. You didn't, you didn't challenge a professor. This guy was fearless. And he went after him. They locked up.

• 37:45Speaker 02

  And the student just absolutely ripped the guy to shreds. And we thought it was wonderful. It scared us. We were, I thought it was wonderful. And so I later talked to the guy, and he was a great guy. And he, he said, he said, what are you studying? And I said, general business. He said, that's, that's crap, man. You don't want to study that. He said, study accounting. It's the toughest business major. It'll prepare you for law school. I'm going to law school, and I'm going to do this and I'm going to do that. They said, that's, that's the route to go. And I said, okay. Just like that. I thought, that makes perfect sense. Law school is something I should think about. And that's when the light came on at the age of 20. Suddenly, I stopped drifting, found my place on campus.

• 38:29Speaker 02

  I found my place in the major, started thinking about law school, and I was a different, I was a different person, that one moment.

• 38:36Speaker 00

  What's interesting about that one moment is that it has the same core value, justice. You were rooting for the Vietnam Vet because of your deep sense of justice. And the same thing was true when you got the backhanded weird compliment about what a gifted writer you were in a way that was very unjust. And so the dots are there. And I think, you know, when I was talking earlier about that kind of idea in 1980 that came to you through the friend for the firm, about the firm that nobody leaves, that's kind of what I meant, that there are these little things when you look in reverse.

• 39:18Speaker 00

  Oh, even though the path was really screwed up, I kind of see how all this connects.

• 39:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:24Speaker 00

  And I often think about that because in moments in my life, even today, where I feel just overwhelmed or challenged, or I'm not quite sure what move to make next, I typically remind myself, well, I don't need to know. I just need to look backwards and say, they've always led somewhere so I can trust that where I'm standing right now is going to connect to something in the future. And I don't need to know what that is to know that it will happen. And then your advice, you write one page, you take one step, you start chapter two. John, I have another question I want to ask you, but I got to take a quick break right now so we can hear a word from our amazing sponsors. And don't go anywhere.

• 40:07Speaker 00

  Because coming up, I'm going to ask John some questions about moments when he was filled with doubt. And he'll share with you exactly what he did and what you can do to push through it. Don't go anywhere. We've got more with John Grisham when we return, so stay with me.

• 40:26Speaker 00

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• 41:10Speaker 00

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• 42:36Speaker 00

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• 43:06Speaker 02

  Every job, every job you ever have is material for the rest of your life. You learn lessons from all of them.

• 43:13Speaker 00

  Welcome back. It's your friend Mel Robbins, and today you and I are here with John Grisham, one of the most successful authors of all time. So, John, the next thing I was curious about, what was the second golden moment?

• 43:25Speaker 02

  Far more important. I was a 30-year-old lawyer, dreaming of being a big-time courtroom lawyer. That was my goal, to be a big trial lawyer. And because of that, I was always hanging around the courtroom. In our local courthouse, we had a beautiful courthouse, a beautiful courtroom, and good lawyers and good judges, and that was my turf. And I was always there. And I volunteered for a lot of court-appointed criminal cases and trials. And by the age of 30, I had been through a lot of trials, and I was sort of on the path. It's hard to make a lot of money in a small-town practice. That was the frustrating part. But I also had the dream of being a big trial lawyer and getting bigger cases. That was where I was headed.

• 44:10Speaker 00

  Like that guy in Jackson Hole. What's his name? That legendary?

• 44:13Speaker 02

  Jerry Spence. I think he passed away last year. Yeah. He was a hero 40 years ago. He was a big hero, a famous lawyer. And so I was hanging around in the courtroom one day when I saw something that changed everything. It was a trial that I knew about. We all knew about it because it was a horrible case. Young little girl had been raped, and they called the guy, and he wanted to go to trial. He was a bad actor, terrible guy. And they brought the little girl in to testify. She was, I don't know, 10 or 12. And the judge, my judge, great judge, he knew that it was going to be very, very difficult. And he did something I had never seen before. He cleared the courtroom. Everybody out. Security

• 44:58Speaker 02

  was tight. Security was very tight. So everybody left the courtroom. And he put a deputy at the back door, the front door, said, no one can be admitted for the next hour or so. And there were deputies all over the place. And being a lawyer, I was an officer of the court, so I could hang around. And I did. And the little girl testified. And at times, she was very brave. At times, she was very frail. She told what happened. It was horrible. It was horrible. And for an hour or so, she took us through every emotion known to the

• 45:37Speaker 02

  human soul, from love to hate to retribution to, well, you name it. We went through a rollercoaster. And I kept asking myself, what am I doing here? And I don't have to be here. I knew three people on the jury, small county, and I was across the courtroom looking at them. And it's really bizarre to see all 12 jurors wiping their eyes. The judge was hiding his face. The lawyers were, you know, it was just horrible. And the only person who didn't show any emotion was the defendant, who was a hardened criminal. And finally, she could not continue. And the judge said, let's take a recess. And I, thank God, I raced out of

• 46:22Speaker 02

  the courtroom, side door, went down the back steps, and raced to my car. When I got to my car, I realized I'd forgotten my briefcase. So I had to go back in the courtroom, up the back stairs to the side door. And the defendant was sitting in the same chair. He hadn't moved. And there was nobody else in the courtroom but a deputy who was kind of guarding him, but he wasn't going anywhere. And I walked by the defendant, and I just had this thought. I said, you know, had that been my daughter, and I could get this close, and I had a gun, I would happily blow your brains out. And I would look at the same jury and say, now, what are you going to do to me for doing something that you all want

• 47:04Speaker 02

  to do? That was raw, intense, and filled with hatred. It was awful. But it was real. It was such an emotional moment. And I got through it. I got my briefcase, took off. I had this idea of this story in a courtroom, my courtroom, a fictional story is seen through the eyes of this idealistic young attorney who gets appointed to represent this guy. And here we go. And that was the origin of A Time to Kill. And I thought about it for days and weeks. And finally, I said, you know, I'm going to start with chapter one

• 47:47Speaker 02

  and tell this story. I had never written before, fiction. And that's how it got started. But if I had not been in that courtroom, I'm not sure I would have been inspired or motivated enough or ambitious enough to try something like that. And that's how it got started.

• 48:06Speaker 00

  And you ultimately wrote it. But when you went to go get a publisher, what happened?

• 48:14Speaker 02

  Oh, boy. Talk about rejection. Well, about halfway through, after a year or so, I had a lot of, there was a lot of stuff written, still untyped, handwritten. And I began thinking about getting published. I had the big dream, the dream of writing for a living. That was the big dream. And I could not shake it, didn't want to shake it. And that's what motivated me to keep writing and reading. Reading was crucial because I read so many great mystery writers, suspense writers, all the guys who were big in the 80s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. So when I finally finished the book, I sent the book off to

• 48:57Speaker 02

  New York, the way you're supposed to do it. You know, three sample chapters, a cover letter, a pitch, and you send it off to, I had a list of 10 agents and 10 publishers. Back then, you could send it to an editor. You can't do that now. It has to come through an agent today. And so I had 10 and 10, two lists. And my secretary, because I was off at the state legislature, she would send off 10 and 10, 20 submissions, go to New York. They came right back, rejection, rejection, rejection. And I would come in on Friday afternoon from the state Capitol, run by the office, and check the mail, check my rejection letters.

• 49:36Speaker 02

  And so that's, that's how it went. And I don't, there were a lot of them. But you know, that's kind of, that's kind of the way you did it back then. It was rejection was so much a part of it.

• 49:46Speaker 00

  Well, I think that's kind of the way you do it now, too.

• 49:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 49:48Speaker 00

  Like, anything has a lot of rejection. I want to, I want to compliment you about something. I want to make sure the person listening or watching really gets the profound importance of something that you allowed yourself to do. You started writing just because you wanted to and you enjoyed it. Like, so much of your story, which I find to be so inspiring, is that the dream didn't happen first. You were just interested. You had something you enjoyed doing just for the sake of doing it. And we've all had those moments where you get

• 50:29Speaker 00

  lost in something. And I think it's so important that we all have something for ourselves. And as I was listening to your story, you know, you said very early on, I've always loved stories. And I grew up with storytellers. And I grew up with grandparents and parents telling stories on the porch. And allowing yourself and giving yourself permission, creating space in your life, to have something that is just for you, simply because you enjoy it. That, to me, is the fundamental lesson. Because even if you never published, even if you never wrote the 70 books, or however many you've written, all of which become number one, even if none of that never happened, having that space for yourself to do something

• 51:14Speaker 00

  that really is for you, that you enjoy doing, it brings so much meaning to your life. And so I think it's really important, I want to make sure as you're listening, you heard the brilliance in that. Because the dream came after you created space for something that you actually just enjoyed doing.

• 51:31Speaker 02

  Still enjoy it. Still, still therapy.

• 51:33Speaker 00

  One of the things that I'm really picking up on your story, because so many people get either derailed before they even start, or they get derailed because of the rejections that start coming in. And what's interesting about your story is that if you're really paying attention, you know, listening as John's talking, that the getting started for you in terms of writing as a habit and just kind of leaning in, felt like more of something that just brought a lot of meaning and joy to your life. And that that was the why. But I'm curious, how did you deal with the rejections? And how did you deal with the fact that the

• 52:16Speaker 00

  time to kill, you, you get published, it's now out there, and nothing's happening. And yet you're still writing. So what is the lesson that the person listening can take about processing rejection, or putting yourself out there, and it's not successful, because it wasn't?

• 52:35Speaker 02

  Well, the submission rejection routine that I went through was, was fairly typical for writers. The first novel that was a flop is not unusual in this profession. But you know, there are a lot of stories, a lot of great stories about famous writers who were turned down repeatedly, time and time again. Nobody wanted to publish their stories. And they kept on, they kept on, they kept. And finally, they got a break somewhere. And, and those are the great stories in publishing. Some of the great books we can, we've read and enjoyed over the years were, were totally rejected. And I tell, I tell aspiring writers that, you know, some of these stories, they're fun stories to talk about. My story's fun. But every, almost every successful writer got rejected.

• 53:18Speaker 00

  I think every successful person.

• 53:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure. Yeah.

• 53:21Speaker 00

  What's in your story is that you didn't stop.

• 53:24Speaker 02

  Right.

• 53:24Speaker 00

  And it goes back to one page a day.

• 53:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:26Speaker 00

  Whether the rejections come in, whether the book does well, you just didn't stop.

• 53:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:32Speaker 00

  And to me, time and time again, that always seems to be the unifying thing that happens in successful people's story. That, and again, if I use a writing metaphor, if you're still here, the story hasn't ended. And the person that has control over where the story goes next, whether you keep writing, or you keep showing up, is you. And because you loved what you did, and you were doing it for you, it didn't matter if you got rejected, you were going to keep writing.

• 54:02Speaker 02

  I don't know how long I would have done it, had I not had the success with The Firm.

• 54:08Speaker 00

  Really?

• 54:08Speaker 02

  I didn't have a story for the third book at the time. And I'd spent five years, three years for Time to Kill, two years for The Firm, back to back. And I was getting kind of tired of the 5:30 routine. I was spending a lot of time there, and I, and I kept thinking, well, you could be spending more time with your cases as a lawyer. I was letting some things slide. And the practice was not going anywhere because I was distracted. And at some point, I had to make a decision, because I wasn't making any money as a, as a writer. And I think at some point, fairly soon after that, I would have had to have

• 54:50Speaker 02

  said, okay, I've tried twice. I can't keep doing this. But I've got a great fallback position. I've got the bread and butter right here. It's my law office. And I can make that more successful. And I can forget about writing, and I can pursue my original dream of being a really successful trial lawyer.

• 55:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:10Speaker 02

  And I had some, I had some heroes, some lawyers I knew in Mississippi who were very fine trial lawyers, who I tried to pattern myself after as a very young lawyer. So I, I think that's probably what would have happened. Thank God it didn't come to that. Thank God it didn't happen. So, you know, I, again, I feel, I got a huge lucky break. I know you make your own luck, okay? But I got a huge lucky break with The Firm. The book went to New York in the fall of 89. And my agent, who had read the summary and loved the idea, he wasn't too thrilled with it. He wanted some changes made. And I said, no, I'm not going to make those changes. And so we were sort of at a stalemate for

• 55:52Speaker 02

  several months. He showed the book to some editors. There was no rush to publish The Firm. And he called me around Christmas of 89 and said, look, nothing's happening. It's the holidays. I'll sell the book in the, in January. I said, okay, great. I've heard that before. And so, and this is where the fun starts. Unknown to him, and unknown to me, a scout, back then, the major studios had scouts in New York who would hang around the publishing companies and, and pick up the gossip for a big book, or a good book,

• 56:29Speaker 02

  a good manuscript. But a bootleg copy of The Firm popped up in Hollywood over the Christmas break. And a guy got it out there. And I'm not sure what he did, but he pretended that he was my agent. And he ran 25 copies of it and sent it off to all the studios, and publishing, and production companies. And he got, they started getting offers.

• 56:56Speaker 00

  And you didn't know any of this was going on?

• 56:57Speaker 02

  Not a word, not a word. My agent didn't know about it. Nobody knew about it, except for the guys in Hollywood. And so the, the offers got more and more intense. The bidding started. And at some point, somebody said, what about Grisham? Have we talked to him? Well, nobody had. Somebody called my agent. They had a huge fight. They threatened lawsuits and all this kind of stuff. And I didn't know about that. And it was obvious a big deal was about to go down. So they, they kissed and made up, and had a deal. And they were, they were ready for the final round of bidding, when he finally called me on a Sunday morning. And he said, hey, I need your authority to take the highest offer from

• 57:39Speaker 02

  Paramount, Universal, or Disney Touchstone for the film rights to The Firm. And I said, film rights? What about the book? And he said, we'll talk about it later. And I said, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. He said, no, this is urgent. He said, they're sitting by their phones for the final round of bidding. And the word bidding had a nice ring to it. And I thought, okay, yeah, sure, go ahead and sell the film rights. And he called back about an hour later and said, we have just sold the film rights. No, I said, I said, okay, just for fun, how much money are we talking about? He said, I'm asking for 500,000.

• 58:20Speaker 02

  I hope to get 400,000, or something like that. And I said, you want my authority to go do that? And he said, yeah, so you have my authority. He called back, and he said, we just sold the film rights to The Firm to Paramount Pictures for 600,000, which was more money than I had made in 10 years of practicing law.

• 58:42Speaker 02

  I said, okay, look, let me, let me call you back. And we ran out, sat down at the kitchen table. We were late for lunch at my mom's house. And we said, you gotta be kidding. This is just, just one phone call. Just dropped in like that out of nowhere, totally unexpected. And that's when everything changed.

• 59:01Speaker 00

  One thing I want to just tease out, especially as you've been listening to John's story, because you said you got lucky and then you kind of, well, you make your own luck. And the fact is, you had been working toward that moment since you were 18 years old. And we recently had this extraordinary professor who researches the science of luck. And luck is this largely misunderstood thing, because it's really about the actions that you take that put you in the current to have those kinds of things happen. And the five years of writing, the kind of walk in past, the 28 rejections, the shrugging

• 59:43Speaker 00

  off, the, you know, the flop of the time to kill book, the continuing to write, the sending it all off, like, all of that are examples of your philosophy of one page a day, move it down the field, write another page, keep moving it forward, that put you in the current to have all of that happen.

• 1:00:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:07Speaker 00

  And it's important for the person to hear that, because it'd be easy to say, oh, gosh, timing, all this stuff. But none of that happens without everything that came before.

• 1:00:18Speaker 02

  Right. I don't downplay it. I don't, I tend to downplay it for

• 1:00:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, I've noticed.

• 1:00:23Speaker 02

  To get, to get a laugh. I love humor. I love to poke fun at myself. I don't downplay what happened. But you're right, it was a five year journey to get to that point. I didn't realize it.

• 1:00:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:36Speaker 02

  But everything I had done, and also sort of honing the craft, learning how to write, learning the mistakes from a time to kill, learning how to keep a story lean and fast. It was all stuff I didn't, just picked up, you know, I learned over time. And so the timing was very fortunate when it came, when it happened. The book came out in, when you saw it, May of 91, March of 91. And there was a lot of buzz behind the book when it came out. And it was, it hit the New York Times list. And back in those days, a new writer on the list got a lot of attention. And so Double Day said, can you come to New York for the victory lap? And I said, sure.

• 1:01:19Speaker 02

  And came, went to New York and, and had a bunch of interviews. I did Bryant Gumbel Today Show, which was a big deal back then. He was very good to me. And we were having lunch, a bunch of publishers in a room and booksellers. And I sat next to a very young executive from the old Walton Book Exchange.

• 1:01:39Speaker 00

  Oh, I remember Walton, yeah.

• 1:01:41Speaker 02

  Every mall had a B Dalton on one end, Walton on the other. And those are, those are the bookstores I grew up with. And this guy, very young guy, probably my age, and he said, we just make an idle conversation. He said something that just stuck. I'll never forget it. He said, we're talking about writers and he said, oh, the big guys come out every year. I had never thought about that. He said, yeah, look, Stephen King, Michael Crichton, Robert Ludlum, you know, Ken Folliot, they come out every year. The big guys come out every year. Elmore Leonard. And I thought, okay, I want to be a big guy. So I hustled back to Oxford, Mississippi, where we lived at the time, and wrote around

• 1:02:23Speaker 02

  the clock to finish The Pelican Brief, to have it out in time to publish in 92, a year later. And that's how it all kept going. That's where the book of year came from. That's been a book of years for 35 years now.

• 1:02:39Speaker 00

  Page a day, a book a year?

• 1:02:41Speaker 02

  You're going to keep your butt in the seat.

• 1:02:43Speaker 00

  Keep your butt in the seat. Talk to me about that.

• 1:02:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, you gotta do it. You gotta, you gotta, you gotta show up. You gotta show up.

• 1:02:51Speaker 00

  You know, there was some real gold in something that you've said, and I want to combine the two and then pull it out for the person listening. You use this term where you patterned other trial lawyers. And that, you know, that was kind of your backup plan, you're following the actions of people that inspired you. And then you said, the big guys come out every year, which is another pattern. Can you talk just a little bit about how, like, some of the secrets to success are literally right in front of you?

• 1:03:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:25Speaker 00

  Based on the patterns of people that you admire?

• 1:03:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. When I was in law school, my third year, third year of law school is pretty, pretty easy compared to the first two. I didn't like law school either, okay? I didn't like law school at all. I'm not sure any

• 1:03:36Speaker 00

  We have so much in common.

• 1:03:37Speaker 02

  Oh, gosh, couldn't stand law school. Couldn't wait to get out of it. But my senior year, there was a federal courthouse across town. And I would watch the dockets. And I knew when the good lawyers were in court trying cases, I would cut classes, which is no big deal when you're a third year student, to go watch the lawyers, the good lawyers. And I was in court one day, watching a civil trial, and two heavyweights were going at it in front of a jury. And it was, it was magic. And I was sitting there, and civil trials don't draw big crowds, you know? And I was sitting, I thought, looked around, I said, there are no other law students here. Which was no big deal. Who wants to watch trials?

• 1:04:22Speaker 02

  But I did. I wanted to watch the lawyers. And so I tried to pattern my practice after those guys. And a lot of it is, is being able to discover cases, not chase them, but get them, which is probably the most difficult part. And then when I was, when I was, when I was writing, when I started writing, Time to Kill, and The Firm, that five year period, I read a lot of popular fiction. And, and it was really kind of odd, because I would read a book and I would say, this is crap, okay? This guy, this is terrible. I can beat this. And I knew I could. I mean, I knew I could tell a better story, could certainly write better than a lot of

• 1:05:07Speaker 02

  popular fiction, a lot of really popular fiction. And that was inspirational. And I was also, also very honest. And I would read a book and say, I'll never be that good. Still do that. But it's, it's always something better. You've got something to aspire for. I want every book to be my best book, okay? And it'd get better and get better. And so I'm an honest judge of my own work, but I knew there was room for me on the bestseller list. And it was often the bad books that inspired me to keep going. Or I'd walk, I'd walk in a Walton bookstore, or a B Dalton, and they have the big wall of all the New York Times bestsellers, and big, beautiful books. And I, you know, I knew a lot of them. And I would get so sad, thinking, who wants to hear from me?

• 1:05:52Speaker 02

  Look at all those books up there. Look at all those books. And I would get, I'd worry about that for a while, but I wouldn't slow down. And I, I tell writers all the time, look, publishing needs new talent every year. If you want to get inspired to write, read debut novels. These are first time writers. And they're celebrated. And we celebrate them. We need new writers. Somebody's going to get published every year.

• 1:06:20Speaker 00

  You know, I love that moment where you're saying, who's going to read what I write? Like, who's going to read me? For the person who knows what they want, but is in that swirl. Because I did that with this podcast for many, many years. Like, there's so many of them, who's, who wants to hear from me? Lots of people have already done it. For the person that's saying that to themselves, like you used to in the bookstore, what would you tell them?

• 1:06:47Speaker 02

  You can't control all that. You can't control whatever somebody else writes. You can't control what, what, what the publishers publish. You can't control what the stores sell. Work with what you can control, which is your own fiction, and you can make it better. If you have a great story, something new, write it. And don't quit. You know, I tell writers, if you, when are you going to stop writing? When I run out of stories? Or writers say, I've been, I've written five novels and I've had them all rejected. You know, what am I, what would you advise me to do? And I will say, well, keep writing if you have a story. Now, a lot of the great writing is God given talent.

• 1:07:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:07:25Speaker 02

  You know, there's some writers, like in any field, you have people who are just, have so much talent that comes through DNA or right education or whatever, whatever experiences they have. But you can also improve your own writing by watching those people.

• 1:07:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:07:42Speaker 02

  By trying to be like them, trying to be great like they are.

• 1:07:44Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:07:45Speaker 02

  And also the technical skills that you can master yourself, you know? Vocabulary and grammar and, and, and reading, reading, reading, reading is the most important. I don't know a single writer, successful writer, who is not a, an avid reader.

• 1:07:59Speaker 00

  You gave some really, I think, cool advice, and I don't even know if you realize this. So as you're standing in the bookstore, and you're looking at all the greats, and you're thinking, there's no room for me.

• 1:08:10Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:08:11Speaker 00

  I'm never going to be that good. We don't look at the books that are crap and use it as motivation to go, if this garbage can get published, why not me? You know what I mean? Like, if this person can do it, why not me? And so I think there's patterns of both ends, to not just look up. Look up for the actual skills of success and the technique and talent. Look down to remind yourself that there are people who are far less talented than you that are putting themselves out there, that are writing one page at a time.

• 1:08:49Speaker 00

  You know, the reason, John, that I release two episodes a week is because the big guys have two a week.

• 1:09:03Speaker 00

  And so the patterning that you're talking about is all around you. And when you were sitting in that courtroom as a third year law student, watching the two big dogs go at it in a civil case, and you look around going, why is nobody else here? Who wants to watch a civil trial? A person who wants to be amazing at it, studies the greats. You're a student before you're a great. And that's everywhere in your story, that you're looking around, you're looking for great stories, you're looking for inspiration, you're looking for patterns, you're looking for what the great writers do. And, you know, I even think that one of the reasons why I was so excited to have you on and talk to you about your story is because I know every single person, the person who's

• 1:09:44Speaker 00

  listening right now, they listen because they want the patterns from your life. They want to know what they can learn from you. And even though a lot of what you're sharing is about the way you think about writing, it is 1,000% the exact same way that you do anything in life. You know, I would love to hear more about the Innocence Project and what you learned from this work.

• 1:10:06Speaker 02

  When I was a young lawyer, I saw this obituary one day in the New York Times about this guy who had obviously just died. And he was very much like me, same age, same neck of the woods, same region. And he came within five days of being executed in Oklahoma. And I thought, how could this guy go to death row and be innocent? And I was just, I was just stunned by the story. I took off to Oklahoma. I took off and I met with his family and I said, I'm going to write this book. And they said, great. They were still mourning his death. Writing that book took me into the world of wrongful convictions. And once I realized there are thousands of innocent people in prison, it was a big wake up call for me.

• 1:10:51Speaker 02

  And that was 20 years ago. And so I'm still writing about them, still published a book two years ago about wrongful convictions, still angry at how they happened, still advocate for criminal justice reform, still frustrated by the lack of reform. So it's something I'm caught up in.

• 1:11:13Speaker 00

  I admire that in you, especially having been a public defender and having Bryan Stevenson as one of my, my most inspiring mentors, for sure. We've had him here on the show. He's, his work's incredible.

• 1:11:30Speaker 02

  He's, he's one of a kind. What he has accomplished is truly amazing. And his book was very inspirational. We've visited his museums in Montgomery and were just really overcome.

• 1:11:45Speaker 00

  How do you stay hopeful when the world is overwhelming and when you're in these cases and grappling with issues of justice in your work? How do you stay hopeful?

• 1:11:58Speaker 02

  I tell myself, okay, go back to the basics, worry about the things you can control. You can wake up each morning and see the news and just fret and worry yourself into a deep funk and stay there all day. Or you can say, okay, I'm not, yeah, the world's a mess, okay? What can I do today to make it a little bit better? How can I help someone today to make it a little bit better? And that's what I do. That's almost every day. Obviously, I can escape in my own world and go write some fiction, which is what I do, I still do.

• 1:12:38Speaker 02

  And I can also work with a lot of nonprofits and things like that to try to make the world better and get a lot of gratification from that. My wife and I are active with childhood hunger issues, homelessness and wrongful convictions. We stay pretty busy working with nonprofits and that's extremely gratifying. So that's, gives us hope. We hope we're providing hope for someone else. Baby steps, small steps, little something every day.

• 1:13:10Speaker 00

  One page a day?

• 1:13:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, one page a day.

• 1:13:13Speaker 00

  You know, I often think about this too, because it is very overwhelming and there's a lot to feel despair about. And on one hand, I think the fact that you feel heartbroken about some of the things that you see is a good thing. Cause it means that you still have a heart to break and you still care about goodness and justice and kindness and the dignity of how people are treated. And I agree with you, I feel hopeless when I look out there.

• 1:13:43Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:13:44Speaker 00

  But I feel very empowered when I just look in my community and I look around me and I say, what is one thing I can do today that really is part of a positive shift? Whether it's in my home, in my marriage, in my friendships, in my community, in the world at large. And I truly think if enough of us just start doing that, everything is going to start to change for the better.

• 1:14:12Speaker 02

  And there are so many people doing that.

• 1:14:14Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:14:15Speaker 02

  The good, the good outnumber the bad.

• 1:14:17Speaker 00

  That's true. I agree with you. John Grisham, you are just an absolute amazing, amazing generous and very talented person. Thank you.

• 1:14:30Speaker 02

  You're being very generous. Thank you.

• 1:14:32Speaker 00

  You're welcome.

• 1:14:33Speaker 02

  You're very welcome.

• 1:14:34Speaker 00

  You're welcome.

• 1:14:35Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me on your show.

• 1:14:36Speaker 00

  Of course. And give Renee my best. I can't wait to meet her one of these days.

• 1:14:39Speaker 02

  She would love that.

• 1:14:40Speaker 00

  I would love that too. And I also want to thank you. Thank you for making the time to spend it here with me and John Grisham. And I hope that you feel so inspired and you are just going to go put your butt in the chair, turn the page and start writing that new chapter. And in case no one else tells you, as your friend, I wanted to be sure to say, I love you and I believe in you and your ability to create a better life. And you got so many amazing pieces of wisdom and tools from John Grisham today, so freaking use them. All right. I'll see you in the next episode. I'll welcome you in the moment you hit play.

• 1:15:19Speaker 00

  Today, I am finally sitting down with a man that changed my life 35 years ago, and he didn't even know he had. What, is that right? Without having any idea? I don't think it's like.

• 1:15:31Speaker 02

  Having any idea.

• 1:15:32Speaker 00

  Okay, great. Today, his exact morning routine that he has followed for 30 years. And this is the, today he'll share two golden moments with you that changed his. And he'll teach you how to, he has written some of the most iconic and award winning legal theor- Now, this episode means a lot to me because 35 years ago, now this particular conversation means a lot to me because 35 years ago, John Grisham changed my life and even, oh my God. Today, you and I are here with the legendary John Grisham, and he is talking all about,

• 1:16:11Speaker 00

  like, and he's sharing what details from, what should we say? Oh, and one more thing. And no, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language. You know what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good.

• 1:16:50Speaker 00

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• 1:17:35Speaker 00

  Nearly 50 years after Stephen King's Carrie became a cultural phenomenon, Mike Flanagan is reimagining the iconic story for a new generation. Now, the new series honors the legacy of the original Carrie, but it's asking the question, are we watching the origin of a hero, a villain, or something far more complicated? And in this modern social media age, Carrie's new story resonates more than ever. You don't want to miss it. Carrie is streaming October 7th only on Prime Video.