How to Reinvent Yourself and Start a New Chapter

Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. 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 sold 500 million copies of his books. And today, John Grisham is here in our Boston studios to share his most personal story 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, 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 got to stop talking because I got to start writing my next chapter. And after you listen today, so will you. 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. I'm your host, Mel Robbins. I 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's 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 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 wrote 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 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. Happy to be here, Mel. Good seeing you. I am thrilled to meet you in person. I'm thrilled to meet you in person. 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've 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 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, 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 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. 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 really happened in law school. For the person who's listening, John, who hasn't read the firm. And, you know, I'm just going to 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 going to go to bed. Because you will just keep turning the page and turn on the page and turn on the page, but put them at the scene of kind of what the book is about and what inspired it. It 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 going to marry my sweetheart from my hometown. I did 45 years ago. And I knew I was going to open up my own little shop and practice law. I didn't like any of the law firms. 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. I 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 to our senior year in law school. And he would go to visit a regional law firm in Houston or Kansas City or Memphis or New Orleans, all in the South, Memphis. And he'd come back and we sort of vicariously lived through him. What was the firm like? What were the odds? And he would come back and we sort of vicariously 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 Like a lot of stories, they hang around. Most of them are based 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 pitch 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 simple title that would never stick. Funny 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 35 years ago, well, it changed the world. I mean, our world was upside down and has been ever since. 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. You never leave, yeah. 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. and 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. 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 probably 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. 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. The good ones stick. 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. 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 from them with my wife. Well, you got to love fiction. You got to love fiction. 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? You got to keep working. You can't be smothered with doubt or depression or fear or whatever. 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. I said, man, let me go write chapter two. And that went on for a while, but it was 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. Well, I lost sleep reading it, so we're even. Yeah. Well, 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 said it a thousand times. If you're serious about writing anything, you're going to lose sleep. You're going to lose sleep. 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. I don't care what your task is or what your thinking about doing. You got to show up every day. You can't just talk about it, dream about it, think about it. You got to show up. Again, I don't care what you're doing, 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 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. 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. 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? What was the way you tried that was like, well, this definitely does not work? The first time it happened, I had gone a couple of weeks and written nothing. And my wife, I can remember more than once said, where's the latest chapter? And I said, I haven't written it yet. She said, why not? And I said, okay, I'll get busy. Because she always loved the story. And I'd learned, okay, to do this, you got to 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. And it got easier and it got easier and it got easier. The thing about it, I wrote too much. The Time to Kill, once it was typed, was almost a thousand pages. Yeah. And another lesson, okay? I didn't know what I was doing. I was not a writer. A 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. And I thought, well, I'm going to 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. I'm not that smart, but 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. They're 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. 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. I have to hog tie her now and handcuff her, make her sit down and listen to me because she's tired of it after all these years. But I'll say, I have a great idea. She said, 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. She usually shoots them down and says, no, it's not going to work. Or occasionally she'll like one. She'll like one. 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 a 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're 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. 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 going to spin. You're not going to get there. No, you're not going to 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, 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 got to do is go write the next one. It doesn't mean it's not coming. It doesn't mean it's never going to get written. You just have to make the, oh, OK, 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 got to 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 with me. 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. 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. You're welcome. Thank you. 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 Wreath. 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. That's right. 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 odd jobs that you've had that, in a weird way, still inform you? All of them. Every job. Every job you ever have is material. Material for the rest of your life. What'd you learn from selling underwear? Well, I almost got fired for that. The customer is the 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. Eighteen years old, drifting. And this customer, with Sears, the customer's always right. This guy brought back a three-pack of white boxer briefs. Brought white briefs, not boxers. And wanted to return them. And the package looked suspicious. And I said, I just, I'm not going to 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 going to touch the underwear, okay? And we got kind of loud. I said, I will leave now. I'll fire me now. I'm not going to take his underwear back. And so, he got loud. And my boss came up to me. And my boss came over. And I worked out a compromise. And I thought I was going to 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're doing. 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 going to 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've got to try different jobs. You've got to live different places, travel. You've got to do a lot of different things. You've got to 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 got to experience life. And the more varied you can make it, the better. I didn't enjoy practicing law for 10 years. I hung in there. But I'm so glad I did because I would not be a writer if I hadn't been a lawyer. Talk to me about writing. Is it true that you failed an English class in community college? No, I didn't fail. I got a D minus. You were hanging on. 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 is 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 the final exam. And we just started. And the teacher said, John, 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. Uh, thank you. She said, no, I mean, you, this is, this is very, um, I haven't had many students who could write like this. I said, okay. And she said, I think you plagiarize this. And I said, oh, no, I said, no, no, no. I. 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, 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, um, looked in the mirror, my face is red. My eyes are red. 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 he's also, he's also being falsely accused. I didn't, I didn't think about this at the time, but, um, years went by before I started, uh, 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, uh, pretty traumatic. Well, it also reveals one of your core values clearly, which is justice and fairness. And I think that there was probably a lot about that searing experience of standing in that hallway. Yeah. 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. Right. when somebody else is saying lies, about you. 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. It was a different era. It was just after there were 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. We're 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 join the National Guard, to flunk a medical 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 a really dark time 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. And there was this one golden 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 embassy there. And it was a two-hour flight. And we were trying to evacuate all of our personnel from the embassy there. And we 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. 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 had 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 challenge a professor. This guy was fearless. And he went after him. They locked up. And the student just absolutely. He ripped the guy to shreds. And we thought it was wonderful. It scared us. I thought it was wonderful. And so I later talked to the guy and he was a great guy. And he said, he said, what are you studying? I said, general business. He said, 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 the route to go. And I said, okay. Just like that. Just like that. 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. 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. 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. 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. Oh, even though the path was really screwed up, I kind of see how all this connects. And I often think about that because in moments of my life, even today, where I feel just overwhelmed or challenged or I know 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 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. Every job, every job you ever have is material for the rest of your life. You learn lessons from all of them. Welcome back. 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? 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 and 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. Like that guy in Jackson Hole. What's his name? That legendary. Jerry Spence. Yeah, Jerry Spence. I think he passed away last year. Yeah. He was a hero 40 years ago. He was a big hero. Yeah. A famous lawyer. And so I was hanging around the courtroom one day. And 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. A young little girl had been raped. And they called the guy. And he wanted to go to trial. He was a bad actor, a 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 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. 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 human soul, from love to hate to retribution to what you name it. We went through a roller coaster. 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 a horrible. And the only person who didn't show any emotion was a 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 the courtroom side door, went down. I got to 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? going to do to me for doing something that you all want to do. That was raw, intense, and filled with hatred and retribution. It was awful, but it was real. It was such an emotional moment. And I got through it. I got my briefcase and took off. And I had this idea of the 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 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. 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. And you ultimately wrote it. But when you went to go get a publisher, what happened? 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 New York, the way you're supposed to do it. You know, a sample chapter is 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 to 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. And that's how it went. And I don't, there were a lot of them. But you know, that's kind of the way you did it back then. It was rejection was so much a part of it. Well, I think that's kind of the way you do it now too. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Like anything has a lot of rejection. I want to compliment you about something. I want to make sure the person listening or watching really gets the profound importance of something. I want to make sure the person listening or watching really gets the 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 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 grandparents and parents telling stories on the porch. And allowing yourself and giving yourself permission and 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 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 wanted to do. And so I think it's really important that you just enjoy doing. Still enjoy it. Still therapy. 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 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. Well, the submission rejection routine that I went through 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 that those are the great stories in publishing. Some of the great books we've read and enjoyed over the years were totally rejected. And I tell aspiring writers that, you know, some of these stories, they're fun stories to talk about. My story's fun. Almost every successful writer got rejected. I think every successful person. Yeah, sure. Yeah. What's in your story is that you didn't stop. Right. And it goes back to one page a day. Yeah. Whether the rejections come in, the book does well. You just didn't stop. Yeah. 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, you're not going to be able to do it again. You're not going to be able to do it again. You're not going to be able to do it It didn't matter if you got rejected. You're going to keep writing. I don't know how long I would have done it had I not had the success with the firm. Really? 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 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 writer. And I think at some point fairly soon after that, I would have had to have 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. And 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 think that's probably what would have happened. Thank God it didn't come to that. Thank God it didn't happen. So 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 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 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 pick up the gossip for a big book or a good book, 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 though 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. And you didn't know any of this was going on? My agent didn't know about it. Nobody knew about it except for the guys Hollywood. And so 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 kissed and made up and had a deal. And they were ready for the final round of bidding when he finally called me on a Sunday morning. He said, hey, I need your authority to take the highest offer from 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, 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, OK, 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, OK, just for fun, how much money are we talking about? He said, I'm asking for $500,000. I hope to get $400,000 or something like that. And I said, you want my authority to go? And he said, yeah. I said, you have my authority. And 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'd made in 10 years of practicing law. I said, OK, look, let me call you back. And Renee and I sat down at the kitchen table. We were late for lunch at my mom's house. And we said, you've got to be kidding. Just one phone call. Just dropped in like that. Out of nowhere, totally unexpected. And that's when everything changed. 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. It's a 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 walking past the 28 rejections, the shrugging 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. The 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. Yeah. 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. Right. I don't downplay it. I tend to downplay it for. Yeah, I've noticed. 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. Yeah. 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 the 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 Doubleday said, can you come to New York for the victory lap? And I said, sure. And came, went to New York and had a bunch of interviews. I did Brian 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 the room and booksellers. And I sat next to a very young executive from the old Walden bookshelves. Oh, I remember Walden, yeah. Every model had a B. Dalton on one end, but Walden on the other. And 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 Fogg, they come out every year. The big guys come out every year. The 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 the clock to finish the book. And I said, I want to be a big guy. And he said, I want to be a big guy. And I 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 a year came from. That's been a book of years for 35 years now. Page a day, a book a year. You're going to keep your butt in the seat. Keep your butt in the seat. Talk to me about that. Yeah, you got to do it. You got to show up. You got to show up. 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? Based on the patterns of people that you admire? 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 law school. We have so much in common. Oh, God. 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? But I did. I wanted to watch the And so I tried to pattern my practice after those guys. And a lot of it 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 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. I could certainly write better than a lot of 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 always something better. You 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 was 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 in a Walden bookstore or a B. Dalton, and they have the big wall of all the New York Times bestsellers and big, beautiful books. And I knew a lot of them. And I would get so sad thinking, who wants to hear from me? Look at all those books. And I'd worry about that for a while, but I wouldn't slow down. And 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. You know, I love that moment where you're saying, who's going to read what I wrote? 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 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? You can't control all that. You can't control what somebody else writes. You can't control 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 yeah 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 write education or whatever experiences they have but you can also improve your own writing by watching those people yeah by trying to be like them trying to be great like they are yep 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 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 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 you 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 you know the reason john that i release two episodes a week is because the big guys have two a week 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 listening right now i know every single person who's listening right now i know 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 1000 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 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 and be innocent and i was just i was just just stunned by the story i took off to oklahoma i took off and i met with his family and i said i'm gonna write this book and they said great they were still mourning his death writing that book took me into the world of writing and i was like i'm gonna write this book about 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 and that was 20 years ago and so i'm still writing about him still published a book two years ago about wrongful convictions still angry at how they happen still uh advocate for criminal justice reform uh still frustrated by the lack of reform so it's something i'm caught up in um i admire that in you um especially having been a public defender and having brian stevenson as one of my my most uh inspiring mentors for sure we've had him here on the show he's he's incredible he's he's uh one of a kind what he has accomplished is is truly amazing and his book was uh very inspirational we visited his uh museums in montgomery and we're just um really overcome 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 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 better how 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 and i can also work with a lot of non-profits 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 non-profits and that's extremely gratifying so that gives us hope we hope we're providing hope for someone else baby steps small steps a little something every day one page a day yeah one page a day you know i often think about this too because it is very overwhelming and um 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 because 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 right 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 and there are so many people doing that yes the good the good outnumber the bad that's true i agree with you john grisham you are just an absolute amazing amazing generous and very talented person thank you you're being very generous thank you you're welcome you're very welcome you're welcome and uh thanks for having me on your show of course and give renee my best i can't wait to meet her one of these days she would love that 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 gonna 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 righty i'll see you in the next episode i'll welcome you in the moment you hit play 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 okay great today his exact morning routine that he has followed for 30 years and this is the root today he'll share two golden moments with you that changed his and he'll teach you how do you he has written some of the most iconic and award-winning legal theory 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 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 i'll see you in the next episode sirius xm podcasts